Maine-ly Perfect

Aaah, Maine. The entire state deserves a gold star.
Nothing quite says summer like a lobster roll and some clam chowder at our favorite Booth Bay eatery, The Lobster Dock. The girl behind the counter deserved a gold star for making us feel better about the 20 minutes we stood in front of the big board, surveying our options. It's hard to choose when you get somewhere but once a year and look forward to it the rest of the days.

"I've seen people take longer..." she sympathized. "It's a big menu."

Vacations are fabulous but not without their challenges, not the least of which is the idea that every moment should be fabulous, picture perfect. There is so much on which to decide, so much you imagine should be wonderful and so many of your regular worries and stresses that you have brought with you, your baggage in your baggage.

It feels as though all should drain away except the beauty when you are looking at some of the misty watery vistas of Maine, and yet... The "shoulds" are what we "should" get rid of. Somehow I feel as if I should be magically sporty and fearless when faced with the outdoorsy adventure opportunities of Maine and, yet, my most treasured moments are spent in the bookstore at Booth Bay, or the candy store, at the flea market or one of many favorite antique stores, reading on the porch, looking up to see the clammers digging in the mud down the hill, with my children running in the grass catching fireflies. (OK, they are usually inside watching cable, but we won't talk about those moments:)

I have in our few short days here given out a fair number of gold stars to sunny Mainers, cheery even in the rain and humidity. "Is it the 27th or 28th?" asked the adorable older woman working at the co-op art gallery, trying to write the date. "I want to make sure I don't miss even one precious day..."

She is so right. There is so much to appreciate here, so much beauty to behold. We should and will in earnest try to leave our neurotic New York selves behind...I think it might require lots of lobster and a fair number of trips to the DQ.

Savoring the Impermanence of Places, Things: Uncle Earl's KC Groves

I met KC Groves at Parco one morning a few weeks back. She was happily, naturally engaging in a conversation about good books, taking suggestions from my friend Emma. She seemed like a local, but she was actually just passing through, back from a tour in Germany ("great food, well taken care of...") and now on her way to a bluegrass festival, DelFest, in Maryland, with her band, Uncle Earl.

After the festival, she said, "I'm going to hit the Appalachian trail." I was envious hearing of her travels. She smiled.

"All I do is travel, and I always think 'could I live here? Maybe this is where I should live...'"

It made sense, then, why she fit in so well in the corner here at Parco. She was trying Park Slope on for size.

I laughed. "I always think that too!"

I shared with her my own thoughts of the area where she was headed in North Carolina where I had travelled with my family along the Blue Ridge Parkway years earlier. I had met a lovely woman at a junk shop in Mt. Airy. She had given me a little succulent as a gift after I had given her a gold star.

"'Hens and chicks,' she called it..."

KC nodded. "Yes, Semper Vivum," she said. "Always alive."

I cringed. "Yikes. It died..."

We laughed. Gifts from strangers are often temporary, as are travels to faraway places. But it is important to learn to appreciate them in the moment, to savor them. KC definitely seems to do both, she's definitely trying, which is why I gave her a gold star. Later, listening to her great band online, I realized I should have given her another...they are awesome!

Rolling with Summer...

Today is the solstice, the first day of summer. It is the first day of the week, the first day of a new season, it is a transition day on which I should give out a lot of gold stars. The first go to my friends Anne and Mike for having us over to their glorious roof deck for the first of (I hope) many evenings enjoying the sunset over Brooklyn.

Change is necessary but hard, that is for sure. My children have four more days of school and then are off for the summer, on vacation, in camp, out of their regular routines into new ones and, often, none. It is a nice break but, as a friend told me earlier about when her child goes down for a nap, breaks can become breakdowns, moments where there is not enough distraction from the things that plague and worry us.

Summer can be fabulous, fun, a time to do all those things you've dreamed of doing. But the list of those things can get long, the ability and means to do them not so much. I hear complaints nearly every summer weekend if people here haven't gone exciting places, done interesting things, taken advantage of all a city like New York and its surrounding environs have to offer.

"I'm doing some easy parenting," a neighbor told me recently as he sat on a bench in my apartment building's courtyard, his son running around in the grass. Maybe it was just me, but it sounded like a judgement of himself, one I offer up all the time of my own parenting when my kids aren't actively engaged, one I  hear from so many others when every moment isn't fun-filled and action packed. We are so hard on ourselves, never more so when opportunities abound, when it is totally up to us (not the school) to take charge of the curriculum.

This summer, I am bound and determined to enjoy, to appreciate all we do (and don't do) and to appreciate that everyone needs a break. Years after the school-year schedule no longer applies to me personally, just my kids, it still feels like the end of things, a wrap-up before a brief hiatus, before September begins everything anew. I try to remember from past years, September comes all too soon. Hopefully you'll remember that too! Gold star for trying...

Teaching Kids to Care: Ms. Marissa

I send my boys to a public school, PS107 in Park Slope, that is a little bit of heaven in the big bad city. It is filled with a faculty like Ms. Marissa, a princess for the day (it's her birthday tomorrow!) and a princess the whole year through in my eyes because she looks out amazingly well for my little Oscar.

Ms. Marissa got her gold star today for getting through the full hard year of teaching five- and-six-year-olds with great patience. She, like the rest of the 107 team, while imperfect as the rest of us, love each and every one of the children in their midst with all their heart, they care about them immensely and wish for them the best. That is no small thing.

When I worry for a moment, especially at the beginning of the year, if I am doing the absolute best thing for my children by sending them to this particular school, if they are learning the most they can learn, getting the most out of the school environment that they can, becoming the greatest people they have the potential to be, I start making a list of the problems, my concerns. And then, every year, I remember: this is a phenomenal community of the kind you cannot pay enough for. The reason why? The people that surround my boys, the people I entrust them to for many hours a day, care, they really, truly care. I can call many of them on their cell phones in a bind and they are always willing to help.

Such recognition relaxes me. This is what I most hope my kids can learn in their lives. More than math or science or nutrition, things I or the Internet could fairly easily teach them, I rely on a school to teach them about the necessary giving and receiving, the sharing and listening and compromising that is required in relating to other people, to the world.

If and when I have suggestions for changes, I know I cannot just complain, I have to act, I have to engage in the conversation with teachers and faculty about the problem and I have to be willing to take on whatever extra work fixing said problem requires, to figure if it can realistically be fixed, if ever and how. Of course, I often decide I do not have the time or energy to fix things as I would ideally see fit to. Or I realize that I am sending my children out into the world and, once there, I can only hope they take the lessons they learn at home and apply them in those places outside my control, that they come home and start a conversation with me if what they are told outside seems to grossly differ from what my husband and I have tried to impart.

So I let a lot go. I often I bite my tongue and realize that we live in a world full of imperfections and so will our children. The problems that French philosopher Montaigne outlined in the 1800s are ones we still grapple with today so I have no illusions that change is easy.

But I try, with my children and with their teachers both, with myself, to cheer successes, to see the glass half full. It is hard, granted, but necessary. This, I feel, is the best way to ensure the overall well-being of my family and my community. Look, in the end, it is selfish: if I support them, the teachers, inevitably, support my children, they look out for them in a way they might not if I were not on their side. That, I think, is a fact of human nature. Thank you Ms. Marissa for looking out for Oscar! I know it's not always easy...believe me, I know.

Massaging A Life: Trish Salazar

Maria-Elena, the barista at Parco who applauds every time I give out a gold star, had alerted me to her friend and neighbor standing there, to her "really cool job."

"What do you do?" I asked.

She smiled, somewhat sheepishly. "I massage people, in the Hamptons."

I laughed. "Nice, I love that!"

Turns out, as we sat and talked, that Trish Salazar has built a clientele organically, patiently allowing her skills to speak for themselves. And people have clearly taken notice, rewarding her with business and opportunities and with spreading the word about her to their friends. She is modest, that much is obvious, but she is also warm and genuine and awesome with a killer smile, all great traits to make people feel at ease on the massage table, to allow people to get the most out of their hour.

"You made my day, I love you!" she enthused as I gave her her gold star.

No surprise, that is my favorite response, the one I hope many people feel even if they don't say it quite as boldly. Trish is bold, I loved her too! We talked for quite a while, sharing the ways in which we are both working hard to figure our lives and careers, to put plans in place but also to find the patience to let life unfold in the magical ways it does when we are not trying to exert total control. It is a hard balance for sure. Plan and there is no room for spontaneity, don't plan and you risk having nothing going on.

Trish is wrestling with what direction to take, grappling with it, so to speak, but ever so gently and calmly. Just talking to her I felt like I was relaxing, the tensions flowing out of me a bit. She squeezed my shoulder as she walked out of the cafe and I thanked her for the free brief massage...

I'm definitely going to reach out to Trish for a massage! She said she could come to me or I could visit her, at her house with her neighbors' chickens out back. "Fresh eggs..." she beckoned. I'm definitely going, sometime soon, before her plans take her elsewhere, to the Hamptons, or before the magical things she is ready to allow whisk her into a different world, or keep her in the same world, appreciating the view.

Words and Smiles Remembered: Matt

As I sit here writing, I am staring at an hourglass my son, Eli, picked up at a stoop sale this weekend. The words ring in my ears from years of soap-opera watching: "Like sand through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives..."

Sappy, sacharine and so, so true. Recently I had the great pleasure of hosting a very old friend in my Brooklyn apartment, someone whom I have seen only at high school reunions over the last 20 years but who, according to my scrapbook, figured large especially in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades.

Matt Knox wrote me a letter in 1981 from his vacation in Santa Ana, California. I found it recently as he sat in my kitchen, in town from his current home in fabulous Manhattan Beach, California to promote his awesome online home-improvement and construction classifieds, DiggersList.

In it he told me "when you grow up you should be a marige (sic) counselor, or maybe a therapist. You do a good job talking to people."

He laughed as I read it out loud. "I said that?" he marveled. Neither of us remember the advice I'd given to warrant the comment, suffice to say it was helpful enough then that he appreciated it. So glad. The stakes were lower then, for sure, "marige" a far way off. But our problems are always hard to us at the time no matter how silly they might seem in hindsight.

It was as if no time had passed as we caught up on each other's lives, the various endeavors that had brought us through the years to now, to this moment when we are both working in our separate ways, on separate coasts, to help people do what they want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

He was high when he arrived here on the sheer exhiliration of offering interviews all day on what DiggersList can do. He smiled big even as he showed my kids on the Internet a ski jump like the one he didn't quite make it over, the one that had him in a cast for months and that has turned him into a bionic man (one afraid forever that he will set off the alarm at airport security.)

His big smile was the thing I remembered most about Matt, the thing that captured me then and now and is, likely, what captured those who had the good fortune to talk to him all over the New York media.

The connection we'd forged back then had stood the test of time because we are, of course, the same as we were. I still talk to people all around to try to help and learn from them how to help myself. I have no degree, but neither did I in the sixth grade when I chatted with my friend about how he might forge ahead in his relationships. Matt is as engaged with the world and the people in it as he was then. And that's why I gave him a gold star and good luck in all his endeavors...