Category: family

Mom’s running gag

It’s Mother’s Day, and the third anniversary of the day my mom died. How like her to make her final exit at this time of year, ensuring we’d never thoughtlessly skip observing the day, or enjoy it too much without feeling some pangs of loss for her. When I was growing up she joked often about her plans to be “a burden” on her children in her old age. The timing of her death is a kind of extension of that running joke.

Three years ago, when my mom died, I wrote “I will miss her” — not much of a stretch, and of course it’s been true. I had grown accustomed to long phone conversations with her once or twice a week, as I commuted to and from my distant job (at Danger, where an important perk was free cell phone calls, which made the long commute more tolerable).

In April, a few weeks before she died, I wrote my epic seven-part blog series “A boy and his dog,” which I was eager to share with my mom. She was a big fan of my writing and I was a big fan of her praise, which she had a lot of for my still-new blog. Little did I know that she had begun her final decline. She’d been in and out of hospitals and a nursing home for several weeks, but we still thought it was temporary and she’d be returning home before long. Meanwhile I offered to read my story to her over the phone, and was annoyed when she kept putting me off. I didn’t realize that her ability to focus on a story, or even remain on the phone for more than a couple of minutes, was at an end.

My long drive-time conversations were over, and soon the fun started to drain out of going to work at Danger. The most avid member of my writing audience was gone and soon I wasn’t writing quite as much. In spite of her joking, the only way in which my Mom ever was a burden was by being absent.

Greatest hits: Movies for kids

Many months ago, on the internal “parents” mailing list at work, someone asked for “movies that a 3 year old could watch that are also fun for the parents.” I wrote the following, which elicited from one list member the gratifying response, “This has to be the coolest kids’ movies list I’ve ever seen.”

Some recommendations in addition to the usual Disney/Pixar/HBO-Family stuff:

Animals Are Beautiful People
Remember the narrated documentary bits from The Gods Must Be Crazy about flora, fauna, and tribal life in the Kalahari desert? This is a whole movie of just that (by the same narrator and filmmakers), humorous in many places and a minimum of nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw.
Apollo 13
If you skip the preliminaries and go straight to the blast-off, and keep your child informed about what’s happening in the story and that it all happened in real life, it’s great.
Batman (1966)
A ton of fun, if you don’t mind your 3-year-old watching cartoonish fistfights.
Benji
Some small kids will be frightened by the peril of the (spoiler) kidnaped children, but you can assure them that (spoiler) it all turns out OK.
Chicken Run
From the Wallace and Gromit folks.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Clearly some of the filmmakers behind Mary Poppins were trying to reproduce that film’s success, and missed — but not by too much.
The Court Jester
Plenty of great Danny Kaye silliness if you don’t mind the (cartoonish) sword-fighting and jousting.
Curious George (the Ron Howard movie)
Much maligned by Curious George purists, but we love it.
A Hard Day’s Night
You can’t start ’em on Beatles fandom too early.
The Muppet Movie
When your kids O.D. on typical inane children’s programming, show them this as an antidote.
The Music Man
Teach your kids to lithp along with little Ronnie Howard — fun! Then tell them he grew up to make two of the other movies in this list and blow their minds.
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Apart from its numerous other charms, it includes a play on the word but/butt. Three-year-old gold.
A Pocketful of Miracles
Actually most of this one will probably bore your three-year-old, but it’s a Christmas tradition at our house and my kids seem to tolerate it well enough.
School of Rock
Like all other parents, I’m hoping to get a couple of musicians out of the deal.
Silent Movie
You’ll have to read the title cards for them, and (if you’re like me) edit out the running “Fags!” gag.
Singin’ in the Rain
If your kid isn’t red-faced with laughter after “Make ’em Laugh,” consult your pediatrician.
Star Trek: the animated series
Not-half-bad kid-oriented sci-fi stories from the 70’s with the original cast doing voices and plenty of respect for science, alien races, etc.
What’s Up, Doc?
Very young kids will of course get a lot less out of this than older ones, but they still get plenty. This one’s in frequent rotation at Casa Glickstein.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Pure magic. And for the record, I love Johnny Depp, but he can’t hold a candle to Gene Wilder.
Yellow Submarine
The Blue Meanie invasion of Pepperland is a little much, especially if you’re a gun-averse parent. But see “can’t start ’em on Beatles fandom too early” above.

All Cretans are liars

The other day Archer asked me to hold up my hand, fingers out. I did. He then began asking me yes/no questions, one per finger. A “no” answer meant that the finger got folded down, a “yes” answer meant it stayed up. Of course this was a brand new trick from the schoolyard with which he was trying to get me involuntarily to give him “the finger,” but between its newness, Archer’s confusion about how to execute it, and my own teasing efforts to sabotage the result, it took a lot more than five questions to reach the hilarious goal. But reach it we did, at which point Archer erupted into merriment. “You’re making a rude gesture!” he laughed, as if we hadn’t both known it was coming. “Now do it to me.”

Well, I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I also didn’t want to see my little boy flipping me the bird. He held up his hand and I pointed to his pinky. “Are you green?” I asked. “No.” Down went the pinky. “Do you eat shoes?” “No.” Down went his ring finger. “Are you very silly?” “Yes!” Up stayed the middle finger. “Do you like mashed potatoes?” “No.” Down went the index finger.

Now his middle finger and thumb remained pointing up. A big smile spread across his face as he thought he knew what was coming next.

I pointed to his thumb. “Should you put your thumb down?” I asked. “Yes!” he said at once. “Ah, that means it stays up!” I pointed out. So he recanted: “No!” “Ah, then I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do.” “Wait… yes! Um…”

I blew his little mind.

Darnedest family math

Here is an exchange between me and my son Archer (age 5 1/2) this morning.

Archer: Are you Aunt Suzanne’s dad?

Me: No, you know what I am to her. I’m her what?

Archer: Her sister?

Me: No…

Archer: Her brother?

Me: Yes! Who is Aunt Suzanne’s dad?

Archer: Grandpa?

Me: Right. Who’s my dad?

Archer: Grandpa.

Me: Right! Who’s your dad?

Archer: You!

Me: Right. Who’s your brother?

Archer: Jonah.

Me: Who’s your sister?

Archer: Pamela.

Me: Who’s my brother?

Archer: [thinks hard] …Nobody?

Me: Right! It was a trick question. But I didn’t fool you, did I?

Archer: [excitedly] No. ’Cause my brain said, “I never heard Daddy say he had a brother before.” So I added that to my brain and then I took away the brother and my brain said, that’s right!

Darnedest negotiation

Yesterday Andrea and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary (and our twenty-first year of togetherness). To get some alone time, we packed the kids off to the house of some friends.

I asked them to get together the things they’d need for an overnight. They disappeared into their room and came back out into the living room a minute later with an armload of stuff apiece. But Jonah forgot his socks, and he was feeling lazy, so he said to Archer, “If you go get me some socks, I’ll give you…” (and here he thought for a moment) “…a hug!”

Archer said, “OK!” at once and disappeared back into their room — whereupon Jonah leaned over to me and whispered, “I’m actually going to give him a hug and a kiss!”

Bench warmer

A few days before our first son, Jonah, was born, my cousin Danny died of cancer at 52. So when it came time to give Jonah his Hebrew name, with the consent of my cousin Diane — Danny’s widow — we named him in part after Danny.

Danny was an Amtrak employee and a lifelong lover of trains. What we didn’t know when we chose his name for Jonah was that his favorite place in the whole world to watch trains was Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, Pennsylvania — just minutes from where my wife grew up and where my in-laws still live. He loved it so well that he wrote online articles about his love of trains under the pseudonym Al Tuner. After Danny died, a bench was dedicated in his memory in the spot where (we only recently learned) he would sometimes sit all through the night, waiting for trains to trundle by, brakes asqueal, jotting down their engine numbers in a notebook.

Last week, during our trip to see Andrea’s family, we finally taught Jonah and Archer the significance of their Hebrew names and visited Horseshoe Curve and Danny’s bench. Fittingly, a train trundled by, brakes asqueal, as this picture was taken.


First meeting of the things-named-for-Danny club

The Swedish fish of brotherly love, the sequel

Two years ago, when Jonah graduated from preschool, I wrote about how he unhesitatingly volunteered half a piece of candy to his little brother, who hadn’t gotten any.

Well, Archer just graduated from the same preschool, and at the party on Saturday he was the one to win a Swedish fish in a mock fishing game only for the new grads.  At once, and without a word, he brought it over to Jonah, tore it in half, and shared.

I was stunned — even more so when Archer informed me that he shared because he remembered (despite being three at the time!) Jonah doing the same for him.

Team spirit

Saturday was the end-of-season party for Jonah’s little league team at his coach’s house. A few days earlier, Andrea discovered that we had managed to accrue decent photos of every team member plus the coach; so for the party we designed, printed, cut, and collated a complete set of trading cards for each member of the team; wrapped each set — plus a stick of chewing gum — in a piece of paper printed with a “Popps Trading Cards” label [sic]; and distributed them at the party alongside the team trophies. They were a huge hit.

Toujours l’audace

We closed out another difficult April with Jonah’s seventh birthday party, an event that didn’t even have a coherent plan as late as one week beforehand. We didn’t have time to assemble and send one of our trademark clever party invitations, so we made do with an Evite.

Last year Andrea sprang an idea on me for Jonah’s party that was challenging but obviously right. This year was no different. As we struggled with how and where to stage a Scooby-Doo party for him (his requested theme) — ruling out one venue after another on the basis of expense, distance, logistical complexity, unavailability, or thematic unsuitability — a plan suddenly occurred to Andrea. “Honey,” she said to me, “I love you, and I’m sorry to say this, but I think it has to be a slumber party here at the house.”

Once again the rightness of this idea was immediately apparent — as was the magnitude of the task ahead. Jonah’s guest list had the names of more than twenty six- and seven-year-olds on it. None of the families had yet attempted a sleepover with more than two guests at once. Our modest little house would barely contain them all while fast asleep, to say nothing of the wakeful hours before and after slumbering! And because we eschewed any location that might have provided its own Scooby-Doo-ish appeal — Alcatraz prison, an old movie house, a Victorian mansion, and the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum were candidates — we’d have to stage our own mystery for the kids to solve.

“Make no small plans.” In the week after sending the Evite, nearly every parent who RSVP’d made some comment along the lines of, “You are very brave” or “I salute you.”

In the afternoon before the party began, as we were getting the house ready for the onslaught, Andrea emerged from the study holding a deck of playing cards. “Boys,” she said to Jonah and Archer, “was one of you playing with these cards and writing on the backs of them?” “No,” they both said. Andrea held them up. Sure enough, each card had a letter written in permanent marker on the back. “Someone wrote on the backs of these cards. It wasn’t either of you?” “No,” they insisted, puzzled. “That’s strange,” said Andrea. “Yeah, that’s weird,” said Jonah.

A few minutes before six, when the guests were scheduled to arrive, Jonah checked on his Scooby-Doo cake, which he’d helped decorate himself. It sat protected in a pink cake box on a side table. A few minutes later, when his first friend showed up, Jonah brought him straight to the cake box to show off his cake artwork. But when he lifted the lid, the cake was gone! In its place was a note:

The cake is all mine, ha ha ha!
If you want to know where I took it, you’ll have to “puzzle” it out.
Signed, The Villain

Jonah was gobsmacked. “The cake was stolen!” he exclaimed and started looking for it all over the place. It was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile more guests arrived, and as soon as each one did, Jonah filled them in. “A villain stole the cake!” While they tried to figure out that mystery, there was pizza and there were hot-dog-pasta creatures.

Then I realized something. “Jonah!” I said. “I think I understand what the villain meant by ‘puzzle it out’!” “What?” Jonah asked. I brought out five boxes, each containing a Scooby-Doo jigsaw puzzle. “I bought these for everyone to do around bedtime, but look! They’ve already been opened!” Jonah got the idea immediately. “Maybe the villain left a clue in the puzzles! Maybe we have to put the puzzles together!” So amidst the general seven-year-old-boy chaos five groups formed, one around each puzzle. The puzzles were found to have some kind of design on the backs of the pieces, but they had to be assembled front-side-up first to make sense out of the markings on the back.

After a while, the first puzzle was complete and I flipped it over with a couple of stiff pieces of cardboard. On the back were two playing card symbols — 3 of hearts and 7 of clubs. Jonah looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes got really big. “That explains it!” he blurted out and ran off in search of Andrea. “Mom! Mom! Where are those playing cards from before?”

One by one the puzzles were completed and flipped over, each revealing a pair of playing card symbols. We found the altered deck of cards and dealt each kid a handful. “Who has the 7 of clubs?” I asked. “Who has the 3 of hearts?” Soon we had ten cards with these letters on the back:

A D G L N O P R U Y

The kids moved the cards around on the table for a while until they made the letters spell:

P L A Y G R O U N D

“Let’s go to the playground!” Jonah announced. With some difficulty, Andrea and I and a few grownups who were helping us organized 16 kids for a raucous walk to the playground up the street in the gathering dark. Our friend Greg, who was also helping but whose foot was injured, stayed behind.

At the playground, we discovered a piñata in the shape of the Mystery Machine, the van from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. I tied it up and the kids whacked at it until a ton of candy spilled out — along with a folded note. Jonah opened it up and read, “Ha ha, fooled you. Now the cake is all mine!”

“Back to the house!” Jonah declared, and again we organized for a noisy march. When we got close to the house, the kids broke formation and ran inside — where they discovered our friend Greg, with the Scooby-Doo cake in front of him on the table, about to eat it himself! “I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”

Cake eating followed, accompanied by Scooby-Doo cartoons, changing into pajamas, and unrolling sleeping bags. After that was lights-out, carefully timed to coincide with a sugar crash, producing a trouble-free night of sound sleep for everyone — even Andrea and me. In the morning, each kid took home a personalized “Meddling kid” t-shirt with himself as Shaggy.

Jonah was all smiles throughout the party and for hours afterward the next day.

After the last guests left in the morning, and after I literally passed out for a couple of hours that afternoon, I remarked to Andrea that though I used to feel guilty at Halloween time (because our kids wear store-bought costumes, even though my mom used to make professional-quality ones by hand), I don’t feel guilty anymore. We have carved out a funmaking niche of our own in which we excel.

Play ball

It’s only natural that I hope my sons turn out like me in a lot of ways, and I’m pleased to say so far, so good on that front. They’re (ahem) bright, witty, thoughtful, and devastatingly handsome. And they love the original Star Trek.

It’s just as natural, I suppose, that I hope my sons will not be like me in certain respects.

For instance, as a boy I disliked team sports, though in summer camp I was often compelled to play softball. I feared the ball; I feared underperforming; and I feared the bees that were my constant companions among the clover in right field. These feelings, and popular stereotypes about (e.g.) obsessive Little League parents, eventually morphed into the conviction that sports were somehow beneath me, and I dedicated myself to the life of the mind. In retrospect I regretted it, of course, belatedly waking up to the benefits of being well-rounded in all ways, physically and mentally.

Over the past few months, Jonah (age 7) has shown the same hesitation about participating in team sports, even ones that his friends enjoy. But yesterday we discovered that our neighbor is the local Little League coach and that it wasn’t too late in the season for Jonah to join in baseball practice that very evening. Andrea pulled Jonah out of his afterschool program early, urging him to try baseball practice at least once. He dragged his feet but agreed. I met them at the field.

I’m thrilled to report that Jonah took to it like a fish to water. He got a warm reception from the coach and the other kids on the team. If the others had been much better than him, that might have queered things right away; but Jonah’s throwing arm is strong, he’s a fast runner, he even shows some hitting ability — and though he can’t catch (I blame myself), neither can any of the other kids!

He was issued his cap and his jersey — number 14. His first game is this Saturday. Go Rockies!

Now I’ve got to get myself a glove and join in practice from time to time. I feel the old anxieties bubbling up. Maybe it took having a son to finally overcome them.