Archive for the ‘Home’ Category
Because I had a particularly hard week that ended with an aching back and a few more grey hairs, my wife let me sleep in until 10am today.
Then she took the five year old and left to spend the day in the city, leaving me to do WHATEVER I PLEASE with my morning. Isn’t she nice? No, you cannot have her.
Cue the Roku stream of Rachel Maddow’s Friday show about our withdrawal from Iraq, couch, and a big awesome bowl full of coffee.
That’s pretty dorky, I guess.
But I don’t care. It was bliss. Even Cherry the Terrible Dog enjoyed it. And she never enjoys anything unless it comes out of the garbage can.
Start spreading the news.. I am [not] leaving today. Sigh.
If we had talked at the end of May, I’d have told you I was on my way to New York, as soon as I lined up a job. By June, I’d have told you my real estate agent had a few garden brownstone apartments lined up to view, and that my daughter’s Park Slope school was the cutest thing in the world. After all, we had gone, researched, clamored online for borough opinion and made several scouting trips over the prior year, investigated every freaking neighborhood from Jackson Heights to Sunset Park and back. By July I had already seen the beginnings of our life there, and wandered around the DUMBO waterfront imagining how my two dogs would adapt to the change. We were definitely on our way East, and were absolutely thrilled about it.
I wore a Leifsdottir black dress with a navy ruffle and cute Kenneth Cole Louboutin knockoffs to an amazing interview in Midtown, where my new agent ordered a Tom Collins and over lunch pitched potential positions for me in the city. I joined my favorite family shortly after in Queens to celebrate this amazing day over Sangria and get a head start planning all the dinner parties we would soon be co-hosting, and all the fall family getaway trips to the New England rental of our dreams.
I had a little secret during this small celebration that at the time, seemed impossible and was therefore out of mind. I very much doubted that my wife was actually pregnant, since we had only made a few attempts and had surely depleted our karma bank with quickly conceiving our first child. She was home in Oakland that week, calling my cell phone, while I was wandering around New York investigating bilingual afterschool programs and considering commute times, leaving successively confident messages that our expectations of a year or two of trying to conceive were possibly very inaccurate.
The thing is, I never expected this kid to be so easy to create. With all the tools and systems in place in the lesbian baby-making paradise of San Francisco and Oakland (Oakland has more per-capita lesbian families than any city in the world. Did you know that?) it was an easy project to launch here and, frankly, a safer place to consider it. We have advocates for our needs here. Strong communities of inclusion for our multiracial gay family. Lots of supporting friends. A willing nanny and great preschool. Swift second parent adoptions. These things are key. I figured we’d move the process East along with the rest of our lives at some point. And it was important to just keep living and not get suckered into living for conception only.
I was planning to finally finish my degree at NYU and had gotten the green light to go. My wife was thrilled with any prospect of change. Life had been stressful and gloomy for awhile and we needed a boost.
A boost we got!
Obviously, our plans have changed. The limitations of what would be zero vacation time from a brand new job and no Paid Family Leave (come on, NY, get it together) the financial investment of moving your family zoo across the country, the timing of the school year and the beginning of kindergarten and lots of boring things you don’t need to hear about, have thrown a curve into this little plan of ours.
I still love you, New York. And someday you’ll hand me the key to my garden brownstone. But I need to let you go and focus on this little life I’m living here for now. In an awesome 1940’s townhouse with access to world renowned vineyards, a revolutionary food community (from the coast who thought of it first), a neighborhood full of art and inclusion, wacky politics and amazing coffee, nontoxic beaches and Indian summers. Bumping into Meshell Ndegeocello at Whole Foods and Ledisi at IKEA. Over 1000 square feet of home ownership.
Maybe in thirty years I’ll still be here. Who knows. I’m leaving the door open to everything, including bright California sun to guide us through these next few years.
Will you ever forgive me?
One summer, I nannied for a wacky little girl named Leila who loved to watch the Wizard of Oz. Rather than swooning over Glinda’s sparkling gown and tiara, however, she would fist pump and scream “DIE, DOROTHY!!” in support of the Wicked Witch of the West during peak moments. For real. And with a voice that sounded as though she’d been drinking whisky and smoking Carltons for five years.
Leila-isms are oft-repeated in our home. We quote her more than any kid I nannied, taught or cared for in a ten year span (which at last count, including the girls who attended my South Central Los Angeles, pro-bono dance classes, totaled over 100). And no quote more often than this (said in a whiny, insistent, depressive tone): I Want To Watch Tee-Wee.
Leila was allotted only a few short hours of Dorothy or Wallace and Grommit reruns weekly and consistently tried to manipulate me into giving in and throwing a video on to keep the complaints to a minimum (which I did not do, of course. In case you’re reading this, mom of Leila. We made whole grain granola and read Proust instead).
My daughter has shortened this phrase to simply “I want to watch”. Which is probably because she’s a Taurus and doesn’t have time to pansy around with long complicated five-word sentences. She’s also amazingly confident navigating the remote and often masters new search functions before we even know about them, prompting quick grab-and-recoveries like “yes that was cartoon but, honey, it’s the grown up kind” (Yikes).
So our family tee wee habits have waxed and waned. For the past year we’ve not had ANY cable, and instead have been streaming stuff from our awesome Roku box, which enables us to watch all the horrible movies that Netflix offers for free, but also a guaranteed nightly viewing of Rachel Maddow on the news channel, cheaply rented movies and TV shows from Amazon, and the occasional addition of a great movie to Netflix’s Starz queue. We have a cute little flatscreen Hanspree monitor connected to the Roku, the DVD player and the living room stereo, forming a poor girl’s version of a home entertainment system and it’s been just peachy.
But then we have this baby coming. In December our world will be rocked and we’ll be exhausted by a new tiny person (I’m still trying to catch up on sleep from the first one. Five years ago). And I recall VIVIDLY that there’s nothing more lovely than fondling the remote control while the baby drops back to sleep at the tail end of a 4am feeding, and finding a reminder of the wonderful outside world, still glamorous and with room in it for you, in the form of Bravo, HBO and A&E.
As part of preparation for said baby, I’ve been ogling U-verse ads that come, and finding sweet deals for wall mountable tee wee sets on chain store websites, but I just can’t commit. I suspect my wife, though she appears cool on the issue, would secretly would throw her Marc Jacobs bag into the bay for a night with bonafide cable and a bag of pretzels. Should we throw in the towel and embrace pop culture? Or save those hard earned cable payments for some post-partum massages?
I read a great description last week of that moment where you realize the coffee you’ve been drinking and thinking is the best thing in the universe for years is actually crap. I had never actually identified the phenomenon, but the very next morning when I made my single drip cup of Peruvian Organic Coast Roast, I took a sip and said, “meh”. Blah. Not bad, but just not ME anymore. The Peruvian Organic has run its course in my soul and it’s not gonna give me anything new at this point.
So once this was all out in the open other facets of my life began to appear dated. Like the couch. Which was a prized possession twelve months ago and is now shockingly and uncomfortably narrow for a pregnant lady, her wife, and a five year old. It’s green. Why did we pick green?
And the books. How long are the essays of Leroi Jones going to sit on that shelf before I pick them up? I forced myself to rummage through it and remembered why it never made it to the bedside table. I adore Amiri Baraka with all my heart, I think he’s wonderful and inspiring and brilliant, and sitting in a small room with his booming voice reading Somebody Blew Up America with an upright bass and jazz kit along for the romp was one of the high points of my life. But the Black Arts Movement commentary of 1968 is not doing it for me. Henry Miller’s Black Spring, even, sits unloved, unopened for years. Once it was a bible.
And finally, the music. Suddenly my entire music collection is dusty, creaky and completely unrelatable. Even things that seemed avant garde last spring are just played. We have seventeen thousand Ani Difranco records but why only the ones through 2001? Did she stop being relevant or did we? Would it pain us to determine what’s happening in hip hop right now and let go of the Method Man 1993? Can we listen to girls play guitars who DIDN’T grow up listening to Liz Phair?
I’ve ordered* a batch of musical joy. And am suspicious that we may be entering what I affectionately call a “bout of minimalism” where all the schmanvas (urban dictionary. look it up.) gets re-homed, and we smile big smiles.
I’m putting all that old stuff to rest and setting a new little boat to sail. I’m thinking of writing a new record (this would be 12 years after the first was released) but approaching songwriting from a more calculated perspective. As inspiration goes, I will no longer rely on the dulcet tones or words of those old reliables. No more repositioning on the sad little IKEA chairs. Time to buy a decent chair, for crying out loud. I need some fresh, new energy to match this summer sun.
Onward!
*that’s right, I said “ordered”. As in actual discs. You can roll eyes all you want. My uncompressed files and I will still be around when your ipods start seeming like little blinky toys.
There is a humongous two-story flax plant in my front yard that threatens to envelop the neighborhood. It eclipses the Volvo. It sits like a giant pineapple next to the front porch, providing a misshapen privacy screen between our front window and the sidewalk. Its eight-foot leaves whack you on the head when you’re pulling the recycling can out, and the snail population that lives within its folds (an overachieving variety that seems to not understand the concept of a “snail’s pace” but rather hauls it en masse from one side of the sidewalk to the other while I’m grabbing a grocery bag out of the car) is healthy to say the least. The gardeners must whack it back weekly along the sides, so that it has a little upside down mullet: short spikey on the bottom and long and lovely on the top.
When we bought the house years ago, the flax plant was a three-foot, decorative feature among what I considered to be a fashionable assortment of grasses on a landscaped mound. I envisioned that the stark modernity of our slate grey stucco and blue-black door would eventually be softened as we added in structural, tropical greenery: reeds, elephant ear, papyrus. We would update the fencing around the house someday with the ultra-cool horizontal slats of eco-friendly Ipe that we used in the back. All of this would provide the perfect setting in which to screen black and white art films along the side of the house as we entertained and cocktailed hipster neighbors and recalled tales of backpacking through Indonesia. A Mazurka band would play ironically in the background as platters of amazing food were enjoyed. It would be the art that we feel in our hearts daily, manifested into a warm, vibrant and intelligently curated space.
In actuality, the yard was never updated with well-placed tropicals but rather with unwanted leftovers from a client’s landscape installation, and sparingly. We meant to have tall bouganvillea fluttering along the porch grate by now but somehow ended with three inch rockroses and a repotted houseplant that grew too outrageous for the kitchen. The mulch badly needs re-doing. That dark cool-kid black paint is peeling off the sidewalk and front door.
Life, just plain life, has been complicated these last few years. When we bought our house, our child then two years old, the gods seemed to smile down on us. Problems and solutions were syncopated. We felt things solidify and developed family goals (a fun and mysterious concept to two adults from dynamic single-parent households). Our careers stretched out and expanded and the sun just seemed to shine on everything we touched. I loved that time.
But, as the our child grew, the economy collapsed and our professional challenges mounted, we became stressed out about the things we were expecting to enjoy. I regularly returned home from work after the baby had been put to bed, having missed her entire day. I began to use my creative energy for work projects, rather than personal ones. The rented upright piano I had once relied so heavily on for late-night therapy did not fit into the 1940’s living room with the needs of the family, and off it went. We tried desperately to keep up with things: making time for each other, cramming in trips to the coast (during which I was eternally checking my blackberry and running off to make phone calls) and find the drive to stay interested in the world, but we ended up learning how to just buckle down and grind it out. It felt horrible to divest in my family, even though it was the right choice. We did not thrive, but we survived.
One morning several weeks ago, with the sun beginning to travel a stronger path across the backyard, I wandered outside, still my in pj’s and very much pre-coffee. I found myself suddenly, maniacally, pulling every houseplant I could find out on the back patio and pulling each out of its dry and cracked plastic liner, and too-tight pot. For several hours I filled new, bigger ones with sweet, healthful soil and a long drink of water, placing each shallow tangle of roots deep and tight. The sun grew stronger and I tossed my slippers into the bushes and rolled up the legs of my pants. The dogs wandered in and out of my workspace, hungry for breakfast but curious enough about my odd behavior to hold off on begging. I realized I hadn’t spent this much time outside by myself in, literally, years.
Since that afternoon, I have fantasized daily about taking a machete to the monster flax plant in the middle of the night. Some new neighborhood mandate about plant height will leave us with no choice but to dig all 300lbs of it from the earth and put it on craigslist. Or we may just get to the point where we just can’t stand it anymore and something has got to change, no matter how irrational it seems. And plant an olive tree where something overbearing and ill-fitting once stood.