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Hell... Handbasket... How?
I snuck out for about an hour and a half last night. A friend and fellow dog person had an opening of her fabulous photographs of film personalities (and if you're in the Lincoln Center area, trot up to the Walter Reade theater's gallery and see something terrific).
In the brief time I was at the opening, I had one of those rare "How Did I Get Here and How Can I Be Myself Again?" moments. I was actually expecting to have this kind of episode absolutely regularly after having a child, but they have been rather few and far between. Instead I get more frequent bouts of Plunging Disappointment when I realize I've forgotten to do something that would have been central in my pre-kid mind.
I fully expected to feel Plunging Disappointment last night. After all, the opening coincided with the New York Film Festival, which in the old days, I attended avidly and I was up in the theatre that I once visited so regularly that I was a bit too well-known not only to the people who worked there but also to the assorted crazed movie fans who religiously see everything just for the sake of it.
Anyway, and I should have known this would happen, while standing around, alone in the crowd admiring the pictures, I was tapped by someone I knew- another dog acquaintance- and all of a sudden the evening turned because she asked a simple question: "Have you started thinking about preschool for Felix?"
There's no escaping. The whole school issue is so firmly rooted in the zeitgeist, and everyone is applying to schools if not for toddlers, then for kindergartners or tweenage middle-schoolers or college kids. I turned mealy-mouthed and suddenly couldn't remember the names of any schools I applied to, couldn't remember why I was applying to them anyway, felt like an idiot because she kept mentioning places that I have never heard of (though they might not be around anymore)- though I agreed that the whole business is insane.
The whole time I was chatting, my eyes kept meeting those of David Cronenberg, as he stared out of a portrait at me. I have never wished more profoundly that I could be talking about sex maniac slugs or exploding brains and all kinds of body horror. I would have gladly discussed pus and trepenation at that point.
What the Hell happened? How did I get here? Usually I don't mind slipping in and out of mother-mode, but last night, I looked into Mr. Cronenberg's interesting eyes, and got stuck. The preschool chatter was enervating and I couldn't remember anything anyway, but the movies weren't letting me in.
posted by Elise at 1:58 PM
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Night Freak (Well, Dawn Actually)
"Toast!" was the plaintive cry at five o'clock this morning- the only coherent part of the cry, I should say. Felix was screaming.
We scooped him out of bed and tried to sort him out, though the way things appear when one has been jolted out of sleep aren't always as they are. I thought my kid was awake and screaming. Felix was inconsolable, barking in his hysteria. The only other time I've heard him like this was on the first leg of a flight back to Manhattan from Canada and frankly, his reaction was completely reasonable then. The only word I could get out of him was "toast" but offers of toast and water, even the latest favorite on the food hit parade, watermelon, did nothing to quell his fury. Finally I gave up and plopped my screamer back in the sack where he eventually settled and slept so late that even the dog went in to check on him. When he got up, things were sunny. Toast was enjoyed and yogurt. The terrier got watermelon on his head for his troubles.
So what the Hell happened? I'm not really in the habit of doing Merck manual (yes, I have the lay-person's and the physician's versions on the shelf, why do you ask?) or Internet diagnoses, but I have done some poking around. It sounds as if Felix had something like a "night terror" or a "confusional arousal." If my diagnosis is correct, he wasn't awake at all. All of the noise was sleep-shrieking. And now that I have a possible idea about what was going on, did I handle things with delicate instinctive aplomb?
Nope. I did everything wrong. One isn't supposed to engage with one's kid when he is having a night terror. One isn't supposed to pick up and talk to and feed a kid who is having a night terror. One is supposed to monitor and let the child fall back into a normal (or "normal") snooze all on his own.
So apparently I could have spent the wee hours not covered in strawberry jam and melon juice.
What causes these things, you ask? Well, many things, but given that Felix bucked many naps this weekend and exhaustion is a prime contributing factor to sleep freakouts, I suspect I have my culprit. I hope I do, at least.
posted by Elise at 8:11 PM
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Hating the Chair
The high chair is making me insane.
It is impossible to quibble with the one we have, which was extremely kindly handed down to us by my in-laws. All things considered, it is a fantastic bit of engineering, since even when my Houdini-child extracts himself from its straps and stands in the seat, or climbs up onto the tray itself (just momentarily, don't get all bent out of shape), it remains upright without even threatening to tip.
So I am grateful to the highchair but I can't stand it. These devises are next to impossible to clean without immersing them in the bathtub and attacking them with toothbrushes (to get into all the secret nooks) and toddler table manners being what they are, one is guaranteed that one's cleaning efforts will be entirely eradicated as soon as the first meal is served.
Impossible to tell what the problem is with sitting in the highchair, really. This week, Felix revealed that he is happy to take his meals off the highchair's tray, as long as he was sitting on a chair in front of the highchair (preferably on my lap, but he'll stretch up if he has to). Clearly these issues are signs that something has to give.
But I'm not so sure about my choices. There are some splendid (Stokke) expensive (Svan) Scandanavian designs, it just seems like folly to contemplate spending so much on a temporary piece of furniture when one has nowhere to store it. Not to be outdone, there are some astonishingly expensive non-Swedish/Danish designs as well. (Witness the Babylon, the Bam Bam the Boon Flair and the Nest.) The things that clamp on to counters and tables are vaguely compelling, but won't work in my house (weird table, short-lipped counters) And is there a verdict on those plastic booster seats? They're cheap and ugly and kind of unstable, so are they even worth a shot? I'm giving up on strapping the kid in anyway. He doesn't sit for it and I just wind up with nasty food-coated straps).
I'm not asking for a miracle or looking for some outrageously cool Engadget solution to this phase of impatience- Felix's and mine, because I really don't think one exists. It is probably all compromise and wrestling until one of two things happens: I break entirely or Felix realizes that the pleasures of eating can be a distraction from the pain of sitting.
Still, getting back to Scandanavian design for one moment, the Handy Sitt does have some charm, though there are those tragic torture straps again.
posted by Elise at 5:12 PM
14 Comments
If You Can't Do It, There's Always Buying It
Looking ahead is always a terrifying prospect, even vacation planning seems so fraught with decisions and problems to solve. I think about what I won't be so good at teaching my kid in a few years when he actually will need to know specific things. Will I be able to teach him how to read or ride a bicycle? Who will teach him how to play poker (as I wish someone had taught me at an impressionable age)? So while I was put out by the tone and items on New York Magazine's incredibly snarky and pretty useless gag article "The Outsourced Parent", I did think to myself: "Perhaps all is not lost."
It is terribly easy to ponder one's shortcomings when raising one's kid. I know I fear I will pass on my clutter tolerance to my child. My husband worries that his lack of athleticism will result in a child who never learns sports (though he does have one grandfather and at least one uncle who can probably be coaxed to step in). Will my lack of kitchen organization and enthusiasm give Felix some sort of dining handicap or render him unable to cook for himself? I wasn't bad at math, but I'm not sure what kind of a tutor I'll be in a few years.
So while I hate the tone of the piece and think that the items on their list are silly and that the whole piece is pretty dimwitted in itself, it is comforting to be reminded that one needed possess all talents. One can find help. And with any luck that help will be cheaper than most of the suggestions the magazine gives.
posted by Elise at 10:27 AM
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Endless Distraction
"Life is too short to read the New Yorker" is one of those catch phrases that gets tossed around here and there. Unfortunately, lately life has been a bit too crowded to read the New Yorker (and the enormous stack of other periodicals I've got here at my side, or the well intentioned book list, for that matter, though I did get pleasantly waylaid by a fat novel recently).
And I've been easily distracted, as I was when I picked up this week's New Yorker (the Style Issue, for those playing along at home). I tried to read Anthony Lane's review of the Michel Gondry film The Science of Sleep, but I got waylaid.
What do Ed Asner, Rita Moreno, Patricia Neal, Gena Rowlands and Kitty Carlisle Hart have in common? I'm struggling with this myself, but it is in my mind because one of the little ads on the side of the "Current Cinema" reviews page (the ones that so often invite you to purchase Cat Art or Celebration Bowls or musical note jewelry) is in invitation to join those actors on an 11-day journey: the 34th (Baltic) Theatre At Sea cruise.
What? Why? Are all these folks friends and just happy to get to take a cruise together with a little acting thrown in? Are they all so desperate for cash or bored that cruise theatre has become the thing to do? I can't imagine any scenario that makes sense because everyone reminds me of a different era. When you say "Rita Moreno" I think of the Electric Company and West Side Story. Patricia Neal reminds me of A Face in the Crowd. Gena Rowlands is inseparable in my mind from the movies she did with her husband John Cassavetes and Kitty Carlisle Hart, well she's certainly a personality, but I know her best from the Marx Brothers' A Night At the Opera.
The mind reels with Death on the Nile scenarios, and the whole project seems so odd: a cruise with constant theatre.
I must finish reading that movie review otherwise this issue will never get recycled, but it is so hard to focus and shake the intrusive thoughts of what possible plays these actors could perform at sea for almost two weeks.
One thing is certain. I won't be joining them at sea, and if things keep up as they have been, I won't have finished the magazine either.
posted by Elise at 8:19 PM
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Oh, Grow Up
It probably wouldn't come too much of a surprise, given the number of comic books, carefully saved young adult novels, toys and candy selections one can find in my house that I have an immature streak. I don't mind this. Someone needs to keep the Good n' Plenty people in business.
Often, especially when I go to the park and watch other parents have what appear to be more "grown up" conversations, I feel a bit like an imposter- someone play acting at being a mother, all living, breathing, shrieking evidence to the contrary. I feel plump and unfashionable, out-of-it and really more kid-like than adult. This isn't much of a set back, really since the amount of "spotting" one must do for a daredevil toddler limits the possibilities for sustained conversation anyway.
But then occasionally something pops up that makes me remember that I am the grown up. I'm not talking about those ridiculous traffic jams on the slide where inevitably some bigger kids want to have a battle where one is a sniper on top shooting at the kid holding the plastic T-rex who tries to climb up the slide while littler children pile up in the middle. I am usually non-confrontational and don't mind watching low-level power struggles, especially among the pre- or barely verbal, but while standing on the grass, my husband pointed out a little savage scene.
Three kids were chasing down a little bird, which was barely managing to flutter a few feet ahead of their stomping feet. It was almost Looney Tunes-esque how close they came to trouncing it. And I had to intercede.
I asked why they were trying to kill the bird. The blonde bad seed of the pack said they just wanted to watch it fly into the trees (which was such a crock I couldn't believe she would even try it on me), and I told her that clearly the bird was terrified and sick and wasn't inclined to fly anywhere and to leave it alone and chase some of the pigeons if they had to terrorize something.
The critter eventually made good its escape, and I was left with a sticky weird feeling. What does it mean to reprimand someone else's children, even gently, even in the service of doing something quite necessary? I have strong feelings about animals and underdogs, so I really had no choice but to step in, but part of me was bracing myself for some mini-skirted mom in cork wedges to come up to me and scold me for raining on her monster's parade. And then. . . And then I don't know what I would have done. But I can certainly imagine an idiotic argument developing.
Surely there is a protocol for this sort of thing. I would be thrilled to know that if my kid were suddenly possessed by some demon and went after small animals that someone would catch him and stop him. But would they? Do people intercede or is it every parent for his or her own kid?
Is it appalling that I haven't really thought about this until now? Does it show too well how I remain a playground novice?
Perhaps. But at least the sparrow lives.
posted by Elise at 5:23 PM
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Applying Oneself
It is always interesting to consider the pedagogical moments that lingered most in my mind over the small eternities that have passed since I stopped being a student.
I attended a number of schools with wildly different educational philosophies, but it was really the Virginia public school system that I think truly inspired my hatred of bureaucracy and government inspired lesson plans. In grammar school we were shown incredibly frightening movies about fire safety (WITNESS: whole families die, little kids in pajamas succumb to smoke inhalation, fire departments arrive moments too late all because Grandpa got careless in the basement with a sofa and a cigarette and Mom forgot to check the smoke alarm batteries), bereavement (pets die, grandparents die, parents die, siblings die), and the odd social or health issue (domestic abuse and cancer were the two most popular of these).
We were also frequently given little "pop quizzes" that were supposed to teach us how to follow directions well. I can't believe how much class time was wasted so that the state could be satisfied that it had done all it could to ensure we'd all be capable of waiting on line and filling out forms at the DMV or the post office and not have to be told to do them over.
Why is this in my mind, you ask? Because I'm filling out preschool applications for my kid (and thinking longingly of one friend's experience: she applied her kid to middle schools a couple of years ago and at that age children have to write their OWN essays). On these things, any question that isn't: Applicant's Name, seems like a tiny bear-trap, waiting to clamp down and provide a reason why my application isn't worth considering.
Actually, the applications themselves provide all kinds of insight into the schools. One application cares what sort of education the parents have. Some want to know what the parents do for a living, others don't inquire at all. All schools are curious to know how you heard about them, which could be charming although it sort of has the effect of George Clooney shaking your hand and saying: "Have you ever seen me before?" Some seem to be interested in your child, warts and all. But how much should one confess about the kid's less savory tendencies or issues? Should one be a real bore and brag shamelessly? When the school asks what your feelings are about preschool education, do you say something? I looked at this question and immediately thought of a moment between Marlene Dietrich's character and Jane Wyman's in Hitchcock's Stage Fright. Marlene says something like "Please don't tell me you're one of those people who actually says how you're feeling when someone asks how you are."
And then there are the other opportunities for beleaguered parents to slip up because of bad direction following. I know of a school that demands one use a messenger service to deliver the application. It must be hand delivered, but NOT by a parent. Some places want "family photos," but this opens a whole world of direction following quandaries. What if you have no pictures featuring the whole family in what could be considered a non-torture situation? Do you stage a photo shoot in the handful of days you have to return the application? Do you send in two acceptable pictures? Is the picture optional if they say you can choose to send one? If your photos don't really work in the size requirements listed by the school, are you better off skipping the picture or sending something kind of ugly? Which is less likely to get your application thrown in the garbage?
Does any of this matter? Who am I to say? I'm too busy having sixth grade flashbacks. I'll let you know when I'm finished filling these things out.
On an interesting note, Emily Bazelon at Slate today has a fascinating piece about why homework in grammar school is almost useless. I wish someone had thought the same about educational films (shown in "Guidance" class of course) and "How to Follow Directions" practicums.
posted by Elise at 12:10 PM
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The Colic Defense
Everyone does stupid and embarrassing things. There's no way around it. Occasionally a cloud just descends on top of one's head and doesn't lift until one has done something ridiculous. You can't really celebrate these moments, but you can take responsibility for them and try not to let embarrassment make you mean or more absurd looking.
I have been idly following, idly because I'm not really a New Republic reader, a fracas that blew up over at the New Republic web site where critic Lee Siegel in an effort to defend himself against some online attacks, created an alter ego which he used to praise his own writing. The details are actually kind of wearying (Siegel doesn't care for Jon Stewart), but what interested me about this was how someone with a fancy job would be unable to resist the temptation to embrace his inner middle-schooler to such an extent as to put his job in danger. Why would he feel obliged to defend himself in such an idiotic way? Why couldn't he just look away from the screen and accept the fact that some people just have to type angry things at him? He has been suspended from his job for this juvenile and useless name-calling stunt.
Well, according to a New York Observer piece about the fracas, he was stupid because his newborn has colic and he wasn't sleeping enough. Now, I am familiar with the sleep deprivation that happens when babies are fresh, but really. Even if your kid has colic. Even if you're very, very tired, you can be responsible for your actions. The baby didn't force Siegel to invent a sycophantic sock puppet. Having a newborn is no defense.
If you're under the Dopey Cloud, recognize it, and try to control yourself, and if you can't, take some responsibility. It does, after all, happen to everyone, well rested or wakeful.
posted by Elise at 8:32 AM
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Saying Something
I live in downtown Manhattan and have for a number of years. I was living downtown on September 11th 2001, and it was really only a fluke that I had an early morning meeting that day, otherwise I would have been running right beside the Winter Garden when the first plane struck.
There is very little I want to contribute to a discussion about September 11th, in part because I still get very angry about the politics and the suffering and it is hard to explain what living down here then was like exactly.
What I think about is how I will have to talk to Felix about what happened. I remember how a friend of mine who lives uptown was told by various friends of hers that they were not letting their kids know anything about anything. They were pretending nothing happened at all. My friend had no intention of keeping this enormous event from her children and today they are happy, well adjusted, savvy kids. I understand the impulse to hide the unexplainable and terrifying, but I think it is unwise. Of course, I can't talk to a toddler about these things now, but I certainly will when I think he can understand.
My husband took this picture on September 19th, 2001. This is the last structure of the World Trade Centers that persisted after the 11th.
For the longest time, it was going to form the central part of some sort of memorial, but it got misplaced. This made a lot of people angry, but no angrier, really than they were at everything else.
For my part, I think it will reappear. For one thing, New York City never manages to repress anything for very long and for another, you should see the things that show up in the City's lost and founds.
posted by Elise at 7:39 PM
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Thriller
I'm tired and cranky today but only have myself to blame because I stayed up late finishing a thriller that the recommendation wall at my favorite mystery bookstore* promised was better than the movie I didn't see. I have to assume it was superior, since it kept me awake when I usually have a sleep latency of about 35 seconds, but I am ashamed to say I was dragged along into the night by the subject matter, which involved the kidnapping of a small child from her own bed, in a Manhattan apartment, just down the hall from her parents.
It was comforting, while I was frightening myself, to keep in mind that the book family didn't have an excitable terrier constantly poised to attack noises- strange or otherwise.
Of course this got me wondering, as I do periodically, if I've just gone soft or if I'm just a normal person responding to a book in the way that made it a best seller. I hate being the person who is so easily manipulated, but here I am with the bags under my eyes to prove it.
Actually, mystery thrillers tend to see me through all sorts of crap. I oscillate between ancient novels of sensation (Wilkie Collins and the like) and pure pulp. One guy who has distracted me through a miscarriage scare, terrible trips, insomniac periods and low, low, low moods is Lee Child whose hero, Jack Reacher, is a ton of fun.
There is a lot of pleasure in recommending the Reacher books and turning people into addicts. The first in the series, Killing Floor, has the perfect combination of modern noir elements, which is what attracted me to the series in the first place. A stranger in a strange town, mistaken for someone else, arrested for something he didn't do, finds himself an avenging angel out to scrape some corruption out of a corner of the world.
*If you're wondering how I might have a favorite bookstore with such a specialty, there are actually several in Manhattan, but each draws a different crowd and I find that this one has the best recommendations, most entertaining readings and a staff least likely to roll its eyes and act completely snotty if the books you have selected for yourself don't meet some impossible invisible standards of coolness. I don't mind admitting I'm not cool, I just don't have time to sit through the attitude, and Partners & Crime just cuts to the chase.
posted by Elise at 12:02 PM
3 Comments
Education: TV & Preschool, Preschool & TV
Here I am. Here I am, blinking a little bit from my telephone blitz of yesterday morning. As always I seem to have miscalculated my mission somewhat since only two of the schools I had to call for applications had the "redial mania" requirement. I'm impressed that my phone held up as well as it did, grateful that my husband could pitch in and am even more pleased that I didn't have to ask for help from anyone else.
This wasn't what I was facing, but the New York Sun (no, no I don't really read it, someone pointed me at it and because I'm a glutton for punishment, I had to check it out) ran one of those silly "human interest" pieces yesterday just to make all New Yorkers look like morons.
My task isn't over. I have several more schools to contact so I'll be hitting "redial" a lot more at strategic moments for the rest of the month.
While I was punching buttons, a New York Times article caught my eye because it seemed to explain why my kid will absolutely not look at a television for more than two seconds (and then only if there are images of water or helicopters on it).
Note that I don't mind this at all. I don't really want Felix watching TV, and this only is in my mind because of the whole question of travel, and how everyone agrees that offering some visual entertainment makes trips easier on everyone.
But my kid won't acknowledge the screen at all. And it seems that at Felix's age, it isn't so unreasonable. Felix is younger than the group that was studied, but apparently toddlers are more receptive to video information is "they consider the person on the screen to be someone they can talk to." This goes some way towards explaining why kids do not become bilingual from constant exposure to foreign language movies. (My dentist told me a friend of his hoped his children would learn one of the Chinese dialects, I can't recall which one, in this manner. I'm sure they saw some fabulous pictures, even if they didn't learn much Chinese.) The type of show that is apparently most successful in stimulating toddlers' attention and being actually "educational" is something like Blue's Clues (which I have not seen, so I don't know if it is bearable or not).
It is an interesting article, and if the studies actually prove at all accurate, there will probably be a wash of new interactive toddler programming hitting airwaves soon enough.
But I just got a call from a little nice sounding nursery school saying: "Well, we'll send you an application, but I have to warn you that there's almost no hope of getting your child into our school next year. It's just very competitive."
And now I must find those cookies I wasn't going to eat and redouble my efforts.
posted by Elise at 10:38 AM
5 Comments
Crocodile Hunter Felled By Ray
It's hardly news by now, but I was very sad, and quite surprised, to learn this morning that Steve Irwin died. I've been a fan of his television antics for some time and appreciated how he and his wife never let having a couple of small children cramp their style or pleasure in running around the world, petting unusual critters.
No, I haven't forgotten. The dreaded preschool marathon starts at dawn. The fingers on my hand that won't be speed dialing are crossed.
posted by Elise at 5:30 PM
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Neither Gods Nor Fools
That is Jack Valenti's description of the members of his Motions Picture Association of America, a group of "average American parents" who rate every movie that hits theatres in the United States. If you like conspiracy theories, and really, who doesn't? It is worth thinking about the organization that wants to parent your children for you. Because actually, some of these people sound quite a bit like fools.
On Friday afternoon, I played hooky and watched Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, which explains in remarkable detail the remarkable way the MPAA works and how it sets film ratings and punishes filmmakers... for what, exactly? Well, the reasons for MPAA behavior are largely secret.
It is true that the MPAA is not a censor, though it often recommends cuts to movies so that films can acquire acceptable ratings.
What makes ratings acceptable? Sometimes films are required by contract to have certain ratings, but the larger problem is that films that get an NC-17 rating or which skip being rated entirely are not able to place advertisements in many publications, will not be sold by large chains such as Wal-Mart, and are destined to an ignominious audience-free life.
Most countries have a ratings board or a censor, but very few have one that is as astonishingly secretive and Kafka-esque as the one that is in place in the United States. The names of the raters are kept secret (though this film tracks them down and attaches names and faces to most of the panel). They are supposed to be normal people, and as a result are given no training or guidance, have no standards or expertise. Being a parent is enough. Except when it isn't, because one member of the board doesn't even have children (and most of the board members' kids are much older than 17, the upper limit suggested by the vague guidelines).
Hiding behind a cloak of morality: "Are you a parent. Would you want your child to see this?" the board behaves as if questioning its decisions is practically an admission of child abuse. As the film critic David Ansen points out, while the MPAA claims it wants to protect kids, it is turning us all into children, incapable of making our own decisions or taking on the responsibility of guiding our children's viewing.
Consider this: The MPAA gives over 4 times as many movies the dread NC-17 rating for their sexual content than it does for violence. I wasn't surprised to learn this, but I do think the fact demonstrates a lack of useful perspective. Sex is embarrassing, but it isn't usually terrifying. The movie The Cooler was initially given an NC-17 rating because of one shot in which Maria Bello's pubic hair could be seen for about a second. Saving Private Ryan, spends its opening 30 minutes depicting the hideously gruesome D-Day landing at Normandy. I would be much less concerned about the effects of a glimpse of an actress's body on my kid's psyche than I would the extremely naturalistic images of a teenage soldier screaming for his mother while writhing in agony as he clutches the open wound that spills his intestines all around him.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated touches on many other themes, but I was really overcome by how Valenti (who worked for Lyndon Johnson before the MPAA and who has been an extremely well paid pro-copyright lobbyist) in countless interviews over the years says repeatedly that the board gives filmmakers freedom. There is no freedom here. The MPAA is like an abusive parent: Quixotic and random, capable of holding extended grudges and exacting extraordinary punishment.
My husband says that he wishes this question of film ratings could be at the top of his list of worries, and while I agree, I think it is a symptom of the many ways in which we can give up our power and our ability to make decisions (for ourselves and our children) because someone takes some undefined moral stance about how kids need to be protected.
See the movie if you can. As the title says, it isn't rated, so you may have to look for it, but the IFC web site contains quite a lot of useful information and is worth a visit, even if you can't catch the picture in your burg.
(Oh, and here's a not-uninteresting article on the subject from the Guardian.)
posted by Elise at 7:07 PM
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