Pre-School!

Bye Bye Bottle

For two years, my parents have turned a blind eye to my oral fix, ignoring my dependence on the bottle. Now, with preschool right around the corner, suddenly they're consumed with migrating to all things big boy. I'm not too keen on the adjustment, but sometimes I oblige with other people, including baby sitters, just to mess with them...

Bye Bye Summer

Remembering 10 Years Ago

It's a rather odd header, I suppose, considering I wasn't even a glint in my parents' eyes back on 9/11. But the connection is certainly there, as my mom and dad had met just weeks before and were instant messaging each other across the world when the planes hit the twin towers, my mom narrating the grizzly scene to my dad from her office window 'til she had to evacuate. My dad, not having a clue where she was for 48 hours, was freaked and realized in that time, 'crap, I must really like this woman.' Their relationship blossomed under the heavy canopy of 9/11. Every email, phone call and IM thread those first several months was against that backdrop. The smells, the sounds, the national psyche and even the sentiment of carpe diem that permeated the city then were part of the fabric of every exchange.

***

My parents passed the promenade on their run this morning, and the eerieness was palpable. (So was the timing. By sheer happenstance, my mom took the photo above at exactly 10:28, when the north tower fell.) And for a New York minute, the compassionate and caring aura that filled the city ten years ago was back. Across the Brooklyn Bridge, bikers and runners tossed their normally contentious exchanges for a rare moment of cooperation, each yielding to the other in the bridge's narrow lanes while they made room for a band of firefighters from Anaheim, CA playing their bagpipes. Runners, including my normally aggro mom, paused their stopwatches to make way for others and took a break from elbowing clueless, ambling tourists. And by the time my mom made it to Chambers Street in Manhattan, the re-valorization of the people in uniform was in full gear... from diners offering free donuts and coffee to NYC's finest to runners stopping mid-way along the park to thank police officers for their heroism.

Chocolate Chocolate Chunk

Block Part-ay

Can you hear me now?

Waiting out Irene