Archives for category: Parenting

TRAJECTORY

July 23, 2012 //

TRAJECTORY

Never had a commercial event in our small town generated more anticipation than the opening of an ice cream shop known as Scoupe de Ville.

For months, after the “Coming Soon” sign was posted, the former nail salon at the corner of Central and Main was under renovation. First, the nondescript exterior gave way to vivid streamers of pink and blue bunting. Next, the parking lot was repaved from pitted concrete to smooth asphalt with stripes painted like candy canes. Excitement reached a fever pitch when a half-sized replica of an electric blue Cadillac appeared. It hung from a crane in the parking lot for two days awaiting installation, long enough for everyone in town to see it. Finally, after we tired of telling the children: “Soon, soon, it will be open soon,” balloons and banners announcing “Grand Opening” were hung around the building.
Children were not the only ones who were excited. Adults viewed the store as a sign of class, of local distinction.

     “Who needs Baskin-Robbins or Haagen Dazs?” we asked each other. We will have an authentic ice cream parlor. We speculated that it would not be long before a cheese shop and an art gallery would open.
     Needless to say, the first week of business was spectacular. The parking lot was full. People waited in line around the block. Families strategized that it was necessary to have ice cream at four in the afternoon, before dinner, just so that they could sit at a table. Following the decorating theme, sundaes were served in cardboard containers shaped like Cadillac convertibles.
     It was a week or two before the first hints of disappointment seeped out.
     “The service was slow,” said some.
     “My ice cream was melted,” said others.
     “Mine was lumpy,” said one.
      “The prices, my God, can you believe the prices?” commiserated several adults.
       At the end of the first month, there were spaces available in the parking lot and several empty tables in the parlor. The jovial owner, a jowly Floridian, who had beamed in the first week, now appeared sullen. He raised himself slowly from a corner stool to supervise the teen-aged employees.
T     he model Cadillac still gleamed in the center of the dining room but the juke box now had an “out of order” sign. The tables were sometimes dirty. When a dish dropped, the now-quiet room heard it break, clatter several feet, and finally spin into agonizing silence.
     After two months, there appeared a sign in the window: “Check out our new, lower-priced menu.” However, the children had moved on – prices were not their issue.
     “Let’s go to Baskin-Robbins,” they begged. “It’s faster.”
     “Let’s go to Haagen-Dazs, their cones are bigger.”
     After three months, Scoupe de Ville was a ghostly scene. The owner served the few customers himself, since business was so slow. No one was fired, he assured a concerned customer, since most of the teen-aged staff, dependent upon tips, simply quit showing up.
     A “Business for Sale” sign marked the fourth-month anniversary. Hardly anyone noticed when an “Out of Business” sign appeared several months later. By the sixth month, weeds grew in the parking lot; the brilliant colors were faded. Someone said the owner had skipped out on his lease and gone back to Florida.
     “What do you think will go in there?” people asked, eventually.
     “We need a bagel shop,” said one.
     “How ‘bout a Thai restaurant?” asked another.
     “Maybe a nail salon,” one woman said. “We could really use one.”
     “Yes,” nodded the others.

Tags Human Nature, Ice Cream

Categories Modern Society, Parenting, Reflections, Uncategorized

Babar

May 30, 2012 //

BABAR

No matter what my father may have said, I was not the most adorable five-year-old in the history of the world. I was contrarian at every opportunity. I rooted for the Cubs in a family of Phillie Fanatics. I cheered for Nixon in the debate while everyone else clapped for Kennedy. I preferred pomegranates to apples and grapefruits to oranges.
But none of the foregoing transgressions were as contrarian as my professed lack of interest in reading books — this in spite of having a mother, an uncle and three cousins employed as librarians.
Only one set of books redeemed me and allowed me acceptance in the intellectual society of my family, namely: Babar. I was hopelessly, completely, and inexplicably interested in the lives of Babar, Celeste, and all of their progeny. This obsession afforded every relative a surefire gift idea at birthday time, as though I were a middle-aged man interested in golf.
There were other books in my childhood. I recall being read “Ten Apples Up on Top.” I think it featured monkeys. I recall seeing “Where the Wild Things Are,” with its fantastic creatures. There was “Black Beauty,” though I had no interest in horses, whatsoever. All of these lesser mammals were tolerated only if I knew there was a heavy dose of elephant coming up afterwards.
Somewhere around the age of eight or nine, I suppose, my love of Babar receded and, with it, the intimacy of being read to in my mother’s lap or beside her on the sofa or bed. Those moments slip away unnoticed by the eight-year-old. But the parent notices, like when your five or six-year-old will no longer hold your hand in public. It may be a rite of passage for the child but it feels more like last rites for the parent.
When my daughter, Sarah, was old enough to be read to, my childhood love of Babar popped into my head. I hadn’t thought about it for twenty-five years. I immediately acquired an armful of books and looked forward to sharing them with Sarah. I was certain she would share my taste. I wondered which ones would be read over and over to the point of memorization.
It did not work out as I had envisioned. Sarah’s passion was for the Berenstain Bears – all seventy or ninety or three hundred of them! I found them to be tedious, moralizing, trite and predictable. I was disappointed. I was chagrined. Can you tell? I wondered how my own child could not share something that was so special to me. How could she not have been wired just like me?
Over time, I found a way to understand and accept the situation. Upon reflection, it made total sense. Just like her dear old dad, she’s a contrarian.

Categories Coming of Age, Parenting

Nolan W, an Adventurer

May 22, 2012 //

Nolan W is confused and confusing. He is at the intersection of adolescence and adulthood that now extends to the mid-20’s in the post-Great Recession economy. He has a job he does not like, a Master’s program he has not finished, an adoring girlfriend he wants to dump and absolutely no idea in which direction to point his wanderlust.

Nolan recently announced that he is considering joining a covert military branch that specializes in rescuing lost or captured soldiers behind enemy lines. “Only five percent of the enlistees make it through training,” he boasts.

“What makes you think you will be in that five percent,” I ask.

It is as though I have asked Kobe Bryant if he can dunk a basketball.

Nolan teaches physical education at a local charter school. It is not the type of PE that involves balls in a gymnasium. Rather, Nolan’s students are “alternative” students who have not functioned well in traditional learning environments and have transferred to an “alternative” school that embraces a curriculum centered on the outdoors. There is rock climbing, hiking, canoeing and orienteering. The more scientific-minded among the students learn the finer points of operating a compass.

Although this is the perfect match for Nolan’s skillset he yearns for more adventure. He resists the administrators and other teachers and their expectations of particular outcomes. “How do you test someone’s ability to hike?” he asks, with exasperation.

In consultation with Nolan’s parents, from whom he is temporarily estranged, again, I have suggested an alternative to Nolan that would satisfy his restlessness and, at the same time, satisfy their desire that he survive to reconcile with them again.

“Have you thought about Costa Rica?” I ask.

“What about it?” he responds.

“You could go down there and have a great adventure. There are parks and mountains and volcanoes and surfing beaches. There are visitors from all over the world. There is wildlife like nowhere else.”

I refrain from mentioning the safety and friendliness for which the country is so well known. That would turn him off, for sure.

Categories Parenting

First entry vignette

April 29, 2012 //

Sam is a college student who only ate foods from the paler end of the color spectrum for the first nineteen years of his life. These included bread, pasta, sugar, rice and milk. For protein, he might have added chicken. The greens, reds, oranges and browns were not consumed. As his parents, we were initially alarmed and willing to fight to get a vegetable or fruit onto his plate. However, he was a third child, and we were relatively older parents and, as far as battles worth fighting go, our stamina did not match his stubbornness.

We sent him off to college happy that his diet was possibly the worst of his defects. We hoped he might learn to diversify his diet just a little bit before he graduated. Little did we imagine that he would return home after just one semester a changed person. He blew out our food budget by requesting salmon and swordfish. He asked for sushi at lunch. For breakfast, he turned down chocolate chip pancakes, much to my dismay, in favor of crepes.

When we suggested dinner at a standard chain restaurant one evening, he pled for Indian buffet and then regaled us at length with the relative merits of tandoori chicken versus curried lamb. When he craved take-out from the Turkish place in town, we knew something had happened, but what? He certainly could not be pregnant.

It turns out that Sam has a girfriend named Bonnie. Bonnie is
Korean. As far as she knows, Sam has always been an open-minded gourmand and he told us he would not mind if we did not emphasize his true history too much when we met her. She brought kimchi and sea-weed with her as a gift and he pled with his eyes, figuratively, at least, for us to shut up and chow down. We did, with mixed results. Now my wife sometimes chooses to snack on sea-weed. I still stick with the potato chips.

Anyway, Sam got his comeuppance at New Years. He was invited to Bonnie’s house for a family dinner and she asked him what he would like her mother to make. Instead of naming a favorite he said that Bonnie’s mom could make something “interesting.” Hmmm… that may have been a mistake. She chose to make a highly seasoned octopus. Our son dutifully ate, so besot with affection was he. Then he came home after midnight and consumed the biggest bowl of Cheerios I have ever seen.

The traditional assumption is that the way to a man’s hearrt is through his stomach. In Sam’s case, however, the way to his stomach may be through his heart.

Tags dating, octopus eating

Categories Coming of Age, Parenting