Marnie Piazza

The Old Days

I was chatting with friends at the soccer field, and one mom was talking about her oldest son's visits to colleges.  While it amazes me that I have friends with children of that age, it also amazes me how well I remember my college visits and how young I was back then.  Some of it would be positively cringe-worthy, if it all wasn't over 20 years in the past.

I did my college visits with friends.  I have no idea why my mom, who was best known for chauffeuring me around in order to know where I was at all times, decided to let the 16 year old me go off to see colleges unsupervised, but it happened. 

Maybe it was because we were hopelessly geeky.  We weren't like the smart kids nowadays, who take AP classes, compete in elite soccer leagues and build art portfolios, all while looking like Abercrombie and Finch models.  We were plain old geeks, of the Anthony Micheal Hall character in Breakfast Club variety, only without detention, since we never got detention. 

The first trip was to Cornell with a good friend who ended up going there.  I crossed it off my list during the part of the tour when we were led across a bridge over a gorge and told that it was a popular suicide spot during the long winters of academic striving.  I now assume that the guide was the dark humor type, or just liked freaking out 16 year olds, but I believed him back then.  So, tour out of the way and Cornell off my list due to fatalities and low temperatures, my friend and I proceeded to stalk a cute guy who worked at a record store in the little college town adjacent to the school.  We walked back and forth in front of that store, giggling, for a long time.  It's hard to imagine why.  I guess we couldn't figure out what else to do with ourselves and our freedom and weren't ready to go back to our hotel room.

The worst college visit was to Duke, the beautiful, sprawling, warm, green and lush campus with which I fell in love.  We were staying in dorm rooms with freshmen women.  But these women were a different breed from us.  The one I was staying with was a SORORITY GIRL.  We were left on our own while she did sorority things, including a secret ceremony with girls in white dresses and possibly devil worship. 

I was again with my stalking-the-cute-guy-at-Cornell friend.  We could not get anything right in the sorority girl atmosphere.  First, there was the awkwardness of multiple girls asking if we were twins. We still don't know why, except that we are both fairly short and have brown hair.  Then, there was the fatal faux pas of my friend borrowing, without asking, a baseball camp from my host's room. My friend is allergic to the sun and needed the shade.  For whatever reason, we didn't go to the bookstore and buy her a hat.  She borrowed the hat and wore it all over campus, we came home, saw my host, and she looked at us in horror.  It turned out it had her sorority letters on it and was forbidden for anyone but her or her sisters to wear it.  After asking if anyone saw us, she took that hat and turned on her heels.  Later, I lost her keys for a few hours, though I did eventually find them.  And did countless other ridiculous things over that long day and a half.

Next was the Boston area visit:  Brandeis, and then Tufts, with a different friend.  Brandeis was a perfectly nice and age-appropriate visit.  Again, we stayed with college women in their dorm rooms, but these were friendly ones.  We ate in the cafeteria with them, went to a class or two, and socialized a little with their friends.  It's probably what my mother had in mind.

Then we moved on to a long gone Quality Inn in Harvard Square, our base for checking out Tufts.  And for some reason, in Harvard Square and in Faneuil Hall, two of the toughest places on under-aged drinking I've ever seen, we managed to go bar hopping.  Maybe it was our utter cluelessness that did it.  The fact that we didn't look guilty or sneaky, because we didn't even know it was a big deal to get into a Harvard bar at 16.  My friend was even wearing her retainer.  We just wandered right in wherever we thought looked like fun.  I would say this was not what my mother had in mind, but other than a drink or two bought by men at least five years older than us, we didn't get into any particular trouble.

So will I let my kids go on college visits themselves?  We'll see.  For now, I'll just reminiscent about mine.

Summer...

As summer comes to a close, I'm thinking about all that I'll miss about it.  It's been a good one, near the top of my best summer lists.  That's saying a lot, as I'm someone who takes maximizing summertime fun seriously.

As I gather school supplies and add back-to-school nights to my calendar, I think of riding the waves with my eight year old.  A few days into our extended stay at the beach, he could keep up with me and became as passionate about the ocean as I am.  Instead of sneaking down to the beach for a swim without my boys, I was a little bored when I wasn't body surfing with him.  Being with an eight year old gave me permission to get goofy and exuberant about those fast rides on white water all the way to the shore line (the ones that fill your bathing suit with piles of heavy sand and make you dive right back in for more.)  I also think about how far my six year old will have come by next summer.  At the end of our beach stay, he was already getting more independent, wanting to "ride" waves by himself, getting knocked over and trying again, so proud of himself for floating a bit in the shallow surf. 

As I read letters from teachers and principals, I think of some of our other special beach moments. When you are lucky enough to spend a full month in a little community on Fire Island, there are a lot of them to cherish.  There was the day we swam in the rain.  The day of the red jellyfish.  The many days of wild, awe-inspiring red flag surf.  The first time my  youngest jumped off the lifeguard stand as the sun set across the island. The Kadima records.  Playing catch in the surf for hours when it was too rough to go out past the breaking  waves.  Buying the New York Times just to find out when high tide would be.  It's not the picture perfect sunny blue sky days that stand out.  It's somehow the imperfect ones that  were actually perfect just by us being there.

As I shop for back-to-school clothes and plan for pre-picture day haircuts, I think about being back home, our lazy summer mornings, of which there weren't enough, when we'd lounge on the couch together until the town pool opened or it was time to go to a friend's pool.  I think of our pool time with friends and on our own, racing with my eldest, letting my youngest hold onto my back while I swam underwater, trying to do water somersaults and handstands together, my oldest teaching himself the butterfly stroke by watching Micheal Phelps.

My boys don't know why I am holding on so tightly to the last days of summer.  They're a little bored of swimming every day, ready to move on to other activities.   But summer has always been my favorite season, and a summer day without being within sight, and preferably in, water makes my antsy.  I've always felt our time to swim under the sky in this part of our world is too brief.  But that's also what makes it special.

I'll let go when I have to.  Fall has its own beauty and tempo of life, and I'll embrace them when it's time. But for now,  even though it's time to plan for fall, it's still summer.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

It was a lazy summer morning.  We had no place to be in a hurry.  Friends weren't coming over for hours, the town pool wouldn't open until the afternoon, and those were our only plans for the day.  Our lack of a schedule had put us in a lounge-on-the-couch mood so we scrolled through the list on our DVR for something to watch together.  I had recorded something called "Jurassic Fight Club" on the History Channel.  Anything dinosaur-related is always a huge hit with my youngest son and is usually interesting for my oldest son as well.  I was just happy it was something we hadn't seen before and that it was presumably educational, being on the History Channel. 

We started the show and it looked like a good enough way to spend an hour.  It appeared to mix science and violence in a visually stimulating way, but most importantly, the dinosaurs looked really good.  I went into the kitchen to wrap up a few chores so that I could join the boys on the couch and watch.

Then, from my oldest son, "Mommy, what are herpes?" 

"What?!" I said.

"What are herpes?  Are they bad?  What are they?"  My older son is nothing if not detail-oriented, curious, and determined.

I had been mentally tuning out the commercials as I cleaned up, and was startled into catching the tail end of an ad for Valtrex, a medication used to treat herpes infections.  Since that was not the segue I planned to use for a facts of life discussion, I hedged big time and basically hid for a few minutes until the dinosaurs came back on the TV and started attacking each other, guessing correctly that my son would get distracted by the wanton prehistoric violence.

After I stopped hiding, we settled into our couch positions.  My youngest son sweetly said "I like to put my head on your tummy and cuddle on the couch."  At six, he's growing lankier and more angular, losing the baby fat that I love.  But he doesn't know that yet, and still curls himself into a cuddle ball with me.  I'll go along with it for as long as I can.  It was the kind of cuddle that was starting to make me feel sleepy and cozy.   

But not too cozy.  I had to stay alert to fast forward past the commercials. 

Packing Perils

I have been packing for our Fire Island family vacation for the past two weeks.  The boys and I are lucky enough to be spending a month at our rental beach house, and my husband will be there for a week and weekends.  The packing is a labor of love and well worth the effort, but I really need to stop as signs of insanity have set in.

Today I screamed at my husband for handing me a bag of coffee, i-pod speakers, and his camera to pack.  I have been asking him if there is anything else he needs packed for at least a week.  He has said no repeatedly.  So the coffee which needs to be put in a "might spill" section of the luggage, the bulky and exceedingly solid speakers, and the expensive and fragile camera, each of which cannot be crammed into random corners of duffel bags or canvas totes, put me over the edge.  That and the fact that he occasionally wanders past the growing pile in our bedroom and makes comments like "That's a lot of bags.  What's in there?"

Then there's the problem that I've packed things we still need.  Two days ago my older son earnestly asked if I could unpack one pair of socks for him to wear.  Today my youngest son came to me crying because his sneakers were missing.  Of course I knew just where they were:  shoved between a box of Ritz crackers and three baseball mitts near the top of the giant backpack my husband once used on a hiking trip to Scotland.

I think the pile of bags is as big as it's going to get.  It doesn't have much more time to expand, since we are finally leaving tomorrow.  It isn't a moment too soon.   

End of the School Year Blues

As much as the boys and I have been looking forward to summer vacation, we have mixed feelings about the close of the school year.

For me, it's the reminder that another year is passing, my children are getting older and more independent, and the cuddles and joys of having very young children is that much closer to ending.  Though I know they have to grow up, it's bittersweet and tends to make me weepy at certain transition times, such as this one.

For them, it's the unsettled feeling that comes from the end of a year with beloved and nurturing teachers (we have been lucky in this,) the end of daily time with the children in their classes, and for my older son, the end of his soccer season.   They have become so used to the structure of their daily lives that these sudden days off, with no end in sight, seem to make them slightly hyper, moody, and kind of annoying to be around.  The switch to a relaxed pace, with time for free play and spontaneous plans, isn't as easy an adjustment as it sounds.

I know we will settle into summer soon though.  We already had a lovely day of pool hopping between two good friends' homes.  And today we're seeing a matinee.  And then we are off to the beach for a vast expanse of fun with no schedule in site.  I get to be a fun mom at the beach, since I am happy to frolic in the cold ocean waves, get sandy, go barefoot, touch stinky seaweed and sea creatures, and do whatever the boys want as long as the surf is in sight. 

So I'll purge the papers, plans and paraphernalia of the school year for now, and wait for the relaxation to begin.  I'll try to make the most of this summer with my slightly less young boys, while at least the little one is still happy to unabashedly sing songs about how much he loves me while he wraps himself up in my arms.  And we'll all go take a dip in the Atlantic, watch the sunset over the bay, and jump off the lifeguard stand soon.  Actually, I think I may be over the end of the school year blues already. 

 

What I Would Have Said

I recently attended a memorial service for my old boss, Rich, a man who meant a lot to me.  He was my boss for several years, and he was the boss, mentor and friend who wished me well into my new life as a stay-at-home mom.   I joined his company as a young single city dweller dating and dancing into the wee hours.  I left as a married mother of an infant with a house in the suburbs.  He was there for the biggest adult transition in my life so far.

When I found out about his death, in addition to grief, I had regrets.  I missed numerous opportunities to stop by the office and say hi over the years.  We kept in touch by phone and email, but it was sporadic and I certainly could have made more of an effort to be a consistent part of his life.  I always assumed there’d be time to finally get together, to show off my kids, to ask him to look at this site, and then suddenly there wasn’t.

His service was a moving celebration of his life.  People were invited to speak about what Rich meant to them, and their words were as sincere and as unique as Rich was.  He was the most truly spiritual person I’ve ever known, and his relationships showed how seriously he took his calling to be kind to people.

As friends and family walked to the front of the church to say a few words about him, I considered going myself.  But I’ve never gotten over a primal fear of public speaking, and I didn’t manage to do it.  And part of me didn’t feel entirely worthy, since we hadn’t spoken for a few months and I felt I’d already missed out on my chance to say goodbye.

But there were some memories and thoughts I would have liked to share about his generosity of spirit.  He supported me well beyond the realm of work life, listening to my love life problems, apartment woes, and anything else.  He was thrilled with a pastel I drew for him of his and his wife’s beloved Yorkshire terrier, Mischief.  I’m not even sure it was any good – it was probably fine, but it was on cheap paper with cheap pastels and put in a cheap frame by me.  Yet it is probably the most worthwhile piece I’ve ever done. 

He danced with his wife at my wedding and seemed to truly enjoy himself.  He held my cranky baby once and seemed to feel privileged.  He truly loved his job and his company when most people seemed to always be looking for something bigger and better.  Most of all, he seemed to believe that I was talented and brilliant, and tried his best to get me to believe that too.  He did that with everyone he cared about, found the positive and never looked back.

When I left his firm, Rich sent me a compass with a note that I wish I could find.  It said that I should look at the compass and consider it a moral compass to keep me on the right track in life.  My kids got hold of the compass a long time ago.  They have it in their special tool box that they use for hunting insects and finding other treasures, but I think I am able to keep Rich’s sentiment in mind without its physical presence.  I hope I will. 

The Cat's Out of the Bag

My nearly six year old son has a summer birthday.  What this has meant, beyond a very uncomfortable July for me while pregnant, is that he never had a 'real' birthday party.  We are always on vacation at Fire Island in July.  The community where we rent our house is a laid-back, quiet and small place where the kids pretty much run free and barefoot between the bay, the beach and their house.  There's not a lot of hoopla about anything, which is the whole point of the place and integral to why we love it.

So, for Jacob's birthday each July, we invite over whatever sandy kids happen to be on the stretch of beach near our house at the time.  We have pizza in our screened-in porch.  After scavenging a few candles from the drawers of our rental house, we eat a semi-crushed and slightly melted cake that my mom brings over on the ferry from the mainland.  Jacob gets a few little gifts from the one general store in town.  Then we all go back to the beach to play, chasing sea gulls and jumping off the lifeguard stand.  I wish my birthday could be spent this way.  Actually, I wish my every day could be spent this way.

Well, now that he is in kindergarten, all the kids talk about their birthday parties, all the time.  And if there are any conflicts between the kids, apparently the big comeback is "You're not invited to my birthday party."  And if the kids want to pledge their undying friendship, "You're invited to my birthday party."  It doesn't matter when their birthday actually is; this went on all year long.

So I sold out on the mellow birthday party dream.  We had a party for him a month before the actual date so that he could invite his classmates and have the big party that his brother, with his January birthday, has been getting for years.  We had it at a location with lots of hoopla, including a dinosaur dig, games, the works.  And a giant pile of presents from 20 plus kids.  Jacob loved it.  And the truth is, I thought it was pretty cute too.

I don't think there's any going back now.  Maybe we can tone it down a little, not invite the whole class, pick a slightly more modest location, but the cat is definitely out of the bag on this one. 

But he's still going to have a sandy little party in July.  And I bet someday he'll decide that the one with the sunset over the waves beats the one with the party bags and crowds any day.

Worthy of Nostalgia

A restaurant that I haven’t been to for about ten years is closing and I find it sad.  It’s a place called Florent, in the meatpacking district of Manhattan.  I used to go there with friends back when there were actual dead cows hanging and dripping blood onto the cobblestone sidewalks.  I have a vivid memory (slightly dreamlike, I hope it is real) of trying to get past the cows without getting blood on my shoes, probably at about 4:00 am.  Luckily this was pre-Sex in the City, so the shoes were probably Doc Martins and definitely not Manolos.

To sum up what Florent was like, I’d have to say it was a glamorous dive.  The space was diner-like, the food wasn’t expensive, but the feeling and crowd were dynamic.  It was the perfect place to end a night out at bars and clubs, to rehash the evening and make it last a little longer.  And part of its draw was that it was off the beaten path in the somewhat seedy and desolate meatpacking district, making for that unbeatable in-the-know feeling.

It’s probably amazing that Florent lasted this long into the meatpacking districts’ metamorphosis into a playground for the privileged, with expensive bars, restaurants, and boutiques.  And I’m not saying that from an anti-gentrification high horse – I’ve enjoyed my meals and drinks at Spice Market and a few other glitzy places in recent years.  I just wish that Florent could have stayed too.

It’s different from the closing of CBGBs, which I found sad in a more theoretical way.  After all, I was too young to have seen Blondie or the Ramones there.  I saw a friend’s band play at about 6:00 pm on a weekday and must have stopped in for some random acts on crowded nights.  But by the time I was roaming around the city, it was already a bit of a museum.  The new music was playing elsewhere, like the Knitting Factory and Mercury Lounge.

But the closing of Florent, I get.  It has the feel of the end of an era.  And my blurred memories of the place, and I’m not sure if they are blurred from age, the passing of time, or the amount I was drinking back then, are some good ones. 

There’s a quote from the owner in a recent New York magazine article about its closing that about sums it up for me: “New York is the city of changes.  People forget that is what they love about it.  They get old…They get nostalgic.”

So in the name of change, I cede the meatpacking district to my 20-something cousins, who are having a party there at Ono at the Hotel Gansevoort, with a private cabana and bottle service.  I can't picture a cabana in a New York bar and I’m too old to have experienced bottle service, but I’m sure it will all be worthy of nostalgia someday.

Cosmo, Anyone?

Sometimes my moods can seem shallow.  Last Saturday night I got upset because I was not going to see the Sex in the City movie on opening weekend.  I had known I wanted to see it at some point but hadn’t thought much more about it.  Suddenly, on Saturday night, I felt like I had missed out on a major girlfriend bonding event.  It became clear to me that everyone with a friend to their name was out drinking cosmos and enjoying the perfect chick flick, while I was home with kids who were getting overtired and a husband who was going to be sound asleep on the couch at 9:00 pm.  Not to devalue the kids and the husband, but what happened to fun Saturday nights? 

When I shared my angst with my husband, he was fully supportive of me trying to find a friend to head out with.  But when I checked the movie listings, I saw that the local theaters were sold out, more proof that I was Cinderella missing the ball.  And I didn’t want to go to the ball badly enough to schlep into the city or make too much effort in the end.

The truth is, girl time doesn’t come as naturally as it used to.  It’s not a constant given.  It’s hard to make it a priority.  The kids come first, and then everything else is in one big pile to muddle through.  Sometimes it’s easiest to be passive and let relationships with friends slide.  But the problem is, if you do that, those friends might not be there when you are ready to make time for them again.  It starts to seem strange or presumptuous to pick up the phone out of the blue and say meet me for cocktails or coffee.  I had a friend do that recently, and I was thrilled, but unfortunately it ended up being a missed connection.  I was out at soccer practice with my kids, and by the time I got home to hear her phone message and call back, I only got her voice mail.  I hope we reconnect soon, but between all the demands on our time, we may not. 

But it's important to remember that girl time lightens us, lets us laugh about nothing or something that we wish were nothing, lets us obsess outloud and shamelessly, lets us forget the chores and the tension in our family relationships and all the things that aren’t perfect.  It helps us do better and feel better in all the other parts of our life.   

The next day, I wasn’t thinking about my lack of opening weekend Sex in the City plans anymore.  It was nice weather, the kids weren’t being annoying, my husband was in a pretty good mood, and things were ok.  We all went to see my older son’s soccer game and life was status quo.  Then a girlfriend came to sit with me on the sideline, and asked me if I wanted to go see the Sex in the City movie sometime this week.  Another mutual friend wanted to go too. 

Maybe there’s a cosmo and some girl time in my future after all, if I can just find a babysitter.

A Day in the Life

My day-to-day life isn’t quite what I pictured it would be as a married 30-something stay-at-home mom.  It’s not bad at all, but it’s a lot stranger than I imagined, and it starts a lot earlier in the morning than I’d hoped.

Today started at 3:00 am.  My five year old, Jacob, wandered into our bedroom and asked to get in bed with me.  My husband drowsily evacuated to our son’s now empty bed and Jacob snuggled in with his little feet against my back.  We fell back to sleep peacefully.  This differed greatly from the night before when he joined me.  That time he wandered in and said something that I heard through my dreams as “My finger hurts like my head.”  I decided that was too weird to acknowledge so I told him to get in my bed and be quiet.  When I snuggled my whimpering son, I realized he was soaking wet.  He had actually said “I don’t know why I am wet” and had been woken up by a pee accident.  So we dealt with it and eventually got back to sleep.  But, last night was much easier than that.

The real morning rush started at 6:30 am.  I got up and checked the backpacks, gave cheerios to my early rising older son, Alex, and got organized for the bus.  Then I realized I would have to wake Jacob if he was going to make it onto the bus.  He was asleep with his butt up in the air and his face snuggled into the sheets, and I can’t wake him when he looks like that.  So it became a drive to school day.

When he woke up on his own, I gave him his breakfast and left the room to take a shower.  When I came out, I found out that my older son had refused to put on a kids’ show because he wanted to see the Yankee game highlights on Sports Network.  This resulted in Jacob screaming and whining, and Alex talking to him in a bossy and condescending voice that alarmingly resembled my angry voice.  I diffused the situation and finished dressing in relative peace.

After I got them to school, I went home for some multitasking.  I was multitasking because I wanted to finish my chores quickly, and then spend an hour on our deck reading my book before the after school rush started.  But the plan failed because I ended up organizing the boys’ books, a necessary task because we’d lost two library books in the past two weeks.  Then the gutter repair man rang the doorbell while I was on the phone with the pharmacy while also on the toilet.  Then I had to return a broken sprinkler, continue trying to find a pharmacy that had children’s liquid Zyrtec in stock (I didn’t succeed) and get some groceries.  I got home from doing my errands and after some final organizing, emailing, and laundry folding, I was ready for the deck.  Then I remembered the groceries, which had been sitting in my trunk for over an hour.  I managed to put the milk away about a minute before bus arrival time.

The afternoon with the boys was generally peaceful and pleasant.  I finally got some time on the deck, though with Jacob and a Pokemon sticker book instead of my own book.  That was fine with me though.  I’ve spent two years hearing a close mom friend tell me that her son speaks a foreign language that deadens her mind when he gets going on Pokemon, but I actually don’t mind the topic.  Some of the characters are cute, and I can hold my own talking about things like their evolution and fire vs. water types.  It must have something to do with the fact that I like Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and Star Wars (but in case you’re thinking it, I did NOT play Dungeons and Dragons as a youth.) 

The real weirdness starts again at bedtime.  Jacob decides to air his every grievance.  He whines and cries over the fact that I told him he can’t pick his nose.  Then he hides under the bed in order to pick his nose.  He whines and cries because I won’t put a band-aid on a scab just above his eye (there was no way to get a band-aid on it without taping his eye shut and it didn’t need one.)  He whines and cries that he is bored.  When I suggest he won’t be bored if he is sleeping, he whines and cries some more.  He finally tosses and huffs and puffs himself right to sleep with one last disgruntled whine.

At least he gave me something to write about tonight.