Pulling teeth

I am thinking of Nanny right now. It's the time of year when, once I left home, I knew I'd get to see her more regularly than usual. Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then her birthday. Three months of Nanny really.

She hated cold and/or rainy weather. Just hated them. She'd bundle up in roughly 32 layers when the temperature dropped south of 65 and set her heater on thermal blast. I used to stagger backwards when I walked into her house during a winter month, as if I'd ventured into a broiling oven.

Despite the incongruence of her favorite holidays and birthday falling during her least-favorite time of year, she always had her glorious smile at the ready. And her cooking mitts on.

This was prime Nanny-as-culinary-matriarch season. Cranberry sauce, rice and cornbread dressings, blackberry pies. She'd whip them all out, full of flavor and just perfect.

Anyway, all this is not really the point of this story but will be a good one for later. Why, you might ask? 

Because other than teaching me how to cook all this goodness, Nanny also taught me to pull teeth. It was an inadvertent lesson; really, I just remember how she pulled mine and Elia's. Teeth gross my  mother out. Loose teeth? The ones that go horizontal in a light wind? She'd rather die than look at them. So pulling them? Forget it.

Nanny would soak a thin washcloth in cold water, wring it out, grip the loose tooth with her strong fingers and the cloth, and twist quickly up to one side. I don't ever remember it hurting.

The cold wet cloth was the key, in my opinion. It ensured that the tooth wouldn't slip the way it can between naked fingers. It also provided a slight distraction, for you felt and initially focused on the cold. During that moment, Nanny did the upward twist move, and once you noticed, the job was done. Finally, a gum that's just been liberated of a tooth is wont to bleed, and so that wet washcloth was right there, just waiting to absorb whatever drool and blood pooled in the fresh hole.

Tom is rather like Mom. The very idea of pulling a tooth sends him for the hills. And so I have donned the mantle of Resident Tooth Puller.

Each time I wet and wring the cloth, I tell the kids the story of how Nanny once did the same. I tell them about the upward twist, how quickly and painlessly it snaps the last of the connective roots.

Before they know it, they're sticking their tongues into the space that only seconds before wasn't there.

Last night, it was Ol's turn. For the first time! He was so nervous but also desperate: to lose a tooth and to get that puppy out. It was hanging every which way and his gum was swollen. "I am scared, Mama, but also I want this tooth out. I feel small because I think I am the only one who hasn't lost a tooth."

"Well buddy, you have to come to the right place."

He was beyond thrilled, said that the tooth fairy could not, under any circumstance, take his tooth* (probably because of his hoarding tendencies) and fell asleep happily.

Thank you for the tried and true method, Nanny. I miss you.

*Conversation about said ordinance:
Oliver: "I do NOT want the tooth fairy to take my tooth."
Jack: "Why not? Don't you want a gold dollar coin like she always leaves me?"
Oliver: "No. I want my tooth."
Jack: "You are weird."
Oliver: "It's not all about the money, Jack."

Competitive parenting

I live in Northwest Washington, DC, which doesn't want for intensity. Politicos, hyper-educated lawyers and business folk, a shocking number of inept drivers...all of them forge ahead with, let's say, a sometimes ferocious thrust.

I am nothing if not an intense driver, schooled as I was in the lanes of Boston so many years ago. (They call them Massholes for a reason, people; defensive, aggressive driving at its very best.) So while I loathe the traffic that can confound the most desolate of streets here during hours that seem as if no one should be out much less going somewhere, I do appreciate the opportunity, no need, to drive assertively.

I enjoy the thrilling, seething marriage of intellect, experience and engagement that characterizes so many of my city's denizens, most of whom aren't even from here. Native DCers past the age of twenty five are like white whales. Ahoy! You there. You grew up here? Fascinating! 

My sons attend an excellent school, admission for which required parental essays, a toddler IQ test and a supervised playdate. Such is the norm in DC, as it is in cities like New York and San Francisco, but I feel we largely escaped all the scary intensity of what the admissions process could be and often is like and am grateful every day for that.

By and large, the parents at my boys' school are remarkable, humble, terrific people, and in the community, I have made some of my dearest life friends.

All this to say, that it is both despite -toddler IQ tests?- and because of -neat people!- this jumbled context that I love living here. The good and bad, the yin and yang. 

What I have experienced shockingly little of is competitive parenting, a sport in which I have zero interest. We're all just getting through the days, people. I'm trying to turn out solid humans who know how to use silverware. There is no time for nonsensical showmanship.

There was the couple who complained to our children's teacher because Jack handed out homemade Valentines to the other eleven two-year-olds in his nursery school class. Apparently we had not received the memo suggesting that Valentines weren't a thing, and, as an ardent Heart Day fan, I wasn't going to stand in the way of my boy sharing love with others.

I chalked that experience up to lunatic, head-up-bottom, sleep-deprived silliness and never thought about it again because WHO GETS UPSET ABOUT CONSTRUCTION PAPER HEARTS CUT OUT AND DECORATED BY A TODDLER?

And yet, this afternoon, seven years later, at Jack's last baseball game, I saw and heard some crazy stuff that made my eyes pop and my mouth gape.

This is a non-competitive league of nine- and ten-year-olds and the first year of kid-pitch versus machine-pitching. Games are played on Sunday afternoons at neighborhood parks. Parents bring blankets and camping chairs and all their other kids and everyone lolls about in the sunshine watching their little beanpole boys with toothpick legs and absent butts attempt to get a baseball from pitchers mound to home plate or hit said ball in a non-injurious way.

It's sweet and fun, and the batting helmets weigh more than any kid's head.

But today, there was a mother (and it pains me to declare her gender because I'm all about strong and vocal women but if I didn't tell you she was a mother, you'd all assume it was a father because stereotypes) who also served as a coach, and she.was.unbelievably.aggressive.

"I DO NOT WANT TO SEE A BALL GET PAST YOU, TIMMY. DO YOU HEAR ME? IF A BALL GOES BY YOU, YOU THROW YOUR BODY ON IT. ARE YOU LISTENING? WHAT DO YOU DO?"

Timmy swore he would throw his body on the ball.

Every time they struck out one of our kids, she yelled "THERE IT IS!" before resuming her manic nail-biting and/or stalking thunderously around the field.

Tom, who rarely notices anything, said, "That coach is extremely aggressive." Several other parents heard him and said, "Right? That is so sad to see. It's so inappropriate."

And it is. What in god's name is she modeling for those kids? I don't know, but I don't think anything good.

At the top of the 5th inning, as our next pitcher was warming up, one of the other team's outfielders heard him speaking Spanish to his father and started dancing towards him with a clownish gait and singing in a decidedly insincere way, the Star Spangled Banner.

It went on and on and on, despite the fact that the game was in-session. Our pitcher's parents were stunned, the rest of us too. On that kid sang and danced, on our pitcher warmed up, larger our saucer-eyes grew.

And y'all, I am sorry, but I cannot stand for shit like that. I don't know if Mr. Dancer Singer intended to act in a bigoted fashion -taunting the Spanish-speaking child with an ugly rendition of the American anthem- but what I do know is that he was behaving in a distasteful way. And I do know that none of his coaches did a thing.

After several rounds of the SSB, I walked over, stared that kid down and asked, "Is there a reason you're singing that song right now?" He tucked his tail between his legs and hauled it back to the outfield. Where he should have been all along.

Our boys ended up winning and did so with grace and humility and sportsmanship. All of us -parents, kids, siblings- went out to dinner to celebrate: the end of another season (our fourth together), good friendships, hard work, and our best efforts to keep childhood simple and sacred. 

They're watching and learning from us all the time.

A day at a farm

The kids didn't have school yesterday because of parent-teacher conferences, so we decided to go out to Larriland Farm, in Woodbine, MD, to pick pumpkins and apples and whatever else was there for the taking.

As it turned out, we hit the greens, turnip and daikon radish jackpot plus all the Halloween-themed fun. Larriland's straw maze is the best I've ever been to; seriously, you could nearly get lost in there. We loved it!

It was a spectacular day, and as I'm wont to do when faced with in-the-ground produce, I went nuts and encouraged the boys to do the same.

As we headed home, it dawned on me that once again I might have been overzealous. Would it be another death-by-produce situation?

It was. I must have put ninety miles on my salad spinner.

pounds of spinach

Fortunately, I remembered that one of my favorite recipes, batsaria (aka phyllo-less spinach pie) requires two pounds of fresh spinach and so promptly decided that was what we'd have for dinner. 

The recipe is from my friend, Stephanie, whose family hails from Greece. It is so comforting and delicious.

While she makes hers in an 11 x 14 lasagna pan, I like to use two 9x13 dishes, make 1½ times the topping amount called for, split everything in half, bake both and freeze one for later. Y'all know how I love my freezer. Also, I use just one stick of butter -not because I have any issue with butter!- and have never missed the rest. 

Ah, the ways recipes become your own, even if you never forget their origins. Thank you, Stephanie!

Today we raked up 87 bags of leaves from our backyard, enjoyed our tennis lesson, and are prepping for a first grade parent potluck that's tonight. I made my Vanilla Apple Bread Pudding with Caramel Whiskey Sauce (of the gods) and will later roast some rosemary-crusted salmon for the main.