Park Slope Reader

Dispatches from Babyville

LEARNED BY HEART

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When my son was in second grade, his teacher told him about Poem in Your Pocket day. 

“Everyone brings a poem in their pocket,” he explained to me later. “And then we read them to the class.”

I loved this. It was very nearly the greatest thing ever. But if there’s one thing better than having a poem in your pocket, it’s having a poem in your brain — a poem learned by heart.

Recently, I woke in the middle of the night and discovered that I could recite Romeo’s balcony scene soliliquy in its entirety. You know the one. 

“But soft!” it begins, “What light through yonder window breaks! It is the East and Juliet is the sun.” 

I’m not sure what caused me to think of this line around 3am on a Wednesday, except that I think of many things at 3am on Wednesdays. Sometimes it feels like I do as much thinking in the middle of the night as I do in the middle of the day. I definitely do the lion’s share of my worrying in the wee hours. But on this occasion, instead of my mind conjuring an apocalyptic scenario, it made a lovely line of Shakespeare materialize. What shocked me wasn’t that some trigger had knocked loose a long-forgotten line of poetry, but that that it had knocked loose the whole speech, which played out, each word following the next fluidly, as if I’d only committed it to memory that morning, as opposed to twenty years before. 

It was a wondrous, triumphant feeling to discover the jewels of poetry still there inside my brain. It was like uncovering a secret room full of treasure, whose door had been soldered shut. I witness this feeling every time my ninety-year-old grandmother closes her eyes in rapture and lets a flood of Pasolini poetry pour out in her native Italian, straight from her annals of her youth into today. 

What’s so spectacular about committing a poem to memory is not that you can feel self-congratulory at 3am on a Wednesday (though that never hurts) but that you carry the poetry with you, so that it’s always at your fingertips when you are in need of it. And the reason it’s useful to have an internal storage device for poetry is that you may not know you are in dire need of it until that need is about to swallow you whole. 

The first time I learned a poem by heart was in sixth grade, when everyone in my class was required to do so. A poetry novice, I asked my father for a suggestion and he was quick to direct me to Edgar Allan Poe. 

“Annabel Lee,” he said, handing me a heavy tome of Poe’s Collected Works. 

You’d be hard-pressed to find an easier poem to commit to memory. The rhymes leap off the page, hooking right into you like like those sticky burrs that fall off trees. With almost no effort, they adhere, apparently for good. Decades later, I can tell you Annabel Lee’s story from start: “It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea” to end, “The wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.”

There was a lot of the poem I didn’t understand at the age of ten. What was a seraph? Or a highborn kinsman? But the wonderful thing about poetry is you don’t have to understand all of it — or even most of it. Particularly in the case of poems that rhyme, so much of the pleasure you feel in reciting them is letting the rhythms of the words roll over you. If you don’t believe me, stop what you are doing and say these words out loud:

“For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams/ Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes/ Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”

It’s like a massage for your brain, from the inside out. 

So I was delighted when my son graduated from pocket in his pocket to poem in his brain in fifth grade. His teacher said he could pick any poem he liked, and I advised him to choose one which rhymed, assuring him it would be permanently imprinted on his psyche for eternity. 

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” I said, laying before him a selection of poems, Annabel Lee included. He made his choice wisely. Over the next few weeks, in the process of helping him learn the poem, I ended up memorizing it too. 

“Whose woods these are,” he recited, standing in front of the classroom. “I think I know.”

I was in the back of the room, with the other parents, watching him recite it. He took his time, and it seemed to me that he was savoring the words as his lips formed them. 

Fast forward six years, to the winter of 2021. It was in the middle of the second wave of Covid, before anyone was vaccinated, when my kids had been in online school for over a year with no end in sight. The Covid map tracking the spread of the disease across the nation had to invent a new shade of red, to distinguish “Very High” risk from “Severe.” For the first time in my life, we didn’t spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family, or my husband’s. Things were grim. 

Desperate to escape the confines of our tiny apartment, we consulted that same Covid map to see where the virus appeared to be the most contained. Vermont, the map said. So that’s where we drove, after booking a few nights in a rustic AirBnB. 

We’d been prepared for snow. Or, rather, we’d sought out the snow – it was part of the Vermont appeal. That didn’t mean we were prepared for it. It didn’t just cover everything, it buried everything. Who knew what was even hiding under the thick blanket of white? 

It was a lovely sojourn, and restorative in more ways than one. Part of what felt so difficult about that winter was the lack of new-ness, how every day was always the same, looking at the same people, confined to the same rooms, the same sense of dread and tedium and frustration. But in this brave, new world, a land that more closely resembled Narnia than New York City, there were new sights and smells and feelings. There was wonderment. 

One late afternoon, the day after a fresh snow, I was charged with walking the dog. I put a leash on him for fear he’d sink into a mountain of snow and never be found.We descended the icy stairs and walked down the utterly deserted road. To the left of me were trees. To the right of me were trees. Always everywhere, above, below, and on all sides, was snow. 

I stopped walking and the dog stopped walking too. And what I heard then was something that was entirely new to me — total and complete silence. The wind wasn’t blowing. No creatures stirred in the trees. Nothing moved anywhere. The silence was immense. The stillness was staggering. 

My pup, perplexed, or perhaps impatient, made the huffing puffing sound he does when he’s ready to move on. And the door that had been locked inside my brain blew open and out flew these words: 

“He gives his harness bells a shake/ To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep/ Of easy wind and downy flake.” 

The dog and I walked slowly down the road, marveling at the icicle-laden tree branches. Or, at least, I marveled. I can’t speak for the dog. 

Out of my hidden poetry chamber, the words poured:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,/ And I have promises to keep. 

And miles to go before I sleep./ Miles to go before I sleep.” 

Who can say by what magic words renew us? I only know that they do — for me, at least. I know that when I learn the words by heart, they become a part of that organ, a part of the thing that beats in me, and keeps me walking, even in the darkest days of winter. 

Dispatches from Babyville: Finding Space

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My grandmother used to keep her pasta in the dishwasher. Her dishwasher hadn’t worked in decades, and it wasn’t necessary, anyway – she prefers to wash the dishes by hand. But it did take up precious space in her small Bensonhurst apartment. So she decided it would function perfectly as a storage unit for non-perishable goods, like lasagne, tagliatelle, rotini, farfalle, bucatini, penne and orecchiette. 

“Getta me a boxa pasta!” she’d call, and I’d walk over to her defunct dishwasher to select one. 

When you live in a city where one square foot of living space costs hundreds of dollars, you don’t let a broken dishwasher sit empty. You maximize every last inch of usable space, re-purposing and multi-purposing incessantly. Never has that been more true than during the past year and a half, when we were all in and out of shutdowns and quarantines, stuck at home. 

Last August, as our first Covid summer came to a close and my three kids faced a new year of school which we knew would be at least partially remote, I decided we needed to free up space in our apartment. If I made space, we could set up three schoolwork areas, and if I set up three schoolwork areas, we could have an orderly, productive remote school experience.

Let’s set aside the fact that I was delusional in believing any remote school could be productive or orderly. After all, hindsight’s 20/20. 

I started with an innovative brainwave: I’d make my youngest daughter’s bed into a loft, so we could put her dressers underneath it, thus liberating valuable square feet in the shared bedroom. This loft-bed project brought me to Ikea. Me and everyone else in the tri-state area. 

I selected a large quantity of home accessories I did not need, immediately undoing the de-cluttering I had undertaken the week prior. I loaded up on cinnamon rolls and Swedish meatballs and lingonberry soda. Then I headed to the warehouse shelves which were supposed to hold the dresser I’d selected to go in the loft area. When I found the shelves bare, I waited on a serpentine line to ask a women in customer service where I could find them. 

“You can’t,” she said. “We’re sold out.”


“What about in another color? Or at another Ikea?” I asked. 

That’s when she explained that it wasn’t just the Brooklyn Ikea that was sold out but every Ikea in the Eastern Seaboard. 

“The whole Eastern Seaboard?” I repeated. It was a strange expression to use at Ikea’s customer service desk. 

“Yep,” she replied. “Everybody’s fixing up their houses before school starts.”

Looks like I was not alone in my quest to make everything that was wrong in the world right with some light redecorating. 

The loft-bed was only the first of my home improvement projects. Freeing up those precious few square feet whetted my appetite for “finding” more space. This is a misleading term. It’s not as if extra space was hiding somewhere, like there was a trick wall that, when pushed on at the exact right spot, revealed a secret room. Still, I believed that if I planned thoughtfully enough, arranged furniture carefully enough, I’d make the little space we had go much farther. 

The challenge — a challenge shared by everyone — was that my apartment, which used to be just a home, now had to serve so many other functions. It was an elementary school, and also a middle school and a high school, too. It was an office for my husband and I, and a conference room. It was a gym. A music studio where my 14-year-old took piano lessons. A dance studio where my 9-year-old took ballet. An art studio where my 16-year-old learned how to use pastels and acrylics. It was an exam room for practice SATs. A vocal rehearsal space for high school audition tapes. It was a therapy office. 

No home can serve that many functions, and definitely not one that covers less than 1300 square feet. 

Still, I tried, the way we all did. What choice did we have? 

I maximized the use of our tiny balcony which Pre-Covid had never been used, because it overlooks Fourth Avenue and is loud, polluted and generally grimy. Now, the balcony functioned as a gym, housing the budget stationary bike my husband bought in the early days of Covid, when even bike riding seemed too dangerous. By happenstance one day, my 9-year-old discovered zoom school was much more tolerable when she did it while pedaling. Then the balcony because a gym/ classroom. Multi-purposing at its finest. 

The bathroom became an animal sanctuary, with two hamster cages stashed in the bathtub. 

“I need to take a bath,” my daughter whined one night. 

“Forget it,” I told her. “That’s the hamsters’ real estate.”

Another night, my teenage daughter complained there was no room quiet enough to record the original song she’d written on guitar. 

“Go play in my closet,” I told her, as if it was obvious. “The clothing will be a good buffer.”

And she did. Thus began the “Closet Concert” series.

Coordinating remote school was more difficult. When not riding the bike on the balcony, my little one preferred to do zoom school from the living room, which was where my older daughter liked to work too, So much for the special work stations I’d taken pains to establish in August. Most mornings, they’d get set up in the living room, which is also the kitchen, which is also my office, and so, while working, I’d be treated to a lecture on mitosis while simultaneously learning about the establishment of New Amsterdam while listening to my husband grind coffee. 

“Dad, stop!” the girls shouted in stereo. “We’re at SCHOOL!” 

“Where am I supposed to grind coffee?” he asked. 

“The balcony!” I replied, exasperated. “That’s where all grinding, blending and hair drying happens during school hours. When it’s not being used as a gym.” 

One night in late autumn, I was sitting on the couch surveying my living room, which had become impassable. The keyboard and chair blocked egress to the balcony. The exercise bike, dragged inside to avoid rain, blocked egress to the bathroom. You couldn’t sit at the dining room table because there wasn’t space enough to pull the chairs out, what with the desk I’d wedged in there for my husband and the lamp. 

“I wish we could put furniture on the ceiling,” I said wistfully to David. “Is that — are we sure that’s impossible?” 

“You are getting carried away,” he said. It’s not the first time he’s said this to me.

“The problem is there’s not enough space in this house!” I exclaimed. 

“The problem is a deadly pandemic is ravaging our world,” he said. 

He was, of course, right. 

There was nothing I could do about the complex, maddening, terrifying problem of Covid, so I focused with a deranged zeal on a problem that could be fixed. Except that solving one did not solve the other.

“No matter how inventive I was with my storage, or how many functions I could eek out of one toilet bowl (desk chair! salon chair! toilet!), it didn’t change the despair I felt every day over what my kids were missing, and I was missing, which was nothing compared to what so many had lost, and continued to lose. “

Then, in November, just after I’d maximized every nook and cranny of the apartment, I decided to add something entirely different to the house. The puppy who is now a member of our family is small but takes up plenty of square footage, racing around our small home at a breakneck pace, strewing his toys and chewys everywhere, dragging garbage across the floor, wreaking havoc. His crate and beds and gates and food bowls have made me admit defeat in the battle against clutter. Our house is absolutely overbrimming with stuff. But it is also overbrimming with delight. We can’t look at the pup without cracking a smile, or dissolving into coos, or squealing with laughter. He makes the house messy, and immeasurably happy. 

I couldn’t find any more space within the confines of the apartment, but I found plenty of breathing room in the expansive joy the puppy brought with him. 

Dispatches from Babyville: Stop and Smell the Flowers

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Artwork by Heather Heckel

I have never been the kind of person who knows the names of flowers. I couldn’t tell a hydrangea from a hyacinth if my life depended on it. My main interest in flowers has been in their utility as metaphors. Until the pandemic.

Now, very much to my surprise, I find that I am interested in things that bloom. When I spot a flower, I have the urge to identify it, learn its name, admire its colors and contours. More than anything, I like to stop and smell the flowers. Literally. Incessantly. I have trespassed in people’s front yards to get a sniff. I have stopped sidewalk traffic. 

When, I ask you, did the flowers of Brooklyn get so resplendent?

Have you smelled a lilac lately? I mean, deeply drank in its aroma? I can’t recommend it enough. It will renew you.”

I’m not the only one who’s noticed. At the start of spring, my Facebook feed was flooded with flower posts. In lieu of their children’s faces, my friends marveled at the loveliness of lilies, daffodils and, most notably, tulips. 

Oh, the tulips. 

We — hardened, jaded, New-York-tough city dwellers — lost our minds over the tulips this year.

I lack the poet’s tongue to wax sufficiently rhapsodic over flowers. I’m no Longfellow. But back in March, I was walking my 9-year-old to school in the morning, down the same street we always walk down, past the grays and browns and blacks that make up a sidewalk landscape, and suddenly, there was a burst of yellow. Bold. Brillant. Defiant. Three or four sunshine tulips, in a tree bed, their petals beginning to flare. 

The tulips were impossible to ignore. You simply could not walk past them. 

“Good morning!” they greeted us. 

“Have a wonderful day at school!” they cried.

“If the last few months of this apocalyptic winter of our discontent have left you despairing and contemplating the possibility that all joy and beauty and hope have been extinguished,” they said. “Despair no longer! For we, tulips, have nevertheless persisted! Joy and hope and beauty have persisted! You, too, have persisted! So, crack a smile!” 

They were loquacious suckers.

At first, it was just a few tulips here and there, peppering the neighborhood. But every day, they proliferated. Soon, their lovely, vibrant heads – orange, yellow, red– were popping out of the earth in every front yard, every tree bed, every planter. 

My favorite were the two-toned tulips, with stunning magenta petals, edged in yellow. They looked like sunsets. I defy you to walk down a quiet Park Slope side street on a sunny afternoon, encounter a sunset tulip and not be suffused with the exquisite glory of living.

I have become a flower lover. It is an unlikely turn of events. What can I say? Life is surprising. 

To celebrate my anniversary in April, my husband and I spent an afternoon at the Met, which marked our joyful return to museum-going. Crossing Park Avenue on our way home, I found myself approaching a congregation of tulips the likes of which I’d never known. In fact, this is untrue. I’d seen these tulips every year, because they are always there, on the island separating the northbound traffic of Park from the southbound. But this year, they stopped me in my tracks. 

An unimaginable abundance of tulips — hundreds of them — lined up in neat rows, like little soldiers of good cheer, waving in the breeze. 

“Oh my God,” I said to my husband. “They’re magnificent.” 

“I know,” he agreed. 

I turned to him and snorted. “And people said New York was dead.” Only I didn’t use the word “people.” I used a noun not suitable for print, an expletive almost as colorful as the tulips. 

It takes a dark, cold winter to appreciate the spring. And the winter that just passed – it was a doozie. It was so unremitting in its bleakness that more than once, strangers confessed to me their inability to bear it all while waiting for elevators and for the light to change and on line in bodegas. After all of that fear and despair and the barren, terrible cold, finally there was light and new life and color and hope. Finally there were tulips. 

As spring blooms to summer, the tulips have cast their petals to the ground, but there are other flowers appearing. Already, the lilacs are blooming. 

Have you smelled a lilac lately? I mean, deeply drank in its aroma? I can’t recommend it enough. It will renew you. 

But you don’t have to take it from me. Listen to Walt Whitman, father of free verse, the quintessential Brooklyn poet. This is from “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,” a poem which is about loss and beauty and continuing on:

“In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig with its flower I break.”

Every leaf a miracle. 

Indeed.

Dispatches from Babyville: The Dream of After

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Art by Heather Heckle

My grandmother, an almost 90-year-old immigrant from Italy, spent the first few months of the pandemic quarantining with us. We were holed up in my mother’s house in the wilds of suburban New Jersey, and it reminded my grandmother of when she fled Rome as a child, to hide from the fascists in an abandoned barn in the country.

As my grandmother and I sat around the house, cooking pasta, breaking up squabbling kids and watching the death toll tick up and up and up on the news, my grandmother kept asking, “Ma quando finisce questa guerra?” 

“When is this war going to end?” 

She spent countless hours (we had hours, plenty of them) hearkening back to her experience as a child in Italy during World War II, and pondering the similarities between that war and what she’d come to think of as the Covid war. 

One distinct difference, she pointed out, was that in our current situation, we were lucky enough to have plenty of food. Toilet paper, not so much, but who needed toilet paper? They didn’t have toilet paper back in that abandoned barn she lived in during the war with her parents, four siblings, the local priest, and his two sisters. And back then, they didn’t have food either. 

“My fadder would walka hours to get a loafa bread.” She clucked her teeth. “If he found uno pomodoro for us to share, we woulda cry wit happiness.” 

Meanwhile, in our Covid quarantine, where the only novelty or pleasure could be found in what we ingested, we prepared lavish feasts, the likes of which we never enjoyed in pre-Covid days.

“We eata like kings!” My grandmother laughed, as she regarded her loaded plate — barbequed ribs, fluffy mashed potatoes, garlicky string beans, and a pie cooling on the counter. “What kinda war is dis?”

But as the pandemic wore on, her opinion of the Covid war changed. The isolation, she said, wasn’t something she had to deal with as a child in Italy. In the war of her youth, there was an enemy you could see. But, during Covid, the enemy of contagion turned even the people you loved, people you trusted – friends, family, neighbors –  into a threat. As spring turned to summer and summer turned to fall and fall turned to winter, the loneliness of isolation grew and she decided, for certain. This really was a war – cruel, terrible, merciless.

“Ma quando finisce questa guerra?” she’d ask – more plaintively, it seemed all the time. “When will this war be over?”

Just a few days ago, my grandmother, a Park Sloper, had the tremendous good fortune to receive her second Covid vaccine dose. This has filled her with optimism for the future. She sees the light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel. Instead of asking when the war will be over, she’s started to talk about what she’s going to do when it is. She imagines the “End of Covid” the way she remembers the end of World War II – the Americans driving into Rome in tanks to liberate the Italians from fascism. One day, the war was raging. The next day, it was over. 

I do not tell her what I am thinking, which is that this may not be “over” for a long, long time. Maybe it won’t ever be over. Certainly it won’t be for the half a million families that lost loved ones. But even in the most literal sense, it seems likely that Covid, in some form, will persist. We’ll have to find a way to live with it, around it. That’s not helpful for my grandmother to think about. It’s probably not even helpful for me to think about. We have to be forward-looking. We have to delude ourselves a little bit. As my eighth-grade-daughter recently wrote in her essay on Of Mice and Men, “There is no guarantee that dreams will come true, but they fill your life with purpose and meaning.”  

As true in our time as in Steinbeck’s. We need our post-Covid dreams, and we need to talk about them. We need George to tell us about the rabbits. And we definitely need to forget how that book ends. 

As far as my grandmother’s concerned, her dream is simple but vividly-imagined. “When dis is over, I’mma gonna go shopping. I’mma gonna buy all de fruits and vegetables. I’mma gonna load my shopping cart full. Then I’mma gonna make a big dinner, and you come over to eat, all of you.”

That’s what freedom means to her. 

For my eight-year-old daughter, the after-Covid dream is to go to Harry Potter World in Orlando, Florida. Browse wands in Dragon Alley. Eat Bertie Bots. Geek out about quidditch. 

My 16-year-old son wants to ride the rails again with his friends. Hop on a Metro North out of Grand Central with no particular destination in mind, get off at some sleepy Hudson town, walk, explore, eat a burger in a gazebo, come home when he feels like it. Wander free. 

My 14-year-old wants to see her grandmother in Tennessee. Curl up on her couch with those big, slobbery Southern dogs piled on top of her, while eating Little Debbie cakes and looking at the Smokies out the window. 

My husband dreams of live music, concert halls pulsating with sound.

I have a list of after-Covid dreams as long as the Christmas list my daughter sends to Santa. But the main one is: I want to see new things. Radically new things. Unimaginable sights and sounds and tastes. I want to marvel. I want to ride an elephant. I want to climb a mountain. I want to float in the Dead Sea. My appetite for adventure has been whetted like never before. I could devour the Earth and still be hungry for more New Things. To sate my hunger, I’d probably have to get intergalactic. 

People are speculating that when we reach herd immunity, it could be like the Roaring Twenties all over again. Life in Technicolor. Famished people let loose in an all-you-can-eat buffet of celebration. So much time to make up for. 

Who knows if that’ll come to pass. What I do know is that soon, very soon, my grandmother will dust off her handy shopping cart, secure a mask on her face and head out to the grocery store for the first time in a year. I know that it’ll be the Roaring 20s in that shopping cart. You can bet your bottom dollar that it’ll be piled high with eggplants and tomatoes, three kinds of meat for bolognese sauce, prosciutto and melon for an antipasto, and probably those rocket ship popsicles the kids love. I’ll accompany her on that first trip, just to see her face. Her mouth will be masked but her eyes will be grinning. I’m sure of it. 

Dispatches from Babyville: Dear Subway

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Dear Subway, 

It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, I know. Nine months, to be exact. In the period of time since my last ride, I could have gestated a human life. I’ve gestated human lives on three different occasions so I know how long of a span that is. It’s an eternity.

I know you’re still there, just like you used to be. I can feel the vibrations of your rumbling, four stories below me when I sleep. And I know you’re pretty safe to ride. I’ve heard the positive reports of mask compliance. It’s not that I’m intentionally trying to avoid you. It’s just that I have no place to go. Where would you even take me? 

My life has become hyper-local. I barely even leave my zip code anymore. Park Slope has everything one might need, though not everything one might want. But, these days, no one’s getting what they want, and plenty aren’t getting what they need either. So, I’ve relied on my feet to take me where I have to go. It’s worked well enough. Except . . . 

I miss you, subway. 

I miss your velocity. I miss your density, even. I miss your rattling, your thundering, your lurching. I miss indecipherable announcements. I miss “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.” I miss darting through those closing doors with my kids, and telling them the story of my friend Carli, from high school. How, on our afterschool commute one day, she did not stand clear of the closing doors, so they slammed shut on the straps of her backpack and her super-long banana-colored hair. The train zoomed out of the station, with her hair and her backpack on the outside of the car. Carli thought it was hilarious. She did high kicks like a Rockette. 

“Mom, you’ve told us that story a hundred times,” my kids would 

 say. 

“I know, “ I’d always reply. “But it’s a good story.” 

Subway, I miss your chance encounters, your platform churros, your candy purveyors. I miss your potentiality, the assurance that absolutely anything could happen. 

I do not miss your track rats. I hate rats. 

I also do not miss the mysterious piles of feces on your platforms, which I always tell myself are animal turds, even though I suspect they are of human origin – and what’s the difference really, right? Except, well, there is a difference. 

Still, even with your rats and mystery feces, subway, I can’t wait until I see you again. 

I’m sitting here, trying to think of my favorite moment we’ve shared. The most memorable moment by far, was when my son, known in these parts as Primo, my daughter, Seconda and I were leaping onto a G train, coming home from Cobble Hill. Just as we were jumping on, a passenger scrambled to get off. At the time, I wasn’t sure why he was rushing out of his seat with such urgency but a moment later, it became clear, when he vomited directly onto 7-year-old Primo’s T-shirt. The passenger made it off, the train doors closed, and Primo, looking down at his chest, let forth a bloodcurdling, horror-movie scream. We still think twice before getting on the G train. 

I also don’t miss the subway vomit. 

Our relationship has spanned four decades and it’s hard to pick a favorite moment. In my childhood, I had eye-opening moments of discovery. In my adolescence, I had up-to-no-good moments. In my twenties, I had cinematic rom com moments. But my favorite . . . 

Do you remember the afternoon in early spring, four years ago, when I got on the R train to take Seconda to get her very first pet? She was nine, had been begging for a hamster for months, and finally, I’d relented. We were en route to the Union Square Petco and she was in high spirits, bouncing up and down in the orange plastic seat, chatting a mile a minute. When a subway performer got on somewhere around City Hall, she was delighted. As we rumbled into the Prince Street station in Soho, he played “Raspberry Beret” and the passengers came to life, clapping and whooping; Prince had died only weeks before. 

One of the things I love most about you, subway, is that there is nothing more intoxicating than sharing a collective moment shared in the tight, dense, no-exit space of your train car. Most often, it’s a collective annoyance we feel – when the train car slows to a stop in a tunnel and the conductor assures us we will be moving shortly, but we know that shortly is a relative term if ever there was one. Passengers sigh, grumble, exchange exasperated glances. The irritation is shared by all. We are together in this. 

Occasionally, that collective moment can be upsetting. I’ll never forget the homeless woman who walked into my train car a few years ago, asking for money, only to be ignored by all. 

“Look at me!” she yelled, her voice raw and urgent. 

No one looked. 

“I’m a human being!” she yelled. “And you’re animals! Animals! All of you!”

It was a heavy moment, weighted with guilt, shame, fear, complicity — and we were together in that moment too. 

But that spring afternoon on the train to Union Square, the collective moment was anything but heavy. We were floating – my daughter on the wings of anticipation and me, on the satisfaction of making her happy. 

“She wore a raspberry beret,” the busker crooned, leaning on a pole. “The kind you find in a secondhand store.”

We clapped, we laughed and in doing so, we memorialized the musical giant who was gone, but not all the way gone because here was his music, very much alive, providing a Prince Street soundtrack. 

As we pulled out of Astor Place, the performer, having finished the song, collected tips from passengers, including my daughter. He saw her bright smile and he returned it with a massive grin of his own — the kind we never get to see anymore because of masks, 

“This one’s for you,” he told her, as he started strumming a set of familiar chords.  

“I’ve got sunshine,” he sang, looking straight at her. “On a cloudy day.” 

My daughter glanced up at me, her electric blue eyes twinkling. “Are you getting this?” they said. 

I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed. I was getting it. 

“When it’s cold outside,” he crooned. “I’ve got the month of May.” 

Maybe people were still riding the wave of good feeling from “Raspberry Beret” or maybe it was the huge gap-toothed smile that took over Seconda’s face, or maybe it was just that the singer was singing the hell out of the song, pouring himself into it, all of him. Either way, people clapped along. 

“I guess you’d say,” he sang, “What can make me feel this way?” 

He stopped strumming, pointed at Second and sang a cappella. “My girl, my girl, my girl” 

My girl — our girl — giggled, a giggle so effervescent it could’ve powered a hot air balloon. 

I have never been more in love with this city, my always and ever city. I’ve never been more in love with you, subway, 

I was with my girl, and I was with my fellow New Yorkers, too. Despite the many, incessant forces that keep us apart, we were all together in this moment, a perfect, magical moment that could never happen anywhere else. It couldn’t happen in a Walmart, or a strip mall. It couldn’t happen in an elevator, or on a street corner, or in a bodega. It could only happen on a New York City subway. 

One day soon, we will meet again. I’ll swipe my Metrocard, descend a dingy staircase, avoid mysterious fecal matter, steer clear of the rats. I’ll wait for the train, with my indomitable, impatient New Yorkers and when it comes, I’ll think of Carli and I’ll stand clear of the closing doors. 

I can’t wait for that velocity again. That freedom. 

Until then, 

Fondly,

Nicole 

Artwork by Heather Heckel

Dispatches from Babyville: The Persistence of Delight

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: ,

I wanted to write a funny essay about parenting during the pandemic. 

I discovered that I can’t write a funny essay about parenting during the pandemic. 

None of this is funny.  The loss, the suffering, the fear, the isolation, the rage – there is no small part of any of that that’s funny. 

But it’s more than that. 

It’s that the ubiquitous bleakness the pandemic has wrought has seemed to rob other things of their humor, too. I can’t help feeling sometimes like a prisoner in Azkaban, with the dementor of Covid sucking all the humor out of the world. 

It’s not to say that I haven’t laughed in months. I have. There have been things I’ve recognized as entertaining – but those laughing-so-hard-you’re-crying guffaws, the laughter that leaves you breathless and sighing and shaking your head. the kind of laughs that restore you – those have gone missing for me. 

I know that funny’s not gone. Funny’s just on a long vacation somewhere. Maybe Iceland. I hear they’ve got their virus numbers under control. 

For better or worse, I’m an optimist. I know funny will be back. 

In the meantime, I’ve found delight. 

I am not a philosopher. I am not a poet. Hell, I don’t even meditate. I am not qualified to wax rhapsodic on the relationship between pain and delight. So I won’t. 

I’ll just say that accidentally stumbling across small, unexpected moments of delight has sustained me during these months. It’s gotten me through. When Humor couldn’t cope, Delight stepped up to take her place. 

A year ago, I read an excerpt of Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, in which he masterfully chronicles a delight every day for a year. The part I read was about him taking a tiny tomato plant on an airplane with him. He describes the way other passengers and flight attendants are disarmed and charmed to see someone carefully carrying a seedling like a baby, through the airport and onto the plane. The plant brought other people delight and their delight brought Gay some, too. 

For a long time, I’ve tried to make gratitude a habit, and to develop this practice in my kids. I have largely failed. All the “Gratitude Journals” I bought remain blank, and while my children go through the motions naming something they are grateful for at meals, one gets the feeling their heart isn’t in it. If I’m being honest, the concept of gratitude, while appealing to me, has never been accessible. I never feel like I’m doing it right.

Delight, on the other hand, is easy. It’s so small. It’s everywhere. 

And – here’s the key part – I don’t have to go looking for it. It finds me. Even during times of relentless darkness. Especially during those times.

Delight is when you’re taking a walk in nature because everyone agrees that’s restorative, despite the fact that you find nature pretty boring and a little scary — and all of a sudden, you see a baby bunny in the wild. It’s a little brown baby bunny hopping around like they do on TV, and he lets you get so close you could practically touch him. 

Delight is a teenager riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, one-handed because the other hand is clutching an old-school boom box, and on his head, perfectly balanced, is a basketball. 

Delight is the shockingly, stunningly yellow patch of Black Eyed Susans on 9th Street. 

Delight is the look on your eight-year-old’s face when, from all the way down the street, she sees a mini goldendoodle puppy approaching, and she knows that even though everything else ever invented has been cancelled, there is about to be some serious puppy petting, and it is imminent and it is everything. 

Delight is thinking you are out of string cheese when you  are particularly hungry one night at 1am, which is the new 11pm. You go to the fridge in a Hail Mary pass, because while 2020 has nearly killed the optimist in you, there’s a weak pulse of positivity still beating, and it doesn’t hurt to check. Lo and behold, hidden under the American Cheese slices and the moldy goat cheese, there is one string cheese left. And it is all for you. 

Delight is sitting on someone else’s stoop with your 13-year-old daughter, six feet away from passers-by, drinking cold bubble tea on a scorching day. You are sitting near the corner, and a car stops at the light, directly in front of you. “Shake Senora” is blasting from the car, which comes as a surprise because that’s not a song you can imagine anyone listening to of their own volition, but somehow, you and your daughter find you cannot help but bop your head along to the music. The driver of the car, head also bopping, notices you, and calls out a greeting and then the three of you head-dance together as you wait for the light to change.

Delight is when you are standing in the middle of your kitchen, first thing in the morning, already exhausted, and all three of your children are complaining because they want opposite things which seems like it’s impossible because a thing can only have one pair of opposites and yet, somehow, here you are. You are trying to drink a cup of coffee and not think about how you will be stuck in the house with three disgruntled children for who-knows-how-long, no end in sight, and you shout to no one in particular, “I am going to have a nervous breakdown.” And your teenage son stops complaining for a moment, considers this, and inquires, “Well, can it be prevented?” and you put your coffee cup down and laugh, because even though it’s not funny, it’s a thing to laugh at, and probably what it can best be described as is a delight. 

For so many reasons, for so many people, it’s a hard, hard time. And, too, there are these tiny moments of delight. I hope some flutter past you. I hope some alight on your window. 

Dispatches from Babyville: Foreverland

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Happy spring! This particular dispatch goes straight out to the kids. Here’s a sneak peek of my middle grade novel, Foreverland, in bookstores this April, from Macmillan Kids’ Imprint.

Fun fact: I am running away. To live in an amusement park. 

Related fact: I am not a runaway kind of person. Unless you’re talking about running away from a fight, or from awkward eye contact or something. Then, yes, totally, I’m your girl.

But if you made everyone in my sixth-grade class vote for “Least Likely to Run Away to Live in an Amusement Park,” they’d definitely pick me. If they could remember my name.

So it’s kind of unbelievable that I am here, standing directly in front of the Foreverland gates, in the middle of a Wednesday in the middle of the summer, when everyone thinks I’m at computer camp back in the city.

Life is full of surprises.

People say that like it’s a good thing, but honestly, the surprises are usually bad ones. At best, it’s 50/50. Of course, I’m a glass-half-empty kind of person—at least that’s what my mom tells me. So I might be wrong. But, just as an example, the suitcase I found this morning by the door—that was a surprise. And not the party-hat kind, that’s for sure.

This, here, my running away—I haven’t decided yet if it’s a good surprise or a bad one. Because I haven’t decided yet whether I’m really doing this. Yes, I took the Metro-North from Grand Central for an hour and a half, then the Foreverland shuttle bus to get here, but I haven’t really done anything wrong yet. I haven’t done anything I can’t undo.

I crane my neck up to look at the foreverland sign hanging in the middle of the gate. Underneath, in smaller letters, it says: where magic never ends! I look past the gate and see the sweep of coasters curving like mysterious symbols in the sky. I breathe in the tangy, plasticky smell of cotton candy from a nearby stand. If the color pink had a scent, this would be it. I hear the joyful shrieks of people riding high, cutting through clouds. It looks and smells and sounds like freedom and fun and, yes, maybe even magic. And it can all be mine . . . if I step inside.

Chances are, I’ll get caught right away. I mean, there are definitely people who could pull this thing off—fast-thinking, slick-talking criminal masterminds—but I am not one of those people. I panic when I order from the “12 and under” menu, even though I am twelve, because it feels like I’m just cutting it a little too close. This will never, never work.

I could just spin around, retrace my steps, take the train to the city, and be back before my parents get home.

Home.

Home.

I can think of about a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t take another step forward.

But I do.

I take another step. I walk through the gates. Right into Foreverland.

. . .

I head to the ticket booth, weaving around a swarm of little kids in mustard-yellow Camp Barrie T-shirts. The ticket line is really long. I knew the park would be busy, since it’s the middle of the day, but the park is even more packed than I’d expected. Which is great. Perfect, actually.

The bigger the crowd, the easier it is to get lost in.

And since getting lost in the crowd is one of my specialties, I’m all set.

Fun fact: I’m a wallflower.

Actually, I’m more like wall paint. I’m pretty sure flowered wallpaper gets more attention than I do.

I guess it’s because I’m quiet or maybe I have one of those faces that looks like a lot of other faces. Either way, lots of people forget they’ve met me. It’s hard not to be insulted. Nobody wants to be invisible.

Except for superheroes, as my ex-best friend Priya would point out when I complained about this. Spies, too.

“You’re looking at this all wrong,” she’d say. “Think of all the perks of blending in.”

This, right here, is one of those perks. When you’re running away to live in an amusement park, it comes in handy to have the kind of face people instantly forget.

The longer I wait in line, the more nervous I get. My heart’s racing and my stomach gets that familiar churning feeling.

I do the one thing that I know will definitely calm me down.

I write an acrostic poem.

I take my brand-new notebook out of my backpack, uncap a Flair pen, and scribble:

A

C

R

O

S

T

I

C

Then I fill it in:

A kind of weird way to

Calm down, but weird is

Relative. It’s not nearly as

Odd as that

Sixteen-year-old I read about who

Turns her fingernail clippings

Into sculptures, as a way to

Chill.

Acrostics are my superpower. I can turn any word into an acrostic in under ten seconds.

I inch forward in the line. The closer I get to the ticket window, the more my heart speeds up. 

Then it’s my turn. I slip my notebook into my backpack, take out my money, and walk up to a ticket window. A grandma-type lady with short gray hair is asking me, “How many tickets?”

“One,” I croak. “Youth. Ummm, ticket?”

Ticket Lady is peering at me over the tops of these glasses.

“How old are you?” Ticket Lady asks.

My heart is thundering in my chest and my palms are so clammy, my money’s getting damp. 

“Twelve?”

Here’s the thing: I’m not even lying. But I’m short for my age, so I know Ticket Lady will think I’m lying. And that’s enough to make me short-circuit.

Now Ticket Lady has taken her fingers off her keyboard, and she’s leaning over her counter to look at me, which is definitely a bad, bad sign.

Please don’t ask where my parents are, I think. Please don’t ask—

“Where are your parents?” Ticket Lady asks.

Fun fact: I am a terrible liar. The worst. Pinocchio is smoother than I am.

“My parents? They’re, um, coming?” I say. “In a few minutes?” All my answers come out like questions.

This happens to me all the time, and it drives my mom nuts. She’s always lecturing me: “When you make your voice go up, like this? It doesn’t command respect? You see what I’m saying?”

I do now. I see exactly what she’s saying because Ticket Lady, who is officially suspicious, is asking me, “So you’re unaccompanied?”

“No!” I say, way too loudly. “My parents are here, it’s just—I, um, I couldn’t wait to come in, and my toddler—I mean, my sister, who is a toddler—she had an accident . . . a, uh, urination accident? So they went back to the—to our car? Which is in the lot. The parking lot.”

It’s like my mouth has been hijacked. I have zero control over the words coming out of it. 

I put $47 in sweaty, crumpled bills on the counter and push them through the slot in the window.

Ticket Lady frowns, then looks behind me at the long line, which I am holding up. After a few seconds, she pulls my money through the window and stabs at a few keys on her keyboard, and then a tiny printer starts sputtering. My ticket.

I’m not the beaming type, but I beam.

“Have a magical day,” she says. Her lips are pursed tight, like she is still really skeptical, so I don’t think she genuinely wants me to have a magical day, but that’s okay. I’ll take it.

“Thanks!” I say. “You, too!”

I walk over to the turnstiles, where a bored-looking teenager with hair down to his shoulders takes my ticket. He inserts it into the ticket-eating machine, which gobbles it up, and then the light on the turnstile turns green.

“Have a magical day,” he mumbles, in a monotone.

And just like that, I’m in. I am in Foreverland. And it’s exactly how I remember it.

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Dispatches From Babyville: Becoming A City Kid

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: , , ,

Art by Heather Heckel

I hover. As a mother, I mean. Sometimes I try not to, and sometimes I lean into it but either way, it’s my instinct. I was raised by hoverers. I was also raised in Staten Island. These facts are unrelated but relevant to my point which is: I grew up in the city but was not a city kid – at least not until I started high school in Manhattan. I was neither sophisticated, nor saavy, nor independently mobile. 

Even as a little girl. I loved Manhattan – the lights! the smells! the people everywhere! – but I didn’t develop a borough inferiority complex until later, when I was in middle school. This, of course, is when one is most susceptible to developing complexes. 

My parents would drive me over the Verrazano into Bay Ridge every morning, and I would dream we’d keep going until we crossed that cathedral of bridges, with its twinned arches, into the glittering metropolis of Manhattan. I had a small town girl’s adoration of the city, which was stoked by my favorite sitcom, Mad About You. Nothing could be better, I thought, than to live in a doorman building and order Chinese food every other night. That was the life I wanted. 

And that life was mine, every time I visited my aunt, uncle and two cousins in their apartment on East 78th Street. I visited them frequently, for weeks at a time in the summer, like some kind of reverse Fresh Air Kid. When I was in high school, for almost three years, I lived with them Monday through Friday, because it took me just thirty minutes to get to school instead of an hour and a half and three modes of public transportation – bus, train and, incredibly, boat. 

Staying at my aunt’s apartment was like living in a Mad About You episode. I would greet the doorman on my way in, take the elevator sixteen stories up and gorge myself on Chicken Chow Fun and Moo Shu Pork from takeout containers. 

I even had a building bestie, Leah Goldstein. Leah was just my age and lived four floors below us. Leah was a city kid. She enjoyed an independence I dared not dream of. She walked places by herself. She took buses unsupervised. She had HBO and was permitted to watch anything she wanted, including Fatal Attraction. 

I was fairly successful at fitting in with Leah and her savvy, independent friends, but a close look would have revealed I was an impostor. For example, I made it through all of Fatal Attraction without closing my eyes, but had nightmares for months afterward. If I’m being honest, my palms still get a little clammy when I look in a bathroom mirror.  

One weekend afternoon, when I was about eleven, I was hanging out at Leah’s apartment, with her and her friends, when someone suggested we go out for lunch. 

“Ooooh, we should go to Hard Rock,” said a girl with killer bangs. 

There were murmurs of agreement and within minutes, feet were being shoved in shoes. 

“Let me just go grab my wallet,” I said. “Don’t leave without me.” 

I raced upstairs, beginning my begging before the door was even closed behind me. My mother was called. My request was denied.

I implored my mother. I bargained with her, I appealed to her basic humanity. 

“You can go,” she said. “As long as your aunt goes with you.”

It was a preposterous idea. It was like offering someone a freshly-baked chocolate cake that was full of dysentery. I told her as much, and amped up the waterworks. I was then, and am now, a fast and voluble crier. 

“What if,” my aunt chimed in. “What if Harry and I just happen to have lunch at Hard Rock too? At the same time? We won’t sit with you. We’ll just be there, on our own.”

“Because the food is so good,” my uncle Harry said. “And not at all overpriced.” 

Beggars can’t be choosers. People who have never been to the mysterious but inarguably incredible place called “Hard Rock” must find a way there, even if they are accompanied by a secret security detail.

“All right,” I agreed, grabbing my wallet. “Just walk really far behind us. And don’t- you know- talk to me. Or look at me too much. From now on, we’re strangers.” 

I still don’t understand why they caved to my outrageous demands, but a few minutes later, we were taking separate elevators down to the lobby, where I rejoined the group. To my horror, they’d decided in my absence we were going to take a cab to the restaurant. Which was not part of the plan I’d thrown together with my aunt. 

But, I reasoned, this is what city kids do. They probably come out of the womb hailing taxis. And so, throwing a discrete and apologetic glance at my aunt and uncle, who were waiting in the lobby, I piled into the taxi with the other kids. 

I wasn’t privy to the part where my aunt and uncle raced for the next taxi and yelled, “Follow that cab!” All I know is that soon after our group was seated at a large round table in the big, boisterous dining area of the Hard Rock Café- every bit as cool as I’d imagined-my aunt and uncle walked in and were ushered to a table on the upper level. 

I followed suit as Leah and the other kids ordered burgers, fries, milkshakes. It was, I thought, the best meal I’d ever eaten. The burgers were juicier, the fries crispier, the milkshakes creamier than their outer borough counterparts. I felt so suddenly grown-up. I was keenly aware that I was in the middle of an important metamorphosis. 

I would never be the same after dining (mostly) unsupervised at the coolest restaurant in the coolest city in the world. After this meal, I’d be an adult. A saavy, sophisticated adult. I’d be ready to pay rent for a studio apartment and tell tourists the fastest way to get to Bleecker Street from anywhere. It was a straight shot from here to Mad-About-You city -iving bliss.  

And then the waitress brought our bill. 

We were short. Significantly so. 

“You guys, we forgot about tax!” shrieked Leah. 

“Well, isn’t that, like, optional? Like a tip?” one of her friends ventured. 

Panic percolated among the group as it was concluded that tax was not optional. What would happen to us now? Would the waitress call the police? Would we have to wash dishes? 

 I glanced up and found my aunt and uncle paying their own bill. They’d just turned from a liability to an ass-saving asset. 

“Oh my God, you guys!” I exclaimed to the group. “This is so crazy but . . . I think that’s my aunt and uncle up there.” I pointed to their table. “How weird is that? They must be eating here too!” 

“Can you ask them to lend us some money?” Leah asked. 

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed. 

My aunt and uncle did not bother to mask their delight at this unexpected reversal. 

“Sorry,” my uncle teased. “But we have no idea who you are. We’re just perfect strangers enjoying a delicious lunch at the world-famous Hard Rock Café.” 

Back then, I didn’t understand this delight. Now that I’m a mother of kids around this age, I understand it all too well. It’s not just the simple satisfaction of being able to wield an, “I told you so.” It’s the desperately-needed confirmation that you, the parent (or parent proxy) know what you are doing. That, despite all the misgivings and mistakes, the bad calls, the wrong-headed battles waged (and lost), that you still possess enough parental instinct to get the job done. More specifically, it’s a welcome reminder that your kid (or surrogate kid) still needs you, even when they insist they don’t —and never will again.

So it was with immeasurable pleasure that my aunt and uncle descended the stairs to serve as a real-life deus ex machina. 

“Hi guys,” my uncle said. “I hear you’re a little short? We can cover you.” 

I emerged from the lunch a hero. Or at least, the guy that knew where to find the hero. 

When the bill was settled, my uncle asked: “How are you guys getting home?” 

“Oh, just walking,” Leah said. 

“We are too,” he replied. 

They trailed us the whole way home.

Heather Heckel is an artist and educator living in New York City. In addition to the Park Slope Reader, her clients include Whole Foods Market, Kids Footlocker, Juice Pharma Worldwide, and The Renwick Hotel. Her artwork and children’s book has won international awards, and she has been published numerous times in the 3×3 Professional Illustration Magazine. Recently she has completed artist-in-residencies through the National Park Service in Arkansas, Connecticut, Washington, and California. Heather is passionate about social and environmental justice, and is an advocate for human rights and animal rights.

heatherheckel.com

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Dispatches From Babyville: I Love New York In June

By Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: , , , , ,

Art by Heather Heckel

Plenty of people love New York in June. This list includes but is not limited to Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and probably even a few people after 1959. But who, I ask you, still loves New York in July . . . to say nothing of August? 

New York in fall serves as the backdrop for romantic comedies. New York in summer serves as the backdrop for a different kind of film. Dog Day Afternoon. Summer of Sam. Do The Right Thing.

To quote another old song, to everything there is a season, and New York’s season is fall, possibly spring, maybe even winter. Never summer. Summer is when anyone who can flees the city and heads to other places. Places that smell like jasmine rather than rotting refuse. Places with fireflies instead of cockroaches.

I get it. I’d summer somewhere idyllic too, if I could. But since I’m stuck here for most of the season along with my three kids, I figure I’ll find some silver linings. Behold, one mother’s attempt to make lemonade out of lemons. And on that note . . . 

Reasons to Love NYC in Summer

1. Lemonade! Kids can move a lot of units.

Country Time lemonade might be iconic and all, but let’s get real. There are no customers on a dusty country road, or in front of a sweet-smelling, pristine suburban lawn. Smart city kids who pick even a halfway decent location will make bank. Save up those pennies and they’ll have enough for a MetroNorth ticket out of here.

2. Eating Italian ices on stoops

While we’re on the subject of refreshing treats, there is no experience more pleasurable, anywhere, than taking the first lick of a lemon Italian icey while sitting on a Brooklyn stoop on a sweltering day. I’m sure there’s data to support this somewhere. Check the Journal of Geographical Gastronomy. It’s science. 

3. Cold subways are the best subways

New York City subways get a lot wrong. Maybe they even get more wrong than they get right. But let’s pause here to commend the MTA for their top-notch air-conditioning. I concede that much of the enjoyment I feel when stepping into a cool subway car may be relief from escaping the unbearably hot platform, but what’s the difference really? Cold subways are the best subways. Which comes in handy when your subway gets held in between stations for 45 minutes.

4. The island of Coney

Sure, I could go to Turks and Caicos and find silky beaches with oceans as warm and unpolluted as baths. Yes, I could go to Hawaii and hike a volcano, frolicking through waterfalls (I’m speaking figuratively here. I can’t go to those places, or I would, posthaste). But can you play Shoot the Freak in Hawaii? Can you ride the Cyclone and eat a Nathan’s hot dog in Turks and Caicos? Does anywhere else in the world have a Mermaid Day parade where a stranger will hang their freakishly huge and incontrovertibly menacing boa constrictor around your two-year-old’s shoulders? I didn’t think so.

5. Shakespeare in the Park

Okay, fine, I admit it. I haven’t been to a Shakespeare in the Park performance since 2002, well before I had kids. But by Jove, I’m going to get those tickets this year, and I’m taking my son, no matter how much he protests Shakespeare is boring, and it’s going to be world-class theater served up free. And if I don’t make it, then I’ll take my children to an equally free, more kid-friendly and zero-hassle Piper production in the Astroturf.

6. Fire Hydrant Sprinklers

Nuff said. 

7. No one’s here

This, right here, is the real reason to love New York City in the summer. It is, possibly, a misanthropic perspective, but it’s valid. No one is here. That means you get to enjoy all the offerings of New York City which you typically can’t partake in, because of crowds. No one’s here so you can park your car, which is to say, you can use your car. No one’s here so you can eat at restaurants, without having to wait for two hours, or eat at 4:45. No one’s here. Yes, of course, the denizens of NYC are what make it so special, but sometimes you need a break from those denizens. A nice two-month-long break. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s like how you feel such pure, unadulterated love for your children when they’re sleeping. Since ours is the city that never sleeps,  this is how you achieve that feeling about New Yorkers.  

And there you have it—all the reasons to love New York in the summer. I tried to stretch this list to ten, I really did. But there are only and exactly seven reasons to love New York City in summer. If that’s not enough for you, well go ahead and book a flight to the Bahamas. Just don’t blame me when the Italian ices are lousy. 

Heather Heckel is an artist and educator living in New York City. In addition to the Park Slope Reader, her clients include Whole Foods Market, Kids Footlocker, Juice Pharma Worldwide, and The Renwick Hotel. Her artwork and children’s book has won international awards, and she has been published numerous times in the 3×3 Professional Illustration Magazine. Recently she has completed artist-in-residencies through the National Park Service in Arkansas, Connecticut, Washington, and California. Heather is passionate about social and environmental justice, and is an advocate for human rights and animal rights.

http://www.heatherheckel.com

https://www.instagram.com/heatherheckelart/?hl=en

Dispatches From Babyville: Winter Sports

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I should have been born a bear. Or a chipmunk. Any animal, really, that hibernates in the winter. I feel a kinship to these animals who share my belief that plunging temperatures are Nature’s way of saying: “Go away! Seriously, I mean it.”

For those who don’t heed her warning, Nature has to get real: “I guess you thought I was playing around? How about a little frostbite to set you straight? Or some hypothermia? Hey, don’t let that jagged icicle impale you on your way indoors.” 

Nature doesn’t have to tell me twice. She had me at frostbite. 

When it gets cold, to say nothing of freezing, my fight-or-flight instinct is unambiguous. I flee to warmth and cocoa and couches and books and Netflix. If I could curl up in a cave, lower my body temperature and slow my heart rate to one beat every forty five seconds, I would do it. What could be better than sleeping for three months straight? Wake me when it’s spring. 

So I find it perplexing that there are many people who take freezing temperatures as an invitation to head outdoors, and to remain there for hours, and to exert themselves physically, to the point of perspiration. 

I’m talking about winter sports. 

A few caveats: First, I am not a sporty person in general. You won’t find me playing volleyball on the beach either, though it does strike me as easy, natural pathway to fun. You’re lying there in the sun, doing nothing, and you see a ball in the soft sand. Huh, might be fun to give it a whack. Why not? I get that.

Second, it is true that winter seems to serve as an activator to my anxiety, the way contact lens solution magically turns glue into slime. In spring, summer and fall, I am a generally level-headed person with reasonable worries. Add snow. ice and a five o’clock sunset to the mix and I make Woody Allen look relaxed. 

So it is that when I look at sleds, I see only broken femurs and concussions. When I look at skis, it’s all paralysis and massive head injuries. Who can tell which came first, the chicken or the egg, but it is true that I did go skiing once, when I was sixteen, and it did not go well. 

I successfully rode the lift to the top of the hill. That part was fun, I concede. Then, on my way to the starting point at the hilltop, I crashed into a tree, and broke my ski. I had to slide down the hill on my heavily-insulated butt. 

So I do not ski. Or sled, either. But since I have three kids, aged 6, 11, and 14, people are always inviting me and the kids to join them in these activities. 

No sooner does the first layer of snow settle on the asphalt then moms and dads start texting: 

“Want 2 meet @park 2 sled?”

And all I can think is, “Why?” 

It’s like asking, “Want 2 get a colonoscopy?”

I will, if I must, but I don’t want to. Similarly, I would sled, were it necessary. The thing about parenting is, you realize that there is nothing you would not do, if you had to. If I found myself in a frozen tundra and the only source of food was three miles away, I’d fashion coats for my children and I from the skins of wolves, gnaw a tree down with my teeth and construct a sleigh. Then I’d sled the hell out of those three miles. 

But for fun? No, no, a thousands times no. 

Despite my long-standing aversion to winter sports, I want my kids to have fun, nay, magical winters, and I allow for the fact that these sports may be a part of that fun. So, I have made a small exception to my policy. Every year, I take the kids ice skating. 

It’s probably just as dangerous as the other sports, but it is far easier than sledding, and a fraction of the cost of skiing. Also, the outfits are way better. Even a Grinch is powerless to resist the charm of pom-poms.

On our annual skating excursion, I put helmets on the kids, and inform them of the hazards they must avoid. The one that I’ve fixated on is the danger of falling down on your hands and knees and having your fingers severed by a reckless skater who has accumulated too much momentum to stop. It’s not the worst thing that could happen on the ice, to be sure, but it is, strangely, the most vivid scenario in my mind. So we practice popping back up to our feet from prone positions until our digits seem sufficiently protected.. 

Then, we skate. Or, more accurately, we cling to the side of the rink and expend massive, immoderate amounts of effort remaining upright. We pant and whine and laugh and do Tonya Harding impressions. Then, suffused with relief at having survived the endeavor, I hobble off the ice and buy everyone cocoa. 

And I think, There, we did it. Magical winter fun accomplished. 

When my kids grow up, I have no doubt that one of them will move to Colorado, or Alaska, or some other place where winter is supersized. One of them undoubtedly will become a professional luger. And when that happens, I will put on my wolf skin coat, and brave the snow and ice to see them. Because I must.

Until then, you’ll find me on my couch, with the thermostat working overtime. Just like the bears do.