PS 29....Summer is Here!

    Not only is it muggy, and your clothes cling to you, the air feels sticky, you want to jump in a pool and tear your blouse off, but the kids are almost out of school!
    These feelings are ancient-summertime, summertime, summertime.... I always get a little sad on Sunday night because that means Mondays coming and school.  But I am not in school, the girls aren't in school, but still, everyone else in Cobble Hill is in school!  And PS 29 is where they all gather at 2:50 to pick up the children.  I said to Sidney, who was at school to pick up her children, that it was mostly mothers who were picking up the children...
    "Go to the private school-that's where all the nannies are"Sidney said.
  There's a Montessori school on Court that is 30,000 a year...that's after taxes!
    SO everyone is trying to move into Cobble Hill to get their children into PS 29!  That's one of the reasons the rents have sky rocketed.
     At the doctors today they said that the girls, Giggy and Tess, are in the 95% in terms of head size.  Because they are twins, and don't always have a lot of room in the womb, their heads may get fuild inside them...that they have to watch them at 9 and 12 months.  Well, I think they are just fine.  Of course Jordan worried about this and do they both recognize their names, can they pretend to talk, etc.  The worries never, ever, end.
    But Tss is climbing all over, crawling and Gigi is getting up on all fours and rocking.... We now have a huge pen in the loft for the girls to stay in with this matt with numbers, etc on it.  The apartment looks like a nursery!

Oh the body and aging!

    I actually thought it wouldn't happen to me, my body would never give out!  At least not until my 80's.  Four years ago, right around the time of my eldest sons death I noticed a tremor in my right thigh and then a small one on my lip.  My partner had been saying I walked like a zombie.  I said it was because I was in pain.  I'd had a lot of hip and back pain.  Then my daughter-in-law said I didn't swing my arms when I walked. So what, I thought.  But when I looked up tremors Parkinsons came up.  I couldn't believe it.  I was sure it was all those years of remodeling houses and the paint remover I'd used.
  It took 6 months for the doctor at Kaiser to give me medication-I worked hard to look normal.  Like everyone else I read all about it and had investigated stem cell work in Germany.  It's since then been disbanded.
   It's hard to believe I have it. I expect my  body to function and when it doesn't its quite frustrating.
   When I was in my mid forties I feel off the deck and fractured my back. I'd healed from it just fine.  I'd also taken Fosamax for a number of years and stopped it when they said people's jaws were locking.  Then one night we skidded going home.  It was raining, and in order to avoid oncoming traffic our car went up the curb.  I was holding our dog andtried to protect er.  WHen it was over I'd fractured my back on top of an old fracture.  I didn't find this out until I insisted on a MRI of my lumbar spine, Kaiser (no longer with them but where the ambulance went) missed looking at my lumbar spine.  It took 2 weeks to get an MRI that revealed what was going on in my body.  And two vertebrae popped out.  I thought they'd put themb back in place but the consensus was to leave them.  It's driven me nuts.  I've now learned that's what dowagers get!  And I've heard the word Osteoporasis, taken the drug Forteo, and realized I'd not been taking proper care of my bones.  Like Parkinson's, this wasn't something I could spontaneously heal.  It was a mess because with my back out, my spine was weakened.  I can't pick up the twins, and a really heavy bag of groceries is tough. I thought with the milk I had every day, and the walking and yoga I did, I was fine.  Apparently not.
    So aging.  The body doth age, unfortunately, and even for the baby boomers.

Life is a strange repetition!

     Life is strange.  I just heard from a friend of my childhood-Peggy, who I trick or treated with when I was 10!  I remember one year I was a cigarette box, I can't recall what Peggy was,  and we went back to her house and her mom was there smoking a cigarette.  I remember her mom in the kitchen and how we'd come in and she'd listen to us.  It's strange having these memories from so long ago.  We both went to Catholic grade school and high school together, Nerinx Hall in St. Louis, Mo.  Now we are grandmothers!
Also our first children were born at the same year, one day apart, same month.  She breast fed a lot longer than I did.
    It's funny because we moved to Glendale, Mo., when I was 9 or 10.  It is in St. Louis, Mo., the gateway to the west and home of the "arch".  There were 2 golf courses just a half block and 3 blocks from our house.  I would run down to the golf course in the summer at night time, and just walk around it.  I thought of the golf course as my own private back yard even though we didn't belong.  And I remember ice skating, and sled riding on the golf courses. 
     I think it was high school, one of the "cool" girls from grade school, Mary Queen of Peace, was named Kathy L.  One Sunday at Mass I saw her and she was pregnant.  I guess she dropped out of high school for the time being, and I'd see her at Mass with her family as her pregnancy grew.  She was about 15 or 16.  Then you didn't abort babies, you'd give them up for adoption.  But she was so young and it was so strange to see her pregnant.  Somehow I got the lesson that you could be very cool, from a cool family, and strange things can happen to you.
    Now, here in Cobble Hill, we have every kind of combination.  At dance class the other day I saw 3 triplets, girls, and their nanny informed me that the parents were two "gay" men!  That must be wild I thought, two guys and 3 girls in puberty!  Another young mother I met, has two boys, 3 and five, with her gay partner.  It seems PS 29 has every kind of combination.
   

The Nannies Compare Notes

   On Mondays and Wednesdays we have two nannies and it's interesting to watch them interact with one another.  Josephine, from St. Luci, and Samantha from Jamaica traded off today.  Josephine was going, Samantha was coming.  Jordan had tried to get Josephine to be her full time nanny, but she still wants to work for the three different families she has over the years.  It's strange...because its a lot of traveling and peacemeal days, half a day in NY, half a day in Brooklyn.  Josephine was not ready to leave her families even though for two of them the kids are grown and she's cleaning their houses.
   I could see today as Samantha and Josephine compared notes, that they were doing whatever emloyees will do when they get together-talk about their holidays, their jobs, what they're doing.  It reminded me of two ladies at a sewing circle. 
    Samantha, who is always well dressed when she arrives, said she'd had a great weekend and not gotten to bed until 6am.  She looked happy.  She also said she was going to Atlanta this weekend with her husband and children.
    Then somehow the talk meandered around to the girls.  Samantha said she thought they looked alike.  She also said that she "burps" Gigi right after 5 ounces and that way she doesn't throw up.  Josephine nodded that she did the same thing.
     I mentioned how we'd met these two twins over the weekend who lived in the neighborhood.  They were having a book and lemonade sale and we found out the boy and girl were twins.  I said they didn't look alike at all-the girl looked a couple of years older than the boy and she was a completely different body type.  
   I mentioned how Nancy, a mother of another set of twins, said that her girls traded positions-one would be fussy and the other one easy.  And then they would switch back. Apparently that is a trait.
   Josephine said she knew the twins I was referring to, that they were in school with the girl she watches.  They went to PS29, the neighborhood school all the families want.  That's why the rents have risen 25% in the last 7 months!
   Josephine said she needed to get going-picking the girls up at school, and she said her goodbyes.
    Samatha got "undressed".  When she nannies she takes her wig off, and there is her short braided hair, she wears old hospital socks, warm up pants and a top.  The other day she was so hot she was in her bra for a few minutes.  I told her you wouldn't recognize her from seeing her on the street.  We are a 3rd floor walk up in a Brownstone and we rarely get visitors.
   It's a funny world! 

Letting go of the big House on Warren and Twins at the Park!

     Today a friend of Sidney's, Veronica, is moving out of her big house in Cobble Hill!  Sidney calls to ask me if I want to go see a "club chair" Veronica is giving away!
     And she has mor stuff, Sidney says.  Being the curious "collector", I jump out of the chair and rush down there.  Outside the men are sweating in the hot, humid summer with boxes and furniture all over the sidewalk.  I go inside to see Veronica on the phone, a mover with a brush and a can of paint in his hand trying to see if it is the right color for the hallway nicks and chips.
    How do I remember moving out of these houses!  We had a four story house in San Franscisco with double views of the city and bay we left in 84.  It was simply too much money and when I refused to move back to NY, (the company would buy the house if we couldn't sell it), we had to put it up for sale.  It was one of those huge 4 story houses in Pacific Heights that had incredible views.  All the kids were in private school and it was costing a fortune. I even had an "estate sale" though no one died!
    I looked at the chair Veronica was giving away, and told her I was sorry she had to leave the house.
   "Oh, don't be" she said.  "I'm happy!"
    And then it hit me-it's that time of life, late forties, fifties, and you find yourself managing these huge houses, all so that you can look like a family "full of life!"  But they are a pain in the "ass" in many ways.
    And while Veronica's house sold for 3.5 millions, sight unseen, people waiting outside for the "fantasy life," it all comes at a price.  Seeing the inside of her brownstone with its ridiculously high stairs, and long narrow rooms, it had long since lost its appeal to me.  Veronica's children were teenagers getting ready for their own lives.  The world was in a giant platonic shift!
    Meanwhile the nanny and I took Tess and Gigi to Cobble Hill Park, spread out a sheet and watched the girls crawl on it.  Well, Tess had gone from hoping to crawling, and we were in terror of what might happen!
   I am feeling too old for all of this!

Off the Books and the Nannies are in Charge!

  I can't believe it is almost memorial day!  The girls are almost 7 months old. Time is flying by.  It seems our nanny is not ready to leave her other job.  Jordan interviewed some nannies, one of them said she "wouldn't do housework, just the kids, wouldn't claim anything, off the books, and she wanted 2 weeks vacation and a metro card!"
   It's crazy.  Only here in Brooklyn and in NY where the mothers are guilty do you have nannies, many of them  from the Caribbean and St. Vincent, demanding such ridiculous wages.  They want 800 to 900 a week, off the books, paid holidays, etc., no housework, and a metro card.  It's actually amazing, all of this usually with little or no college education.  A few of the women have taken college classes, but try and go in the workplace and demand this kind of money with very few skills other than you "like children" and you've taken CPR.
  It's like they take the position of the mother and hold her hostage and all the while she feels "guilty" for leaving her kids.  It's pretty amazing.
  There's apparently a whole system and the "nanies" talk.  One mother of twins Jordan knows, Carla, her nanny was approached by another nanny, to whom she did not give the job, and told that "she was being cheated by her employer."  The nanny went back to ask Carla if this was true.  Carla was giving her 750 a week, plus a metro card.
  But if Jordan wants to claim a nanny as part of her expense as working, the nanny would have to be on the books.  This most of them don't want to do.  I tried to explain to a few of these women, that if they are on the books they will be building up social security and unemployment, but the information seems to go nowhere.
   Currently we have one woman almost full time, Eugen, who is "called a Baby Nurse."  A baby nurse does nothing except take care of babies.  Since she came as a baby nurse, she never does anything around the house.  If the babies are sleeping she does cross word puzzles, watches TV, or talks on the phone.  She also asks me to do things, get a bottle, help her feed, etc.  Jordan says she hired her as a baby nurse, and since she never does anything anyway, she can't change her!

Never never land!

   I have been here a long time.  I am starting to lose track of everything.  Jordans life is got to work at 9, come home at 7.  Put girls to bed.  Then stay up with girls half the night, get up with them at 7am, play with them til eave for works at nine.
    Mine is babies, babies, babies.  Tonight I am at her friends house.  I am stsying up late. It is good not to have to go to bed early.  Jordans been sleeping in the big loft room where I am.
   I need to review my situation and what I'm doing.   You can lose track of time with children, be in an endless baby world.  That's it! 

The Twins are Becoming Big Girls-Coorperate America is Counter Productive!

   Gigi and Tess are getting BIG!  They are 6 months and in that stage where they are neither crawling nor walking, can roll over. Gigi hops like a bunny, and Tess still likes to use her hands a lot.
   But the fact is that any small amount of time where they are occupied is great.
   Jordan bought a tank, that's what we call it, for the girls.  Gigi immediately loved it and started driving around the apartment.  It's like those baby floaties... the kids think they can swim when they can't.
  Next we bought an activity center, its one of those funny looking contraptions that you can bounce in and that has lots of gadget's to play with.  Tess immediately started bouncing like crazy and Gigi went over to her in her "tank" and they laughed and laughed.  They howled, they screetched, they went wild.  It was like the first time they had really seen one another.
   Win one for the girls being occupied for more than five minutes!
  Now at work Jordan is under a lot of stress.  A new company is running her division, and the executive at the company base, a woman, is simply not happy with how Jordan's running things.  Constant notes, constant second guessing, constant pressure to change.  But the fact is Jordan's a good manager, fair, open, teaching those she manages and wanting them to do well.  When I used to go on commercial shoots with her father, he was on the client side but very liberal and open.  Unlike many of the other executives, he didn't try andc control every little piece of the shoot.  He'd let the creative team do what they did.  When you try and over control, you kill the baby with the bathwater.
   It's like anything in life, the more you try and control, the more things get out of control!

Mothers Day-What about guilt?

     As I ponder Sunday and the many ramifications from the East coast to the West coast and all of AMerica in between I am struck by the many levels of feelings mothers have.
    One of our biggest feelings is guilt, guilt, guilt.
     Yesterday Gigi fell off the bed and Jordan couldn't stop beating herself up.  She been up all night with both twins, working full time, and moved away from both twins on the bed for one second while she grabbed a toy.  Gigi rolled over and bam, off the bed.
    "I should have, I can't believe, why did I, what happened?"  The barrage wouldn't stop.  I told her to stop.  But then she said I do that to myself all the time!  I guess she's right.
     I became a mother at 20 and I've felt guilty for 47 years!
     Plus enter Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan and we have more guilt-work guilt, career guilt, body guilt, house guilt, what we said or did guilt.
    I will never forget the lesson of my dog Putty.  We had puppies with her and kept one of the dogs Patch.  She'd long since stopped nursing, but when Patch would get up in the morning he would bark at her and she would look around confused about what to do.  She was a mother, and he expected her to mother.
    But what about mothering?  Sunday is the mother's day where the family is supposed to love mom and prove it.  Thus the husband doesn't go play golf, or tennis, or surf, he goes to "brunch" with mom and the kids or makes breakfast and buys her flowers!
    Yet back to mothering.  Mothering is not just biological or adoption.  It is caring for, nuturing, teaching, helping someone else.  It is protecting the innocent, feeding the hungry, teaching a better way of life.  It is about the circle of love rather than the rocket of performance.  It is not about Wall Street and amassing hundreds of millions for oneself, no, it is about thinking of and caring for the least of our brethren.  It is about the fact that we are all one, one huge family.
   And then there is the final frontier of mothering...ourselves.  How do we parent and nurture ourselves in ways we were not parented.  How do we get out of the blame game and into self realization.  How do we love ourselves.  Are we good to ourselves.  If we were our baby, would we treat ourselves like that?
  This is the final and greatest frontier-ourselves.  For how we treat ourselves, is how we show others how to mother, father, and treat themselves.
  So Happy Mothers Day to yourself and all those around you!

Dance class at Mark Morris for Parkinsons Patients and the little girls!

      It was quite funny, the bunch of us, teachers, pshychologists, dentists, university professors, housewives, and assundry participants in the Parkinson class held by Pam   ______ on Friday afternoon.  We are supposed to be doing a performance for Canada's national, heck inter national parkinson day and an "executive" in charge is coming to see us.  We are to carry a ball in on our heads and then do various moves with it. It's funny, like being stuck in kindergarden-ground hog day!
       In another section of the studio the real ballerinas, litle 3 year olds are getting ready to TAKE A CLASS!
      BUT AHH, AREN'T WE THE CLASS WITH THE FILM CREW?
      We are the strange class where people stuggle to make their bodies work, move, smile, in our warm up we practice sessions like "hello', 'over there', 'yes, No", "and you?" to get the facial expressions going.  I am starting to cut up.
    "Behave or you won't get a star!"
    "If you didn't hink you could do this in dance class when you were little, try now!
    "We need a tutu!
     Everyone is pretty quiet.  Not a lot of facial movement with Parkinsons groups.
     On the way home I get a ride with Carol and her one year older sister, Judy.
    "WE should talk, say something" Carol says.
     "Yea, so we don't lool like zombies."
     "We already look like zombies" Carol says and we laugh.  Yes, the zombies parading down 5th avenue, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford, the land of the pretty people.  Well here we are, the not so pretty perfect people. the second batch of buz light years with some brain parts not generating.
    ALL in all, it was fun to laugh and cut up.  We are after all, the baby boomers!