Skip to main content

A Trip to New York

 The Natural History Museum is both the worst and the greatest thing about New York City; it is loud, overpacked, badly organized, and also a portal to pure wonder. 


If you compare it to our nearby Newark Museum, it's like you're comparing "Per Se" to Domino's Pizza. It's one of the main reasons that the city itself seems so magical, to everyone living in every other portion of the United States.


My son is addicted to movement, and I have to just believe that he is absorbing some of what I read while he is running around. This could possibly be true, because he recently disclosed that he knows the words to some portions of "The Music Man," and he is also becoming familiar with bits of "Showboat." So I try to narrate what I see in museums, and I try to be accurate; that said, my heart goes out to the parent who lazily declares that "tigers are found in Africa." Or the parent who confidently states that polar bears live together with penguins at the South Pole.


Seeing the elephant seals on W. 80th Street, I very much want to talk about Ernest Shackleton. "He took a boat toward the South Pole.....but his crew became trapped in the ice, and they had to twiddle their thumbs for a full year. It was like a horror movie. They all thought they might need to eat one another. Elephant seals were friendly but leopard seals would pop up and bare their fangs? I think? Something like this? And the sea was like the worst sea on the planet; it was like a living thing, a monster, so you couldn't just take off in a little rescue boat." I don't have my facts straight, so I keep this jumbled story in my head. But maybe next time....


After the chaos, my family and I retreat to Shake Shack, which is another great wonder of the world. Fries and shack sauce; the fabulous ad for the "Shackmeister Ale." I have some "space center" PTSD, but perhaps it's worth the effort. Visions of meteors and iguanodons are (I think) dancing in two tiny heads....












Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...
3 comments
Read more

Joshie

  When I was growing up, a class birthday involved Hostess cupcakes. Often, the cupcakes would come in a shoebox, so you could taste a leathery residue (during the party). Times change. You can't bring a treat into a public school, in 2024, because heaven knows what kind of allergies might lurk, in unseen corners, in the classroom. But Joshua's teacher will allow: a dance party, a pajama day, or a guest reader. I chose to bring a story for Joshua's birthday (observed), but I didn't think through the role that anxiety might play in this interaction. We talk, in this house, quite a bit about anxiety; one game-changer, for J, has been a daily list of activities, so that he knows exactly what to expect. He gets a look of profound satisfaction when he sees the agenda; it doesn't really matter what the specific events happen to be. It's just about knowing, "I can anticipate X, Y, and Z." Joshua struggled with his celebration. He wore his nervousness on his f...
2 comments
Read more

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...
Post a Comment
Read more