The Bananas

Recently we’ve been doing a child swap with the Paisleys. Max comes here one week and Sam goes to Max’s the other. It’s nice.

They get along great although they couldn’t be more different from each other: Max likes his hands clean; Sam likes to dump and spread. Dave calls them Felix and Oscar—they are the Odd Couple. Even though Max has perfect diction and a larger vocabulary than most adults, he still seeks Sam’s advice, “Can I pick my nose, Sam?”

Watching Max hop into Sam’s crib for his every-other-week bounce, paw through our CD collection, and point to the cupboard with the nutty bars has given me a dose of déjà vu.

Our childhood friendships give us that rare opportunity to be steeped in someone else’s family life.

When I was a kid, my friends’ houses were this amalgamation of mystery and familiarity. In Michele’s pantry, her mother kept a never ending supply of vanilla wafers vs. at Gaby’s house, her father served food that seemed to come from a field rather than the supermarket—wild rice and berries. At Tiffany’s house you could jump from bed to bed while her asthmatic brother tried to keep up. Some houses you could scoot down the rug covered stairs on your bottom; and hidden in the attic of one, you could page through dusty medical journals with pictures of weird skin conditions. Denise had a pool with a giant bubble over it. Dink had 3 older sisters that made every sleep over seem like the eve of a grand ball. And at Becky’s house, we’d sit on the deck, listen to Van Halen, and eat yogurt mixed with brown sugar as if we were already 20 yrs. old.

This summer while we were in Ashland, Brigid and Rex reminisced about Quale house—loud, messy, and spirited. And yet, my friends didn’t seem separate from my family life. They became so thoroughly ensconced in our daily rituals, they were players. No childhood memory is complete unless it includes Cooper coming through our kitchen window to have the last brown banana.

And so the cycle begins with Sam. When he comes home from Max’s house, he tells me where the cat hides, and how Margaret piles pillows beneath the ottoman so they can jump, and that Mary likes to pick berries but “you can’t eat them.” They eat waffles for lunch.

And here at this house, we take Max to Pinky Park to build snow castles. Sam and I immediately become engrossed. Max holds his distance and observes. I saw us through his eyes: two happy idiots trying to amass dry snow that blew away or crumbled before we could build anything, yelling at the snow, directing each other to no avail—loud, messy and spirited. Right then I wished I had a banana to give him.

There are three more new entries so scroll on down.

Autumn 08 in NY

I can’t let this season pass without mentioning Election Day. Dave gets that day off and we vote at the library at the end of our street. What a great day it was. Leaves had been raked into piles all along Whitfield. Sam hopped from one pile to the other all the way home. Jen (the next door neighbor) and I raked 3 yards full for the kids. The girls next door wore their handmade McCain/Palin t-shirts. I almost said something but whatever I said would have come out of my insecurity—in this neighborhood it was hard to believe a black man could be president. But we’d all been to the booth and allowed our children to pull the levers in our respective direction. Sometimes, it’s better to do nothing more than await results together in a pile of leaves.

Winter--Party Hardy.

Winter in Buffalo comes on strong and doesn’t let up for so long, that you become as down and out as Mickey Rourke in a comeback film. It doesn’t help that Sam’s birthday coincides with the winter solstice. Third Birthday. Three Birthday Parties. The friend party (nothing like breaking birthday celebrations into categories) was held at Dog Ear’s Bookstore. It’s a literary center in the middle of South Buffalo. How could we not support that?

On top of the birthday festivities, we had a slew of homecomings: Grandma Joyce & Joe, Brette, Scott, Bethy, Aunt Ann. And then there were the many and varied Christmas celebrations. Now Sam just assumes that his uncles will bring forth gifts.

Calendar Pages--The Great Grandmas

Every year, I make a calendar for my Nana. She really likes them and uses it throughout the year to mark occasions and appointments. She's 87 and Betty is 85. When my grandmothers reached a certain age, I started doing these yearly rituals for them--planting bulbs, spring visit to the Broadway market, making calendars. The rituals are my way of saying, "stay with me for this year, for this season".

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I'm devoted to my grandmothers. I figured for Sam, a mere sprout, their age would make them irrelevant to him: They are so passed their prime and each has such little spunk left (and both in their day but very differently were spunky broads). I should have known they would not settle for irrelevance. Sam says to me regularly, "I love Nana." (and alternatively, "I hate Nana" which means "I don't want to do whatever it is you want me to do."); and, he cries whenever it is time to leave Gamma Be-y house. Nana smothers him in kisses, gives him money from her change purse and gushes whenever he shows her a new toy or a latest dance move. And Betty, she calls him her boyfriend, bickers with him and always has soup and cookies at the ready. And I know that when they are gone, Sam may or may not have specific memories of them but their lives will have marked his.

Kaylie and Sam Dancing the Night Away

Sam and I went to Seattle for Chauntelle and Eric's wedding. We had so much fun. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures of the event because I was busy having fun, but I did take a short video of Fred and Ginger, I mean Sam and Kaylie. OK...I should admit because you'll see for yourself, Kaylie has the moves and Sam dances like the white boy that he is. Not to worry, he's taking dance class with Ava so he'll be ready to impress the ladies very soon.

Sam in Seattle Revisited

Eight years ago this month, I moved to Buffalo by way of my Aunt Julie offering me a plane ticket and then I didn’t use the return portion. It was a move by impulse or maybe it was the first link in a chain.

The decision not to return led to my brother moving to Buffalo, which led to buying the Golf Club, which led to me working there, which led to meeting Dave, which led to Sam. One missed return trip and I got the life I always wanted.

I’ve wondered if destiny looks like impulse but is truly part of a greater plan (this would mean of course that all those Snickers bars have divine purpose); or alternatively if a bunch of random choices are put into play at once, the motion forward just looks like destiny.

But in the background of destiny or coincidence unfolding, I’ve harbored a secret resentment against Seattle. I never wanted to move away but the last few years I lived there, I felt pushed out by the expense and traffic and the worst of it—no matter how hard I tried I could not realize my dreams. When you live in the midst of Microsoft Millionaires realizing their dreams every other Tuesday and 2x on Friday…I became peevish.

But seeing Seattle with Sam--well, the boy has a powerful effect on his Mama’s perception. This trip I focused on Sam. Mostly we did stuff that I never did when I lived there or if I did do, it could not be more different with a toddler in tow. Instead of catering out at the Aquarium, Sam and I watched jellyfish swim and parachute around a tube. We stayed with my brother in Sammamish and attended Eric and Chauntelle’s wedding in Maple Valley—places I barely heard of. We made new friends—Lucas and his moms rather than seeing a lot of my old pals (next time). I did get to enjoy a couple nights in Seattle old style—Phyllis treated us to a night at the Wild Ginger/Triple Door. Nothing like Curried Catfish and Coconut Martinis to remind a girl what she loved about Seattle. Sam stayed with a certified Nanny at the Kryzell house. It was a high end evening for us both.

After this trip, I’m thinking that maybe my life isn’t unfolding by destiny or coincidence but rather biology or what passes for biology in my brain. For years my father has tried to teach me how ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: In the embryo, supposedly the fetus develops through evolutionary history. Here is the magical realism version of it: Maybe when I was an embryo I stalled in the salmon stage of evolution. It wasn’t coincidence or destiny that brought me to Buffalo, I just needed to swim up my home river to spawn. And because this is magical realism biology, maybe someday the shrimp and his kipper (and his mom) will get to go back out to sea together. I do so miss my fellow fish.

Sam's Peops: Summer and Autumn

We’ve had a busy summer and autumn. Summer was spent fixing the never ending remodel of our home so that this autumn I could paint trim and Dave could start nursing school. On Dave’s first night of school, he packed his bag full of books: Beginning Anatomy, Beginning Psychology and Goodnight Gorilla. Sam insisted. And the next night Sam packed Elmo Loves You into his dad’s book bag. You never know when I Want to Be Your Personal Penguin will be a necessary reference.