Can People in Heaven See Us Down Here?

 

 I thought that kids were about six years old when they started to grapple with the concept of death, but granddaughter Amalia has been obsessing about it since she turned four-- although she’s never had a close relative, or even a pet, pass away.  And it’s probably my fault.  On a visit to her home in Manhattan, I once said something like this:  “That book is by a man named Maurice Sendak.  He’s a very good artist and writes wonderful books, but he’s dead now.”

I could hear my daughter Eleni exclaiming from the next room, “Why would you say something like that?  You have no filter!”

It’s true. I was thinking the same thing myself, as Amalia asked, “Why is he dead?”

“Well he was very old,” I replied lamely.

“Like you?” she asked.

“Oh, much older than I am,” I lied.

I was also, according to Eleni, the person who introduced Amalia to the concept of heaven when she asked one day where my Mommy was and I replied “in heaven.”  The conversation ended there, but she must have been mulling it over.

On a more recent visit to New York, Amalia and her Mommy took me out to a restaurant for dinner on the last night before I left for home.  On the way to the restaurant Amalia suggested brightly, “Mommy, I’ve got a great idea!  We should take Yiayia out to dinner on her last night with us before she goes to heaven!”

Hilarity ensued, although I assured Amalia that it was an excellent idea, but I wasn’t planning on going to heaven just yet because I wanted to dance at her wedding first.

Maurice Sendak aside, Amalia has been distressing her mother for months by insisting that she doesn’t want to grow up.  She doesn’t even want to turn five.  She wants to stay four years old forever.

This is a very scary thing to hear, especially for a parent.  When Amalia says it to me, I counter by listing all the good things she’ll be able to do when she’s older that she can’t do now—ride a bike, drive a car, even get married and have her own children.

Recently, after my recitation of the good things that come with age, Amalia conceded that she would like to grow up after all, but that she never wanted to be “Old like you, so that people look at the veins in my hands.”

The veins on the back of my hands were bothering Amalia even before she could talk very well.  It must have been when she was around two and really into putting Disney character Band-aids on everyone and everything.  One day she pointed at my hands with concern, said “boo-boo!” and tried to put Band-aids on the backs of my hands.  I explained that it wasn’t a boo-boo, but just the way hands look when you’re old.

Amalia’s Mommy was wondering if she should talk to the child’s teachers, or a psychiatrist, about her obsession with death and old age, but I looked it up on line and discovered there are a lot of four-year-olds out there who don’t want to grow older and who ask disturbing questions about death.  I think they don’t want to grow older because their lives are so terrific right now and they sense that older people have to deal with unpleasant things like homework, exams, lack of money and social insecurities….and death.

Questions about death are disturbing to us because we’re wondering the same things our children are, and we don’t know the answers.  No one does.

As for the question above-- “Yiayia, can people in heaven see us down here?” --I told Amalia that nobody knows the answer to that question for sure, but I was convinced that when I was in heaven—and I didn’t plan on being there for a very long time, because I’m so determined to dance at her wedding—when I was in heaven looking down, I’d see all the great things that Amalia was going to accomplish as she grew up, and I’d be so proud of her.

Amalia Wraps Up Halloween and the Marathon

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By guest blogger Amalia

 Halloween weekend was awesome.  On Thursday Yiayia and I made trick or treat bags for everybody in my pre-K class.  Nicolas helped.

 

 My costume was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  I even had ruby slippers and a basket to carry Toto, my dog, in.

On Friday I went to two Halloween parties—in the morning in my classroom and my teachers gave us goodie bags, and in the afternoon Yiayia came and we went to the whole school’s Halloween party where I danced a lot and had a sword fight with inflatable swords and the DJ said I won over a bunch of older kids who were sword-fighting with me.

 

Yiayia looked really funny in her Scarecrow costume. She even did a Scarecrow dance.

On the way to school we passed lots of scary decorated houses, but now that I’m four, they didn’t scare me, even the ones where the monsters lit up and moaned and one where a giant spider jumps out at you.

My favorite was the one where the witch’s legs peeked out of the ground—sort of like in the Wizard of Oz when a house falls on her.

On Saturday, which was Halloween, we all dressed up like the Wizard of Oz characters and went to a huge party at the Natural History Museum called “Fright at the Museum.”  Mommy was Glinda the good witch, Papi was  the Tin Man, Yiayia was the Scarecrow, and Papi’s friend Arshad was the cowardly Lion.  Little brother Nicholas was supposed to be a Munchkin but he wouldn't wear his pointed hat and beard. There were a million kids at the Museum in different costumes, and I even saw two other Dorothy’s.

Saturday night Yiayia and Mommy and I went Trick or Treating around the Upper East Side, even to former Mayor Bloomberg’s house where people dressed as Minions handed out treats.

Papi had to go to bed early because the next day, Sunday, he was running in his first Marathon.  He had been training all summer.

He got up at six am. and took the Staten Island Ferry to the start of the race.  I had made signs saying “Go Papi Go” and we went to watch him pass by on First Avenue and 79^th Street near our apartment, but there were so many people there that we couldn’t get close enough to see him.  Mommy was tracking his position on her phone.  He stopped and looked for us but we couldn’t get where he could see us.  Then he went on running up and across Central Park.

I started crying because I didn’t see Papi so Mommy took me with her across town to find him at the finish line.  We got worried when she saw on her phone that he had stopped running in Central Park, but then he started again.  Later he said that he got muscle cramps and had to stop and someone massaged his legs.

Papi had hoped to break four hours in his first marathon, but his time was 4 hours and 18 minutes, which is really good for 26.2 miles.  We found him after the finish line and he got this awesome medal and a really cool cape to keep.

Papi says he thinks he’s going to run the Marathon again in two years.  In the meantime he’s going to do a 100-mile bike ride next year. 

Now that Halloween and the Marathon are over, I’m going to start planning what I’m going to cook for Thanksgiving.  Cookies and pies are my speciality.

The holiday season is awesome, but it’s also exhausting because there’s so much to do when you’re four years old.

Weird and Wonderful New York

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      It makes sense that the streets of New York become weird, mysterious and scary around Halloween.  That’s the case all over the country, but especially in the brownstones on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, people seem to be competing with each other to create the scariest haunted houses and yards complete with lights, sounds, and moving parts of the life-sized mummies, witches, skeletons and zombies. Walking Amalia to her school around Halloween begins to feel like being an extra in “The Walking Dead,” but now that she’s four, Amalia is happy hanging out with the neighborhood ghouls.

      But what I love about New York is that it’s full of weird, bizarre and unexpected sights all year round.  Every time I turn a corner I encounter something so strange that I pull out my camera to prove I really saw it, while the real New Yorker's don’t even blink or slow their stride toward the subway entrance.

"Everyone attending is guaranteed a message"

Above and below are  signs that I encounter every day on my way to pick up Amalia from school.

     
 Today I’m featuring some New York strangeness that is not necessarily seasonal.  In my next post I’ll focus on Upper East Side Halloween décor. (And on Halloween night itself, many of these elaborate, scary haunted houses -–decorated multi-million-dollar brownstones-- open their doors to all comers!)

     I found myself standing in line at a Dunkin Donuts behind this tattooed shoulder and arm.  I recognized those columns!  They’re from an ancient Roman temple in Baalbek, Lebanon, that I once photographed and later painted.  So I tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, “Is that Baalbek?” and he said it was.  Then I asked if I could take a photo.

       In September my friend Mary and I traveled by subway to Brooklyn to visit the Morbid Anatomy Museum, which describes itself as “Exploring the intersections of death, beauty and that which falls between the cracks.”  Besides being an avid collector of early and Victorian photographs (which often explore the same territory) I’m morbidly interested in traditions and superstitions surrounding death, so I found a lot to photograph there—reflecting the histories of taxidermy, medical practices, mourning customs, and just plain weird stuff. 

 Every table in the cafe held a bouquet of dead roses.

Two-headed duck and friends.

A devil (I think) and friends.

Taxidermy and pickled body parts.

       Don't know the purpose of this spooky doll in a suitcase.

       And on my way back from the Morbid Anatomy Museum, I couldn't resist photographing this Brooklyn front terrace, with a crowd of lawn ornaments that totally eclipses the single garden troll on daughter Eleni's balcony.  (But he does change his hat and garden pickings with the seasons.)

 Manhattan garden troll dressed for fall.

Next post: The Ghouls of Manhattan!

Traveling in Greece with Babies and Grandparents

Guest blogger today:  Daughter Eleni Gage Baltodano, who wrote this funny essay about part of our Greek odyssey in June, when she had a two-month-old son and a three-year-old daughter in tow (as well as husband Emilio, and Papou Nick and Yiayia Joanie ) and her breast milk pump had a melt down.  She wrote it for Pure Wander Magazine which is "Your Destination for Unique Family Vacations."

I'm posting here the first two paragraphs of her essay.  To read the whole thing, including what happened when the breast pump exploded, visit the Pure Wander site below. 

http://www.purewander.com/greece-for-the-ages-all-ages/

When I planned a family trip to Greece for June, the last month of my maternity leave, I thought it was a stroke of Mommy Genius. I envisioned my parents babysitting our almost-four-year-old daughter and our just-two-month-old son while my husband, Emilio, and I enjoyed long dinners at outdoor cafés on the romantic cobblestoned streets of Corfu Town.

People told me I was crazy to travel with an infant, but I missed my cousins in Greece and wanted to visit while I was still on leave, so I wouldn’t use up my precious vacation time. With my parents along for the ride, I’d have plenty of help. And this wasn’t my first rodeo; I knew what I was doing. I got the baby’s two-month vaccines and made sure his passport arrived in time for the flights we’d purchased; with all that done, I figured I was in the running for Mother of the Year.

It wasn’t until we arrived on Corfu that I realized I had left the essential funnel/cone components of my electric breast pump at home in New York...

Eleni N. Gage is an avid travel writer and author of Ladies of Managua. Find out more about her global family travel adventures and beyond on her website.

Another Amalia Birthday—New York Style

Amalia’s a lucky girl.  A week after celebrating her 4^th birthday at a pool party at her grandparents’ house in the country, she got a second birthday party in her hometown of New York City.  In Manhattan, Amalia has been invited to toddler birthdays that included rented function rooms, hired entertainers and waiters passing out hors d’oeuvres, but her folks managed to throw a super fun birthday with a minimum of expense (and a maximum of lugging things) in New York’s Central Park on Sunday, Aug. 23.   (Meanwhile in the nearby ball field, a bride and groom and their large audience were celebrating their wedding ceremony, which culminated with a loud cheer from the onlookers.) 

The day began with a safari or wagon train to transport everything over the four crosstown blocks from Amalia’s 14^th floor apartment, into the park, and then on behind the Metropolitan Museum to a spot near Turtle Pond. Of course the passengers in the wagon train included Amalia’s little brother Nicolas, four months old. 

We used two strollers and a cooler on wheels, and the stuff we toted included a pink “princess castle” and a small inflated Doc McStuffins “bouncy house” filled with multiple balls.   Amalia and her Mommy wore matching dresses from Nicaragua.

Parents with toddlers and babies arrived; wine, beer, pink lemonade and popcorn were dispensed and Amalia’s Papi walked over to Farinella’s on Lexington to pick up long, rectangular pizzas (called “palams”). 

Meanwhile little Nicolas made friends with Milind, Siya’s little brother.

 We had already bought and transported the two cakes—a carrot cake from Citarella’s (the only cake flavor Amalia will eat—and only $20!) and a Sugar Cookie Cake from Insomnia Cookies on Second Ave. and 82^nd.  

 This was an expanded version of the only cookie Amalia likes--she calls them “moon cookies” because of the moon on the Insomnia Cookies sign (They deliver warm cookies to your apartment up to 3 a.m., hence the “Insomnia” in the name.)

The candles on the cakes were lit and blown out by the birthday girl.   

 After that came the Doc McStuffins piñata, under the direction of Amalia's Papi, which was gamely attacked by Amalia, but not broken open until an older boy took the stick.  But before the cake and piñata came the highlight of the party that everyone had been waiting for—Manny the Bubble man.

Amalia’s folks had discovered Manny the Bubble Man in Central Park a year earlier.  He’s not the only street entertainer in the park who creates giant bubbles with sticks, rope, water and dish detergent, but he is probably the maestro of bubbles. 

 He considers bubble making an art form and was a little disappointed (as were the parents) that the youngsters kept popping his giant bubbles before they reached their full size.

Manny told me that he has done ads or commercials for Tiffany’s and with Sarah Jessica Parker. 

  Eleni and Emilio had booked him for half an hour, but he stayed an extra fifteen minutes, creating customized bubbles for each child plus parent.  Here’s Eleni’s long-time roommate Katherine with her son Pace.

 And Amalia with her Papi.

 Nobody wanted to leave, but it was getting late and people started packing up.  “The goody bags come at the end,” Amalia informed me, as she passed out Dr. Seuss bags from Target with back-to-school treasures inside.

We reassembled the wagon train, complete with all our gear and lots of presents for Amalia to unwrap later, and headed back toward home, thinking “Thank goodness for good weather, an August (not December) birthday date, and the magic combination of little kids and really big bubbles.”  

Amalia's Birthday Countdown

On Thursday night, Amalia and her family, including new little brother Nicolas, arrived at Yiayia and Papou's house in Grafton, MA to celebrate Amalia's 4th birthday (which is actually on August 26th.)  Amalia made sure to pack her special dress with a birthday cake on it.  She had asked for a birthday tiara with sparkling lights and a magic wand, which Yiayia managed to find.  Everything had to be in pink, Amalia's favorite color.  Here's Amalia re-discovering the toys she left in Grafton.

 

On Friday the decorations went up, the pool animals were inflated and Amalia decided to try out the pool along with her Mommy and little brother. 

 

Amalia showed everyone what she had learned during swimming lessons in Nicaragua in July.

 

We all got lunch from Bradish's down the road--including their famous fried onion rings and, because it was Friday, they had clam rolls as well.

That night we all ate ate Amalia's Uncle Fred's restaurant, The Westboro House.  Tia Marina, also a birthday girl, had flown in from San Francisco and she patiently cleaned all the tomato sauce off the ravioli so that Amalia would eat it.

Next day Amalia got dressed for the party with all her required accessories: party dress, "I am 4" badge, pink magic wand... crazy straw?

 

When everybody started coming, Tia Marina, wearing her own birthday tiara, convinced Amalia to put on her bathing suit and jump in the pool.

When it was piñata time Amalia got to take the first whack at the Doc McStuffins piñata because she was the youngest.  But a boy who was older finally broke it open.

Then it was time for the cake--carrot cake from Yummy Mummy in Westboro, with a mermaid on it.

Papi and Papou lit the candles.

And Mommy lifted Amalia so she could blow them out.

Then everybody sat around the pool, eating, and Yiayia held Nicolas.

The older Greek folks stayed inside the rec. room where it was cooler.  Then they all had Greek coffee and Nick's sister Kanta read fortunes in the coffee grounds.

They all loved holding Nicolas, because he smiles at everybody. 

Here he is with his Mommy's godmother, Kiki Economou.

"The goodie bags come at the end," Amalia informed her grandmother.  Here she is checking out the loot in her goodie bag with her Papi.

"It was even better than last year's party!" Amalia told her Grandma.  "Because it was so beautiful."

Then  she went back to Manhattan with her family to get ready for her SECOND 4-years-old birthday party to be held on Sunday in Central Park!