Happy New You

 

12/31/07 05:35:55 AM

Where has the year gone? Has it gone into the trash heap or the archives; I’m not sure which. Into the archives is another beautiful year with a wonderful family. We’ve just moved into an apartment which seems to fit us better. We, for the first time, are in a home big enough for all of us (the second bathroom is key).

Here is an outline of the biggies I can think of this minute:

New House

We love our new house and are looking forward to finishing moving in. Three bedrooms and two baths is the right fit for us. Mason has his own room and it is big enough to send him to. Chandler and Lennox are working out the wrinkles in their new quasi-cohabitation. Generally permission is granted to cross the armistice line; especially since Lenna got her princess netting and pink rug. It is strange to be in a modern building and the view, as I look over the BQE and east into Woodside and Rego Park and watch the sun rise as I write this the sky and the contours of the land are enthralling to me. I love watching when the LIRR rolls out of Woodside on the way to Jamaica: a long silvery snake a half a mile on.

Family

 

I am still so in Love With Linda that it scares me. She is the model for everything beautiful and desirable in my life. I wish I could be with her more and, paradoxically, more like her. I am blessed to be chosen by her to spend these days together with her.

Chandler continues to thrive at the TAG school she’s in. She has a lot of homework and does it without complaint, though she looks at the confections of Cable TV as the just and right compensation for her work. At least is is mostly Disnified Pre-Tween Confections, though she will be a teenager on February 23^rd.

Mason and I survived the soccer season (he’s quite good) with me as coach, though he declined to play winter league indoors. Mason’s way with words continues to amaze Linda and I mostly because he is not the squeaky wheel. Out of -or out from under- the hubbub of the family Mason will make a wry comment that puts everything that we are all elbowing to the front to try and frame just so into context. He does so uproariously and seemingly without effort.

Lennox is growing up so fast in so many ways. Just like with her sister we are often fooled into thinking that she’s older because she’s so damned verbal. She is also sassy in a way Chandler can only dream of (and rue). So when she puts her hand on her splayed hip and rolls her eyes as she wipes stray locks out of her eyes explaining “whatever, duh!” we lose track of her age (5) and size (just right). We start trying to reason with the sarcastic teenager that she apes rather than the Kindergartener that she is. Needless to say we miss having Kindergarten across the street, but we’ll see how this move will effect our lives (passive aggressively I think the earlier wake-up and travel will be good for the family).

School Year

I loved my Fall 1 Classes and I am really enjoying the Lit Elective classes I am teaching. The Contemporary African American Fiction and the Black Lit Survey have been soul-expanding (as much as teaching a class can be). I love the students at LaGuardia CC. Teaching them is a dream come true. In many of their faces and papers I see myself struggling intellectually to come into my own. It is a humbling flashback when I see the same misunderstandings that I made in someone else’s paper. It is a merciful reminder of my current domestic bliss when I see the sturm und drang of youthful courting around campus. I look forward to working on my own intellectual and academic development this next year.

Amir’s Murder

The horror of Amir Hassan Reed’s murder this year has put a lot of things into perspective. I am so grateful to be alive, which I generally take for granted. I take life, mine and my beautiful family’s to be a given that shall continue along, but it “Ain’t Necessarily So.” I had taken it for granted that I would wake up to the same cast that I went to sleep with. It is rare that such a Cause Célèbre visits our lives, and I had often wished that my life would intersect with drama and fame. Sigh, I wish that I had marked my door with blood so this angel never came. What I found most annoying and titillating was the comments left on the SFGate site articles: people who knew the least seemed to make the strongest comments. This puts all of my “Willie-Neckbone-Expertise” into perspective: the more I think I know, the less I know.

48 Years

I turned 48 this December. I remember in 1974 thinking that it would be the year 2000 when I was 40. It seemed so abstract and distant (and of course I took it for granted that I would live that long). Well until this year I’ve held up well. During the spring my Achilles tendons started to act up (and I didn’t go to the doctor). In the Fall, playing soccer with Mason I tore up my ankle (and I didn’t go to the doctor). This December my ankle got infected and I went to the doctor. I will go to physical therapy soon because I really miss my morning runs through Sunnyside, Woodside, Maspeth and Long Island City. I’m feeling trapped by my infirmity in spite of the fact that I did go for a bike ride yesterday. Linda is sick this morning so I don’t think I’ll have that luxury.

Dreams

I still haven’t written the great American novel, but I have been working on a story. I haven’t published my dissertation, but I hope to. I want to do more original scholarship rather than just “willie-neckbone” out opinions on things I know little about. So I will continue to do as the Sanskrit Proverb suggests:

Look to this day
For it is life
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power –

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well-lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

Happy New YOU, Love Stafford.

Prophet Housing

12/18/07 04:56:38 AM

So our new lives in our new apartment have started. I took Chandler to meet Aneka at 46^th Street on the seven train. We were there so early Chandler has renegotiated for an extra 10 minutes of sleep today. I was a work by 7:30 and If I continue to do this I’ll have time to go to the gym in morning. Apparently Lennox and Mason’s drop off also went well. Linda and I went to Costco to buy a TV, which I think we’ve put off in the hopes that we can buy the kids more of what they want this “holiday” season. Funny thing about that ironic use of quotation marked holiday.

I found a copy of Khalil Ghibran’s The Prophet (that I had bought on telegraph avenue used) and in it was a bookmark. The page it marked was the Prophet’s response to the Mason. “’Ironic,’ thought I, it is addressed to my son.” But the opening line is “Then a [M]ason came forth and said speak to us of Houses” (34). So, since I spent the evening unpacking my seemingly endless supply of things and assembling them I was intrigued by the synchronicity of the bookmarking.¹ This is the electronics (and modern) version of feathering my nest. We’ve got to get all of the twigs and grass just right so that the chicks and their parents will all fit comfortably. I imagine a bird’s nest of wires, surge protectors, USB cables and transformer power lines in which we comfortably cuddle together. (God, how I digress.)

The first few “stanzas” were pure anti-city, and I’ll include a bit here as an illustration: “Would the valleys your streets and the green paths your alleys… [and] In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together” (35). These nods to the bucolic piss me off. Besides the fact that the human condition is social, and there would be no wilderness if we spread people out like that, even in 1922, I just want to dissent a bit further on this romanticization of the bucolic.

(Digression Alert) I remember one week when Scott and I lived on Maui. This was before we got food stamps, in deed it might be why I got food stamps. We had “no visible means of support” and we had alienated those off of whom we could beg. But there was a mango tree and an avocado tree that were in season near where we were camping. We could fill ourselves nicely on these huge trees for the cost of a climb. Guavas, I think were also ripe in a pasture a couple of miles away. Before seven days had passed I was crazy and hungry though my stomach never went empty. There is a reason that we are a social and agrarian species. The hunter gatherer thing is too much work. (I think it is also why we are omnivores, but that is another rant.)

Then the prophet gets to why I am writing this now:

Tell me have you [peace, remembrances and beauty] in your houses?

Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?

Ay, it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.

Though its hands are silken, its hear is of iron.

It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeers at the dignity of the flesh.

It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.²

Verily the lust for comfort murders the the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

But you, children o space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. (36)

Moving Impotence

12/14/0710:46:52 AM

So the movers are packing away and Linda is away at the other apartment cleaning and accepting deliveries of new furniture. “The game is afoot,” as Holmes often said. Things are happening fast and I’m not sure how much I can write here. I am useless now that I’ve washed the dishes and tightened the cheap Ikea chairs that are always falling loose. There is a feeling of impotence that accepting (or paying for) help causes. I want to have meaning in this whole process which I don’t seem to feel just paying for it. I am too 19^th century. I feel like if I don’t put my shoulder to the wheel in this move I am not actually helping. Of course that is ridiculous because Linda and I are the “first movers” of this whole show. These three strong Latinas would not be here if we were not paying for them to be here.

It is strange having people in your house touching all of our stuff. Now I don’t know these women in our house singing away to the popular music they have thumping from our boom box as they yell questions and comments back and forth. I guess this adds to the strange feeling of helplessness that I feel not helping. Here are three total strangers doing what in the past only our dearest (and most willing) friends had done. But they are not Richard Heller, Joel Stanger, Trevor Turner, John Mercer, or any of my Berkeley friends who helped with the last three moves. Interestingly the last move here we were helped by Miss Misti H and the one two moves ago involved Dennis Wolf. Both of those people are out of reach to me now and I am sad that they have been replaced by paid professionals.

Neither am I participating physically (no heave-ho), nor am I intimate with the workers. I am slipping out of my life during this move. In this journal, a sign of my increasing alienation from my life, I am recording my increasing feelings of alienation from my life. The skrittch of packing tape sounds like fingernails on the blackboard of my life as I sit in a house with people working incredibly hard as I sit here and diddle on the computer. I guess the root of it is that I am uncomfortable with and unused to my new status as bourgeois middle class sub-gentry (I can’t even own up to the fact that I am indeed a well paid middle class professional with a post graduate degree and a good union job [I'm prayin' for tenure]). I want to live in my imaginary hey-day of a working class youthful messenger. Sigh. If it was that good I’d have never gone to college.

If I insist on continually romanticizing my youth I will always be unhappy, looking over my shoulder at some thin hungry horny bachelor. The truth of the matter is that he was miserable and empty. I was lonely and bored except when I was misbehaving and in grave peril. The life I fantasize about was the life of a young man with few coping skills and a lot of misused down time. I guess I should be proud of one thing. When I was bored, lonely and venal I at least painted and wrote and some of those drawings and writings still exist. Two moves ago, from one place in the village to another I went through my “archive” and looked at lots of my letters and paintings (that wasted time alone justifies the cost of this packing). Up in the attic are two huge tubes of my work from the early 1980s that are testaments to the fact that there might be something to this nostalgia thing. But if you count out how much time I’ve lived and subtracted the time I “created” you’d still have each and every waking hour of a misspent youth.

So I think, against my better judgment I’ll post this now because I’m tired of writing.

 

When I was trying to stay out of the packers way I thought of a poetic way to characterize our move, but I think I’ve lost it: “from the intimate proximity of the gardens to the phallic modernity of the Big Six. ”

 

Above the Taco Truck

Almost 4 Years ago I lived for a time with my mother-in-law on 46th St in Sunnyside, Queens, NY. The block we lived on had a Discothèque, an after hours spot, and two Taco Trucks. After Jaleo and Club Noe Noe, the Discos, closed sending shards of young men and women out into the night there would be a drunken brouhaha in an orderly line waiting for tacos. To parody Hemingway it was a Movable Donnybrook, with high spirits, under the influence of spirits.

Club Tidepool

The yellow streetlight drops them in a pool:
An algae’d aquarium out the window.
I watch these tipsy drunks like Jacques Cousteau;
Filthy ether distorts human desire.

Three clubbers swaying in the pre-dawn air;
The unsteady kiss twists two together.
From right behind the woman the other,
Blinded, is too drunk to look away.

As I’d get up at 4 in the morning to grade papers I would be privy to the slurred inner lives of the same young people whose papers I was grading. There were passionate comparisons of the relative merits of various países latinoamericano. As someone would lose the argument on the eloquence trajectory they’s usually jump to the y-axis of VOLUME:

“¡Viva México,hijos de la chingada!”
(Tomates,Cebollas, y Chiles)

It is very easy to romanticize the hard working facts of these young people, so I did:

Shift Change

Underdressed for the cold of this rainy morning,
They look strange in their clubbing clothes
In early drizzle-gray.

Starched, oversized, faded, denim-gelled hair, laughing
Swaying about the women, long gone
Into the darkest night

Don’t move aside or apart for the bundled braving
On their frigid way to work
Just after dawn on Sunday.

Churchians will to the Assembly of praying,
‘Round the corner past these sidewalks,
Missing the hist’ry of now

Dedicated pre-dawn streets: partying and working
Devoted craft of good time: or work
Or both a long hard day

Working up to a life in America not needing
Sleep-eyed, rooster-time tasks;
Sparking and posing hold no sway

These are the sons of the workers power-walking,
Hunched, backpacked, clutching shopping bags,
Towards a corner of their own

Clucking and cooing rare birds crowding sidewalk crowing
An unsteady conclave relaxed
Don’t see the salt of the earth pass

Ballasted by tools they march to the train, trickling
Past unsteady upright peacocks:
Stagger men their boys’ll be.

These are the same men, on different days of the week, drinking
On different corners, in different rags
The revolving door of the poor

I was both once, dog, drunk and industrious, working
Before I drank the collegiate Cool-Aid™
That was a long-long time ago

Thanksgiving Inflation

11/23/07

So Wednesday we went to see the Balloons blown up for the Thanksgiving day parade over by the Museum of Natural History. This is the second year that we’ve done it and I hope it becomes a family annual tradition. There were clock-management issues and Lennox was carried off and on for the last mile. But let me start at the beginning.

The evening started with a subway ride to the upper west side where we waited for about 20 minutes to get a seat at La Caridad. The food was, as usual, great and I had it in my head that it was Friday and consequently had a hankering for Bacalau. I have anew favorite dish there because they brought me, perhaps as an act of mercy, huevos mesclado con bacalao with red beans and yellow rice. I might stil have to go there tonight, the real Friday night for the Bacalao Guisado, but that is another story. We all had our usual favorites: chuletas fritas, arroz amarillo y frijoles negros, aroz amarillio con camarones, aguacate, platanos maduros, cebollas y ajo (mas ajo por favor). I like to eat at La Caridad because no one ever wants desert or walks away half full.

Because we are moving we had an errand to run before we went to the balloons. We went up to Aunty Odella’s house to see the wood floors that she installed over the linoleum of her Mitchell Lama apartment. This was a beautiful warm fall evening walk up Broadway to 92^nd street. I love to walk about Manhattan and see all of the people out. This is one of the reasons, I think, that we wanted to move our family to New York. Walking in Manhattan is a grand parade of the mad rush of humanity that is New York.

The families, couples, singles, and lonelyhearts parade cheek and jowl with servant class, homeless, shopclerks and underclass in an interesting pastiche of humanity found only in major cities with pedestrian cultures. I think my favorite are the lone wolves who parade around on the New Upper West Side, tied to a neighborhood they no longer fit in with or understand by their rent-controlled leases. When we walk around Queens we get a different sort of diversity, but that is for a different entry.

The kids, though seemingly unaware of the parade of humanity in all of its nuances, watch and learn from these excursions. I think it is important to expose them to the life of Manhattan because they can see people living in the complex harmony of this city. When we take them to Paris or Barcelona or London (which I hope we do) they will see much the same thing in different flavors. There is nothing like the grand stroll in a major metropolis.

As we walked after Aunty Odella’s (Auntie Mame in this tale) down Columbus we started to see the exodus of families kids from the inflation. The closer we got the more there were with their faces lit up in amazement, or red with temper tantrums. Restaurants were full of kids being fed whatever was handy, pizza, foccacio at upscale restaurants, sandwiches from delis and Mickey-D’s was packed. This was the opposite sort of mismanagement of kids’ evenings. We went and got them good food first, while others had their kids done and fed them whatever afterwards. The classic kid management issue: too tired or too hungry. You cannot avoid it unless you are a Von Trapp type operation with rigid discipline and absolute obedience. Such families are said to exist in Utah and Alabama where conditions are harsher.

Lennox was staggering with exhaustion but the sight of the Balloons perked her up a little bit. When she saw the first few balloons she was excited, but by the time we got to the giant Ronald McDonald laying prostrate before a 20′ earth in some sort of weird tableau of globalization she was through.

http://gothamist.com/

She gamely endured the rest of the balloons, that we all find amazing (the Koons silver weather bunny was my favorite this year) and continued her bleary eyed forced march with as much dignity and good attitude as you can expect out of a kindergärtner who had gone to school 15 hours before.

In the crowd there were a few characters worth mentioning. There were the two “models” tall women with lots of make-up and perfume who wore super high heels that Chandler drew my attention to. In the crush of we dowdy breeders they seemed particularly out of place. I don’t think that Chandler noticed that the women were probably closer to my age than hers and seemed a bit long in the tooth to be clacking along in designer wear on precarious shoes with war-paint on. Right after they sashayed away from us in the crowd we saw a grandfather there with his kids. He had a full white Santa beard at least 6” long, a strong hard Christmas belly, an infectious white ethnic laugh and a Harley-Davidson-Viet-Nam-Vet type vest. Mason gestured with his mouth to get Chandler to recognize Santa in his civvies and they shared a wry laugh together as Santa snapped a picture of his grandkids with their haggard parents. I think that the trip to the Balloons was Sargent-Major Santa’s idea, but I could be wrong.

I think most important for me was watching the very tall father with bright red hair seethe repeatedly between clenched teeth “There are going to be serious consequences for this. There will be dramatic punishments for this behavior,” and a few other impotent bromides in a Möbius strip to his two tall think red-headed kids who were delighting in the spectacle of Schreck. I have been that tall gangly wannabe ruler of my children. But on thanksgiving eve, I was not. We had a wonderful time.

More Missing Amir Hassan

Chandler, the youthful scribe of our broken hearts, wrote another letter that I discovered in her room. I found it when we were looking for Halloween Costumes lost since we bought them: the confusing luxury of living life. Though the kids aren’t speaking about the tragedy much, there continue to be silent signs of Amir’s passing. Mason’s weekly essay (which he covered with his arms when I asked about it) is about Amir. Lennox alone is undamaged in our house in Sunnyside.

Here are some youtubes of our lost prince: Amir in a revival of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Stick with it, these flickering images are all we have left outside of our hearts and dreams.

When I watch this Recorder Recital at Emerson I am reminded of my lack of patience at the kids’ performances and recitals. I am going to try and treasure them from now on. Even the kids who don’t die untimely deaths are only children for a few years. I am going to try and stop rushing Chandler, Mason and Lennox through their childhood and savor our todays.

Today is October 21, 2007; Thank you GOD.

Quickly Kids

Chandler at 12, 2 years out of Cali, took the subway to and from 7th grade herself today. She and Aneka were escorted to the subway by Aneka’s Hijabed mom, who had decided that nothing eventful was going to happen on the way to or from school to our talented daughters. The last couple of times is was my turn to escort them I was little more than an afterthought. They spent the whole time on the way to school discussing the layers of the atmosphere for a science test. They know the way and they never looked back for me, assuming I’d be alright. Chandler reported that on the way back they had fun, buying icees and talking with their friends on the N or W and 7 all the way home.

Lennox (5) is writing lots of letters, cards and books to my dad, whose birthday just passed. The image is of one of her ice cream cone calculations (how many scoops, how many flavors and how high it would be, etc.). Kindergarten seems to agree with this little scholar.

Mason’s soccer team, which I coach, is 3 and 0, and Mason is tied for the team lead with 6 goals. This week was a bye-week and I actually missed schlepping out to Greenpoint for the Tuesday night practice. We’ve got to work on “running off the ball.” In the last game one of Mason’s goals was particularly nice. He got the ball with a defender right on him about 2o’ from the goal. He pulled it back and to the right to get a shot around the defender and nailed it to the far side of the goal (passed the goalie who was out of position).

We are all good, and I miss all of you.

Class, Class, Class

 

ENG101

Well here I am grading a stack of papers that don’t seem to match each other in terms of style, content, skill level or even assignment (though that might be because they put them on the wrong piles on my desk). While the ideas are great, and most of the writing is passable, I am disheartened by the wide variety that my “open assignment” has garnered. When I assigned only critical papers instead of creative papers I knew just how to respond, but here, now I am “perflummoxed.”

I am giving suggestions (writing margin and end comments) that go in many different directions. For some they are grammatical and others structural (language and paragraph corrections) while for others my comments are stylistic and imaginative (“write a thesis that describes the rat’s attitude in the poem”).

The freedom of this assignment is making the paper a lot more fun for most of the students, but going through these low stakes first drafts is a lot of work. When I decided to retreat from my impulse to have the papers all critical analyses of the poem “The Message” I naively thought that everyone would suddenly “get it” and have higher skillsets. Sigh. It is especially hard since there was supposed to be an interim draft due on Blackboard where I could just comment on the content.

ENC101

I gave the class back their first ACT exams yesterday and I have to say that I really like the rigidity of the ACT exam in light of the first three paragraphs that I wrote here. While I was disappointed when I turned over the covers and discovered who I passed and who I failed, I have to say that I am optimistic. By reviewing the ACT criteria with other professors and reviewing the materials in the “book room,” I think I know what each of the “lost sheep” will need to do to succeed (pass).

The research plans that I’ looked at and returned yesterday also show a lot of promise. Of course about half were late, so I might just have the best of the bunch.

ENG225

This class is sharp. Of course I wish that I had more writing to confirm my opinion of their verbal skills. I am impressed by their responses to Phyllis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano. They are very mature in terms of their responses to these, honestly, fairly dry texts. I was particularly impressed by the close reading that they did of Wheatley’s poems. NICE.

When we got to Frederick Douglass’ 1845 yesterday there was a “clicking into place” of the class understanding. Wheatley and Equiano, neither of whom stylistically fit the “common understanding”of African American literature, suddenly made sense when the students read Douglass’ sentimental slave narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This is, in my opinion, the beginning of modern or contemporary Black Lit. The ability to make the connection between pre-abolitionist literature and the late-enlightenment works that preceded it is, I think, a break-through for the students.

And I love Frederick Douglass’ 1845 Narrative.

Big Move (Sunnyside to Woodside)

OK, we got the call. It looks like we’ll be moving to Woodside. Before I go into the particulars of the place, which I’ve written in painful (and hopefully amusing) detail below, let me say that I think we’re all in shock and a bit out of sorts. Lots of big fights over little stuff, which leads me to believe that we’re coming to grips with the fact that change is coming.

We went to see the first apartment offered us at Big Six, the Mitchell-Lama Coop on Queens Boulevard in Woodside. WOW. It was huge, and, according to big Gene, in the best building (furthest from the BLVD.). Of course that puts it closest to the L.I.E., but that’s a different story. Which is worse, air pollution or noise pollution? And if noise pollution is better, what about the fact that some days (like yesterday) it is under the flight path to LaGuardia? Every two minutes another silver bird came grinding over us. The wheels are down by the time they come over, so you know that they are pretty low.

Hurm. I loved the apartment, why am I leading off with this? I guess that there is some thinly veiled ambivalence in my initial response.

 

The apartment is huge. The basic dimensions are 50’ by 20’, though there are some oddities that make it actually larger. When we first moved to University Village our apartment was a 600’ two bedroom, this is very close to twice the size of the place we were all happiest together, so if size matters, we should do well here. Of course, there is more to life than square-footage (or even acreage), so the jury is out on this one. My little piece of bottom land is on the 6^th floor.

It faces East North: that is the balcony faces North East, while there are two bedroom windows facing East and two (1 smaller) facing North. With the Balcony’s Eastward sweep, however, the overall feeling is East. The dining room and living room total almost 400 square feet, not including the screened in balcony. It is huge. If it were on the roof I’d open a farm. Of course the thresher will be powerful hard to get on the roof.

Each of the bedrooms is over 140 square feet (140, 142, and 159). OK, now the bedroom, the master bedroom we’re in now is barely 140 square feet, and some of it in hard to use nooks and crannies. There is a lot of jockeying for position vis-à-vis room selection, and I’ll leave the choice to the calmer and cooler heads who actually think logically and strategically. The master bedroom has two windows one small one facing north and one larger one facing East. It is large, and we’re thinking of splitting that room for two of the kids to share (there are battles over this division, but I’m not a snitch). The closets are huge, no joke. There is enough room for two Senators and an evangelical minister (who is health conscious: Falwell wouldn’t fit). I think that any of them would be large enough for Linda and I to fit all of our (hanging) clothes in together, though maybe I embellish here.

The kitchen is big, with so much cupboard space I feel like we could actually safely shop at Costco (when we lived in the village we would split bulk items like diapers and paper towels between families so that we wouldn’t overload our precarious little arcs). SO now I feel fully empowered to overshop in the American fashion. This is the New York version of getting a SUV. I’m fighting the desire to squelch my recycling impulse as I key this in.

We are so used to one person kitchens that I’m going to have to learn how to share the kitchen again (no more crabby “I’ll finish when you’re done and I’m alone in here…” statements). There is so much room in the kitchen that we’ll be able to pass each other carrying pizzas, while I foam cappuccino, as Linda practices her Kung Fu katas (her sticky hands technique is feared on both coasts of North America). Indeed, we will have room for all of the gizmos that I keep in the attic like the Cuisinart and slow cooker that I bring down for particular recipes.

And speaking of conflicts in rooms with plumbing: we will now have two bathrooms, though only 1 has a shower. No more worries about an ill-timed bowel movement when people are trying to brush teeth during the morning rush, we can have the offending element take “potty-B” and work it out as we file through and do our dental ablutions in a neat and orderly file in the master bathroom. The plumbing and construction look like that good early 60s vintage, though the water-saver showerhead is not long for my apartment. The tiles are all good, there is no decay or mold or cockamamie cosmetic paint (read camouflage), it is all so well maintained that I am ashamed of all of the messed-up places I’ve tolerated in my adult apartment-dwelling-life.

(Below and above the flags and next to the morning glory is our balcony)

Hard upon the two bathrooms is a closet that is so large that I immediately thought of putting a washer and dryer in there, though on sober reflection I think an office or computer nook might be better. Linda, however, smartly points out that we want the computer with internet access in a public space for reasons I don’t want to think about. The closet is about 4×3, which is much larger than the closet under the stairs where we had an office when I finished my dissertation.

Running around the flat on first

There is only one real drawback (besides moving during the semester) and that is storage space. We have a lot of (hard to access) storage space here in the attic, but maybe we’ll have to rent a storage space someplace for a couple of years until we get through the waiting list for a place here. There are multiple waiting-lists we’ll qualify for now: there is a whole magical world of wait-lists in the Big Six: there’s the storage room list, the parking lot list (and these are just the ones they let we new initiates know about). It will be a good use of the hundreds of dollars we’ll be saving in rent every month. I mean really, who wants to winter in the DR, or visit Javier, Julia and Lulu in Australia, or buy a minivan that we don’t fill so we can bring friends places out of the city?

There is a bike room, so I can take my bike off the street, and move the kids’ bike inside too. In fact, maybe I’ll buy them better bikes, since they don’t have to live on Skillman Ave anymore.

As I got up early this morning and worked on my lessons and grading, in our cramped cute apartment on a tree-lined block I have to say that I am sad about having to move. Yesterday one of Mason’s friends came to the door and invited him out to play soccer at the park, and he could just go. Tomorrow, around the corner and across the street there will be a farmers’ market where we’ll pay too much for fresh local produce. I love this safe, cute, quaint, human-scale neighborhood. But the size of the apartment and the savings and the security, and the professionalism, and the maintenance of the Big Six are making us an offer we cannot refuse. (I look forward to an apartment that won’t need me to manually unclog the toilet regularly-yuck!)

 

So though we’ve been feuding like a sack full of wet Democrats all day long, we are still a family. Chandler Mason Lennox, Linda and Stafford are all grateful for the huge new apartment we might live in. If I can find the right photo you’ll see our happy faces looking around the apartment in awe. I mean they all look big without furniture, but do they all have echoes? This change, though painful and terrifying, will be for the best, إن شاء الله.

The Semester Begins (Summer Ends)

We went to Riis Beach for one last splash this weekend in between the madness of the kids’ first week of school and Mom and Dad’s first day teaching. The water was warm and we were there at high tide so the waves came up and were really impressive to look at and play in. We got there in the afternoon and the kids and the cousins stayed in the water for three straight hour, until we beached them (pulled them out of the water as unwillingly as mermaids and a merman). It was a wonderful end to the summer of Jacob Riis Beach visits (and Aunti ‘Neene couldn’t make this one). I guess I should mention also that we might not be able to ever go to Coney Island, The Coney Island of yore again: and I’m sad about that (Sigh).
I’m getting excited about my new classes, though, again the “new preps” are spelling lots of reading and extra new work. In a strange way I’m excited about teaching new classes in new ways, but it is always a lot more work. I wish that I had just settled down and done my regular preps, but I think that that is just a way to stagnate. While I want to improve my ENG099 skills/practice and get my ACT pass rate back up to where I started, developing a whole new prep for the common reading like I did last year just doesn’t excite me like trying these new classes.

At Opening Sessions I was talking with President Mellow and I mentioned that Dr. Katopes once published a book of fiction. I, somehow, ended up saying that I’d read it and send her my review. Getting a hold of it will be one of the problems that I have to overcome here: me and my big mouth.

When I started blogging my tentative syllabi for the coming semester I got some interesting hits from people who’ve taught the same books, been taught the same books and are interested in the graphic novels I’m teaching. The dialogues that began as responses to the posts went on as ecorrespondences that have given me interesting ideas and pointed out problems I might face. The internet can be helpful.

Oh Yeah, And I’ve got to give a quick update on the kids: Lennox is a big Kindergarten Girl at PS150 now. She, on Friday, left me at the door for the first time. I think she’s full of her new status as a big Public School Girl, and the wry pride I see on her face as she turns to say goodby one last time at the PS150 Kindergarten Annex on Across the street from our house is priceless.

Mason, who is still at PS150 is full of his new status as a 6th grader. That is big at the school and he has the upper-classman-swagger that is nice to see after a summer with girl siblings, girl cousins and a girl world that didn’t fit him. He also started Soccer on Saturday, and I see the life coming back into him each moment. The Schoolyear is a rebirth for all of us.

Chandler is just so great. She is growing into her new role as seventh grader like a beautiful garden. She has her metrocard and rides the subway to and from her school (chaperoned) every day seeing the world of the New York commute like, well, a New Yorker. Everyday she has a) tons of homework, b) complaints about the subway and commuters, and c) some really keen observation about the world she’s out there witnessing. I think that this exposure is making her more comfortable here in New York. I know that this independence will pay dividends, though I am nervous about her spreading her wings.

Yesterday Auntie Elena got tickets for a Broadway play for Linda and Chandler so Mason Lennox and I went to the Museum of Natural History. We all met up at La Caridad for dinner afterwards. The play was a great experience for Chandler and Linda, who chattered on about detail after detail of the matinée. We went to the mythical creatures show which the kids were really into (though I was a bit disappointed by). For me the real fun was when we got lost looking for “Dum-Dum” (at the end of the Margeret Meade hall) where we saw all sorts of animals and exhibits we never look at when we come with a plan. I think I’m going to stop getting maps when I go to museums to let the hand of fate guide me through the exhibits. It was great.

They are all growing well, Thank You God.