CityMama™

In this economy, love thy neighbor

One evening about a month ago, I received a phone call from a woman who attends my beloved hippie church asking me how I was doing and if I wanted to talk to our beloved minister about any issues relating to the economic downturn. (I realize that's a lot of "beloveds," but this place and the people in it are my rocks.) She was reaching out to all the members of our community to ask if we were facing a job loss or home foreclosure or anything else that might be causing financial hardship. She also let me know about a new group forming at church—the "Recession Riders"—and that its members were planning on weathering the economic storm together.

I've heard people saying that the area I live in is "recession proof." Restaurants are packed, people are out and about doing their thing, but I wonder: when it gets worse, and it will, will this area crash that much harder? How many people in my community are barely keeping it together or putting up fronts or needing help but are too afraid to ask?

When I was your age we played outside, and our parents didn't care what we did, and we liked it that way.

My brother and I were talking recently about our childhood recently and about how much of it was spent outside playing absolutely, positively unattended by parents (or any adult for that matter).

When we lived in Hawaii, we lived near the top of a windy, rain-foresty, mountain road called Tantalus Drive. Our house overlooked a valley and was surrounded by acre upon acre of barely-tamed forest. (The view in the photo is similar to the view from our house.) Trails led up and away from the house into the woods and we would explore for hours. And hours. We'd drag our Big Wheels and bikes up up up those trails, which were lined with eucalyptus trees, carefully align them at the top of the trail and then ride them all the way down peddling as fast as we could. We'd do this over and over again. Sounds fun, right?

Dear Cyber-Bullies, Your moms are on Facebook

Last week, a dear friend of mine emailed me a link to Facebook "hate group," created about her son. After getting over the initial shock which included my heart breaking into roughly a thousand pieces, several thoughts ran through my head:

"Who are these kids?"
"Why would they do such a thing?"
"Do their parents know?"
"Why weren't more kids posting comments that this was wrong?"
"Who do I know at Facebook (which is headquartered five minutes from my house)?"
"How do I get this taken down?"

I knew my friend was very upset, but strangely, the person I knew who would emerge from this "okay" was her son. Of course, I felt protective of him, but he's just in a different world from people like that. Did I want to throttle those kids? Yes. Would I feel like an absolute failure as a parent if I knew my kids ever did something like that? HELL yes. But their intended target is one of the most sweet, brilliant, and together kids I know. If anyone could come out of this looking at the bigger picture, I knew it was this amazing boy. The person I was most concerned for, one mother to another, was my friend.

How the Grinch tried to ruin Christmas and how he didn't know he would be blogged

Wallie with her beloved smoked salmon plate.

On Christmas Eve eve the girls and I hit up the local mall with my mom and brother to do some last minute shopping and along the way, we decided to stop and have lunch.  My brother wanted to continue shopping and said he'd meet us for dessert so my mom and I headed into the restaurant with Bunny and Wallie and promised to save him a spot.

Naturally, the narrow restaurant was crowded with shoppers and the many outside tables—normally packed—were empty due to inclement weather. When I asked for a table for five, the grandmotherly hostess (aka Strega Nona, who I think was also the owner) tutted and asked where the fifth member of our party was. I could tell this wasn't going to go well.

"He's shopping," I explained. "But he'll meet us later for dessert."

I was prepared for one of those "we can't seat you until your party is all here" spiels, but instead she huffed and said something even more frustrating, "You are going to order food...right?"

It was the "dot-dot-dot, right" that killed me.

I blinked.

Twice.

Why would she ask that question? Sometimes I think (and this is something that is probably common with mixed race folk though we don't readily admit it), "Is it because I'm not white? Is that why you think I won't order something?" I don't want to go there, but I've been learned to be disappointed by presumptuous people. And she looked presumptuous. It wouldn't be the first time someone assumed something incorrect about me based on my appearance.

I wanted to scream, "I'm half-Italian! Aren't you Italian, too?" But instead I said."Yes, we're here for lunch." We were standing in the crowded entry and people were pushing past us bumping their shopping bags into ours and all I could think was, "I'm getting out of here." But at that moment she sighed and said, "Hold on, let me prepare a table."  And so we waited.

fall. beauties.

It was cold today, but that didn't stop us from taking a pre-dinner walk outside. My plan was to leave the house while it was still light out and be out walking the neighborhood as it turned to dusk.

We are all a little antsy in the late afternoon. Work is wrapping up for the day and yet I sit at my monitor just in case one more email comes in. My to-do list has only three checks on it. The empty boxes are mocking me. I need to get outside.

The girls have gone from games to drawing to playing and are just about to start causing little rows. So we threw on our hodge-podge of it's-cold-but-we-live-in-California attire (jackets, dresses, scarves, shoes with no socks) and prepare to head out. Before we could leave Bunny needed to get her diary. Wallie grabbed her stuffed rabbit.

Bailout? I gotcher bailout right here.

So...how is everyone doing? Panicked? Apathetic? Unaffected? Stressed?

I have no monetarily-related brain space left to comprehend the scope of this bailout since our finances have been in a strained state of affairs since we took a hit selling our Portland house. That, combined with moving from a relatively affordable place to live to a very expensive place to live, has snowballed into a series of mini-crises that we've been working hard for the past two years to correct. It's shocking that two people who earn a very comfortable living who aren't extravagant or frivolous, who watch their pennies and try to put something away every month, aren't living a better life. And speaking of putting something away, I have buried my head in the sand about our 401ks. I can't look. I really do not want to know.

Most everyone I know has it really tough, but not very many people have been talking about it. Until now. Now everyone seems to be talking about ways they are cutting back, saving money, and trying to make ends meet.

I have spent the last week researching (again) places we can live that are cheaper. A move is in our future, probably next summer. I am crushed thinking about uprooting our girls (again) so that we can save money on housing costs and have a little more discretionary money for fun things. Could we suck it and stay here? Maybe, but I don't want to live this way anymore. We've had to accept our own "bailouts" at times over the past couple of years, which I am grateful for, but we can't rely on that. Our own little economy needs to right itself. And soon.

When bought our house in Portland, I was staggered to learn that you could rent decent houses in decent neighborhoods there for around $1000 a month. I know you mid-westerners are laughing right now, but when the average price of a small home here is $700K, you live in a different world. Triple that rent in the San Francisco Bay Area (at least) and you see what families like mine are facing. Our combined salaries in Portland was a very different reality and we are feeling the pain.

The saga of the swimming lessons

Here's the thing that frustrates me about large group lessons (more than 4 kids): kids spend most of their time waiting around to do the strokes or whatever rather than doing them themselves. And while they are waiting around they aren't paying attention, they waiting around bored. Or they are chatting with their friends or splashing each other and otherwise screwing off. Or so it was all winter long at the Y when my girls did their lessons last year. Teacher's fault? Partly, but beyond 3-4 students, how much time can the instructor realistically give each student in a 40 minute lesson?

Last summer and this summer they had 1:1 lessons with a competition swimmer, a seasoned instructor, someone who knows her shite. They did this every single day they spent in Hawaii. After their lessons I practiced with them and each day they grew exponentially better and more confident with their skills. I am now a firm believer that large group lessons do not work if you want your kid to progress quickly as a swimmer, especially as it relates to proper swimming technique. I guess it's like anything.

Now that we are back from Hawaii, we are still spending lots of time in the pool, but since Bunny wants to do swim team this fall, I have been in search of lessons that match my philosophy of swimming, that philosphy being: Stop being a baby and swim, goddammit. Not that I would ever say that out loud. I'm grilling everyone, "Do you like your lessons?" "Why?" "How many kids are in your class?" "Is the pool heated?" "Are your kids making quick progress?"

Bubble world

Went up to San Francisco with the girls earlier this week to have lunch with my sister. The girls scampered into the car with their sundresses and sandals on and as I climbed into the front seat, something triggered deep down in my brain and I ran back into the house for heavy jackets and yoga pants they could slide on under their dresses.

How quickly we forget.

We were having lunch near 9th & Irving close to where we used to live in Cole Valley. "There's Tata's old house!" I pointed out.  "There's where Mamma and Papa used to live before we had kids!" I indicated, but who could see through the fog, which was rolling over Cole Valley thick as pea soup.

We arrived at the restaurant where I snagged a spot in front. There was a time that I'd rather walk 15 blocks from a non-metered spot than to have to pay 25 cents for 7 minutes. "Screw that," I thought, pulled into the metered spot then realized I had no quarters. I've gone soft. The days when I used to go the bank to get two rolls of quarters (for laundry and parking) are long gone. Luckily my sister had a bunch of quarters.

Hello, pretty Korean ladies, can I talk to you?

Cross-posted on Kimchi Mamas.

The gym we belong to is truly a "community" gym. It is family-oriented and caters to the many different cultures represented in our diverse city. At any given time you can hear multiple languages being spoken, and I especially love how the old Chinese men sit in the lobby reading their newspapers and chit-chatting.

Swimming lessons, however, are dominated by Koreans. More precisely, Korean moms and their children. Their kids somehow manage to look immaculate even while in the water. The little girls wear frilly swim caps and goggles that match their swim suits, and the boys' brush cuts glisten with little drops of water whenever they surface. Two minutes before classes end, a line of Korean moms stand at the edge of the pool with towels-in-hand ready to wrap up their children so they don't get cold. They are then whisked off to the showers where the mothers scrub them from head-to-toe, even if by Western standards, those kids could scrub themselves.

The moms, sporting pastel-colored cashmere cardigans and cropped chinos, congregate together, chatting in Korean. They fawn over each other's babies and answer newcomers' questions about what to do in our city. They look so put-together in their jaunty-yet-sporty outfits while I sit on my bench with a book and my kids' towels in my lap.

But, I want to talk with them! I want to say, I know I may not look it, but I'm Korean, too! I want to know which Korean market they go to. I want to know if I can get the frilly swim caps here or if they brought them with them from Korea. I want to ask if I can fawn all over the sweet little baby in the stripey sweater that sits contentedly in her stroller looking at me for the entire swim lesson.

They are so...elusive. They remind me of jellyfish. They are so elegant. So pretty. So lithe. I am so...the opposite. I fear that if I approach them wearing my normal uniform of jeans, a fleece jacket, and Crocs (it's a pool), that I will cause them to flutter away.

So I sit there watching and admiring this group of women who, despite all the reasons why they have left Korea to be here, have found each other. Admiring that they are finding their way here despite being so far from home and, perhaps, not speaking English so well.

I imagine that if they were in Korea, they would be doing the exact same thing, spending the afternoon at the pool watching their kids swim, chatting with friends, swapping packets of candy and kim and other treats.  It would be exactly the same. Except they are here.

Maybe next week I'll "dive in" and ask them about the swim caps.

Wanderlust runs in the family

As we approach the one year anniversary of moving out of San Francisco, it's occurred to me that when January rolls around, we'll have already lived here longer than the last two places we lived (if that makes ANY sense.)  Last year we spent six months living in a sublet, and then six months living in a place that we hoped to buy, but then life sent some changes our way.

At about the six month mark of living in our current house, Bunny started asking when we were going to move again. "I'm tired of this house," she'd say. "I don't like the one-level house anymore. I want stairs again."

Side note: everywhere we've lived since Wallie was born has had  Stairs of Death—with awkwardly steep rises and perplexingly short runs or just lots of them to get to where you needed to go. (Notice the first set of stairs leading to our house in the photo above. Only 4 more sets to go and you're home!) Both girls became adept at scaling stairs early out of necessity, but now I've noticed that Wallie has completely lost her stair mojo.

Today over breakfast Bunny told me she was ready to move back to Portland. Her old Portland play buddies visited recently and she just now realized that they were back home.

"When can we move back to Portland," she queried.

"Well, we're planning on staying in this town for a while," I countered.

"No. I want to move back. I miss our basement playroom."

"If we move back to Portland we'll have to leave your school...your friends... Is that what you want?"

She thought about it then put forth a quiet, hesitant, "No."

Thing is, even though I have no intentions (none. no really!) of moving outside of our lovely burg, I spend a few minutes every week day dreaming about the "what if...". J. speaks of his company's outposts in Ireland or India and I find myself thinking, "I could totally do two years in either place. What an experience that would be for our kids."

Of course, we still haven't unpacked the 10 or so boxes filled with books that we packed in Portland two years ago, and my china and silver will probably have to spend another year slumbering away in its packing. We're hosting Thanksgiving this year and I keep debating on whether to pull it out. After all, our lease is up in a couple months and then what?

I know that "then what" will be to renew it on a month to month basis while re-evaluating our long term plans.  I hope my biggest worry then will be finding a place to live that's in the same school zone so Bunny doesn't have to start first or second or third grade somewhere else.

Bunny's just going to have to get used to living here. ...Fickleness might run in the family, too.