Our Turtle Lives in the Bathtub

A few weeks ago we moved Harriet upstairs to her winter quarters.  Her summer accommodations are more spacious.  She’s got a lounging area, a larger master suite, an expansive outdoor deck with native plantings and constant running water.  But if we left her there for the winter, chances are she’d freeze to death. Which would be a shame given that we have spent nine years keeping Harriet alive and trading up aquariums as she grew from the size of a quarter to her current 9” shell span.

Harriet basking in the sun in Shangri La.

Her summer digs Rich, my live-in partner, dug for her four years ago…. by hand …with a pick axe. To specs provided by a consultant and our landscape designer who assured us that the pond we were creating  (kind of a turtle Shangri-La) for our not so tiny red-eared slider would be a perfectly safe  year round  domicile for her to move to from the tank that had taken over half of our kitchen counter.

Harriet, who liked to eat from our hands and scramble up the ramp of the tank for her feedings (to the delight of visitors) transformed the moment we released her into her pond. No hesitant doleful glances over her shoulder. No, no, no. Our cheerful, indoor boarder never looked back. Harriet took one lumbering, clumsy splash into the deep, black beyond and we rarely saw her again that summer.  She who used to creep now swam and dove. She was Esther Williams. Harriet who used to lounge for hours on the water dock in her aquarium, with one leg daintily stretched out behind her and her neck extended upwards toward the heat lamp seldom emerged from the water. Harriet the amphibian became a fish.  At the approach of a human, she shot straight to the bottom like a submarine. “Dive, dive, dive, enemy bombers overhead!” If we waited patiently—say 20, 25, 30  minutes or so  (sitting quietly without moving and practicing our oneness-with-nature skills), she might slowly resurface to feed from the small plastic sieve filled with turtle pellets—after she tried to  snatch the sieve from your hand and compact it between her not so delicate reptilian beak. Think razor sharp pincer pliers clamped shut that maybe an iron crow bar could open.  Harriet, our friendly, housebound, crowd pleasing reptile had gone native. Reverted to type. Trusted no one and nothing. Harriet seized her prey, jerked it roughly (think “neck snap”), then tried to drown it for good measure by dragging it underwater.  Over time she settled down, but only with me. Rich cast too big a shadow (predator coming!) and didn’t have the patience to sit it out with her. The day she allowed me to pet her around her tiny shoulders and wrinkled neck registered as an unreasonable triumph. The salmonella carrier was allowing me to share her germs and I felt privileged! The queen had granted an audience: I was permitted to intrude upon her royal presence.

Harriet and I had come to an understanding! She would allow me to pet her if I would dangle my finger in the water to set up vibrations letting her know her food had arrived. Slowly, with the languidness of a grouper or swiftly with the aggressiveness of a great white shark (depending on her mood, the amount of sunlight and her appetite) she would emerge to check out the chef’s offering for the day. Was it human pinky finger, worms from the woods (a favorite delicacy), nova scotia salmon (the closest we could come to giving her live goldfish which we had mistakenly done early on in our Harriet stewardship; we thought we were providing a companion and she thought we were offering an h’ors doeuvre), or the predictable and pedestrian turtle pellets?

Life for Harriet was idyllic until the weather turned colder, the leaves began to fall and her owners began to angst. Was the pool actually deep enough for her to brumate? Turtles don’t hibernate. They’re way too cool for that. Their metabolisms slow down in the winter just like some of their mammalian sisters and brothers but they dig in under the wet mud and go into a kind of suspended state of animation for the cold winter months as long as they can stay below the frost line. Too high up and they turn into turtle pops. Call it mother’s intuition or owner’s guilt; we checked again with a different set of consultants and discovered that as magnificent as Harriet’s summer set-up was it would become her permanent tomb if we left her out there for the winter.

It was Lindsay, my older daughter and third child, who came up with the ingenious solution. It’s a good thing too, since it was Lindsay who saddled me with Harriet to begin with in the middle of her junior year of college. She arrived home with Harriet—who was then Huey—one cold winter weekend. Some kids bring home laundry. Others bring their pets. “Mom. He’s SO sick. I have to give him shots every day and I can’t do it. I’m scared he’s gonna die. PLEASE help me take care of him for a little while. The vet says it’s pneumonia.”  This might possibly have been related to keeping Huey in an unheated aquarium in a student apartment in Bethlehem, PA in the middle of December.  Huey and I bonded during his convalescence. There’s something about sticking a tiny turtle with a very sharp needle every day for 3 weeks and then feeding and soothing him immediately afterwards. He’s either gonna like you or hate you when it’s all over.  Upon careful reflection, Lindsay believed that it would be in Huey’s better interests to be in a more stable environment. As Huey grew and graduated from one aquarium to the next and the next and the next and the next, it became apparent that Huey was Harriet. Sexing turtles is not a novice’s game.

Less than enthused with the idea of a 100 gallon tank dominating our kitchen counter, Rich and I were desperate for alternatives as we talked with Lindsay about the challenge of bringing Harriet back inside. “How about giving her away to a good home or nature center?” we proposed with a mixture of ambivalence and relief.

“Oh, Mom, you can’t do that! This is the only home she’s ever known!”  It seemed that Harriet, who would as happily chomp down on my finger as on an earth worm, had a patrimonial claim to press. The college boyfriend’s whimsical $1.25 China Town pet store purchase (“Your girlfriend, she die salmonella, you no come back and bother me!”) had become the serious suburban multi thousand dollar investment. I was reminded ofThe Little Prince: “You are responsible forever for what you have named.”   And if you aren’t, then Mom certainly is.

“If we put the tank in the basement where there’s room no one will ever visit her and she’ll be lonely,” I observed. “But when she’s in a tank she gets social again.”

“I know! Put her in my old bathtub.”

Lunchtime for Harriet

At first the idea was so bizarre I rejected it out of hand. Who puts a turtle in a bathtub? Bath tubs are for people, the occasional dog and the passing pig (yes, we once had one of those too). Bath tubs are a place for carp before you make gefilte fish if you actually make gefilte fish. Within minutes though, the suggestion made perfect sense.  The tub was big enough and deep enough. We could raise and lower the water when we needed to. Electrical power was close enough to supply the filter and the heat lamp. AND we could drain it by flipping a lever!  You can’t do THAT with a tank. Oh, bliss! The bathroom wasn’t quite in the midst of daily traffic patterns but we wouldn’t be able to go through the day without passing the room.

So Harriet winters in the bathtub. It’s not exactly the Riviera but it beats being buried in the slimey ooze below the frost line. If I were a turtle and I had a choice I think I know which one I’d go for. She gets pellets, freeze dried shrimp, nova scotia, an occasional pass at my finger, an extra large new floating dock where she spends most of her day time hours, striking poses and basking in the glow of the heat lamp. We transfer some water lettuce from the pond to provide her with the cover she craves. We don’t think we should use the fake plastic plants we put in the first winter. It seems that turtles, like goats, will eat anything. I was still plucking tiny green plastic offerings from the outside pond the following August.

Thanks for the hand, Mom.

Harriet’s now back for her third winter season at what we call Palm Beach. I look forward to our morning visits. We have our special time together. I use a hand net to skim clean the tub. She swims up to see what delicacies are on the daily menu and to get a scratch around the neck or on her legs. I like to think we are communing. In those few moments of quiet we are celebrating US and the fact that we meet a need for each other. I feed her and keep her tank tidy. She gives me a few moments of utter calm and concentration.  All day long I am assaulted with messages and demands, electronic alerts and human requests, the complicated responsibilities of relationships and obligations. In these few moments everything else flies out of my head. It’s all about the simplicity of Harriet. “Enjoy me. Feed me. Pet me. Keep me clean.”  

Harriet swimming in Palm Beach

There’s just one hitch. We understand that turtles live for a really really long time. This means two things. 1) Harriet has retired and gone south before us. 2) Someone (are you reading this, Lindsay? ) is going to have take care of Harriet if she outlives us. She has, after all, become accustomed to a very high standard of care. Summers in Shangri La, winters in Palm Beach. 

Why Rituals Are a Good Thing

Everywhere I go people are still discussing Thanksgiving celebrations. Their turkey was a big hit. They cooked more or less food than they needed. Thumbs up or down on ‘Thrifty Thursday’—the commercial prequel to ‘Black Friday.’ A new pumpkin pie recipe got rave reviews.  Hosts of adult children and all their offspring are groaning as they clean up behind by their visitors. One friend is still looking for her husband’s I Phone.  It was last seen in the same room as her 18 month old grandson. Unfortunately, no amusing You Tube video offers consolation. Another friend thinks that her kitchen may be in good working order by Christmas—just in time for the next onslaught. I’m sure there were family get-togethers  that left folks less inclined to get together with family but I haven’t heard of any—just people enormously grateful for the chance to be with loved ones even with all the chaos and inconvenience that comes with long holiday weekend visits.

Sitting with my friend Karen over a cup of tea, she described her let down over the superb meal she and her family had shared. It surprised her. Preparing it together had been such a great bonding experience!Two days of planning and effort had gone into its execution. Her daughter-in-law-to-be wanted to do her family’s traditional shared gratitude reflections. But Karen didn’t think that would go down so well in a family adverse to public confessionals.  Instead the group sat down at the table, thanked the chefs and demolished the fruits of their collective labor in about 20 minutes flat.  The experience left both women feeling empty. Didn’t hearts and minds need to be fed in addition to tummies and taste buds? Wasn’t there a way to make this day different and more memorable than others? Wasn’t Thanksgiving supposed to mean something special?  I agreed with Karen. It’s discouraging to work so hard on a meal and see it devoured in minutes with no acknowledgement of the unique purpose of the day.  Just as we put time into planning for our food, we need to plan for our meaning. Purpose doesn’t magically materialize at our table any more than the food on our plates. If we leave that part of our celebration to happenstance it likely won’t happen.

At our table, we are accustomed now to the idea that Thanksgiving isn’t really about the meal.  Good food matters but the meal is the symbol of what we have come to celebrate. We have passed through another year safely. We are saving up for another year, storing away memories of our time together. This is when everyone who is able makes a special effort to be there. We stop before we eat to talk about what is special about being Americans. We have ritualized the practice because we don’t trust ourselves to make it happen otherwise.   Sure, we would have a bigger, better meal than usual (and everyone agreed that it was the best yet) but when it was over we’d have nothing more than fuller bellies. A ritual gives structure to our coming together and reminds us to stop and pay attention to this day and time together. As a result, we have years of a compelling tradition that has grown over time and that we associate with the holiday of Thanksgiving. This along with good food is what fills us with gratitude.

We aren’t slaves to a fixed ritual because that would bore everyone, instill thoughtlessness and incite rebellion.  This year we adapted our practice and used “A Memory Harvest” to tell stories about people whom we love who are no longer with us. Children and grandchildren heard about 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd generation Americans who lived life in different ways and taught us lasting life lessons: “Adapt.” “Be kind.”  “Take risks.” “Work hard.” “Be interesting.” “Have family dinners.” “No matter how busy you are there’s always time for play.”

I listened to Karen and Karen listened to me. “I think we’ll try your way next year. I hated getting up from the table and feeling like this was just another meal. We hadn’t created enough to remember.” National holidays are too special to let them pass without passing on the stories of your family and our nation. When you begin to experience the magical connections that appear when you connect the two, the holidays transcend food. They become about all the ways you and your loved ones can celebrate US.

Finding Gratitude in Gratitude Plates

This past week we worked with our partner Art with a Heart in Lakeland Elementary and Middle School, Monteverde Senior Center and Restoration Gardens,  an interim housing site for young homeless adults.  Using the project first developed with CMOM, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM), we helped citizens from 7 to 70+ create  Gratitude Plates  that expressed what they’re thankful for as they approach Thanksgiving.

We hoped that participants would find the activity engaging.  We brought plenty of supplies and gave schoolchildren paper and plastic plates and our adult artists glass plates to decorate.  After introducing the exercise with a short discussion about the meaning of Thanksgiving and our country’s early experience with physical and political survival, participants drew, and pasted, glued and painted, and thoughtfully composed their amazing gratitude creations.

What surprised me was how absorbing the activity was for everyone regardless of age or setting.  A good art activity should be as appealing as a pool on a hot day.  Participants plunged right in.The noise level rose in every space as participants laughed, talked about what they were doing and cheerfully shared supplies and ideas. “You should put the dolphin here.”  “Look! I found a great turkey for you!”  “ How about this color green?” “You know I’m a pink girl!” The concept seemed to hit people where their hearts are and gave them a chance to connect the holiday with a symbolic object that made sense to them: it represented how (we eat) and why (we’re grateful for what we have) we celebrate Thanksgiving .

My assistant Tanya and I also took the project on Friday morning to Baltimore’s Kipp Ujima Village Academy where 100 5^th graders made plates after doing their own version of the Freedom’s Feast Thanksgiving ceremony. There we had the same experience I had at the other sites. An hour just wasn’t enough. Once our artists got involved and committed to the idea it was hard for them to stop. They laid out designs and began to search for the colors, words and embellishments that would best represent their theme. Family was popular at Kipp with family pictures enhanced in thoughtful ways while others were grateful for music, food, friends, teachers, their school, the dream of a career. “I am thankful for a roof over my head” was accompanied by a picture of a nice house with a prominent roof. Another was grateful for “A mother’s power.” 

At Restoration Gardens, Mone̕, a 19 year old resident created a stunning plate and wrote: “I am most thankful for living in the ghettos of Baltimore city because it carried me to struggles and without those struggles I wouldn’t be as strong as I am.” On the front of her plate she added a book. The book, she explained, will tell her story in images and symbols.

 I am about to launch into my three day annual frenzy of Thanksgiving preparations. I have shopping lists that get re-edited, boxes of table decorations and seating plans that go back ten years. Almost everyone  knows their food assignments. It will still be frenetic but everything will get done for our crowd of 25. On Thursday we will sit down to a beautiful meal and a meaningful experience as we do our version of the Try A Slice ceremony and inside of that tuck the Memory Harvest with 7 stories about family members who are no longer with us.  Gratitude Plates will sit on our table and trigger more stories. This is our nation’s story. These are our stories. When else will we tell them? What I am grateful for going into these few days is that we can do this. But I am also grateful for the lessons these talented artists taught me this past week. The children at Kipp and Lakeland, the young adults at Restoration Gardens and the seniors at Monteverde reminded me that it is such a blessing to be able to create, to have a family, to have a roof over our heads, a good school, teachers we love, trials that test and strengthen us, friends we trust and special moments when we can stop and celebrate US. Enjoy your Thanksgiving wherever you are!

Celebrating With Stories This Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away.  And I’m not ready.  It’s not about the meal. Most of us spent a lot of energy and time getting that part right. In our family, we’ve been sharing the feast responsibility for years now. Two to three weeks in advance, I send out the request for volunteers to bring sides, entrees, and dessert. Thanks to my niece, Buffy, we’re using www.perfectpotluck.com, to help us coordinate this year’s collective effort. It’s a big improvement from our traditional group email message and annoying “please remember to include all when you hit send” reminder. Rich’s fried turkey has become our standard, along with Phyllis’ cranberry relish and Kristin’s wild cherry and fennel stuffing and mashed potatoes with garlic. We have a few serious contenders for favorite dessert. The meal is important—so few of us are farmers anymore and we’re celebrating a harvest holiday that’s been around for thousands of years.

That’s the basic message of Thanksgiving: we look back as we’ve survived the past year. We’re filled with gratitude. Then we look forward: we hope to have enough of what we need to survive the coming year. The big meal we love represents our harvest. And we become very attached to our Thanksgiving recipes. The reason makes sense. We come to the table to celebrate that we’ve made it safely through another year. Familiar dishes tell us that we’ve reached our destination. While we’ve changed, the food stays the same.  Like a final lap marker, the smell of our family’s favorite recipe tells us that we crossed the finish line!

But here’s what’s always bothered me. We take hours to prepare the meal, then sit down and devour it like locusts and thirty minutes later people are finished and ready to go watch the football game. As important as the meal is we sometimes forget that food gets eaten, while the memory of our time together is what truly sustains us.  We should feed people’s bodies and their souls. This takes some planning, especially as busy families have less dinnertime conversation experience and guests living in different communities have fewer shared regular interactions. Part of that soul feeding can take the form of a ceremony.

We’ve been doing some version of a Freedom’s Feast ceremony for the past 10 years in our family. We now use the “Try a Slice” variation at our table and adapt it differently each year to make it fresh. As we mark our first decade of Freedom’s Feast inspired holiday celebration, what I can comfortably say is that Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without Freedom’s Feast. Our children have grown up with it. They expect our Thanksgiving to include a really interesting table conversation about what it means to be Americans and why we are thankful for that privilege. Our family represents the range of the political spectrum so we get different ideas and perspectives. The ceremony is the frame. It’s the signal that tells us this is important, a unique day with a special purpose. It says, “Listen up, folks!” And we do.

Time’s running out because I want story-tellers this year. People we love have passed on and we haven’t done a good job of passing on their stories. Their stories are our inheritance, just as America is. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have some of the people who made us who we are at our table?  We’ll use “A Memory Harvest,” a one page ceremony to gather brief stories of those who are no longer with us at our Thanksgiving table. Instead of going around the table and asking everyone to say what they’re thankful for this year, we will use “A Memory Harvest” instead. I’ll ask guests to write what they’re thankful for on little parchment sheets and we’ll post them on a board book for guests to read by the buffet table.

I sent out an email on Saturday night inviting 7 guests to tell a three minute story about a parent, grandparent, or other loved one this Thanksgiving. I sent them the Tips for Storytellers. No one has responded yet. That’s the running out of time part. Everyone is so busy. So I will have to follow up and help a few who may not understand the request. I also have a story I want to tell. I’ve got to find the picture I have in mind, or a toy helicopter. We need to set tables for 23 and figure out the seating. If we leave it to chance, some guests might be ignored, others will just sit with the people they know best, and we miss the opportunity to learn more about people in our own family.

A holiday is what you make it. It can come and go in a flurry of frantic activity. The logistics will always be there. But, if you are willing to take a little more time and think about what you want your family and guests to take away from the table other than full bellies, then help to create the experience you would like them to have. The holiday only comes once a year, but the memories you make together can last forever. I can’t wait to hear the stories people bring this Thanksgiving as we share our harvest meal and celebrate US.

The Q Team Comes to Dinner

"Dr Q” and his team came for dinner at our home this past Friday night. “Q” is short for Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa which is a mouthful. Dr Q, the neurosurgeon who directs the Brain Tumor Surgery program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Center and the Pituitary Surgery Program at the hospital, is a charismatic personality. Even our neurotic border collie, Jake, was charmed by him. It was easy to see why he attracts people of all kinds. He touches people constantly, grips your arm, pats your back, and dispenses hugs without hesitation. Our 14 year old schipperke instantly threw herself at his feet knowing she would get the attention she craves.  He embodies the American dream, having risen from illegal immigrant to star medical practitioner in the most exacting of all medical sciences. Alfredo neither forgets his humble origins nor the fact that many people contributed to his success. He has a grueling work ethic but hasn’t lost his sense of humor. He laughs readily and often—mostly at his own expense. We laughed about the Mexican hairless dog his family adopted through a dog rescue service because his kids didn’t want him to forget his “peeps.” Unfortunately the dog couldn’t forget the climate for which he was bred and refused to go outside during our Baltimore winters. Rescue went out the window and the dog, so ugly he was almost cute, went back to Arizona.

Over the days leading up to the dinner, the invitation list kept growing.  I was struck by his team’s global character. Dr. Q apologized as he added two more guests the day before. I apologized in return. We could only seat sixteen at the same table, but I wondered if he could dig up another nation or two for our mini UN forum? We had Argentina, Mexico, China, Belgium and a roster of names so challenging I would never make it through the evening without a cheat sheet.  Emily, the event coordinator, sent the attendee CV’s and Rich, my partner, and I marveled at the array of talent. We decided that it would be prudent to speak little and listen a lot. Despite demanding operating schedules and lab experiments, everyone arrived on time and we enjoyed four hours together over a Shabbat meal.  We don’t go “out” on Friday nights, so we couldn’t accept the invitation to join their Friday night end of the week ritual when they gather for a meal at the lab. They share important findings and often invite a guest patient to their dinner to keep their work, as Dr. Q. and I discussed, “down to earth and honest.”

When your goal is curing brain cancer, it’s easy to get lost in the clouds. A patient living with ‘the monster’ can quickly bring you back to the ground. On the other hand, so can the memory of a loved one who died of the disease. We were deeply moved to hear how often personal experiences with brain trauma and disease had touched the lives of team members. I won’t pretend to remember or even fully understand all the work that these brilliant young researchers were doing. You can go on Dr Q’s website http://www.doctorqmd.com/ to read all about it. My big takeaway was this: in an era when so many of us have become addicted to the gratification of instant answers and quick results, these young people—equally divided between men and women— have deliberately committed themselves to a goal that is painstakingly slow and undeniably distant. Their work proceeds in miniscule increments that require remarkable discipline, commitment, and skill. “Don’t you ever get bored?” I asked. All heads swiveled to my end of the table. They looked at me as if I had asked, “Is it possible that the earth is flat?” It wasn’t a stupid question—just an inconceivable one. “No!” Pragathi replied,”one small thing leads to another. It opens up.” 

“Like Windows?” 

“Yes, like that.”

Beaming as he surveyed the table, like Vince Lombardi talking about a championship team bearing down on a trophy, Dr Q declared, “What one of them discovers today may lead to a cure 50 years from now.”  I would never want to take on the adversary they are all determined to vanquish, but I am so grateful “the Q team” is committed to waging the battle. They lose patients they come to love and admire almost every day, yet they suit up in rigor and vision to celebrate US, so that one day we won’t have to dread the fight.

The Circus Is Coming!

Going to the circus should be just plain fun. There are clowns and acrobats, a ringmaster, tigers and elephants, trapeze artists, and strongmen. My son, Sam, took us (Rich and me) to see Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus in Boston along with our 4 year old granddaughter, Lauren, and her friend and dad. We reached the Garden after parking 20 blocks away, because every access street was blocked off for the filming of what looked like a disaster movie. (If it wasn’t, it should have been!) This created its own hilarious pre-show spectacle as we rushed past fallen debris in the streets, staged traffic jams with crushed trucks, cars artfully jammed and crunched into each other, alongside the wide-eyed tourists who happened on the mess, clicking away on their cell-phones and cameras. We would have spent more time investigating if we didn’t have a date with the three rings.

We missed the opening promenade, but that didn’t dampen Lauren’s enthusiasm. Although she is already a circus going veteran, the ritual of act openings and closings don’t seem to matter, nor do exceptional feats yet fully register. The acrobat flying through the air, doing a somersault, and landing upright in perfect form on his massive vaulting stick wasn’t a remarkably trained athlete working with a disciplined team—for Lauren, he was a guy in bright colors bouncing around on a stick. Isn’t there a TV commercial like that? “Cool!” The woman balancing her male partner in beautifully choreographed, gravity-defying poses that required exceptional strength and trust wasn’t a slow motion, role-reversed ballet—they were two people acting like pretzel magnets.  “Neat!”  The elephants seemed to have special relationships with their trainers and moved with unexpected grace and precision. Lauren pointed gleefully at the dog rushing about. The tigers seemed far less happy to be there. And we were less happy watching them. Motorcyclists raced inside cages dodging one another with inches to spare bringing the first act to a heart pounding finale.

Elaborate costume changes helped to keep spirits high and to shift our attention from the ancient Egyptian segway riders (didn’t they use to ride in chariots?) to rough and ready cowboys with high stepping cowgirls in short skirts. In fact, that seemed to be the overriding concern of the circus—that the circus itself somehow wouldn’t be enough to hold the attention of its twenty-first century audience. So on top of the wonderfully colorful and joyous costumes, continuous stream of acts and non-stop narration and singing of the huge, black ring-master, they piled on sound—tons of it. A constant soundtrack blasted throughout the arena at decibels guaranteed to promote hearing loss. I finally wrapped my scarf around my head turban style to muffle the noise. I looked like a circus act myself but didn’t care. My ears were ringing. I couldn’t hear Lauren 12” away from me. To accompany the auditory assault, large LCD screens hung above and below the performance space broadcasting jarringly bright images. My eyes ached from the glare.  Meanwhile, in the darkened space, hundreds of flickering LED lights flashed constantly in the dark as tiny patrons clutched their souvenir batons, pendants, and swords and waved them about.  For us, the experience soon moved beyond exhilaration to exhaustion. We were saturated with stimulation. 

Happy in the realm of celebration, we’d been shoved into the land of overload. Joy turned to dismay.  We loved the circus for itself.  Why hadn’t the circus returned our affection?  Sure, not every act was great. But we weren’t that fickle. Besides, a constant stream of awe-inspiring performance might also be overwhelming.  Josephine liked the clowns while we found them barely silly. We thought clowns were funnier when we were kids—without all the fancy sound effects and elaborate storylines. The tightrope walkers were a bit wobbly. The audience didn’t love the skillful trampoline jumpers, but their zany costumes were a distraction.  If the music and the LCD screens were supposed to divert us from what didn’t work or enhance our entertainment experience, the tactic failed. 

Afterwards, we visited Sam’s office which has a great view of the harbor, a yoyo, and a water cooler.  Oddly the day after, Lauren remembered that and the long walk to and from the Garden, but almost nothing about the circus. I can’t help but think that the total sensory overload inside the Garden made it nearly impossible for her to sort through the things she had seen. It all converged into one massive stimulation barrage—the circus that flattened my granddaughter. 

We came to the circus like everyone else to celebrate fun and us. But I learned something else there.  Fun sells itself.  To celebrate US, create the right vista and trust people to appreciate the view for its own virtues.  Even PT Barnum would tell you the memories aren’t as good when you invite folks up for the view and then try to push us over the edge.

Let's Play - Baltimore's Ultimate Block Party

Our series of wet and rainy days that made Baltimore feel more like Seattle or London, and raised our water table 12 ½ inches above normal levels, continued. The sun remained stubbornly hidden behind dense, low-hanging, steel gray clouds. It was cold and miserable with occasional drizzle, definitely not the kind of day you send the kids outside to play in, but that’s exactly what 15,000  Baltimoreans did as they descended on Rash Field to participate in the Ultimate Block Party (UPB) on Sunday, October 2nd. The party was championed by Dr. Susan Magsamen, a Johns Hopkins-based educational entrepreneur, who believes that parents are our children’s first and often most influential teachers. She has dedicated her career to integrating the latest findings in brain science research and educational methodologies into award-winning, innovative, family friendly products that parents and kids like to play with and use. 

Play is essential to learning, the development of imagination, social competencies, and critical thinking skills. So when recent research demonstrated that the time children spend in play had plummeted by eight hours a week over the past two decades, Susan and her colleagues decided to do something about it. The first Ultimate Block Party (www.ultimateblockparty.com) was piloted with a number of institutional partners a year ago in New York’s Central Park. They expected 10 to 20,000 people to show up and participate. The final attendance figure exceeded 45,000. Apparently, families missed play in their lives and wanted to do something about it too.

The idea is simple. Throw a giant outdoor block party with dozens of sponsored activity booths and spaces where children and parents can play together.  Keep the atmosphere relaxed. Include “Play Doctors,” helpers dressed in white lab coats sporting red clown noses, to encourage, instruct, and pass out materials.  Post prominent messages about each activity’s educational value –we always learn as we play. But mostly, make play possible. There was so much play happening that I thought the sun would jump out from behind the clouds to declare “3-2-1, ready or not, here I come!”  

At the clay station, parents were as engrossed as their children in shaping, molding, and coiling.  Families proudly cradled and carried their finished red clay treasures all over Rash Field. We all love what we create. Children and adults made paper airplanes, built blue foam structures on a large artificial beach, played drums with silly abandon, decorated faces, read books, studied zebrafish under microscopes, played in child-sized kitchens, spun hoola hoops, and jumped rope. One grandfather jumped through 10 cycles of the jump rope, gamely smiling and laughing in order to encourage the shy trio of little girls who wanted to jump, but couldn’t quite muster  the courage to join in. They still were hesitant, but they beamed as they watched their grandfather’s crowd-pleasing moves. Everywhere you looked, children and their significant care-givers were laughing and talking to one another. As I strolled around, watching and listening, I realized that something was different about this public gathering. There was no food, so children weren’t jazzed on sugar or asking for snacks or treats, and everyone was truly paying attention to one another. It was rare to see an adult check a phone, text, or even make a phone call. People were simply enjoying being with one another. This is what play does after all.

Play lets us immerse ourselves in the experience we are having. It feels so good we can forget about everything else—even unseasonably cold weather. Families were also able to get new winter coats for their children at the “Operation Warm” booth, which put big smiles on many faces. But, the biggest reason everyone was smiling was play. Attendees got a huge happy dose of it out in the open air with no pressure to perform, only to discover and enjoy. The Ultimate Block Party was a giant celebration of US at a time when we all need reminders about the importance of play and the sheer joy of being US together.

Crossing Distance to Celebrate

Welcome to Celebrate US--stories about how we can celebrate the little and big moments in our lives to create memories that last. Last week, Jews all over the world celebrated our New Year holiday. No, it’s not my purpose here to explain the meaning of the holiday, why we celebrate it in the fall, or why this is the year 5772 in Jewish tradition. If you’d like answers to those questions, please check out the wonderful and easy to use site: www.myjewishlearning.com.  What I will note, is that like many families these days, ours wasn’t together this holiday. It isn’t like “the olden days” as my kids used to say. It isn’t even like half a generation ago when you might expect at least half of the family to live within driving distance of one another.  I am divorced from my children’s father, and my four children, two married with children of their own, live in four cities on two different continents. My siblings and I, unusual even for our generation, all live in Baltimore. In the fourth generation, only one of my father’s ten grandchildren has chosen to live here.  We arrive at every holiday, religious or secular, joyful to be with those present, but also sad that so many of us are inevitably absent.

So I called all four of my children on the afternoon before the holiday began to wish them a good and sweet year. Then I emailed another message with an attachment, a list of ten questions put together by a talented educator to inspire meaningful conversations for their holiday celebrations. At lunch the next day, I shared the list and one of the questions with the family group my father and step-mother were hosting for lunch after services. “If someone were to write a book  about you this year—what do you think would be its message?”  We went around the table and asked each person to add one thing they wished for in the coming year. It was spontaneous, easy, and meaningful. “Health, peace, fun, life, inspiration, family, more time, more peace” and so it went.  Then my six year old grand nephew and I took turns blowing the two ram’s horns (called a shofar) I had brought. This was a source of great amusement for everyone and amazement that we could get any sound whatsoever out of these ancient instruments.

I spoke to my Boston son later that afternoon to learn how his four year old daughter’s synagogue visit had gone.

“Didn’t you get my text last night?” he asked.

“No I didn’t see it.”

“It’s going to be your all time favorite text.”

One of the things about having family all over the place is that we collect texts and emails, digital pictures, and voicemail messages. These are the moments we share and celebrate, some of the most precious memories we now make together.

“Lauren said that ‘Rosh Hashanah is her favorite.’”

“Favorite what?”

“Just her current favorite experience.” Why? She got to eat apples with honey, drink a thimble of wine (she has loved wine has ever since she was an infant which alarms all of us just the teensiest bit), spend special time with “work daddy” (daddy dressed in his work clothes—he is usually gone before she wakes up in the morning), and both parents snuggled in bed with her and read her a bedtime story. What’s not to like for the average four year old—except for the cabernet?

The point was that the day stood out for her. It was special. Not like every other day.  A few things marked it and made it different.  Her parents made for her a memory. At our table in Baltimore, we participated together in naming the things we wanted for our new year. We broke bread with a blessing and blew the horn that gets our attention with its sharp, piercing notes. Halfway across the world, my son Alex with his wife, Natalie and their one  year old son, Roy, gathered with 40 other Jews and their families in Dar Es Salaam to worship and have a meal together—an experience far from home that none of them will ever forget. We also made for ourselves for a memory.  Although we were apart, and the absence of family was keenly felt, in Baltimore, Dar Es Salaam and in Boston, the holiday and its multiple rituals helped us all to connect to a shared tradition, and to find ways to celebrate US.