Category Archives: family

rehab

poor claudia recently had a week of toy tragedy. we came home one night to find the child-version, easter-themed, non-caucasian barbie she’d gotten in her easter basket (you think that was easy to find?) half-eaten by danpung. claudia’s sobbing was terrible, but even worse was how she looked at the chewed pile of legs and said, with a truly pathetic attempt at positivity, “her SHOES are still okay…”

this barbie-eating thing has happened before (the precious “halloween barbie” — claude’s first caucasian barbie) and when that happened claudia asked me to just throw her away, and i did. but this time, there was so much of the little girl doll LEFT — well, less than half, but all the… thinking parts?.. claudia and i both have a paralyzing degree of anthromorphization going on in our heads (i had to draw multiple happy faces on beat-up envelope recently, after it had surfaced from a pile and claudia became sad because “nobody has used it yet”), but that’s not the reason i wanted to save this little-girl barbie. the idea that a human without legs — or useable legs — should be thrown out, is not a good one for our family.

why?

memie!

claudia and béla’s only aunt — my sister — uses a wheelchair. so it seemed important to point this out to the agonizing (maybe a little ostentatiously agonizing) claudia. i said, “gee, i know YOU’RE sad about this barbie being eaten, but imagine how SHE feels! now she has no legs, AND she has to worry that someone is going to throw the rest of her in the garbage!”

claude didn’t want to let THAT happen. we talked about what a little girl with no legs might need. a flurry of tiana band-aids later, Easter Torso Barbie was safely “hospitalized” on a kitchen shelf, awaiting… yes… her wheelchair.

there are more and more toys i want for my kids that require me buying from third-party “collectibles” dealers on amazon. the african-american styling bust (lovingly known as “christie head”) was one of those, and out of all the aa styling busts i found available, i found myself paying more for the darker-”skinned” one. literally — the very light skinned “not white but not black” ones were cheapest, medium-hued skin was medium-range price, and undeniably black was most expensive. (and in pristine vintage packaging.) well, we tore that packaging apart and had tons of fun. even béla loves christie head. (and i will be paying out the nose soon to buy béla a “vintage” spirograph set, because the ones they are manufacturing these days are total shit.)

at some point in the nineties, the barbie people made “share a smile becky”, who sits in a wheelchair. all i needed was the chair, but we got becky too, and we upgraded her to “doctor”. or maybe she’s a home aide. i don’t know for sure. but i don’t think i have to consult with my sister — who is not very into disability “culture” — to know that naming this doll “share a smile becky” is a little disgusting. it suggests, and encourages, that the BEST thing that disabled people can do — what THEY have to SHARE with the world — is their pleasant gentle SMILE. my sister and i aren’t that different in temperment. knowing this, do you want to suggest to memie that she should do us all a favor and share her smile with the world?

she might share a smile, or she might key your car for parking in the handicapped parking spot at the mall. you just don't know.

anyway, we have the wheelchair, and “doctor” becky, in her unfashionable sporty clothing (because that’s what disabled people wear) and hideous shoes (which seem kind of realistic — ankle support can be nice if you do your own transfers in and out of a chair). both kids are thrilled — béla loves to push the wheelchair, and claudia is mostly interested in “doctor” becky’s hair.

in the same week that Easter Torso Barbie revealed her true smile-sharing purpose to us, claudia bounced her harlem globetrotters basketball into traffic and watched it pop under the car of a VERY frightened, and then pretty angry, driver.

once again, more wailing, wailing claudia. but we almost immediately ran into friend and artist kate mundie, who had many suggestions for what we should do with the popped ball. here’s our harlem globetrotter hanging flower basket!

there’s a bright side to so many things!

patch jackets

did you have a patch jacket as a kid? i kinda did.

the 2012 version is here, and it better last until 2014. if there is any sign of them outgrowing this by next year, it’s nothing but cigarettes in the easter basket, i tell you.

follow our patch jacket saga.

four years of the claude

claudia’s gotcha day, 2012 is upon us.

i think THIS is the first year she REALLY understood the concept of the “gotcha day photo”.

her birthday, by the way, was celebrated with a standard school pizza/cupcake party, but also with a SPA DAY at sweet and sassy salon in cherry hill, where she and her friends veronica and katie received facials, manicures, and makeup applications — and then went to the cheesecake factory for lunch.

this girl has come a long way in the past year. she’s still a princessy girly girl, but she has a MUCH wider range of definition for that. she understands how important it is to be kind in this world. she has a school where she is MUCH loved and she basks in that love daily.

she wakes up singing. it’s just who she is.

her birthday gifts were all VERY big hits — a charm bracelet (very personalized!), a balance board, and a pair of pre-stilt wooden walking blocks that both kids call “puppet feet”. she and béla also received a record player for her gotcha day gift and have been listening to my old 45s (“karma chameleon”) and burgess merideth reading aesop’s fables.

last night, in a sort of funny coincidence, she got to help take care of some newborn (one day old!) puppies. her reaction to them — ambivalent, slightly grossed out, but making sure they were safe — was very like my reaction to her, four years ago.

she. is. claudia. she is amazing.

a christmakwanzakah carol

we do celebrate christmakwanzakah. we do it for real.

the kids did our menorah at a paint-your-own place. we don't have an actual kwanzaa kinara, but these ikea candleholders do just fine. and it's not christmas without the animatronic dean martin.

a few months ago, ben backed a kickstarter project by jonathan langager, who is making a short film called “josephine and the roach”. as one of ben’s backer rewards, jonathan wrote a son about any topic ben chose. ben chose christmakwanzakah.

Christmakwanzakah from Jonathan Langager on Vimeo.

Christmakwanzakah
What a merry mix of holidays
Christmas Kwanza Hanukkah

Christmakwanzakah
I wouldn’t want it any other way
It’s the perfect holiday

Labor day plus Arbor Day–
Larbor Day sounds really really really dumb

Groundhog’s Day plus All Saint’s Day
All Hogs day sounds like it wouldn’t be too much fun

Christmakwanzakah
What a merry mix of holidays
Christmas Kwanza Hanukkah

the inaugural krampuslauf philadelphia — a joy!!

it has been the most exciting holiday season i can remember — between sinterklaas rhinebeck and krampuslauf philadelphia, also the most original!

you might think it’s just holiday sentimentality, or blogperbole, to say that krampuslauf philadelphia changed my world, gave me new purpose in life, and made me want to stay in philadelphia after a few years of thinking about leaving. but the fact is — it did all of this. i feel like our krampuslauf — and indeed, grassroots festal culture, is a calling for me.

of course, i had never even heard the term “grassroots festal culture” before finding that an organization called many mouths one stomach, in tuscon, AZ, had congratulated us on the lauf after hearing about it on national public radio. after i checked out their site, i could see that what i was feeling, and what i wanted to do more of, was no one-shot deal — it was a real need, and a need i felt my community — the community in which i raise my children — was feeling deeply.

the interview i did for the many mouths one stomach blog puts it all together — and i mean all of it. it was the best opportunity i had to speak to someone who understood what i had wanted to do, WHY i had wanted to do it, and who helped me see that the stumbling blocks i had come up against were almost archetypical. using the only definition i know of a “fulfilling experience”, this was one of the most fulfilling of my life.

why do i continue to think a CHRISTMAS DEVIL PARADE is good for my kids? well, it’s all right here, in InCultureParent magazine.

and here’s our quickest, easiest, cheapest krampus craft! and that craft is of course permanently linked here as well.

and, if you’d like a more audio-ish experience, listen to this WHYY radio piece, in which janet and arun and i talk about krampuslauf philadelphia.

we were pretty amazed when this piece aired on NPR’s “weekend edition” the morning of the lauf.

it had been shared over 8,000 times on facebook before we even got in the car to go to liberty lands, and over 10,000 on that day alone. wow!

check out the krampuslauf philadelphia flickr pool for shots of the event.

did i mention that joel came?

continue to follow along at krampuslaufphiladelphia.com.

halloween 2011

no knitting at all this year — and, the first year they chose what they were going to be. which made it extra challenging for me — because i was not excited about making glinda the good and wicked witch of the west costumes.

and, for anyone who sews, i’m sure this wasn’t much of a feat — it was just the simplicity pattern for these costumes, but it was a lot of machine sewing for me! i had help from a friend who had made the glinda dress a few years back (and quite a few fun trips to jomar with her as well), and working with all that glittery tulle was just… nervewracking. and the satin too. oy.

i used linen for béla’s dress and peplum. since i love linen, i really did want to know what sewing with it would feel like. i was happy with it and feel confident about using it again. and nicer than just a cotton dress. the hat and cape are just craft felt.

what’s the best prop for the witches of oz to take with them on a VERY busy trick-or-treat evening down 13th street? how about a barnyard cousin dressed as dorothy? they didn’t even have to have a grownup hanging on them the whole evening — from where i stood, they were clearly having a very memorable evening.

a big move forward in my sewing confidence. and, second to knitting, machine sewing is the thing i want to concentrate on most. happy halloween!

linus and sally, marked for death

claudia took her skull rubber stamp and put it directly over linus and sally’s faces in a peanuts’ halloween coloring book. and, in one instance, over the moon.

and then she colored everyone’s faces pink, of course.

we are inCulture Parent magazine’s “real intercultural family”

we like to think we are pretty real!

and we are BIG supporters of inCulture Parent Magazine. i look forward to hopefully doing some writing for them in the future.

korean culture blowout!

always happens in the early fall, doesn’t it?

won community center’s fifteenth annual korean folk festival

new york korean parade and festival

folklore and mission creep

yarn bombs have bored me since day one. i mean, one ends up having to be polite about it — oh god, the number of times people will e mail me articles about yarn bombs or goddamned crocheted coral reefs telling me they “thought of me” when they saw them — but i’ve never seen much point in going beyond the first of either of those particular enterprises.

but here’s a bomb i can get behind — it’s local, it incorporates found objects, helps clean up litter, and uses actual folklore to transform not just an already tended public area (like a sweater on a statue), but goes into territory that’s in need of a second look — and a watchful eye. marie elcin says it well — she worked on this with her friend johanna marshall, whom i am sure i remember working at rosie’s at one point, but in the blur-of-having-the-kids years of ’08 and ’09.

when i saw on facebook that marie was working on this project, i found a tutorial on shisha stitching online right away, as i had always wondered how that worked… but wasn’t sure how or when i would apply it. amazingly, that evening, as i continued to research perchta for the krampuslauf, i discovered that perchta is sometimes adorned with small pieces of mirror and edelweiss… how is this possible? i never cease to be amazed at how things “come together” for me and how frequently and richly i am rewarded for either chasing down, or holding out for, the things that interest and inspire me most.

working towards krampuslauf has become an exercise in process over product for me. i am, of course, interested in the final “outcome”, but my expectations of how “right” it will be have changed so significantly and gotten so much more serious than i remember my intial impulses being. the ways i’ve been able to incorprorate both knitting and writing into the project, not as a way to buoy the project itself but as a way to understand the krampus folklore, its meaning in general, and its more specific meaning in a world where “enlightned” rich white people believe they have no need for folklore and that “scary” things serve no purpose but to scare, has been a phenomenal gift. as a handworker, as a writer, and as a parent, i have learned more from krampus this year than from just about anything else.

i think our event itself will not be a “performers” and “audience” scenario, nor will it be a resume-builder for anyone — it’s a little too down-home for that. but i love the “stone soup” approach in which the real pleasure comes from creating something WITH people — who know that their fun from the event will be in direct proportion to the fun they want to have with it. it’s amazing to see other people’s renditions and ideas come to life.

and every day seems to add something else to the list of things i am making. i keep trying to “get ahead” but between halloween costumes and krampus and actual christmas gifts it’s never gonna happen and i also now realize i don’t even WANT it to happen. i can’t just “get projects done on time” and then let the clock run out with days or weeks to spare — i really just want to keep going until it’s all over. why be done if you’ve even got a few more hours left to make it more interesting, to learn a new technique, to use a new material?

at a time when claudia’s interest particularly is leading us to read a lot of fairytales and folklore, and we are avoiding disneyfied versions (she’s really into the grimm’s), my own interest is really growing. folk textiles have always been important to me, but now the stories surrounding them is becoming more important to me as well. if i were eighteen again, i’d be about to embark upon a VERY useless degree program, i bet.

maybe we all need a college of one. scott and sheilah’s began with proust, which i am rereading now as well. life is wonderful when you don’t settle. there’s no other way i can say it.