Draft Protection

The new Park Slope Reader has hit the stands, with a brand-spanking-new Dispatch from Babyville.

Enjoy a laugh at my expense: Draft Protection.

Going Down

Hey, you say, isn't it about time for another one of those delightful Dispatches from Babyville from that powerhouse of a local mag, The Park Slope Reader? As a matter of fact, it is.

GOING DOWN


I used to complain constantly about what a pain it was to live in a walk-up with two small children. But since moving into an elevator building, I have come to see that the pain in my behind was from the kids and not the stairs. As it turns out, it’s still a three-ring circus whenever we enter or exit our house, although for entirely different reasons. In fact, the elevator, which I’d counted on as a cure-all, has created problems of its own.

Don’t get me wrong: I love our elevator more than it is reasonable to love a steel box. But while it has liberated me from the physical burden of being a pack mule, it has saddled me with a mental strain. Walking up stairs is simple, one foot in front of the other, but riding an elevator, like any other situation in which you must share a confined space with strangers, requires your behavior to adhere to certain unspoken rules. Of course, there are always individuals who shrug off these conventions: on the subway these are the people that eat stinky, messy food or tell detailed stories about their sexual exploits or sing to the music on their headphones at full voice On the elevator, these people are my children.

It works like this: as soon as the doors close on the elevator, a signal is released in my 3 and 5 year-old’s brains to say something odd, inappropriate or just really god-awful loud.

This might just be the uncouth sound of a bodily function, or the announcement of future body functions, as in, “I NEED TO DO A HUMONGOS POOP!”

But usually the off-putting words are spoken directly to our fellow passengers. The best case scenario is that Primo, my sociable son, will be friendly, super-friendly, so friendly it is almost an assault, like the time we stumbled upon a pretty middle-school girl in the elevator after-school.

“What’s your name?” Primo asked, instantly interested.

She was busy looking at her cell phone and didn’t hear him.

“What’s your name? What’s your name?” he repeated.

“GIRL!” shouted Seconda, “Say your name, girl!” My kids have a serious good cop/ bad cop thing going on.

“Lauren,” she mumbled, staring at the elevator doors.

With this, Primo fired forth a barrage of questions, leaving nary an opportunity for her to answer: “How old are you? What school do you go to? Where’s your mother? What’s the number you live in?”

This last question, it was clear, was the most pressing, and he asked her again “What’s your number?”

“SAY YOUR NUMBER GIRL!” Seconda shrieked. .

Lauren, clearly wishing she’d taken the stairs, asked me, the official Crazy-English translator: “What do they mean?”

“What apartment number do you live in?’ I explained.

“Oh,” she answered as she stepped out on the 3rd floor:”3B.”

The doors closed again and Primo announced: “I am going to write that girl a letter and bring it to her house!”

I tried to dissuade him. I tried to distract him. But at the end of the day I walked him over to 3B and helped him slide an anonymous letter which read “her is a pictr av the sun. you r nis,” under her door, if that was, in fact, her real apartment number.

As elevator behavior goes, friendly advances from a five year-old, no matter how persistent, are generally beyond reproof. Where I get into trouble is with my daughter.

Secibda looks like she just stepped off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: golden hair, rosy cheeks – the whole nine yards. But when she opens her mouth, it’s a different story.

“What beautiful eyes!” people on the elevator often exclaim.

“I don’t like you!” she snaps back with venom, “Go away!”

This response usually works to paralyze her appreciators, but if they persist in making conversation, she’ll pull out the big guns: “You can’t talk to me!” “This is my elevator and you can’t be in it!” “You’re annoying!”

It’s not that she’s cranky or upset. In fact, she’s at her happiest when she is berating and scolding others in a small box from which there is no escape. I know this because of the grin which spreads over her impish face afterwards.

I’ve come to accept the fact that my daughter is, at present, just really, regularly unfriendly. Ok, hostile. Ok, more belligerent than a drunk who’s been cut off.

This is shocking to me because I’m a people person. When I board an elevator (and I’m not doing damage control for Sec) I make light, palatable, diverting small talk, the conversational equivalent of muzak. I’m as amiable as a Southerner except I know when to stop talking. Yet, as with so much in parenting, this friendliness has caused a backlash in my daughter.

I’ve grown so accustomed to Seconda’s gnarly, snarly elevator bit that when I see children who are perfectly nice to others for no reason whatsoever, I can’t help but conclude that they are either cuckoo for cocoa puffs or under the influence of Children’s Benadryl or a similar mind-altering substance.

One morning last week, I was rushing Sec off to school and we got on a crowded elevator. Among the many riders was a brother and sister, about Seconda’s age, with their pregnant mother. I smiled at the children. The children smiled at me. The children smiled at Seconda. Seconda growled at them like a rabid dog. Then she informed me, “Betsy doesn’t like them!”

Betsy is Sec’s imaginary sister, and frankly she’s a bad influence. Where Seconda is mischievous, Betsy is nefarious. Betsy has a lot of opinions about things and they all fall under the “I hate it” category. I am currently filing paperwork to have Betsy excommunicated from the family.

The little girl on the elevator had a nicely-maintained black bob and was wearing an adorable flower-print sundress, making me have second thoughts about how I’d allowed Seconda to dress herself for school in pink penguin pajamas. She had been wearing a fetching frock this morning, but only because she’d put that on to sleep. She’s like an infant with her days and nights switched, only with wardrobe. But I’ve learned to pick my battles with this iron-willed child, and the battle at hand was over Sec’s habit of saying “Go away! I hate you!” to each and every person she encountered. She was under strict instructions not to direct the word “hate’ at anyone, period.

So now, I stood in the elevator, holding my breath and hoping we could make it to the lobby without an incident. But Seconda said nothing, Instead it was the girl who spoke, turning to her brother and saying: “I love you, Jack.”

And little Jack said, “I love you too, Pearl.”

Everyone on the elevator, including me, oohed and ahhed. Who wouldn’t? It made your uterus hurt, it was so cute.

Encouraged by the response, Pearl went on: “I love Jack and I love my Daddy and I love my Mama!” she said, flinging her arms around her mother’s legs. Then she put her hand on her mother’s pregnant midsection and said, “Hello little baby! Hello! I’m your sister!”

Seconda squinted her eyes and cocked her head, which I knew from experience did not bode well.

“Do you have a baby in your belly?” she asked the mother, innocently enough.

“Yes, I do,” the mom replied with a smile.

“Oh,” Sec answered thoughtfully: “I hate that baby.”

Every passenger on the elevator, including but not limited to Pearl, Jack, the mother, me, and probably the in-utero baby – gasped audibly.

“Seconda!” I exclaimed.

To make matters worse, my daughter broke into a huge grin which stretched from one blond pigtail to the other.

Thankfully, at just that moment, the doors of the elevator opened and I bounded through them, exclaiming, “Sorry! So sorry!” over my shoulder.

Wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last time I have to make a hasty exit after a doozie like that. Though I’m inclined to make a big show of being shocked and aghast – you know the show I mean, where you exclaim loudly, “I don’t know WHERE you learned to talk like THAT! You know BETTER!” in defense of your parenting skills — I’ve learned it only fans the flame of bad behavior, so I try, whenever possible, to just let the mortification roll over me and subside, before reminding my daughter that it is not kind to tell a mother that you despise her fetus.

But it does make me remember fondly the days when we lived in a walk-up, where the only people who suffered in the freak-show of my family getting in and out of the house, was me. And so I’ve decided that until the reigning Mean Queen of the Elevator can soften that razor-sharp tongue of hers, we’re hoofing it up the stairs. Not only it is rehabilitating, it’s good for the glutes.

The End of Summer Loving

Summer issue of the Park Slope Reader is out, complete with a new Dispatch from Babyville about my love-hate relationship with summer in the city. Click here to read The End of Summer Loving

Or, if you're too damn hot and lazy to click over, well, I'll reward you by pasting the essay below.

THE END OF SUMMER LOVING
By Nicole Caccavo Kear

Every June, I start a hot and heavy love affair with Summer in the City. I'm smitten with his seemingly endless sunlight and the opportunity he gives me to wear open-toed shoes. I can't get enough of sitting on the stoop while the kids play hopscotch and blow bubbles. The jubilation that comes with no more pencils, no more books is infectious, because even though school is out, I've shelled out the cash for a few weeks of summer camp. The sprinklers are on! There's an ice cream truck on every corner! Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.

In July, the honeymoon comes to an end. The novelty of sprinklers has worn off and I begin to wonder what's in that soft serve my children are consuming in large quantities. The kids don't blink an eye at the sight of an available swing at the playground. Noses get burnt because I forget to re-apply sunscreen. The flame between City Summer and I is still very much alive but it does require some fanning. So I take the kids to fancy Manhattan playgrounds with sculpture gardens and unconventional climbing apparati. We step up our playdate game. We launch a lemonade stand.

Then comes August. When August hits the city, the living is not easy. Your daddy's not rich and your mama's not good-looking (though, for the record, she could be, in a season with less humidity and fewer bikinis). Camp is long over and I am on Mommy duty all day every day with a pair of tired, overheated whiners who regard everything with the bored expression I imagine Louis XIV had after he built Versailles. I realize that toddlers crap in the playground sprinklers and there's probably a raging case of cox sackie on the way. I want to throw Mr. Softie and his infuriating jingle into the East River.

Yes, by the first week of August, the passion that once burned so hot, so bright between City Summer and I is utterly extinguished. I know, for certain, that it's not going to work out. I just don't feel the same way about him anymore. Everyone else has walked out on him, to their country houses and vacation destinations, and now I see why.

All I really want is a trial separation in the form of a beach getaway, but since I have no money or connections to people with Hampton houses, I am trapped. So I agree to give my relentless beau one last chance. I plan a stay-cation.

Like deciding to move in with a boyfriend to save the relationship, the stay-cation seems like a good idea, but it isn't. The behavior that annoyed you before becomes intolerable, your few remaining stores of goodwill are quickly depleted, and you end up with a really nasty breakup.

Which is precisely what happened between City Summer and I last year. The breakup took place in the climactic moment of our stay-cation, when David and I took the kids, 4 and 2 years old, to the Statue of Liberty.

I feel a special affection for Our Lady of the Harbor. My grandmother immigrated to America 52 years ago, and she has described many times the way her heart was seized with joy when she caught sight of Lady Liberty as her boat pulled into port. Whenever we cross the Brooklyn Bridge, the kids yell "Hello!" to the great green girl. We have a large, artsy print of her hanging in the front entrance of our apartment. We know all sorts of trivia about her construction, gleaned from watching Ken Burns documentaries as a family. So we were genuinely jazzed to set foot on Liberty Island.

The good news is, I gained newfound appreciation for how my grandmother felt on that boat squeezed among sweating hordes with her two hot, hungry, tired children. In particular, I now have a real understanding of those famous words inscribed on Lady Liberty's pedestal, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

"I always thought it was 'be free,'" I told David.

"Me too," he replied, "But now it makes sense. After riding in that boat I am actually yearning to breathe free. It really smelled like crap."

The stench and the heat were only the first of many nails hammered into the coffin of my love for City Summer. There was also:

The pulling of a double stroller up crowded ferry stairs, provoking expletives in every language, just so the kids could stand on the deck and feel the bay breeze in their hair.

The wrestling with a toddler who, inspired by said breeze, wants to jump overboard for a little dip.

The consoling of a terrified preschooler after he is forced to walk through a high-tech security gate that blasts him with puffs of air (how can you be sure it isn't poison, the kid wants to know).

The breakdown of all sanity when after arriving to blazing hot, overcrowded island of Liberty, both children report that they are too tired to walk up any steps and demand to be carried.

The epic quest to secure a photo of all four of us in which we are not yelling at the kids or the kids are not yelling at us, so that we can always remember this glorious day (a big thanks to the stranger who snapped the one decent picture horizontally so that the only glimpse of the magnificent icon is about a quarter of her pedestal)

All of which culminated in my yelling, like I had an important announcement for all to hear: "I AM NEVER HAVING ANOTHER CHILD!"

And that was when I broke up with Summer in the City.

There was a week left in August, but we spent it in our air-conditioned apartment, reading books, drawing pictures and watching PBS. Finally, Labor Day arrived, and City Summer agreed to give me some space, which was convenient seeing as I'd started a dalliance with autumn. Could you blame me? September, that hunky stud, puts my kids back in school. He's downright irresistible.

Moved to Tears

Got a new essay in the Park Slope Reader called Moved to Tears which I thought you readers might enjoy. If you're too darn lazy to click on the link, just read it below.

MOVED TO TEARS
By Nicole Caccavo Kear

Moving! What could be more exciting? A blank slate awaits! You arrange your old furniture in a new and improved configuration, find uses for things you'd deemed unnecessary, get rid of the crap that really is unnecessary and perhaps best of all, discover all those missing pieces to chess sets, puzzles, Lego creations and sock pairs.

Yes, the flood of satisfaction I feel when I find a missing puzzle piece, and can stamp "Case Closed" on that particular mystery, thus releasing Saint Anthony from his bondage, that satisfaction almost makes moving worth it.

Almost, but not quite. Because when you are moving, particularly with two little children in tow, perks like being reunited with lost earrings are short-lived. Sure, you could linger to enjoy these little victories...or you could slip into a three month-long anxiety attack. You could transform into a harpie hag, wildly berating your husband for not bringing home more packing tape, beseeching your children to "GIVE YOU A BREAK, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!" and fainting - that's right, fainting - in the middle of packing your china (never, for the record, cracking a plate).;

Yes, I recently moved - for the first time since Primo and Seconda were born. And it nearly moved me to madness.

Before you have kids, packing is annoying and tedious but you can get it done: you just put other responsibilities on hold and hunker down. When you have a 2 and 4 year-old at home, this is not really an option. It helps to order in and let the kids watch near-toxic amounts of TV but you can streamline only so much. You can not, for instance, tell your kids "Change your own diaper!" and "Read your own books!" and "Take yourself to the playground!"

The other challenge that young children pose to packing is the fact that a toddler's greatest joy is to unpack boxes. To the extent that a smart entrepreneur could start an unpacking business staffed entirely with 2 year-olds. I can't tell you how many times I labored over a box - placing items carefully in so that all objects were protected and every inch of the box was used to its fullest potential - and when I turned around for a minute to grab the packing tape, Seconda would dart in like a ninja and fling the items all over the room.

Moving with children also means that you have to confront your conspicuous consumerism, particularly as it relates to the insane amounts of crap your kids own, all of which they find utterly indispensable and which they want to be able to retrieve at a moment's notice. If you think arguing with a spouse over what to keep and what to toss is tough, try negotiating with a 4 year-old. When I asked Primo if we could perhaps discard a shoebox full of acorns, he was shocked and chagrined.

"Not my LUCKY ACORN COLLECTION!!!!" he shrieked, "I'll never find a hundred lucky acorns like that again!"

And even after you've conceded to take along the stuffed animals they haven't played with in three years and the dozen empty toilet paper rolls that have suddenly acquired special meaning, the trouble is not behind you. Because as soon as you pack something and shove the box somewhere in a teetering pile of boxes, you child will experience a desperate need for the exact item you have just packed.

"Where is my GREEN MARBLE???" Primo would yell, and heaven help the poor soul who did not think to label that particular box "Toys, including one green marble."

The night before the move was, without a doubt, the worst. I'm not proud of the things I said that night but I do maintain that when I said them I was under the influence of moving.

We shipped the children off to my parents' for a weekend of non-stop fun (or if not fun, at least non-stop guardianship) and David and I packed like fiends. Emphasis on "I" and on "fiends." I morphed into a mini Mephistopheles, with an insatiable appetite for packing tape. Besides the occasional string of hardcore, multi-syllabic expletives, I spoke only to bark directions like "More tape!" and "Hurry!" and frequently, "WHERE'S MY SHARPIE?" As the hours passed, my impeccably-filled boxes became haphazard, desperate. I threw my meat tenderizer in my Uggs and stacked those on top of David's CDs and threw in a handful of stray bath toys on top. Sec's potty went in with the toaster which went in with my wedding album.

You know your packing has reached the point of no return when you trash things that you love, treasure even, because the thought of finding a box to put them is literally nauseating.

"What about this?" David asked, pointing to our blender, which I'd lugged home on the subway at 39 weeks pregnant with visions of postpartum smoothie-making dancing in my head.

"Too heavy!" I snapped, "Garbage!"

"And this?" he asked, holding the kids' autographed copy of Babar.

"Already packed the books!" I panted, "Books done. Garbage!"

When I told him to throw out my favorite childhood cup, he deemed me unfit to pack and sent me to bed where I stayed awake for over an hour, yelling orders at him.

Miraculously, when the movers came the next morning we were more or less ready and in three hours, we had changed homes. When my parents dropped the kids off the next morning, Primo and Seconda found their bedroom fully furnished, with ogre-green walls, outer space nightlights and Trofasts filled to the brim with lucky acorns, superfluous stuffed animals and one very precious green marble.

Slowly, my devil horns shrunk until you couldn't see them at all. My shoulders eased down from their position next to my ears. My furrowed brow softened and my craggy haggy voice began to resemble a human's again. By the time the cable man came to hook up the Tivo, I was my happy, perky self again. Happier and more perky in fact, because now I have a dishwasher and an elevator and more electrical outlets in the living room. And all the pieces to every single puzzle.

Little Critters, Big CIty

The summer issue of the Park Slope Reader is now out, complete with my newest Dispatch from Babyville. You can pick one up in a coffee shop near you, or, if you're living beyond the Reader's reach, you can read the essay here:

Little Critters, Big City

By Nicole Caccavo Kear

I had a pet-less childhood with nary a dog or hamster or even a goldfish to call my own. To say that my mother is not an animal lover is to put it mildly. Though a reasonably feeling woman in general, she is downright coldhearted when it comes to creatures covered in fur, feathers, or fins. Not as bad as Cruella da Ville, but close. I guess I inherited this animal aversion because it never bothered me that I didn't have a pet. I had a kid sister, and that was sort of the same thing.

My kid sister, on the other hand, pined for a pet. Melissa's pining (and whining) led to a series of what I will euphemistically call "eclectic" pets, the kind a kid can keep in the city without disturbing the domestic peace too much. The first was Slimy, a snail gifted to her by a waiter at Ko Chine Restaurant in Chinatown. The waiter was impressed by Melissa's appetite for escargot and thought she might savor a live snail as much as she did the ones she swallowed whole. My sister shared one and a half magical days with Slimy before he, for no reason whatsoever that we could discern, suddenly stopped sliming.

After that she had to content herself with taking the classroom fish home on holidays, until one day my mother accidentally (we hope) flushed him down the toilet. Guilt ridden about the fish-slaughter, she consented to buy Melissa a bird. So they went to the pet store and came back with Freddy, a one-eyed, skittish cockatoo.

My sister did not look too happy with this, her long-awaited pet.

"Why does he have only one eye?" I asked.

"He was on SALE," she replied sulkily, "because he's missing an eye from having a fight with another bird. Now he's a nervous wreck."

"We rescued him!" my mother exclaimed, like she was auditioning to play Dian Fossey in the remake of Gorillas in the Mist. But my sister and I knew better than to buy the act - my mother had bought the bird because he was a bargain.

Over time Melissa grew to love Freddy, and when he issued his last, anxious chirp, our cousins handed her down their bird, a green parrot named Captain, who was as bona-fide a pet as a child of animal-haters could hope for. So, in the end, her dreams of pet ownership were realized.

Fast forward twenty years and you will find the cycle of pet-withholding has repeated itself. Only now I'm the meanie and Primo and Seconda are the pitiful city kids without a canine sidekick.

It's not that I hate animals. I just don't want them as roommates. Little critters, no matter how smart or loving, like to roll in the mud, lick their butts, and eat garbage, and I think that's fine, that's totally cool, as long as it's not happening in my house.

There's also the fact that I can hardly manage caring for myself and my two children, who seem more like animals every day, which leads me to believe it's not a great idea to enlarge our family. Every plant we've ever had dies a slow, painful death of thirst and is left to wither for several weeks before it's disposed of. The only living things that do thrive in our apartment are the animals that live there without my permission, the endless parade of mice, not just any mice but a mutant strain of defiant super-mice who are invulnerable to death and skitter around the kitchen corners despite my unflagging efforts at hole-plugging and crumb-collecting.

Point is, I've got my hands full.

But children don't understand logical reasons such as these. Children just want. And my 4 year-old wants a creature to call his own. In his desperation, he has turned to bugs. Ants, in particular.

In the afternoon, he has taken to patrolling the stoop for stray ants that he can pluck from their happy life on the pavement and drag into our inhospitable home.

"I FOUND ONE!!!!" he shouts, like he's struck gold. Seconda runs over and bends down so that her face is a half inch from his fingertip.

"Oh you so tiny, you so coot my little Anty! I LOVE YOU, ANTY. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!" she bellows.

"Too LOUD! You're going to scare the living daylights out of him!" Primo scolds.

Then, like he's a surgeon and I'm a nurse, he orders, "Habitat!"

I comply, handing over the plastic dome with a yellow handle, kindly manufactured by Fisher Price to satisfy the bug-capturing yen of children like my son.

"Get in there you little Anty you!" he coos, dropping the sucker inside and shutting the door, which must sound like a death knell to poor old Anty. No doubt word has gotten out in the Park Slope insect world about Primo's appetite for ants; the sight of that habitat cum torture chamber must send them running for broke.

Primo captures a bunch more, gleefully narrating to Anty that he's delivering some roommates for him so he won't be lonely in there, and then, when the habitat is full of writhing, squirming, dirty bugs, we get into the old "Can I bring them inside?" debate.

The first time this debate unfolded, I was a novice, and feeling guilty that I'd deprived the kids of a Fido or a Mittens, I agreed to letting the bugs come upstairs, provided - and this was the dealbreaker - that the habitat door remain closed.

Rookie move, I know. But Primo's my first and parenting him is full of rookie moves.

About two minutes after we brought the impromptu ant farm upstairs I heard a shriek.
I ran into the living room to find Primo holding the empty habitat, screaming, "WHERE IS ANTY?"

"Did you let him out? All of them?" I yelled back, scanning the floor for ants and spotting not a one, "I TOLD you not to!"

"But I wanted to PLAY WITH HIM!" he choked out before the bawling began, the wild, wide-eyed sobbing of a man with nothing left to lose, "ANTY! ANNNNNNNNTTTTY!"

Seconda, not quite sure what the hubbub was about, but always willing to join in on a good cry, piped up, "I WANT MY ANNNNNTY! GET HIM MOMMY!"

Primo thought this was an excellent idea. "Yes, Mommy, find him! Find Anty and his roommates, too!"

It is the lot of mothers to fix the unfixable, to do the impossible. But even we have limitations. I tried to explain that you'd have better luck keeping track of a collection of dust motes than ants on the loose. I told him it was his own fault for not listening to his mother. I told him you can't really play with an ant anyway. I suggested finding one of Anty's identical twin brothers on the stoop. There was no consoling him.

Since that fateful day, we have a strict all-bugs-left-behind policy. The kids can pick up whatever creepy crawlers they please - slugs, inchworms, millepieds, rolie polies - but they all get released back into the wild when its time to go home. And wouldn't you know, just yesterday, the wheel came full circle when Primo was poking through the dirt at his grandparents' place and found a small, sleek, black snail.

"Mommy, Mommy look!" he cried, breathless.

I had to admit, the snail was stupendous. She stuck her head with its lovely little snail horns right out in a delightfully amiable way and swayed her body this way and that, ever so slowly. I felt positively enchanted.

We named her Slimy Jr. and spent an hour or two in the garden playing with her. When it was time to go inside for lunch, I told Primo it would be OK if we kept Slimy, since she was such a special, such a one-of-a-kind snail.

"No, we better let her go free, Mommy," my son said, "So she can find her family and live a happy life in the dirt."

And that, I think, is precisely what happened.