Langer Loksh

Father's Day, Thorndike Pond

It is way too hot to blog, or to do anything else at all, except maybe jump into Thorndike Pond.

Good Enough

Today we went to our town lake for the first time this season. We went late in the day and we didn't have to pay. It was sunny and a little cool, and the beach wasn't too crowded. I felt like I was watching a tennis match--I had to keep turning my head to make sure neither kid drowned. Charlie had so much fun patting the sand and water, and Summer managed to spend almost the whole time in the lake without a single drop of water touching a single hair on her head. I couldn't take pictures because I couldn't stop watching them long enough to get my camera out, so I'll describe them. Charlie was wearing a swim diaper and hand-me-down trunks that served no purpose other than making an amusing pfluffing sound every time he fell on his tush in the sand. Summer wore her Tinkerbell suit and was so excited for the other kids to notice her. No one did--they were too busy pretending to be doggies and babies in the water and playing some form of basketball with a fishing net and a tennis ball.

I'm hoping Summer will soon start to realize that being and doing are more important than having, but there's just so much cute stuff out there for kids these days, I really can't blame her for getting excited about all of it. I remember two years ago I was totally annoyed that I couldn't find her a beach chair without a character on it; I settled for Dora. The Dora chair broke last year and this year I found her one with Barbie in a midriff-baring top. I was sort of horrified with myself for buying it, but I know she is going to be so excited when she sees it. It's just too hard to be the kind of parent I thought I wanted to be--too hard, and not nearly fun enough.

My wonderful friend Alissa is having a fourth birthday party for her daughter Sylvia and the invitation says, "In lieu of a gift please consider joining us in making a donation to The Smile Train." Now if anyone should be soliciting donations to help kids with craniofacial birth defects, it should be moi, non? Yet it would never even occur to me to explain to my four-year-old that she really doesn't need that Sleeping Beauty dress-up dress because there's a child in Colombia who needs surgery.

I'll try to do better, but jeez, I'm just not that good.

Charlie's Tab

Bonita knocked her ceramic water and food bowls off the buffet where I put them to keep them away from Charlie; they smashed. I put them on Charlie's tab. After the Waterford Crystal Incident, all of our china and crystal sat on our kitchen table for a week and a half. I couldn't decide what to do. I ordered cabinet locks, but in the meantime, I put a boombox in front of the cabinet to see if barricading it would help. Charlie still opened the door, only this time he opened it into the boom box and put a gouge in the solid cherry.

The cabinet locks arrived, and I was planning to put them on today, but when Charlie and I got home from his Early Intervention playgroup, I found that Mary had crammed all of the china and crystal into the top, glass-fronted part of the cabinet. The only things she couldn't fit up there were the super cool pottery bowls and mugs with goose heads for handles. I've put them in the kitchen with our other bowls and mugs so we can actually enjoy using them. That's about all I can come up with for a positive spin on the Charlie smashfest! Ice cream tastes better out of bowls with goose head handles.

No Stopping Mary Pat

On Sunday we went to see Jim's cousin Mary Pat Gleason in her one-woman show, Stopping Traffic. You have definitely seen Mary Pat in something before--she has guested on every television show from Mama's Family to Desperate Housewives, and she's been in lots of movies including Traffic and The Crucible. The best is when we don't know she's in something, like when she swirled across the screen in Bruce Almighty and announced, "I lost 40 pounds on the Krispy Kreme diet!" and Jeff and I simultaneously shouted "Mary Pat!" as if we expected her to turn around and wave at us down there in the stadium seats. (As I write this, I am astounded that we ever found the time to see a movie like Bruce Almighty, and more astounded to discover that Bruce Almighty was released in 2003, which means we already had a kid, so somebody must have babysat for us to go see Bruce Almighty. Astounding.)

In addition to being the hardest working actress in Hollywood and a really generous, open-hearted, hilarious person, Mary Pat has bipolar disease, which we sort of knew because she crashed at Jeff's grandparents' house when she had an episode while filming The Crucible, but we didn't ever really talk about it. In Stopping Traffic she recreates her manic episodes, which caused her to believe that she could stop traffic with her mind, that she was a magic healer named Glasson, that she was Maria from West Side Story, that she was Maria from The Sound of Music, and that Nick Nolte had lights in his eyes and was bringing her a special crystal ball. That last one doesn't sound too far out, since she did work with Nick Nolte in Lorenzo's Oil and he seems like a special-crystal-ball kind of guy, from what I read in the celeb rags. "Right now you're thinking about renting Lorenzo's Oil to see if I look mentally ill, right?" Mary Pat asks the audience. "Go ahead--I did."

Stopping Traffic is the theatrical expression of a project she's been working on for 17 years: helping people with bipolar disease fight employment discrimination. She's specifically concerned with journeyman actors like herself, but her message applies across professions. It resonates on many levels, too; in the talkback after the show, an old lady in the audience recalled having to sign, as a condition of employment, a statement swearing that she would not become pregnant. It resonated with me too. "I've been told your wound is your gift," Mary Pat says in her show. "I believe bipolar disorder is my gift. But I have to see it that way. Otherwise, your wound is just a wound." I choose to see Charlie, though he is slightly wounded, as the best gift I ever got.

The reviewers liked it:

NY Times Review: "If an actress is going to share the story of her insanity, Ms. Gleason in her hearty one-woman show, 'Stopping Traffic,' has found the way to do it."

AP Review: "Gleason, a bold, brash woman with an intuitive comedic flair, is a sturdy Minnesota gal, Irish-Catholic, whose family was always telling her to shut-up. Fortunately, she never did."

We in Mary Pat's family are lucky enough to be treated to her stories off stage as well. At brunch before the show, I told Mary Pat about our Dustin Hoffman sighting. Mary Pat countered with an Isabella Rossellini sighting. Mary Pat was on the subway recently when Isabella Rossellini got on with a seeing-eye dog and sat down next to her. Mary Pat had to ask her why she had the dog, and Isabella said she trains them. But she feels so bad when they fail the final exam that she has to keep them. She already has three living in her apartment. "Thees one is good," she told Mary Pat. The dog poked its head out and licked another passenger's shoe. "Well, that was not so good, but really, she is veddy veddy good," Isabella said.

Stopping Traffic runs through June 25 at the Vineyard Theatre just outside of Union Square; if you're in New York, go see it.

Once Again, The Circle of Smiles Post

The End of an Era

On Saturday in New Jersey we took the kids to Syd's for grilled hot dogs. Here are Summer and Uncle Joe enjoying their kookamongas (grape drink with lemon slices). Syd's is a landmark that, like my dad, my temple, and lots of other restaurants, moved up from Newark.

In the same shopping plaza as Syd's are two other institutions: Tabatchnick, a family-owned Jewish deli born in Newark in 1895, and Sonny Amster's bakery, which has the best rye bread in the world, rye bread I can only dream about between my visits to New Jersey and my mom's visits here (because she always brings me a sliced loaf of Russian rye).

In a few weeks, Tabatchnick and Sonny Amster's will be gone forever. The people who own the plaza are booting them out to make room for a Staples. A chain store. A century-old family tradition, and the best rye bread in the world, destroyed, to make room for things you can buy anywhere.

We visited both stores after our hot dogs (we didn't eat at Tabatchnick because without teeth, Charlie couldn't do much with a pastrami sandwich and a pickle). Here are some pictures from the bakery. I find the old bakery-box string dispenser to be a thing of beauty, and I like the handwritten sign from Sonny telling the "girls" to mark the big bills.

Here are some pictures from Tabatchnick. The deli men smiled for me, but they spoke about the store closing with palpable melancholy. "It's terrible," we said. "Call the landlord," they said.

I felt sad when our little neighborhood video store here in Massachusetts closed, but this is different. We've already lost Grunning's, where I sat with my mom and licked the world's best hot fudge sauce off a long-handled spoon, and Don's, where I sat with my dad and poured imitation maple syrup over a three-inch thick slab of deep-fried French toast like nothing else I've ever encountered. The gustatory portion of my childhood is receding. For now, we still have Syd's, as well as Bagels-4-U, which is owned by Sonny Amster and which makes the best bagels in the world--no lie, no exaggeration, no chauvinism.

All I can do, I guess, is make sure my kids make the same kinds of memories, even if the places aren't the same.

Oh man, seriously, what am I going to do without that rye bread?

Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific

For the first few years of her life, Summer didn't take to my mom. She wouldn't let my mom read her a bedtime story, tie her shoes, hold her hand, buckle her car seat, unbuckle her car seat, or anything else, at all, ever. My mom, who had been saving baby clothes both blue and pink in a big box for years; who had told me on the phone moments after I gave birth that "girls hold the family together"; who came and made me sandwiches and slept in our not-air conditioned house when early baby Summer brought a hot, early summer; and who sent Halloween cards and Thanksgiving cards and Valentine's Day cards and postcards; felt her heart was breaking. I, of course, felt guilty.

Sarah speculated that it was because my mom was too much like me and this confused Summer. Pop wondered if it was because Summer was threatened by my closeness to my mom. Most people said it was because they didn't see each other often enough, since we live a few hundred miles apart. I thought that when Summer was older she would begin to see Grandma as the most exciting and fun person, which is what I thought about my mother's mother.

It took three years, a baby brother, and a series of Disney Princess storybooks offered at my mother's grocery store, but it's finally happened. On Friday night as I drove through Worcester on my way to New Jersey, Summer said "Just over that hill is New Jersey, I can see it already!" I told her she must have exceptional eyesight because New Jersey was still hundreds of miles away. "I do have good eyesight, and you know what else," she said, "I can almost smell Grandma's hair!"

That sweetness was worth the wait.

Excavator

Charlie digs in the dirt in our rubber tree plant and gets soil all over the end table where I had placed it up off the floor in a lame attempt to keep it away from Charlie. Charlie, who regularly climbs on top of tables that are taller than that end table, and is able to get down without falling, I might add. Tonight when Charlie got into the plant I picked him up and scolded him. He rewarded me with a huge smile. I tried so hard not to smile back because I thought Jeff would disapprove of me for sending mixed messages. I sneaked a look at Jeff. He was covering his mouth with his hand, desperately stuffing his laugh back down. We are so screwed.

Here's Charlie in the cat napper. He likes to store snacks in it for later. Which really couldn't be grosser.

Two Days Ago

This is how sunny it was.

Looking Good

It's so much fun to share a belly laugh with Summer. Tonight we laughed when Charlie casually crawled through our blanket fort on his way across the living room. It was kind of like we had a dog all of a sudden. Sometimes Summer laughs just because I'm laughing; it's even better when she gets it.

We have a Little Golden Book version of 101 Dalmatians. On the last page, Anita doesn't look like her demure self. She looks like she's wearing too much makeup and her hair is piled too high. A few weeks ago I told Summer I thought Anita looked... "Va va va VOOM!" We cracked up over that, and we both had to say "va va va VOOM!" about a dozen times before we could move on.

When I came home the other day with my hair cut and highlighted, Summer said "Mommy, you look... va va va VOOM!"