Nicole Kear

Here, in the spring of 2025, I’m thinking about kindness. One of the dangers of plugging into the news and staying attuned to what’s happening in the nation and beyond, is that it really does seem like Human Kindness has fled, taking Decency and Respect with her.

Where has she gone? I wonder. Will she ever come back?

I keep thinking of a phrase Shakespeare penned, in which Lady Macbeth concludes that her husband is too full of “the milk of human kindness” to commit murder (spoiler alert: he’s not). I love this expression because human kindness is a mother’s milk—essential, life-sustaining. Without it, we fear not just for our future but for our present.

There’s a difference in kindnesses extended by those we have relationships with —family, friends, colleagues—and kindnesses offered by the unfamiliar people passing by who neither know nor owe us anything. Even if you don’t depend on the kindness of strangers, to quote another iconic protagonist Blanche DuBois, you probably relish it. I know I do. 

And in moments of calm, when the news is turned off, I remember that it is always better to light a candle than curse the darkness. When I do that, what I see, of course, is Human Kindness everywhere. I see it in the teenager who holds the subway doors open for me as I bound across the platform to make the R train and in the woman who chases me down the block to return the headphones I’ve dropped. I see Human Kindness on full display all over this city’s five boroughs, in bagel shops and bus stops. Even in that unlikeliest of places, JFK Airport. 

I’m assuming that we’ve all had the experience on being trapped on a flight with a baby who would just not stop screaming, right? Sure, the baby might momentarily quiet, possibly long enough for you to think, “Yes! It’s over!” but then, almost immediately, the screaming would resume, only louder, and you’d realize the child was just drawing a deep breath in order to fuel up for the next movement of the horrifying symphony. 

I’m talking about the experience where you get off a plane and your husband or sister or taxi driver or whoever picks you up asks about your flight and you tell them it was awful, terrible, possibly the worst flight ever, because there was a baby on board who was bore a striking resemblance to Rosemary’s Baby only, well, much, much louder. 

You’ve been a passenger on that plane. But have you been the mother of that child? 

I have. 

It’s how I know that true, unconditional Human Kindness exists. 

My youngest child, known in these parts as Terza, was two years old and I was flying home from Los Angeles with her and my nine-year-old son, Primo. 

I didn’t panic when, within a few minutes of taking off, Terza began to cry. She’d had chronic ear infections as a baby which resulted in ear tubes and she was very sensitive to the altitude-induced pressure changes. Nothing that pacis or snacks or milk wouldn’t help. 

But these tried-and-true measures didn’t improve things and the more she cried, the more distraught she became. Was she hurt? Sick? I laid a hand on her forehead, checked that her little body was intact. She seemed fine, except for the fact that she squirmed and pawed at her ears. 

Primo and I, increasingly desperate, offered candy, screens, toys. I paced the aisles, bouncing her on my hip, but her wails only intensified. I developed the creeping suspicion that this was not going to be a slight hitch in our giddy-up. This was going to be a whole thing. 

The suspicion must’ve been contagious because the people seated near me mobilized to help; they tried peek-a-boo, passed toys, offered lollipops. Terza, her face beet-red, wisps of hair matted with sweat, hurled everything to the floor. She arched her back, then suddenly collapsed. She kicked and kicked and kicked. She kicked so much that the pair of baby jeans she wore slowly but steadily shimmied off her legs and dropped to the ground, so that she was just in her diaper. 

Later, Primo and I would reflect on this experience and use the loss of pants as a way to measure the intensity of a meltdown. As in, “that little boy freaked out when he dropped his ice cream. It almost turned into a pants-loser.” 

But at that moment, on the plane, in the midst of the inaugural pants-loser, there was no reflecting. All my energy was being spent trying to keep hold of Terza so she didn’t accidentally get hurt. There was no way to prevent her from jostling the seat in front of her. I apologized over and over and over to the man seated there, until it was embarrassing to continue. Then I just focused on holding onto Terza and trying not to cry myself. 

The hours seemed not to pass. It felt like the plane was suspended, not just in air, but in time. But finally, a flight attendant announced that we were preparing for our descent into JFK and I dared to hope this experience might actually end. And it was at just that point that Terza fell asleep. 

After five hours, her body had surrendered to exhaustion. She lay crumpled on my chest, her sweaty head heavy against my clavicle. I pressed my hand into her back to steady her and let my head drop against my seat back.

When the wheels touched down, Primo readied to stand but I told him to wait. We’d let everyone off first, let Terza sleep, I wouldn’t subject anyone on the plane to more crying. So it was that we remained in our seats as all the passengers filed by. I turned my face to the window to avoid the looks of judgement and anger I anticipated. I was just so embarrassed. We’d ruined everyone’s day. What kind of a mother can’t console her child for five hours? 

I was startled to feel a hand on my shoulder. Standing next to me was a woman who looked a little older than me, with glasses and a messy bun. 

“We’ve all been there,” she said. “You did great.” 

The surprise of this compassion, how unearned it felt, and the relief it afforded me, made tears spring to my eyes. 

She wasn’t the only one to extend this kindness. At least three other passengers stopped to say they were sorry Terza had had a hard time, that it happens to the best of us, that I was doing a good job. 

Each kindness was a rainfall washing away the shame of perceived failure. Each kindness was the sunlight bringing the warmth of fellow feeling. 

Primo and I never did find Terza’s pants. When everyone had left, we walked slowly off the plane, just a nine-year-old boy who was going to think twice about air travel in the future, a diaper-clad, sleeping toddler, and a mother who was depleted, but okay. Despair had taken our pants but not our optimism. That had been spared, thanks to the compassion of people we didn’t know and would never see again. 

Traditions that carry on through multiple generations tend to grow in importance as the years pass when we turn to them in seasons of despair. In the weeks following the presidential election, Nicole clings onto tactical wisdom from her grandmother and discovers the ways that traditional threads can connect us together in dismal times.

No sooner had I announced the news of my first pregnancy to my grandmother than Nonny — Italian native, Brooklyn transplant — unsheathed her knitting needles.. Nonny’s passion for knitting, combined with her terror of cold weather, especially where babies were concerned, was a powerful combination which led to a near-pathological frenzy of knitting. 

For the next six months, every conversation I had with her was underscored by the the rapid-fire clicking and swooshing of metal needles which she was so adept at wielding, I could’ve called her Nonny Needlehands  By the time my son, known in these parts as Primo, was born, he had an impressive infant trousseau; three sets of matching button-down sweaters, pants, booties and hats, as well as an array of baby blankets. 

For my grandmother, knitting was an act of caretaking, just like cooking and sewing, other areas in which she was prodigiously skilled. These acts were battles she waged to protect her kids, grandkids and great-grandkids from harm or discomfort. To arm me against hunger, she’d serve up a heaping bowl of tagliatelle and meatballs. To stave off cold, she’d knit me a hat. 

Over the years, she showed me how to knit, but I never felt the yen to try it myself. As a modern mother, I outsourced these caretaking responsibilities. When my kids were hungry, I bought them a bagel. When they were cold, we picked up a hat at the dollar store. Knitting was slow and I struggled to see the point. 

A few years ago, it struck me that the slowness of knitting might make it a meditative act for my high-energy daughter Seconda, then 14. For Christmas, I gifted her a set of bamboo knitting needles and a spool of cyan fleece yarn. She knit 1/10 of a scarf before concluding she’d gotten the gist of knitting and it wasn’t for her. After that, the yarn sat forgotten in a bag, in a bin, in a closet, in Seconda’s room. 

Then on the first Tuesday of this past November, a thing happened that caused me to feel powerless and demoralized and angry and acutely scared for the future. Maybe you felt the same way. A lot of people did. A lot of people still do. 

My brain, a problem-solving machine, whirred incessantly, trying to riddle out a solution to a problem so massive and complex it was impossible to even see all at once. It didn’t take long for my brain to overheat and shut down. My mind could not compute. 

What do we do? I wondered. 

What do we do? I asked friends, my husband, like-minded strangers I heard lamenting on the subway. No one knew. 

I tried to work, to sleep, to watch TV, but I couldn’t. I tried listening to the news and then I tried not listening to the news. None of it lifted the boulder of anxiety off my chest. 

Then I started cleaning my apartment. I made my way into Seconda’s room, and hauled out the contents of her tiny closet. There, in a bag in a bin on a shelf, was the blue yarn and bamboo needles attached to the seedling of a scarf Seconda had started years ago. The yarn was so bulky and soft, it felt like a stuffed animal when I pressed it to my chest. The color was bright and cheerful, a kind of blue that made me think of stepping out my front door into a glorious spring day, lifting my face to the cloudless sky and closing my eyes to receive the benediction of morning. 

Finish me, the scarf seemed to whisper. Make me whole.

So I did. That night, while watching Gilmore Girls, which is nothing short of Valium in televisual form, I used the basic stitch Nonny had taught me years ago which I’d, in turn, taught Stella. As I added rows to the scarf, I started thinking about how pretty the finished product would be and how the color would compliment Seconda’s azure eyes. Winter was coming after all, and she’d need a cozy but serious-business scarf to keep her neck warm. Here was a thing I could do to protect her from harm. Here was a thing I could make with my hands. 

The more I knit, the more I enjoyed it. It was just so simple. Slide, loop, release, repeat. The predictability of it, the way it worked just as it was supposed to, helped my overheated brain to reset. I made mistakes, but they were easy to fix. You could always just pull the row out and try it again. Slide, loop, release. 

Incrementally, my work grew, beginning to resemble a scarf. This, too, was a balm for hurt minds. 

It’s working! The scarf seemed to cheer. Your labor is bearing fruit! Keep going!

After a few weeks, I finished the scarf and gave it to Seconda, who received it with less fanfare than I’d hoped. Isn’t that always the way with teenagers?

“Cute,” she said. Which is about what she’d have said if I’d given her a scarf I bought at the dollar store. 

But watching her wind the scarf around her neck in the morning as she heads off to school fills me with gladness. All sorts of terrible things may happen but today, her neck will be warm. The bitter cold will not win this battle, not on my watch. I will fight it, as my grandmother did, and our weapon of choice is really a tool, a tool powered by love.

But watching her wind the scarf around her neck in the morning as she heads off to school fills me with gladness. All sorts of terrible things may happen but today, her neck will be warm. The bitter cold will not win this battle, not on my watch. I will fight it, as my grandmother did, and our weapon of choice is really a tool, a tool powered by love. 

We will need those tools, I think, more than ever in the years to come. 

The realistic fantasy for motherhood

Like many before me, I’ve succumbed to the allure of Bridgerton. 

When watching previous seasons, I was hooked by the overwrought, downright hilarious intensity of the romantic passion, delighted by the coiffures, the couture, the string quartet renditions of Taylor Swift. This fall, though, as I watch the series, I find myself fantasizing about a facet of the epoch that I doubt is attracting the attention of anyone, except possibly other parents of teenage girls. 

 find myself fantasizing about having a ladies’ maid for my teenage daughter. 

Let’s be real for a second. It’s draining to parent the modern adolescent. It’s a thing that people don’t often discuss. Expressions like: “Teenagers! What are you gonna do?” are flung about with perfunctory eye rolls, but that doesn’t quite do the situation justice. 

Each teen is different, of course, some are more or less challenging for all sorts of complicated reasons. But they all have feelings, huge floods of feelings, whether they express them or not. They all have pressures and stresses, whether academic, social or otherwise. They all have human bodies experiencing varying degrees of tumult. And they all need to learn things that no one is born knowing how to do: how to drive, how to properly load a dishwasher, how to fill out a W-9. 

Who teaches them these tedious yet important things, and helps them manage their feelings and pressures and turmoil? 

Theoretically, a village of benevolent teachers and coaches, friends and family, maybe even a kindly stranger. 

But, often, it’s just you, the parent.  

Unless you’re a parent in Bridgerton. Then you get help in various forms. Including a ladies’ maid. 

Before I fully indulge my fantasy, I’ll offer this caveat: 100% of my knowledge about the historical figure of the ladies’ maid comes from Bridgerton. Doubtless, in real life, these women were under-valued, mistreated, probably de-humanized. I’m not calling for a return to the Regency Era. No, thank you. 

But the general idea of a dedicated helper to keep teens on track? Yes, please. 

Oh, to outsource even just the task of getting my 17-year-old daughter, known in these parts as Seconda, out of bed! Oh, for a surrogate who would be solely responsible for throwing open the drapes, coaxing the lady out of bed and ensuring she was dressed appropriately for the day’s activities. 

Instead, I coax, then cajole, then nag, then bribe, then threaten, until finally the young lady — who, if I called her that to her face, would doubtless shoot back, ‘Who you calling a lady?” —  is standing upright. She groggily rubs her eyes while complain-asking why the sun has to be so freaking annoyingly bright, as if I have a direct line to the sun and can give him some feedback. 

I prod, agitate and invigorate to keep the morning moving forward while Seconda makes herself breakfast. Her preferred breakfast is a complicated toast concoction which contains so many disparate, perplexing elements, only TikTok could have possibly supplied the recipe. She begins with a brand of bread that sounds positively biblical — Ezekiel bread, with no flour, gluten or (I can attest) taste. This is slathered with off-the-beaten path butters, made from cashews, sunflowers, possibly even tree bark, who knows? The toppings must’ve been recommended by Little Miss Muffet: they include whey, curds, and other foodstuffs I couldn’t identify in a line-up. 

Once this inscrutable breakfast has been consumed, I fall into the trap of thinking Seconda’s departure is nigh upon us. Foolish! Naive! Breakfast, it turns out, is only the smallest sliver of the Morning Routine Pie. Grooming makes up the lion’s share. 

There was a time, not that long ago, when you could count the categories of cosmetic product types on two hands: lipstick, mascara, blush, eye shadow, foundation. If you were a hard-core makeup geek, you might own lip liner or bronzer. 

But if you’ve stepped into a Sephora, ever, you’ll know that now, for each part of your face and body, there are a dozen different beauty-enhancing products. I do not doubt that if I googled, “thumb knuckle care,” the array of possible products to improve the appearance of my thumb knuckle would fill several Google result pages.

It’s not that Seconda needs a ladies’ maid to assist with her skin care regimen, a regimen so elaborate it would make Joan Crawford look like a slacker. Thanks to Youtube, she’s a quasi-professional 

aesthetician. But a ladies’ maid might help her beautify herself in a timely manner. A ladies’ maid might suggest toning down the black eyeliner, just a smidge, so she doesn’t look like she’s auditioning for the role of Cleopatra, or a cast member in Orange is the New Black.

The ladies’ maid of my fantasy would also be indispensable when it came time to get dressed, mainly because Seconda could subject her to the barrage of “Where is my . . . ?” questions that I field. 

Where is my belt? 

Where is my necklace? 

Where is my other avocado sock?

Where is my tube top? No, not that tube top, my orange tube top. 

No, not that orange tube top, my good orange tube top!

A ladies’ maid would have all of Seconda’s assorted tube tops organized in a rainbow array. She’d have Seconda’s preferred accessories, undergarments and footwear at her fingertips. I’d never again have to turn the apartment upside down to find a missing student Metrocard with -10 minutes to spare. 

And, speaking of Metrocards, how wonderful would it be to have someone to escort Seconda to her various engagements, beginning with her subway commute to school? I’d yell as she walked out the door, “Do not put both earbuds in! Be situationally aware!” My daughter would disregard my wisdom as she always does, but the ladies’ maid would be there to alert her to any disturbances on the train which required her attention. 

“Beware the mysterious piss puddle at your feet, m’lady,” she’d warn.

“P’haps we might change subway cars, m’lady,” she’d suggest. “As there’s a gentleman exposing himself across from you.” 

And then, of course, there’s the matter of the chaperoning. If Bridgerton is to be trusted (and it is not, it really is not), the ladies’ maid doesn’t just escort the young lady to her engagements, she chaperones. 

Oh, for a chaperone! Oh, for a non-physically-intimidating woman to trail a few feet behind teenagers, reminding them to use good judgement, or to internalize society’s choking norms, depending on how you look at it. 

Sigh. 

It takes a village to raise a child. A ladies’ maid isn’t a whole village but hell, it wouldn’t hurt. 

But until I figure out how to make my fantasies come true, I guess I’m the ladies’ maid. And this ladies’ maid is looking forward to binge-watching Bridgerton tonight.

Music possesses the power to carry memories in melodies. Turn up your speakers and step into the soundscape of writer Nicole C. Kear’s curated playlist of warm-weather tunes, selected from her own scrapbook discography.

In the same way that soda tastes better on an airplane, songs sound better in summer. There’s a song for every season of course, but I would argue that there’s no greater pleasure than hearing the perfect song on a perfect summer night, blasting from a car cruising by, or blaring from the top of a stoop, or wafting out an open bedroom window. 

In homage to this pleasure, I offer my top songs of summer, in three acts.   

1) 1981: Sailin’ Shoes, by Little Feat 

In the summer when I was a kid, I loved to sleep over at my aunt’s place on East 87th Street. She was single and child-free and she worked with musicians so her small apartment was always full of jazz saxophonists and drummers and singers drinking wine and eating take-out and listening to music, including the album, “Sailin’ Shoes.” 

The “Sailin’ Shoes” album cover features a pert, anthropomorphized cake sitting on a child’s swing. Swirls of pink icing make up the cake’s hair and in addition to her long-lashed eyes and waifish arms, Cake Lady has got gambs that are pin-up-girl sexy. The painting captures her mid-swing and she’s kicking one shapely leg in the air with such vigorous delight that her high-heeled shoe flies off. But what makes the album cover genuinely intriguing is that Cake Lady has a slice cut out of her which allows you to glimpse her chocolate, double-decker insides. 

To a five-year-old kid, this album cover was utterly fascinating. 

Now, you may be thinking, how could any song deliver on the promise — the tantalizing, irreverent, vaguely disturbing promise — of a cover like that? To answer that question, you’ll have to head over to your favorite music streaming service. I’ll just tell you the first line of the song, equal parts rock, blues and funk, which goes: “There’s a lady in a turban, in a cocaine tree. ​​She does a dance so . . . rhythmically.”

When I’d sing it, my aunt would laugh and then she’d say, “Don’t sing that in front of your mother! She’ll kill me.” 

My mother, her younger sister, didn’t listen to songs about cocaine. My mother didn’t fraternize with musicians, who let’s face it, were probably partaking in plenty of cocaine themselves. Was there even a single jazz saxophonist in all of Staten Island, where we lived? 

My mother didn’t order in Chinese food, or Polynesian food, or Indian.  My mother didn’t have a vintage vanity from the 1940’s heaped with makeup that I had carte blanche to experiment with when I woke up early. When Cabbage Patch Kids came out, it wasn’t my mother who beelined to Gimbel’s and wrestled the very last doll out of some weaker shopper’s hands. 

My mother mothered. My aunt aunt-ed — doting, lavishing me with attention. I loved staying with her, loved the glimpse it gave me into another world, with different rules, different tastes, different sounds, including the twangy, twisty, off-kilter sound of “Sailin’ Shoes” on a summer night. 

2) 2011: Hit the Road Jack, by Ray Charles

Maybe it’s being a firstborn, or maybe we’re just divas, but for my son and I, a favorite summer pastime in childhood was coercing our kid sisters to serve as backup singers in our musical arrangements. After all, there were just so many Sweet Valley High books a third grader could read, so when I’d run out, I’d coax and cajole my sister to back me up on Madonna covers. 

One of the unique delights, and horrors, of parenthood, is witnessing your own traits emerge in your child. So I was not surprised when, the summer before third grade, my son, known in these parts as Primo, conscripted his sister, Seconda, as a backup singer. There were many duets rehearsed that summer, but one of my favorites unfolded during a car ride when the two kids workshopped a rousing rendition of  “Hit the Road Jack,” mercifully preserved for posterity via video.  

Seconda, 4, is strapped into the four-point harness of her car seat, offering Primo a captive collaborator. 

“Old woman, old woman, why’d you treat me so mean? You’re the meanest old woman I’ve ever seen,” Primo croons to his sister. “I guess if you say so, I better pack my things and go.” 

It’s Seconda’s line — “That’s right!” — but she’s forgotten it, so Primo prompts her again, and again and again. His standards of excellence are high, but he’s patient, seeming to understand the limits of a four-year-old’s working memory. Though Seconda’s reliability is spotty, she is selling the hell out of her line, furrowing her brow and pointing a tiny finger as she scolds, “That’s right!”

At long last, Seconda gets into the groove, as Madonna might say, and makes it to the second verse with nary a misstep. Now she’s supposed to sing: “You ain’t got no money, you ain’t no good.” 

Except what she sings, scowling ferociously, is: “You ain’t got no money, you taste no good!”

Primo, my husband and I succumb to helpless laughter, and that’s where the video (and the rehearsal) ends. 

And it’s why whenever I hear “Hit the Road Jack,” I think of cannibalism. 

3) 2023: Cruel Summer, by Taylor Swift 

My 17 year-old daughter was a Swiftie for a decade before the term “Swiftie” came into popular parlance. On Halloween when she was seven, in red lipstick, a bowler hat, and a “NOT DOING A LOT AT THE MOMENT” shirt, she was a dead ringer for Tay Tay. She learned how to play guitar picking out “Teardrops on my Guitar,” and spread the good word at open mics and recitals with performances of “Love Story” and “Trouble.”  Just a few weeks ago, she took a pilgrimage to Nashville and played an original song at The Bluebird Cafe, where Taylor is said to have been discovered.  

By the time the Eras tour presale opened, my daughter and her cousin, an equally obsessive Swiftie, had nailed down their concert outfits (Sec: Lover, Cousin: Reputation). Taylor had gotten the girls through the cruel summer of 2020, through the fear, confusion, boredom, and loneliness of Covid. Even my sister, who ranks “fun” very low on her priority list, was adamant we had to get tickets for the girls to go.

And so, applying the same New York hustle that makes it possible to find a parking spot in Park Slope on a weeknight— Stamina! Ingenuity! Persistence! — we nabbed three tickets to the Eras tour at East Rutherford Stadium in late May.. 

You’ll be spared a detailed accounting of the concert, because I didn’t go. David had dreamed of taking our kids to their first concert since they were zygotes, and though he’d have preferred Springsteen or Yo La Tengo, he was excited to introduce Sec to the thrill of live music. 

Since I wasn’t there, I didn’t partake in the “religious experience” my daughter later described. I just know that when she got home late that night, voice hoarse, mascara running from crying in helpless, breathless joy, she said: “It was the best night of my life.” And I believed it.  

No Slouch: A Middle School Story

My youngest child, Terza, is starting middle school this fall. And I am thinking about socks. 

Slouch socks. 

E.G. Smith slouch socks. 

If you entered puberty in the mid-80s as I did, these words will catapult you back in time and place — like Proust’s madeleine, only instead of landing in the French kitchen of your beloved aunt, you’ll land in a middle school hallway in Bay Ridge, rank with Aquanet and newly-acquired B.O.

In 1987, in middle school, in Bay Ridge, E.G. Smith slouch socks were de rigueur. They weren’t a fashion choice so much as a fashion necessity. In the same way that you didn’t show up to school without pants on, you didn’t show up to school without E.G. Smith slouch socks on. For the uninitiated, I’ll pause here to offer a description. 

E.G.s were huge — figuratively and literally. They were at least five times as thick as the thickest sock you’d ever worn, including those SmartWool ones with magical properties that can keep your feet warm even when they’re plunged into an ice bath in the Siberian tundra. E.G.s reached to your mid-calf, but of course you’d never wear them like that — they were made to scrunch. When pushed down towards your ankle, they’d fold in neat, lovely piles of cotton knit, piles so robust, you’d have to roll your pants up to accommodate them. 

Without EG socks, you couldn’t peg your pants, and if you couldn’t peg your pants, you looked, well, 11 year-old Nicole would have said, ridiculous. Clueless. Clown-ish 

Adult Nicole knows the word is conspicuous. And it’s one thing no middle schooler ever wants to be. 

I didn’t particularly like the socks, I didn’t even want them, really. But I needed them. Desperately. 

The problem was what the problem always is, for all middle schoolers: Mothers 

My mother, a woman so fond of sales, promotions and clearance that our childhood pet was a one-eyed bird bought at a sizeable discount, would not purchase me a pair of E.G. socks. 

“Are you crazy?” she’d said when I’d pointed the socks out in a department store, sometime towards the end of sixth grade. “These cost $10! For one pair! One pair of socks!” 

“But I only need one pair!” I protested. “I’ll wear them every day, I swear.” 

“You’ll wear dirty socks?” 

“Yes!” 

She shook her head resolutely. “Over my dead body am I sending you to school with dirty socks” She turned away from the tantalizing display of slouch socks to the sale rack where anemic-looking hosiery hung, the price slashed down by half because no one with half a pulse would be caught dead wearing them. 

“Here,” she said, fingering a pair of the on-sale neon green socks. “We can buy five pairs of these for the price of one of those.” She slipped a pair off the display and handed them to me with a smile. “And I think these are better. They’re funky.” 

Funky is the word my mother invoked to persuade me that something I found repellant was cool. It always had the reverse effect. 

I shoved the funky socks back on the rack and explained to my mother that I needed the E.G. socks. That she was single-handedly responsible for saving me from ostracism or relegating me to it. Likely, the words I used to communicate this sentiment were, “You’re ruining my life!’

“Such a drama queen,” she replied. 

“Everyone has a pair!” I tried once more. 

But all this did was elicit the ever-reliable response, one of my mother’s favorites: “If everybody jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” 

“If I didn’t have E.G. socks,” I wanted to tell her. “I might.” 

We left the store, sans socks, and I remember feeling befuddled at how it was possible that my mother didn’t understand. Had she not been a human pre-teen? Had the blustery winds of social approbation and peer pressure not blown upon her? 

It’s odd to find yourself on the opposite end of the equation, suddenly the mother with the wallet in her hand, the one pursing her lips, shaking her head, saying, 

“Are you joking?” and . . . 

“Because I said so,” and . . . 

“Do I care that everyone else has a hoverboard/ puppy/ nose ring/ smartphone? I’m not everyone else’s mother! I’m your mother!” and, inevitably . . . 

“If everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” 

All my kids have inherited my stubbornness, perhaps Terza most of all. She’s prone to drawing up persuasive Powerpoint presentations to advance her case, walking me through the various benefits of whatever she’s lobbying for. For some requests (hoverboard) I hold my ground, for others (puppy), I allow myself to be convinced. 

Experts tell you to pick your battles, but what they don’t tell you is how hard that is to do. Distinguishing the valiant, worthy battles from the petty and unnecessary ones is not a small feat. Knowing how long to hold the line and when to retreat, these are challenging decisions. Maybe the problem is the metaphor itself, because even though it feels like you’re battling your child, especially in those years between twelve and twenty, what you’re really doing is battling the threats and dangers, both short and long-term, that seem to lurk at every turn. You want them to learn fiscal responsibility so the peril of penury won’t touch them. You want them to reject a “by any means necessary” approach to fitting in, so they’ll grow resilient, strong and confident. And sometimes, you just think the overpriced socks they want to buy are hideous. And you’re not wrong. 

A few weeks after the trip to the department store, my mother came home with E.G. Smith socks for me. It was just after July 4th, and the pair she’d nabbed, with red, white and blue stripes, had been marked half price off because they were seasonal. 

The Independence Day fireworks had ended but the fireworks in my heart combusted with special force. Relief, gratitude and excitement exploded inside of me, not just because I was looking forward to wearing the socks to school, but because, belatedly, my mother had understood. Maybe she’d remembered a pair of bell bottoms or a psychedelic-print polyester shirt she’d pined for in her adolescence. 

I slipped my feet into the unthinkably thick socks, and slouched them down, admiring their overly patriotic but wonderfully indulgent folds. I wore those socks, dirty or not, all year. 

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You, and ten books for children. She lives in Park Slope with her husband, three kids, and absolutely no slouch socks. 

Almost everything I know about birds I learned from the Bird Study, which is a magical, marvelous unit of study taught in second grade in my children’s elementary school.

Recently, I was walking home, practicing mindfulness. Meaning, my phone had died, so I was forced to pay attention to the world around me

What I noticed, almost immediately, were birds. So. Many. Birds. And it occurred to me that of the many incredible things we ignore in our daily lives as we rush around, texting and talking and blindly blundering forward, the most incredible is probably the airborne creatures that fill the skies with color and motion and song.

Almost everything I know about birds I learned from Bird Study, which is a magical, marvelous unit of study taught in second grade in my children’s elementary school. 

In Bird Study, every second grader selects their Bird of Choice. The kids then undertake an exhaustive study of this creature, the seven-year-old equivalent of a dissertation. Like the Hogwarts house you belong to, the kind of bird you pick says everything about you. 

My son, known in these parts as Primo, picked the Barn Owl. Ten years later, at high school graduation, he was inducted into the school’s honor society, called Order of the Owl, after the mascot. My son is wise beyond his years. 

My daughter, Seconda, chose the Northern Cardinal. With feathers of resplendent red and a magnificent crest, the bird is a burst of Technicolor, impossible to ignore. My daughter, to a tee. 

And my youngest, Terza, chose the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. Do you know how fast a ruby-throated hummingbird beats its wings? 53 beats per second. Which is very nearly the rate at which Terza talks, and walks, and hatches wild schemes. This bird is like no other bird out there. Magical. 

Terza began her Bird Study in the spring of 2020, during which our family of five was holed up in my parents’ home in Northern New Jersey. In a desperate effort to find a slightly silver-ish lining to the unrelenting Covid stormclouds, I decided that Northern New Jersey was the perfect place to conduct the long-awaited second-grade bird study! We could even, I suggested, get a bird feeder!

When we ventured to the local Walmart, there were no hummingbird feeders but there was a small, transparent feeder that attached to your window via suction cups, as well as a large sack of seed designed to attract a host of bright, beautiful birds—cardinals, yellow warblers, bluejays. Terza and I attached the birdfeeder to my bedroom window and filled it with seeds. Then we waited. 

“Nothing’s happening,” Terza said. “Why aren’t they coming?” 

“They’ll come,” said my husband, David. He’s from Tennessee, a fact that, in my mind, single-handedly qualifies him to serve as the family’s resident wildlife expert.

Terza looked as dubious as I felt. 

Then, one afternoon, I was working on my laptop at my father’s desk, when a blur of blue darted in and out of the feeder. So fast I’d have missed it if I blinked.

“A BIRD HAS COME!” I bellowed, thundering down the stairs to get Terza. “HURRY! COME SEE!”

You don’t need to be an ornithologist to guess that screaming “A BIRD HAS COME” is the fastest way to make a bird go. But after waiting silent and motionless for what felt like an eternity, the bluejay returned. Or possibly it was a different bluejay. It’s not like we could tell them apart. All I knew is our plan had worked! Terza and I watched the surprisingly large creature peck at the bird food, using his sharp beak to split the seeds on the floor of the feeder.

“He’s so pretty!” Terza cooed. 

“I know!” I said. “I’ve never seen a bird up close like this!”

“Let’s call him Bluey!” Terza proclaimed. 

I put my arms around my youngest daughter and squeezed. I was feeling hopeful, an unusual feeling for 2020.

We are making the best of a bad situation, I thought. 

Hope is a thing with feathers, I thought. 

The next morning, my peaceful veil of slumber was shredded by what sounded like a miniature jackhammer. RAPRAPRAPRAPRAP. 

“What—” I muttered to David, sleeping next to me. “What is that?” 

He squinted open his eyes and located the source of the sound. 

“It’s a bird,” he concluded.

Sure enough, in the feeder attached to my window, was Bluey.

I was suffused with surprise and excitement at the sight of the bird, who I’d come to think of already as ourbird. But then, almost immediately, these feelings were washed away by a flood of annoyance. It was 6am. Thanks to a combination of quarantine-induced late-night work sessions and quarantine-induced later-night insomnia, I never went to sleep before 2 am. So, what I really needed to do at that moment was not so much enjoy the miracle of avian splendor but go the *%$& back to sleep. 

RAPRAPRAPRAP

“What’s he doing?” I asked David. 

“What’s he doing?” David replied. “He’s eating the seeds we put out for him.” 

“But why so early?” I asked. 

“It was probably the only reservation he could get.” David rolled over, away from the window. “He’s a bird! This is when they eat! What do I know?”

RAPRAPRAPRAP.

“For the love of God,” I moaned. “Get rid of him!”

Which was easily achieved by David walking to the window. . 

Ten minutes later, though, the bird was back. 

“You have got to be kidding me,” David said. 

“I am going to lose it!” I cried. “This is the straw that broke the camel’s back!” 

“You wanted birds!” David pointed out oh-so-helpfully. “You’ve got birds!”

“I didn’t know they’d come so early! No one talks about how early birds eat!” 

“Who talks about birds?” he asked. “In Brooklyn?” 

“I want to go back to Brooklyn,” I said for the first, but not the last, time that day. 

And so it went for a few days, until finally, one morning when Bluey was enjoying the world’s loudest breakfast, I yanked open the window, scaring Bluey away. Then I grabbed the tray of food and flung its contents to the ground. 

“I’ve had enough of birds,” I told David, getting back into bed. 

The camel’s back was just too overloaded. It could not take even one more straw. 

The next spring, our family was back in Brooklyn, where we belong. Terza, now in third grade, and I reveled in sighting birds, nestled in tree branches, twittering on stoop steps, waddling brazenly towards us on elevated subway platforms.

“Did you know a pigeon is a dove?” I asked Terza one morning as we waited for the F train while watching pigeon antics.

“Of course,” she said. “DId you know a ruby-throated hummingbird can beat his wings fifty three times per second?” 

“Of course,” I said. “Did you know that hope is a thing with feathers?”

“That perches in the soul?” I’d made the kids memorize that poem during our quarantine and apparently, it had stuck. “Of course.” 

Terza tossed a crumb of her everything bagel to the grisly, threadbare-feathered, worse-for-the-wear-looking pigeon standing a few feet away. He walked over on stick legs, head bobbing, and pecked at it. 

Not as wise as a barn owl. Not as bright as a cardinal. Not as fast as a hummingbird. And definitely not as loud as a bluejay. 

But, hardy. Tough. Like all of us. 

Every year, sometime between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, I announce to my family, “Now is the winter of our discontent!” Which is another way of saying, winter in the city has more than its fair share of miseries. 

What is sometimes more difficult to recall, as the salt-white snow turns pepper- black and the wind chill becomes positively punitive, is that winter in the city has plenty of delights too, many of them unexpected. Here are a few of my favorite:

1. The Smell of Overpriced Sidewalk Christmas Trees 

There’s not enough room on a Brooklyn sidewalk under normal circumstances, and even less during the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when sidewalk Christmas tree sellers set up shop. I’m not sure who has the disposable income to afford one of these very costly, usually haggard Douglas Firs or Blue Spruces, but the beauty part is this: the smell of the pine needles that fills your nostrils as you walk by is one hundred percent free. 

2. Little Dogs in Their Finest Winter Fashion

Is there anything more delightful than a tiny quadruped in a Canada Goose down jacket? With a hood that has ear-holes cut out? And matching booties on petite puppy paws? Even the most cold-hearted curmudgeon, the Grinch-iest of Grinches, will melt a little at the sight of such wildly unnecessary adorableness.

3. The Over-the-Top Decorations of (the area adjacent to) Dyker Heights Lights 

I grew up right near Dyker Heights and every year when I was a kid, my parents would drive us down 84th Street to marvel at the over-the-top decorations: the houses so blitzkrieg-ed with lights you could spot them from Mars, the life-size Nutcrackers, the Santa Clauses posing for pictures. It was an easy thing to enjoy—just hop in the car and go for a ride. 

A year or two ago, after feasting on Spumoni Gardens pizza with my kids, I had a hankering to show them the lights I so enjoyed in my youth. After all, it was the weekend before Christmas and we were already in the car, so close by. I called my mother and asked her what street we should drive down. 

“Are you nuts?” she asked with a cackle. “You can’t drive down those streets anymore! You’ve gotta park and walk—and you’ll never find a parking spot! Traffic’ll be worse than the Five Borough Bike Race day! Forget it!”

I did not listen to my mother, clinging instead to the belief that a magical Christmas moment was within reach. 

After spending the better part of an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic on 15th Avenue, at least half a mile from the place where magical Christmas moments happen, my children revolted. 

“This is taking too long! I want to go home!” my littlest one, known in these parts as Terza, yelled. “I don’t want to see any of the dumb lights!”

“She’s right,” my middle daughter, Seconda, chimed in. “This is totally not worth it.” 

“But the life-sized Nutcrackers!” I pleaded. 

“Look.” David pointed to a house across the street. “That house is decorated. That’s probably part of it.”

The house in question was strung with a decidedly average amount of decidedly average lights. A few strings were corkscrewed around the banisters and another paltry few lined the perimeter of the windows. This, it was abundantly clear, was not the Dyker Heights Lights. On the scale of holiday decorations, it barely registered as festive.

“Oooh!” cooed Seconda, not so much believing her father as wanting to prove we’d gotten what we came for, and thus could leave. “It’s so pretty!”

“But that’s not them,” I insisted. “We’re not even close.”

“There’s another one!” David gestured at a house down the street to our left. This one had a Ho Ho Ho! sign buzzing in red neon over the doorway and some lights half-heartedly tossed over a tree out front. 

“Wow!” Terza gushed, following her big sister’s lead. “That is so cool!” 

“These are not the real ones!” I insisted. “These are not the real Dyker Heights Lights!” 

“Well, they’re not imaginary,” my teenage son, Primo, shot back. “So they must be real.” 

The kids fake oohed and aahed as our car crawled down the avenue and I protested, “But those aren’t the real ones . . . not the real ones,“ until at the very first opportunity, David turned left, and hightailed it away from Dyker Heights. 

The moral of the story? Listen to your mother. 

4. The Smell of Hot Nuts on a Cold Day

You emerge from the bowels of the earth, otherwise known as a New York City subway station. Maybe it’s 57th Street. Maybe it’s Union Square. The snap of cold hits you first — your nose, your fingers. You zip up your jacket. You pull up your hood. You watch as your hot breath makes clouds of steam in the air. Maybe a stranger knocks shoulders with you as they rush by. Maybe you step on a half-frozen dog turd. And you think: Why? Why do I stubbornly continue to live here? Where sidewalk Christmas trees cost a not-so-small-fortune and the fun that is free, like Dyker Heights Lights, is so overrun with crowds that I can’t access it without a ten step plan? I could live in Florida! Where the politics are abhorrent but high-speed-internet costs $7 for the whole month! And your hair never, ever freezes!

And then the aroma of something being roasted reaches you. You don’t know if you can smell the salt or simply remember the taste of it. Just one whiff warms you. Let the snowbirds have Florida, you think. You have hot nuts on a cold day. 

5. Warming Wet Socks on the Radiator

Page 25. The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats. 

“He told his mother all about his adventures while she took off his wet socks.”

If there’s a more perfect sentence in all of children’s literature, I don’t know what it is. It calls to mind countless afternoons spent in my grandmother’s second-story apartment in Bensonhurst, and her peeling off my sodden socks and placing them on an ancient radiator which rattled underneath the window. When I had children, I transformed from the sock-wearer to the sock-remover, and I smoothed my kids’ hosiery over the grates of our own radiator, smaller than my grandmother’s but just as ancient. The distinctive smell of wet wool being warmed is the smell of care-taking, of tender, maternal affection. It’s the smell of childhood winters — for me and for Keats too, I‘m guessing.

6. The Quiet of the First Snow

The city that never sleeps is, unsurprisingly, never quiet. Except for when it snows. 

When my oldest child, Primo, was a newborn, David took endless videos of the baby. Occasionally I’d make an appearance in these. Among these cherished videos, there is one I treasure above all others. 

In the video, there’s a very young-looking mother that I can hardly recognize as myself and a two-month-old baby who I’d recognize anywhere as my son. We’re in the middle of the first snowfall of the season, which also happens to be the first snowfall of Primo’s life. I’m sitting on the radiator under my bedroom window, the baby on my lap, both of us peering out onto Carroll Street, which is being blanketed by snow. 

David points the camera out of the window, down onto the street, which is made magical, new, by the snow. Everywhere, everything is silent. The only sound is my murmuring as I talk to the baby, naming the snow, and the cars, and the window. Then David turns the camera back to us. The baby is watching the world out the window, as I watch the baby, and the look of wonderment on my son’s face is rivaled only by the look of wonderment on mine. 

There are so many moments in motherhood you anticipate, all the milestones you expect will be joyful—and sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re not. But always there are the unanticipated moments of delight, of marvel, or awe, and this was one I’ll never forget. The quiet of my first baby’s first snowfall.