Z

Detective Lincoln at the theater

Writer/producer/actor in The Mystery of the Million Dollar Mugwump at the Depot Theater. 

fighting over Rosa Parks

These twins play. They also fight. Today they were outside in unseasonably warm weather doing both. I knew that the graphic biography we'd read last night about the life and grit of Rosa Parks had interested them, but still it surprised me when I heard the screaming and yelling drifting through the open back door:

"I ROSA PARKS.... NO. I ROSA PARKS!...NO YOU NOT! I ROSA PARKS!... NO! YOU NOT ROSA PARKS. YOU CAN'T BE ROSA PARKS! Ahhhhhhya ROSA PAAAAAARKS!!!" 

I looked outside to see that they had set up the school bus tent with a small stepladder inside and were fighting over which of them got to stand at the top and wave a stick in the air and declare their identification with the admired activist. At the moment I took this in, Orson was atop the ladder doing a very good impression of Ms. Parks' stubborn refusal to budge from her seat and Zephyr was trying her best to push him off. It was a very serious situation to them, and they seemed puzzled by my laughter as I intervened to avert injury. In the aftermath, as they settled down and resumed taking turns practicing stubborn boldness on the coveted perch, I sat on the grass and shot this briefly harmonious photograph. 

I can see that these two white, comfortable and young children don't understand the complexities of race and the civil rights movement at this age. Absent any but the most vague sense of its deep social/cultural/economic histories, racial difference is largely just optics to them. Children's books that simplify these complex topics are only ever comprehended against the backdrop of their very limited experience in the world, and it is hard enough right now to get them to fully grasp the concept of tomorrow let alone a construct like race.  But it occurs to me as I watch them play that these two really are at a perfect age to grasp the basic principals of Parks' activism.  The twins are already scarily adept at  fighting for their rights and comprehending wrongs. Their sense of fairness is so honed it often drives me nuts, as does their staunch refusal to follow any rules they deem insensible. Indeed, their truly unadulterated grasp of our common humanity seems the perfect foundation for understanding the crime of oppression. As I watch this made-up game I see two people honing skills that hopefully will help them better participate in the wide world their brains are steadily and increasingly taking in.

lunch date

Stellar teacher conferences, half day, lovely spring weather, local voting, special lunch, just Lincoln, with both of his proud parents who feel very grateful for days like this.

"wacky outfit" day

Today was wacky outfit day at preschool. Orson stated that he would wear the orange fairy skirt and wings. Zephyr  wanted to dress up like this.  I'm holding on fondly to these last years before this free range gender utopia starts to be complicated by all manner of normative pressures. It's good to be a kid. 

Happy Birthday b/Dad

comrades

Interacting

with contemporary art. Crouching under the Bourgeois spider; offering a counterpoint to this familiar representation of maternal ambivalence. Rolling about on a grey upholstered bench in a room full of etherial Agnes Martin work. They want to touch everything. They try to touch everything. The do not touch everything, to the relief of dozens of black-clad gallery attendants.  In this context it seems very strange, how nearly all of these objects strongly invite the very thing that the institutions that elevate them strictly prohibit. On the one hand I strongly support these prohibitions. I'd like these works to endure for others to enjoy. And John and I diligently curb the curious and destructive fingers of our three gleeful children. Except the one time Zephyr breaks free and runs smack into Untitled, c. 1959. Maybe on purpose.  And I'm horrified. And I angrily drag her out of there. And I think about the immense contempt we must invoke in museum staff--we desperate people who bring our children here. There must be so many meetings about what to do with us. (Besides, of course, dip into our wallets.) And yet--it seems a shame somehow. I wish there was a room of aging Sol Lewitt wall drawings smeared in grubby fingerprints.  A warehouse of Bourgeois sculptures bent and twisted and fully altered by little climbing arms and legs. Warhols you could stomp on. I think about the contrast between how I used to experience Untitled  c. 1959 and how I experienced it today. It's absurd. But we are drawn here now, to this museum, on a regular basis, by a portico full of Serra's torqued ellipses in which minds and senses, young and old, can run and delight and get lost.  

Thinkers.

on delaying

7AM snowing lightly, one school's start time delayed, morning plan disrupted. There was a beat, and I had a thought about just dragging Linc along on my previously scheduled commitments after I dropped the twins at preschool.  Another beat.  Linc, excitedly: "Mama the last time it was just you and me was on Halloween!" A third beat in which I saw his swollen newborn eyes taking in the strange world around him and felt an immense sense of my life rushing past. Now, every plan for this day fading, tepid and unimportant.  I stop on the way home and buy him a lollipop and we return to the kitchen table to play his game of choice--Stratego--until the ice melted.  Brian Lehrer was on the radio talking about the debate last night and Lincoln had a million questions about a million details of an analysis I had thought was over his head. We talked about Trump and political parties and  Clinton and how primaries work and who might become our next president and when he'd be able to vote too. His miner blew through a few bombs and captured my flag just before it was time to leave. And we donned our winter coats and walked the few blocks to school with snow blowing softly on our cheeks. Just the two of us.