now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

When I was a young kid, by far, the best toy I had was dented and dinged and in craptastic shape. It was a popcorn can- one of those giant holiday ones that my dad had received as bakshish from a vendor- sans popcorn and filled with legos. It was the great equalizer. It was the toy my dad and I could play without quibbling (the man would not, for love or money, wedge onto a tiny chair and play tea party). It was the toy my guy friends- and I had plenty of little boys as friends- and I could agree on, when the weather was too lousy to be in the pool and we had driven my mother insane with fort building. It was the toy that could let me pretend I was anywhere, could do anything, be any one.

Lego has changed quite a bit since I was a kid- themes and special pieces and licensing and whatnot. For all of my original grumbling, though, that the themed sets didn’t give as much scope for imagination, Sean has pretty much disabused me of that notion (see: General Grievous and his 6-not-4 arms, his unmet need for tea and crumpets, and that being the true cause of his fall to the dark side. I swear to you, I could not make this stuff up if I tried). And so yes, I’m sure a kid could use next year’s new line to pretend to be whatever they want. Sure maybe Kai from Ninjago has a huge backstory too, and surely some kids go off plan.

But.

But but but.

I cannot help but feel shivved in the back by Lego. Seriously, guys? You think that little-girl-wench would have played with Legos more if only they had breasts, hips, stories about how they dream of being a singer in Hollywood while they mop floors at a diner, and have special brick colors in pastels? You think it needs to be a safely named line- Lego Friends- instead of the more adventurous Pirates, Kingdoms, or Ninjago, to compare to similar non-licensed IP lines? Do you really think so little of me as a female?

Maybe. Maybe I was over reacting to this new line. So when the catalog arrived today, I casually walked into Sean’s room and showed him. Absolute confusion washed across his face.
“Those don’t even look like legos. Who would want to play with them?”
“Well, read what it says. Who do you think they’re trying to get to buy them?”
After a minute, utter disgust registered. “Girls. And that’s lame. Because if a girl got that as a set instead of something cool, she’d not like Lego any more. And it’s not fair they treat girls like they’re stupid and can’t play with pirates and Star Wars.”

Dear Lego Company: when an 8 year old boy, who hates all things pink, tells you you’re screwing up your marketing to girls and your core business mission and message, you’re screwing up big time.

It has been quite the year. We’ve had dizzying highs- Sean truly hitting his stride with his posse of friends, the exhibit I worked on for four years finally opening and winning some pretty awesome awards, some research the Lad had worked on getting submitted in a sweet paper, mom’s surgery being a rollicking success and her supposedly fatal disease handled, a trip of a lifetime to Alaska. But we’ve also had some nasty lows. Rough patches at both of our jobs. The Lad’s grandmother died suddenly this summer, my grandfather died 2 weeks ago after being in the hospital since mid-October. It can be all too easy to be mired in the day to day and forget the big picture.

The other day, driving the kid to school, he and I were chatting. We started talking about our holiday donations- his allowance is split between mad money, savings, and charity, and at the end of each year he picks what charity to support. This year he wants to do Child’s Play and Save the Rhinos. The longest part of that conversation was narrowing down the options and explaining that we actually contribute to charity all year long, as he was concerned that charities needed money all year but we were only giving at the holidays. With that debate handled, what, I asked, was he looking forward to most about the winter holidays? His answer stunned me. I expect an 8 year old to be voracious, capitalist, and all about the presents and in second place, the sugar. “Lighting the menorah and eating latkes at Chanukah.” he said. I practically drove off of the road. “Uh, really? Not Christmas morning?” He allowed as how he liked Christmas just fine, but Christmas morning can be a little crazy, and could he please spread out opening his presents a little more so it doesn’t feel so intense, and, he added, “Besides. What I like most is being together and doing stuff together.”

I am thankful I have somehow managed to, so far, not raise a total self-absorbed jerk. The world has plenty of those.

I am thankful that I went to a grad school that ultimately was a horrible fit for me, and didn’t go to Yale which would have suited me much better.

I am thankful I persevered when that guy in grad school told me no way was he dating while in grad school, and if he did he sure as hell wouldn’t date within his department.

I am thankful that I walked away from my first career love.

I am thankful when that tiny company said ‘we want to fly you out here to consult with us for a day. We’ll pay for your travel, and eventually maybe we can contract you, but right now you’d be consulting for free’ I didn’t say ‘no freaking way’ and instead said ‘ok’, against everything everyone in consulting had ever told me.

I am thankful that I didn’t listen to the parenting books that told me not to have the hard conversations just yet.

“What I like most is being together and doing stuff together.”

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone. May you not forget the good stuff.

Don’t you miss Sean and Jerry? All this travel. It’s nice to see places, but all this travel!
It’s ok Grandpa. We have a routine, and Sean’s getting better about it. Besides, this is a great museum project and it’s just to Atlanta. Trust me, I know where every Starbucks in Hartsfield-Jackson is.
That must get expensive! Those fancy coffee drinks!
Yeah well, I usually just get a coffee. If it’s been a rough meeting or I’m really missing the boys, I’ll treat myself to something fancier.

That’s when the Starbucks cards started arriving. “Treat yourself to something on the road. Love, Grandpa”, with his crazily looped handwriting. Every year, for my birthday and Chanukah. Grandpa’s been at my side from coast to coast, north to south, on the airport trams in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta. Every latte order brought a smile to my face. I sent him a photo of me pounding a Starbucks in Hawaii at a conference and the impertinent email came back. “I thought your mother taught you better. You should be drinking something with fruit juice and rum!”

Thursday morning, I told mom I was heading to a Starbucks. She gave me the ‘you are crazy, there is a ‘restaurant’ downstairs here in the hotel’ look, and pointedly looked out the window to the dizzily falling flakes of snow. I ignored her attempt at momming me and not letting me behind the wheel of our rental land yacht, and headed out. If I was going to be hand-shoveling dirt in the snow in some highly proscribed ritual which was not of my brand of belief, this was the least I could do beforehand.

How’d you get the idea, Grandpa?
There’s a Starbucks not too far away. They said they sold gift cards. Seemed like a good idea.

So, employees of the Starbucks at 76th and Good Hope Road, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I apparently stunned you with an order for a 4 shot peppermint mocha, which when pressed I had once told Grandpa was my ultimate winter travel comfort drink. I’m sorry I started to cry when you asked if I’d be paying with a Starbucks card. I’m sorry the funny, sweet 98 year old man won’t be buying gift cards from you again. But thank you for treating the sniveling wreck of a woman with dignity.

Okay kiddo! Love you! Give my love to Jerry and Sean! Don’t drink too much coffee!
“I don’t think there is such a thing as too much coffee, grandpa. Love you too.”

We moved here 9 years ago, bereft at leaving our fair city. Within months we were welcomed into the foodie community. It kind of went beyond embracing and took on a borg-like quality. 40 Sardines was our home-away-from-home, due in no small part not only to Debbie Gold and Michael Smith’s cooking and hospitality, but also the good natured, hard working guy in the kitchen who towered over everyone else. One time, when I had to get the baby out of the house due to the exterminator being there, I swung by 40 for lunch. Everything went swimmingly until Jamie kicked on the cappuccino maker near us, and the sound freaked out Sean. Every server took a turn at trying to calm him, but it wasn’t until ‘Big Country’ John himself swaggered out from the kitchen, swooped up Sean, and started getting downright silly with him that the wailing stopped.

We were sad when he left 40, but thrilled he took over at Starker’s Reserve- a venerable grand dame on the dining scene here. And we were even more thrilled when he bought out the place. Barely 30, the chef-owner of a great place. Active in charity, always a spine-cracking hug, always asking how things were and meaning it sincerely. Now at 35, opening a second place, well ensconced in the young leadership of the KC culinary scene. We did dorky dances in the rain at Brookside and compared tomato growing tricks. He cajoled Sean into eating raw veggies other than sugar snaps straight from my market basket. We commiserated over the cost of sheep’s milk yogurt. John didn’t bat an eye when we started bringing Sean in for lunches to teach him white-tablecloth restaurant manners, instead loudly greeting us and making it clear to the disapproving lunchtime businessmen that oh no, he wanted us there. He got misty-eyed when he found out Sean’s name for him was ‘Little John’, because that, it turns out, was a pet family name for him. When we had the opportunity to swipe tickets to Green Dirt Farms dinners this summer, there was no question: we were going to John’s, period. My last conversation with him, we talked about carnitas and cocktails, about kids’ books and table manners, about new year’s and biscuit bars and infusions and melt-your-eyeballs vodka and the plaza art fair and how mmmmm girl, fuck the traffic, live a little and c’mon down, I’ll take care of you.

I don’t think I ever outright said how vital he was to KC becoming our home, and now I never can. I cannot bring myself to say ‘be at peace’ to you, John, because peace is not how I picture you. You laughed too big and lived too loud for that. You are likely dumping out vats of red crawfish on newspaper strewn tables in heaven. You are drinking like a mofo and singing along to your favorite band. I picture you happy, surrounded by an eternal harvest of heirlooms and rarities.

I miss you so hard, and it’s only been a few hours.

Maybe a meme will kickstart me. Courtesy of R. Comment and I’ll hit you with 5 questions of your own.

1. What’s your favorite thing about parenting a third-grader?
The fact that he can get himself up, get dressed and ready, and snag himself breakfast if need be. Also, actually being able to hold an intelligent conversation with the kid is pretty awesome too. It sounds trite, but parenting has taken a decisive veer out of ‘reactive physical caretaking’ and that is so much less exhausting.

2. If you could host a dinner party with any five people — real or fictional — as guests, who would you invite?

Jane Austen. Terry Tempest Williams. Charles Darwin. Murasaki Shikibu. Graham Elliott Bowles.

3. …and what would the menu be?

I know GE, and I would beg and plead with him to bring two things: his truffle-buttered popcorn and his foielipops. The concept of Darwin and Austen snacking on foie gras rolled in pop rocks amuses me greatly.

Other than that, it kind of depends on the season. How’s that for a dodge? But if it’s cold, dark winter, carmelized onion blue cheese and sage free form tarts, wine and port braised short ribs over mashed potatoes with rainbow chard, a big ballsy red wine, plenty of crunchy bread, and bittersweet chocolate pudding for dessert.

4. What do you hope you will have done or experienced by the time you’re sixty?
Gone to Hawaii as a family and have NOTHING BAD HAPPEN, OH MY GOD (the last two trips were business and separate and all hell broke loose each time), run a marathon, set foot on the Galapagos, cruised the Viking path, finally worked a theme park project from concept to opening, witnessed a sane and rational woman become president of the united states, raised a healthy and reasonably successful kid.

5. What are your favorite scents, and what do they evoke for you?
Cofffffeeeeeee. It’s the stuff of life. Burt’s Bees baby wash is still the only body wash and shampoo Sean can still reliably use without rashing out, so that smell will always equal kid to me. Lilacs=that dead week at Williams in late spring/early summer. Gin and Tonics with loads of lime equal hot nights on a rickety balcony in Chicago with friends.

Today at Old Navy, kid started singing along to Dynamite. When I asked where the heck he’d learned that, he said school. When I said then I’d failed as a parent, he asked how. “Because my job is to protect you from things, like bad people, horrible pop music, and the lousy writing in Twilight.”

The cashier high fived me.

Recognize this?

I went absolutely nowhere

That’s a ‘Macintosh Portable’, released in the fall of 1989. My dad had one, because he was an absolute weenie for technology. From what I understand, this technological marvel was voted the 17th worst tech product of all time, but Dad was undeterred, and his love of Apple ran true and deep, and he was the very definition of ‘early adopter’. When I was 5 we got an Apple II+ with a serial number until 1000. To this day all I have to do is hum a few bars of ‘Turkey in the Straw’ and my mom will start singing along in a little ‘beep beep beep’ and then yell ‘goddamnit!’ when she realizes I have gotten her to do so.

2MB Ram, 40MB hard drive, oh yeah baby

And this is the PowerBook 170, which came out in the fall of 1991. That would be the fall my dad landed in the hospital, as a cascade of, in today’s parlance, FAIL proceeded to wreak havoc on his body. We went in before Halloween with a hurt back from a fall; he got out 2 days before I got home for Winter Break, the nascent staph infection it turned out he’d come in with having his the wound site in his spine and the valves of his heart, his kidneys having failed from medications coupled with his diabetes, and a congestive heart failure or three thrown in for good measure.

So when my husband regarded me askance when I announced my plan to actually stand in line for the iPad2, I felt it was my heritage to do so. After all. I’m the daughter of the man who from his hospital bed- in the days before everyone and their brother having high speed internet access and wireless in the hospital- managed to score himself a damn PowerBook 170. You know, while he was being listed for a heart transplant.

Tonight, dad, on the anniversary of your death, I salute you with the newest Apple shiny.

Tonight, for reasons that don’t merit explanation, we found ourselves explaining the concept of life insurance to the kid. And while he’s totally cool with car insurance, life insurance- and thus, the possibility of, you know, SOMEONE DYING- wigged him out. To the extent that he stuck his fingers in his ears and began to sing when we used ourselves as examples. “Truffle!” he yelped, throwing his pet chocolate oranda goldfish under the proverbial bus. “Do it with Truffle!” The Lad and I eyeballed one another and I began gamely.

“So Mister Truffle, who works as, uh, a seaweed harvester, and his wife Ms. Truffle and their son, er, Chip.” I was quickly corrected that it’s ‘Small Truffle’ and ‘Baby Truffle’ and there was a very pointed, “Because THEY have 2 kids…” He realized the error of his ways when Truffle died, leaving both the workplace obtained life insurance and the private life insurance to his wife and kids. This allowed Ms Truffle to either pay off or set aside part of the money and pay for the mortgage on their fabulous, multi-bedroom fishtank because she might want to continue to get the mortgage related tax break, a fact which I forged on ahead with despite 1. my child really does not need to understand fucking tax law at the age of 7 and 2. the fact that he was wailing, “Truuuuuffflllllle!” as he realized we were now talking about his pet being dead and this was mighty distressing even in the face of $750,000 of mythical life insurance money. We explained that Ms Truffle could put money aside for college, and invest the rest, using the earnings or interest to help supplement her income since Truffle would no longer be bringing home a paycheck from Seaweed Harvesters Ltd. (cue more sniffling). This sort of stuff, we said, while hard to talk about, was a really important part of being a parent- planning for the possibility of unpleasant things in an effort to take care of your loved ones, and we take it very seriously so that the kid never need worry.

Dinner conversation rolled onto other things. Like Warcraft. And belt tests. Like you do. The kid seemed to be suffering no ill effects from our ‘my god, we might as well be CPAs this is so soul sucking’ dinner time conversation.

Until he informed me at bedtime that “wow mom, I had no idea being a parent sucked like that.”

It seems really shallow to be foot stompy about little details at the kid’s school (all is well: rough transition when his teacher had her baby early, and they abruptly had a very experienced but very stylistically different sub) when New Zealand and Japan are, to use the technical term, fucked.

Downside of technology infiltration: kid does not realize ‘tsunami warning for US’ does not mean ‘Alien invasion movie-like walls of water moving halfway across the country’ and instead means ‘Hawaii, CA, OR, WA, watch out.

I would really like to know what genius at Hall’s feels a DJ during the lunch hour was an awesome idea. Because let me tell you, explaining to my *mumblemumble* year old mother that no, no he’s not mashing up a nice girl singing with that yelly rap star, it’s Eminem featuring Rihanna in ‘Love the Way You Lie’ and yes, yes they are blasting a song about domestic violence while ladies who lunch are attempting to browse for ridonkulously expensive and ugly shoes (peep toe booties: not okay in any universe) was oceans of fun.

Shout out to the DJ: nice touch then spinning the Everly Brothers in an effort to reach out to the older shoppers and impeccably dressed salespeople. Please note my mom and I did actually locate the breaker boxes that your gear ran from. Persist in your volume issues and we won’t be afraid to use this knowledge.