Rites of Childhood My Kids Will Miss

As a parent, I am thankful every day for the wonders of progress and technology. Super-absorbent diapers, child safety seats, powdered baby formula, video monitors, lightweight and portable highchairs – all these things have made my life easier and my kids’ lives safer. But there are a few things from my childhood that I feel like my kids will miss out on because of scientific and technological advancements.

Standing on the hump

Those of a certain generation know exactly what I mean when I refer to “the hump”: that raised tunnel in the center of the backseat of a car. When my parents bought their first new car (when I was about three), I was terribly distressed over the possibility that the new car would not have a hump, since my favorite place to ride was standing on the hump where my short self could peer over the front bench seat and watch the scenery up ahead. My children have spent their childhood safely strapped in their car seats, protected from accidents, but also protected from the wonder of standing on the hump.

Riding in the backwards backseat

When I was a bit older, my parents bought a Plymouth Gran Fury station wagon that could seat 11 (I know this because they still owned the car when I got my driver’s license my senior year of high school – enough said). The best seat in that car was, hands down, the backwards jumpseat. My sister and I would entertain ourselves by making faces at the drivers behind us, trying to get them to wave or honk or laugh or stick out their tongues at us. Sometimes we’d even make signs saying, “HONK!” or “WAVE” or “HELP WE’RE BEING KIDNAPPED” (fortunately for my parents, we could never keep straight faces while holding that one). It’s probably a good thing that my children will never have this experience, but I still regret that they’ll also miss out on that particular piece of mischievous fun.

Recording a family answering machine message

Telephones as I knew them in my childhood will be a complete mystery to my children. They hardly recognize the heavy bakelite table phones with long, curly, perpetually-tangled cords that I grew up with; in just a few years, no doubt any kind of household landline will be as extinct as the dodo bird. There will be no such thing as a phone that is shared by family members, and therefore there will be no opportunity to compose a funny outgoing message with each member of the family saying (or, in my family’s case, singing) one or two lines.

Waiting for a Polaroid picture to develop

Photography has been completely reinvented since my childhood. I remember my excitement the Christmas I received my very first camera: A heavy, bulky, Polaroid One-Step. I can still hear the buzzing hum it made as it spit out the blank piece of film; I can still smell the acrid scent of the chemicals; and I can still remember the thrill of anticipation watching the image slowly appear, the colors morphing into being and the outlines becoming crisp. I remember the almost irresistible urge to touch the picture as it emerged, maddeningly slowly. My kids will never experience the anticipation of waiting to see a picture they’ve taken; it will always be displayed instantly, waiting to be deleted if found wanting.

Watching a slideshow of the family vacation

When I was a kid, there were no slick Powerpoint presentations that neatly flicked through a series of perfect photos at even intervals. We had to sit and patiently wait for Dad to set up the screen, put the projector on a TV tray and adjust the legs so the image was centered on the screen (it never was) and a perfect rectangle (it never was), pull down the window shades and turn off all the lights, then wrestle the tray of slides into place. When the first slide appeared on the screen (usually with the shadow of someone’s head superimposed on it), there was a collective gasp of excitement, followed by a sigh of disappointment as we realized that Dad had put all the slides in backwards and we had to wait for him to rearrange the whole tray. My children will never have the opportunity to see a blurry image of their own dad with his head mostly cut off standing underneath a sign labeled “KRAP ENOTSWOLLEY”.

 But I can console myself that my kids will find ways to have fun that I’ve never imagined. Maybe they’ll put a holographic spider in their teacher’s desk, or go joyriding in the family hovercraft, or reprogram our food generator to spit out nothing but tuna noodle casserole. Technology may change the ways kids have fun, but they will always find a way to have fun.

The Truth is in the Trash

Yesterday as I was doing laundry, I noticed that my favorite pair of jeans has a threadbare spot right on the knee, and it occurred to me that being a mom has made a definite change in the sorts of things that get worn out and thrown away in my house. In fact, if you looked at my trash, you could easily figure out a lot of things that are going on in my life right now.

For example, those jeans. Adult jeans worn out at the knee are a definite indicator of the presence of small children. I haven’t spent this much time crawling on the floor since I was a small child myself. But these days, I spend endless hours crawling on my hands and knees playing horsey, or pretending to be a lion/monkey/kangaroo, or reaching under the couch to retrieve a Matchbox car or a Lego block or a crayon, or just rolling around wrestling with one child or another (or both).

Food trash is different these days, too. When my husband and I were newlyweds, our trash included plenty of wine bottles, champagne corks, Brie wrappers, and shrimp tails. These days, the main food-related trash items are milk bottles, uneaten crusts of peanut butter sandwiches (crusts are not considered edible by my children unless they are absolutely starving), and empty juice boxes.

And, of course, a staple in our trash can right now is diapers. LOTS of diapers. Or, I should say, diapers and pull-ups. And less pull-ups every day, as my son gets closer and closer to successful potty training. I’m not sure who will be more excited when the pull-ups finally disappear from our trash can, me and my husband or the guys who pick up our trash. We might throw each other a party when that finally happens. And when my daughter’s diapers disappear from the trash as well (hopefully very soon afterwards!), it’ll be an even bigger party!

Other items in our trash that mark us as a family with small kids are, sadly, broken toys. Both of my kids are, shall we say, “rough” on toys. They love to bang and crash things together, to throw and roll pieces around, to explore how items can be bent and turned and twisted and removed. Our trash commonly includes things like a bucket broken off a toy backhoe, a puzzle with half the pieces mysteriously missing, a deflated ball that was sat on one time too many, a toy car with the wheels ripped off. It’s not quite as creepy as Sid’s toys from “Toy Story,” but I wouldn’t blame anyone who did a double-take seeing the poor toy detritus in our trash can. (At least we give them a good, clean burial instead of re-assembling them in horrific combinations. I still have nightmares about Spider Baby.)

But the most fun part of our trash is the artwork. We can’t possibly save everything our kids make, so after leaving each piece of art on display for a while, we take photos and then quietly and stealthily discard most of them. So the debris in our local landfill is often graced with macaroni glued to construction paper, painted hand- and foot-prints, and various abstract images festooned with glitter, tissue paper, and stickers.

I’ll be honest: I look forward to the day when our trash contains fewer diapers, fewer broken toys, and fewer ripped jeans of all sizes. But I’ll miss the glitter and the macaroni. I’ll even miss the juice boxes and the sandwich crusts. But I’m guessing that by then our trash will be filled with other interesting detritus showing what our family is up to: copies of report cards, carefully folded notes passed in class, used up bottles of horrific teenage scents like Axe and Love’s Baby Soft (or whatever their equivalent will be in another 10 years or so).

I’m actually looking forward to that trash. And that’s the truth!

Finding My New Normal

A week and a half ago, my 21-month-old daughter slipped out of the house and fell in our pool. Thank God, we found her a few minutes later, and after a harrowing week at Children’s Hospital in Boston, four days of which she spent in the ICU under heavy sedation, she is home again with a perfectly clean bill of health and no lingering after-effects of the accident, either physical or emotional.

I, on the other hand, bear a few emotional scars.

Likewise, she has easily fallen back into her usual routine, her “normal,” while I am struggling to find my new normal.

Most of my new normal is merely increased diligence over my old normal: The doors I always closed, sometimes locked, and rarely latched are now always closed, always locked, and always latched. The video monitor that I glanced at now and then while my daughter napped in her bedroom has become the video monitor that I focus intently on for several seconds every minute or two. The “mom radar” that woke me up when one of the kids made a noise in the night has been heightened so the slightest peep has me sitting up in bed, wide awake, my heart racing. Taking a shower with my daughter in her playpen and my son in the playroom is a thing of the past. Taking my eyes off either of my kids for more than 30 seconds at a time is a thing of the past. Letting my son play in the sandbox while I watch him through the window instead of sitting outside with him is a thing of the past.

This is my new normal.

But my new normal is also kissing my kids more often, thanking God for my patient husband more often, ignoring my phone and my computer in favor of playing with my kids more often. My new normal is gratefulness for my kids’ general good health, for their sunny dispositions, for their bright curiosity. My new normal is thankfulness for family and friends who love and support me and my family, no matter what.

I have no doubt that over the course of time, my new normal will drift closer to my old normal. I’ll probably never be as nonchalant as I was about waiting 30 seconds to finish what I’m doing before chasing my daughter when she runs upstairs. I’m sure I’ll never again leave the room even for a moment without securing every exit. But I hope that I’ll also never take for granted my kids’ health, or their presence in my lives. I hope I’ll never take for granted that I have family and friends who will make sacrifices to help me out, without questioning and without resentment. I hope I’ll always remember and appreciate how my church family and my theater family were there for me when I needed help.

Where I’m at today may not be perfect; it may not even be average; but it’s definitely normal. And for now, it’s healthy. And over the course of time, healthy and average will get closer together, just as the old normal and the new normal grow closer together. And someday, my new normal will become just normal. Or at least, it will become our just normal.

What more could a mom ask for than that?

We don't aim for average, just normal.

Words Aren't Enough

English is an amazingly expressive language. But sometimes words simply cannot adequately express the emotions of the human heart. This weekend I have learned the inadequacy of both the word “horrifying” and the word “grateful.”

On Friday night, I lived every mother’s nightmare of seeing my child floating limply face down in a pool. “Horrifying” is not enough.

I performed CPR on my own baby. “Horrifying” is not enough.

I watched helplessly as medical teams put tubes into her lungs and stomach, seemingly endlessly poked her with needles and IV lines, strapped her into a nightmarish neck immobilizer, and put restraints on her wrists. “Horrifying” is not enough.

But thanks to the instant and universal connection of e-mail, text messaging, cell phones, and Facebook, my child and my family were lifted up in prayer by family, friends, friends of friends, and strangers all over the world. “Grateful” is not enough.

My sister- and brother-in-law and their family took in my son without hesitation or question and offered to keep him as long as needed. “Grateful” is not enough.

Innumerable friends and family offered to babysit my son at any time. “Grateful” is not enough.

I woke this morning to literally hundreds of well wishes from friends and strangers alike, sending messages of reassurance and hope. “Grateful” is not enough.

I woke this morning to find that the EEG leads had been removed and a compassionate nurse had carefully washed my daughter’s hair and put it into pigtails so she looked more like my little peanut and less like the work of a mad scientist. “Grateful” is not enough.

A compassionate doctor took the time to explain the various procedures that my daughter would be undergoing, gave us a realistic picture of the possible outcomes, and answered all our questions. “Grateful” is not enough.

So to all those from Djibouti to Serbia, from Tennessee to Pennsylvania, from Haverhill to Belmont, from the Waltham EMTs to the medical staff at Boston Children’s Hospital, from the churches and synagogues who are lifting us up in your prayers at this very moment, all you who have loved and prayed for and supported us over the past few days, I say from my heart, “Thank you and God bless you all.” Even though those words are not enough.

Of Horses and Hats

Yesterday was the 139th annual “Run for the Roses”: The Kentucky Derby. I’ve never been a follower of horseracing, so to me the two most interesting parts of the Kentucky Derby are the names of the horses and the fantastic (and often fantastical) hats.

Past winners of the Kentucky Derby include horses with such delightful names as I’ll Have Another, Smarty Jones, Real Quiet, Go For Gin, the appropriately named Winning Colors and Spectacular Bid, the ironically named Genuine Risk, and my all-time favorite, Foolish Pleasure. I will admit to being somewhat disappointed that this year’s race was won by the talented but dully named Orb, but at least the field of contenders did include other fun names, like Charming Kitten, Overanalyze, Giant Finish, Falling Sky, Palace Malice, and Will Take Charge.

Even more wild and creative than the horses’ names, however, are the marvelous hats seen at the Derby. Generally, the hats fall into one of four categories: fascinator, classic, gigantic, and wacky.

Fascinators became all the rage at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s 2011 wedding, and they remained prominent at this year’s Derby. A fascinator is a fancy headpiece or miniature hat with elaborate trimmings worn on a headband or attached to the hair by clips, combs, or hairpins. A fascinator may be as simple as a small spray of flowers or feathers, or as elaborate as a tall geometric sculpture.

Classic hats are elegant and proportionate, and would be appropriate at other events besides the Kentucky Derby. Pastels such as pink, peach, mint green, and pale yellow are popular; trimmings include ribbons, small bows, and the occasional tasteful feather. Their colors are subdued, their trimmings are restrained, and their style is timeless.

The third category is the gigantic hat. Over the years, hat brims have grown in size until I wonder how some of these women are able to walk through the crowds wearing these hats. The brim often needs to be pinned back so the lady is able to see the horses, or occasionally a giant hat will be worn at a rakish tilt to make her face accessible for a charming air kiss from a gentleman acquaintance. Naturally, the decorations on a gigantic hat may – and should – be proportionately larger. Multiple foot-long feathers, huge looping bows, knots of fabric, and yards of veiling adorn these spectacular creations.

The final category includes the most fantastical hats of all: Wacky hats. Wacky hats are unique works of art, and can incorporate all kinds of decorations, from horses’ (and jockeys'!) heads to dozens of roses to literally piles of horseracing memorabilia. And naturally, a truly wacky hat calls for additional accessories and costuming, from horseshoe sunglasses to a cutaway tailcoat and matching shorts.

And the best part of Kentucky Derby hats is that you don’t have to go to Kentucky to wear one. My family got into the act this year at a “Run for the Roses” party. We managed to cover all the categories of hats: my sister-in-law, on the left, is sporting a jaunty fascinator; my mother-in-law, at center, is wearing a lovely classic; and yours truly, on the right, is treading the fine line between gigantic and wacky. I give us extra points for both my nephew and my husband in their elegant boaters.

(photo courtesy of www.light-magic.com)

Say what you will about horse racing, but when it comes to the Kentucky Derby, at least you can’t say that it’s dull!!

Mom-ercize

I had my annual physical recently and my doctor asked me if I do any regular exercise. I assumed that by the word “regular” she meant some kind of formal class or official workout. Since I haven’t darkened the door of a gym since…well, EVER, I admitted that I do not. She opened her mouth to scold me, but then I reminded her, “But you’ve met my kids.” She just laughed and dropped the subject.

My kids are pretty much a gym, a personal trainer, a cheerleading squad, and a set of free weights, all rolled into one.

Let’s look at the parts of a “regular” exercise routine and see how my personal “mom-ercise” routine stacks up against it.

Warm-up: Lego Retrieval

Most exercise regimens begin with some kind of gentle stretching, bending, and reaching. I owe my warm-up exercises to an architectural anomaly in my house. One of the walls in the playroom has a section that juts out a few inches from the rest of the wall. I assume the practical reason is that there’s some kind of structural support beam there, but the practical result is that there’s a 2-inch gap between the couch and the wall the couch rests against. This gap is a black hole that sucks in small objects such as Lego blocks, empty juice boxes, and the TV remote. My arms are just long enough that with sufficient stretching, contorting, and flailing, I can grab the lost items with my fingertips before being sucked into the vortex myself.

Abs: Belly Bounce

My 1-1/2 year-old daughter serves as my workout partner for this crucial exercise. I lay on the floor on my back with my knees slightly bent; she straddles my midsection and, without warning, drops her entire body weight onto my abdomen, resulting in a satisfying “OOOOF” from me. This initial drop inspires me to maintain my tensed abdominal muscles for as long as she enjoys repeating the drop. The tighter my muscles are, the less loud my “oof,” and the less exciting the game. She wins when I make funny noises; I win when my abs are strong enough that I can remain silent and she gets bored and leaves me alone.

Quads: Baby Squats

My daughter serves a slightly more passive role during my baby squats routine. She entices me to pick her up for whatever reason (she knows my hatred of this portion of the workout so often lures me in by offering me a hug or a kiss and then latching her arms around my neck in a position that my husband and I have termed the “koala baby”). She then either drops the item she was holding (a sippy cup, a stuffed animal, my car keys) or points insistently at an item on the floor she wants me to retrieve (an ant, a cookie crumb, an invisible speck of lint). She’s heavy enough that I can’t bend over at the waist while holding her without falling over, so I do a deep plié while carefully keeping my back straight, grab the desired item, and straighten up. She repeats the item drop until one of us gets bored and ends this portion of the workout.

Glutes: Airplane Rides

My 3-1/2-year-old son is the more effective workout partner for this part of my routine. I lie on my back and pull my knees tightly to my chest. My son then leans with his belly resting against my feet, and we grab each other’s hands tightly. I then slowly unbend my legs so my lower legs are perpendicular to the ground and my son is lifted into the air like an airplane. In the high-impact version of the workout, I then tip my legs back and forth and side to side and make airplane noises for an added cardio benefit.

Cardiac Workout: Chase and Reverse

My full cardiac segment is also done with my son’s assistance. Our basement playroom is a large room with a staircase in the middle, effectively creating an oval track. He yells, “Chase me, chase me!” and tears off around the track with me in hot pursuit. When I start gaining on him, he comes to a dead stop, shouts, “Now I chase you!” and we both reverse direction and set off at full tilt again. The endpoint of this exercise is directly related to the level of pain in my knees.

Aerobic Endurance: Dance Challenge

Both kids get in on this one. I have to admit, this is by far the most enjoyable workout segment for me. We put on some music with a good beat (Laurie Berkner and They Might Be Giants are particular favorites) and boogie down until we drop from exhaustion.

Strength Training: Piggyback Rides

My son weighs 50 pounds. He loves piggyback rides. Once allowed to climb on my neck, he hangs on like a barnacle. Those three factors combine to mean that anything I want to do for the next 15 minutes or so, I do with a 50-pound albatross around my neck. This routine is particularly effective when I’m making dinner, as I alternate between reaching down to retrieve pans from the lower cabinets and stretching up to retrieve ingredients from the upper cabinets.

Cool Down: Various

My list of cool down exercise options is pretty extensive: airplane swings (holding a child by the armpits and spinning in a circle), tick-tock clock (holding a child by the armpits and swinging him or her back and forth like a pendulum), tickle fights (I think that one’s pretty self-explanatory), diaper wrestling (both children prefer to be pants- and diaper-free as often as possible), horseback rides (similar to piggybacks, but with a much lower impact since I’m on all fours), and the ever-popular spinning in a circle until you get so dizzy you fall down.

 

Other advantages of Mom-ercize are that there’s no membership fee, instead of a wheat grass smoothie at the end of your workout you get milk and cookies, and your trainer gives you slobbery kisses whether or not you worked up a sweat. Everybody wins!

My Kids Make Me a Better Housekeeper

Confession time: I am a slob. An unrepentant (mostly), inveterate, habitual slob. I'm not dirty, but I am messy. I like having my clothes in piles instead of in drawers or on hangers. I need my shoes out where I can see them, not tucked into cubbies or dangling from a shoe tree. I see no reason to keep my toothbrush anywhere other than right on the sink where I can grab it with soap in my eyes and my glasses off. And towels dry just as quickly when thrown haphazardly over the curtain rod as they do when folded neatly on a towel rack. I'm a slob, and I don't care who knows it.

When I got married to a neat and tidy husband, I learned to curb my messy tendencies. Somewhat. OK, a little bit. Okay, okay, a TEEENY TINY bit. I have a shoe tree that most of my shoes are on. Some of my clothes land in the closet even though others still live on the couch. I hang the towels neatly on the towel rod in my husband's bathroom all the time and even in my own bathroom when we have company.

But what really made me rein in my inner slob was having kids. Most parents get a little germaphobic when their first child is born, but I'm not talking cleanliness, just messiness. When you have a baby, the amount of stuff in your house expands exponentially. The crib, the car seats, the swing, the diaper pail, the high chair, the piles of diapers and wipes and medicines, the socks and the onesies and the cute little hats, the blankets and the stuffed animals and the rattles and the light-up toys, the binkies and the bottles...it just never ends. You learn to be neat so your house doesn't implode from its own weight. But let's be honest: you also learn to be neat so you're never hunting for a binkie at 3am with an infant screeching in your ear. You learn to be neat so you know if you're about to dirty the last clean bottle and you need to run the dishwasher NOW before you're faced with a hungry child and a stack of unwashed bottles. You learn to be neat so an unexpected poopsplosion doesn't suddenly reveal that you're out of diapers/baby wipes/onesies.

And once your children become mobile, the need for neatness is even greater. Any item left on the floor will promptly be popped into a curious mouth, whether it be a stale Cheerio, a petrified raisin, a dead bug, a penny, or a small Lego piece. And speaking of small Lego pieces, the mobile child is not the only one whose tender toes are in imminent danger of being impaled by small toys left on the floor. What parent among us has not endured the agony of stepping on a Lego or a Barbie shoe or an abandoned Monopoly figurine with a bare foot in the middle of the night?

Being neat is a survival tactic.

Yes, motherhood has curbed some of my worst messy tendencies. But it more than makes up for it by allowing me to enjoy other types of messy fun: hands covered in sidewalk chalk dust, gluey pieces of macaroni sliding slimily across a piece of construction paper, licking the frosting off a chocolate cupcake, fingers squelching though mud in search of earthworms, cutting tissue paper into confetti, jumping in puddles. Motherhood is a wonderful balance between neat and messy!

Mrs. Fix-It

One of the things that I love most about being a mom is this magic power I seem to have spontaneously acquired which allows me to fix just about anything, from a skinned knee to a broken toy to a stained shirt. My children bring the damaged items to me with absolute faith that I will be able to restore them to their original conditions. Occasionally, particularly in the case of my son (a.k.a. DestructoBoy), the toy is broken beyond repair, and we have a little discussion about taking care of our things and then decide whether we can still play with the broken toy or whether it’s time to send it to the Great Toy Box in the Sky. But most of the time, a little creativity combined with a kiss, some Elmer’s Glue, or a needle and thread, will put everything back to rights.

I’m not sure exactly how my children’s belief in my magical restorative powers began. I suppose it could have been the first time they pulled apart two Legos and sadly held them up for my inspection, and I stuck them back together. Or, knowing my son, perhaps it was a toy truck that he had pulled a door off of, and I popped it back into place.

 

It might even have been a beloved shirt covered in mud (no doubt resulting in a sad, “uh-oh!”) that miraculously re-appeared in their dresser sans stain. I know that I’ve been kissing their boo-boos away since before they could talk. And somehow, over the course of time, the legend of mom’s ability to fix anything was born, and grew.

Unfortunately, when my son was around two years old, my fix-it ability resulted in his developing a very cavalier attitude towards breaking toys and tearing books. The words, “We can fix it with glue and tape!” became an all-too familiar refrain (his words, not mine). I had to rein in my ability in order to discourage him from destroying everything in the house. Occasionally, I would even inform him sadly that a book was beyond repair, but then secretly fix it and hide it for a while before returning it to the bookshelf. Eventually he learned to be somewhat more careful with books, but despite my “failures” to fix some books, he still came to me with complete faith in my ability to fix anything.

My daughter, at 20 months old and with somewhat limited verbal skills, has already begun her trip down this trusting path. Just yesterday, when I went to get her after her nap, she held up a teddy bear with a gaping three-inch hole in a back seam, and handed her to me with a sad, “Uh-oh! Oh, no!” and an expectant look. She watched me intently as I pulled out a needle and thread and carefully stitched the hole closed. When I handed the bear back to her and told her, “All better!”, she broke into a huge grin and gave the bear a tight hug and me a cheery, “Tank oo!!”

 

I’m sure that at some point in the future, my children will realize that I can’t magically fix everything. A broken arm that can’t be kissed away, a favorite toy smashed beyond the help of “glue and tape”, a broken friendship that can’t somehow be wrestled back into place, a broken heart that is beyond the help of even the coolest band-aid. The realization that Mom is, after all, only human, is a big milestone in a child’s life. That knowledge is one of the things that will start them on the path to adulthood.

But fortunately, if they continue along that path to adulthood, I have no doubt that someday they too will acquire magic fix-it skills in the eyes of a child, whether it be their own child or someone else’s. It’s a legacy that I can’t wait to pass along.

 

What I Will Tell My Children about the 2013 Boston Marathon

At the ages of 1-1/2 and 3-1/2, my children don’t really understand what happened at the Boston Marathon two days ago. To them, the most unusual thing that happened that day was that Daddy came home from work early and Mommy had the radio on a lot. But I’m sure that a few years from now, they will hear someone mention it in conversation, or they’ll talk about it in school. And when they ask me what happened in Boston on April 15, 2013, this is what I will tell them.

On that day, someone – or several someones – tried to break the spirits of the people of Boston. On that day, there were a few people who tried to hurt some others. On that day, there were perhaps a handful of people who tried to strike terror into our hearts.

They failed.

Because for every nail, for every ball bearing, for every piece of shrapnel they planted in those bombs, there was an EMT, a firefighter, a cop who raced to the aid of those who were hurt. For every bystander who was hurt, there was another bystander who offered a stranger his cell phone, his coat, his shoulder, his apartment.

For every Boston family who waited in fear to hear whether a loved one was okay, there was a family in Boston, a family in Chicago, a family in London, a family in Afghanistan who was praying for the safety of all those loved ones.

The images that are burned in my brain most strongly are not the images of the smoke from the bombs and the blood on the streets, but of the bravery of those trained to respond to disasters and those who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time who reached out to help others.

 

The quote that came to my mind most often the day of the bombings is one that was quoted by many others that day, a quote from Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' ”

And both on that day and in the days since, everywhere I look I see people helping. Volunteers asking where they can give blood. Employers offering counseling to their employees. Athletes setting aside long-held rivalries to offer support. People from all over the world standing in solidarity.

The legacy of this day will not be a sense of fear and intimidation, but a sense of brotherhood and solidarity. Whoever set those bombs intended to create chaos and disorder, but instead they created a sense of unity more powerful than they could have imagined. They intended to destroy peace, but instead they created an even stronger drive for peace. A drive for peace which will overcome their hate, and hate throughout the world.

 

 

That is what I will tell my children about this day.

Extra! Extra! Read All about It: The "Newsies" Review

This weekend, I was privileged to attend a performance of the musical “Newsies” at the Nederlander Theater in New York City. I first saw the movie “Newsies” many years ago, starring a very young Christian Bale and featuring Bill Pullman and Max Casella (of “Doogie Howser” fame). Disney revised the musical for the stage, adding some songs and changing around a few characters, and the show opened on Broadway in 2012, receiving 8 Tony Award nominations (including best musical, best book of a musical, best director of a musical, and best scenic design) and winning the Tony for both choreography and original score. The plot is based on a real-life newsboys’ strike in New York City in 1899, and tells the story of a group of “newsies,” young boys who buy newspapers at a penny for ten “papes” to sell on the streets. When the owner of “The World” newspaper, magnate Joseph Pulitzer, decides to up the price by half a penny in order to increase the paper’s circulation (and his own profits), the boys band together and strike, recruiting the help of a girl reporter, eventually bringing the entire city of New York – and Pulitzer himself – to its knees.

What makes this musical unique is that the ensemble – and the vast majority of the cast – is comprised of young men between the ages of about 15 and 25. This gives the show a style and energy unlike any other. The most similar show I can think of is “West Side Story,” with its athletic, all-male dance numbers like “When You’re a Jet” and “Cool”. But where WSS intersperses those dance numbers with all-women’s numbers like “America” and mixed-gender dances like “Mambo,” “Newsies” is all boy. (Okay, there’s one number where one girl joins in, but it only serves to highlight the boys.) And let’s be honest: boys do not dance like girls. Nor do they dance like older men. And in fact, “dance” is hardly a complete description of the choreography in this show. There are cartwheels, handsprings, flips, walking on hands, and full tumbling passes running the length of the stage. There’s a tap number and a prop-driven number dancing on torn newspaper pages a la Gene Kelly. Choreographer Christopher Gatelli makes use of the boys’ flexibility, strength, balance, athleticism, and most noticeably their stamina and endurance to create a hugely energetic, vibrant, electric dance ensemble. The energy level maintained throughout each number, and indeed throughout the entire show, is frankly mind-boggling. And his choreography is not only exciting and interesting, but it serves to build on the characters created in the show, giving each newsie his own personality.

The characters of the boys are crucial to the production. If the audience doesn’t care about the newsies, they don’t care about the outcome of the strike, and the dramatic tension is lost. But director Jeff Calhoun gives us plenty to care about by not only giving the main character, Jack Kelly, both the dream of getting out of the city someday and a seemingly unattainable love interest, but by creating many unique and individual characters within the ensemble. A few of the boys have lines that give them a backstory or a personality – cigar-chomping Race, bookish Davey, crippled Crutchie, wise-cracking Sniper, young and innocent Les. But even the nameless boys are not left faceless – there’s the one who finishes every leap and every tumbling pass with a cocky grin, the shy one who wrings his hat in his hands after a particularly impressive leap as if apologizing for grabbing everyone’s attention, the gymnast who walks on his hands and scampers up the set pieces like an agile monkey.

And speaking of the set – oh, what a set it is! I’ve seen some amazing pieces of stagecraft and scenic design in my years of watching professional theater, but this set was one of the most memorable. There are many stage musicals that are later adapted as movies which take a small, limited stage set and expand it into a huge scale. “The Sound of Music” is a perfect example: the stage gave us a grand ballroom, a room or two at the convent, and a gazebo; the movie gave us a birds’ eye view of the Alps and seemingly the entire town of Nonnburg. “Newsies” must somehow do this in reverse, taking the whole city of New York and fitting it onto the stage. Scenic designers Tobin Ost and Sven Ortel do this brilliantly with a trio of three-level modular scaffolding and stair units that move forward and back, spin, and connect and disconnect to create various backdrops. The front of each segment also has a drop-down screen that is used as both a projection screen and a scrim.

These units, along with similar smaller pieces, all painted in drab, dirty-city gray, become everything from the gates of Pulitzer’s offices to the stairway down into a makeshift prison cell to the balconies and fire escapes of tenement buildings to a platform for an announcement by Governor Roosevelt. These multi-use pieces allow for seamless transitions between scenes, using the actors (and possibly a few stagehands costumed as newsies) to move the sets while the action of a scene is still going on, with no need for a blackout or a break in the action of the story. The added advantage of the multi-level set is that it fills the stage with action from top to bottom and not just from side to side, creating a sense of being surrounded by city hustle and bustle, much like a three-ring circus that gives the audience too much to look at all at once.

But of course, choreography and sets can do nothing without a talented cast to bring them to life. And there is certainly no lack of talent in this cast. Corey Cott as strike leader Jack and Kara Lindsay as young reporter Katherine are both charming in their roles, with impressively powerful vocals and brilliant comic timing, each throwing off witty asides with aplomb and making wry facial expressions that stop just short of actual mugging. The characters are well-matched in terms of their tough exteriors, hidden insecurities, and sharp wit and intelligence, and both actors hit just the right balance of cockiness and vulnerability to make the audience both admire and sympathize with them.

The character of Katherine is an excellent example of how a show can sometimes be improved by character changes. One of the major changes from the movie to the stage show is that the reporter was originally a man (Bill Pullman), and the love interest was the sister of two of the newsies. Combining these two characters by making the reporter a young woman who falls for Jack makes the youth vs. adult battle lines all the clearer, with the youngsters acting completely without adult support, relying on their own wits and determination alone, making their eventual victory all the sweeter. And the increased social inequality between Jack and Katherine is an even greater deterrent to their romance than in the original, which naturally makes them – and the audience – all the more determined to overcome it.

But if every character were totally sympathetic, the show could easily become saccharine-sweet. Fortunately, the sweetness is cut nicely by a villain that the audience loves to hate, John Dossett’s nasty Joseph Pulitzer, who is money-grubbing, self-centered, egotistical, and vengeful, taking delight in tricking Jack and sending him to prison, and showing absolutely no concern over the plight of the boys who are struggling to feed themselves and their families. The audience can’t help but cheer when he finally gets his comeuppance, courtesy of the cleverness and persistence of the youngsters he had looked down on as insignificant and unimportant.

Over the past few years, I have been somewhat disappointed in the quality of many of the Broadway shows that have been created. But “Newsies,” even though not being entirely new, is proof positive that there is a new generation ready to begin “carrying the banner” for Broadway. Based on this production, I’d say it’s going to be in excellent hands.