As is our October tradition, we spent Saturday afternoon at Boo at the Zoo, one of my all-time favorite places to be in the whole world.  The Bronx Zoo is quite beautiful all year round, but nothing beats the fall colors.  Well, maybe watching Huck scream with laughter and amazement at the magician …

Huck’s school has a tradition of celebrating Mad Hatter’s Day right alongside Halloween.  Friday afternoon was the Mad Hatter’s Parade, where each class wore hats that represent what they’re studying and walked around the school block singing loudly and proudly for all of Inwood to hear.   Huck’s class has been learning chess and so they made pink and blue queen and king crowns with “CHESS MASTER” written on them (or “CHESS MASTR” if you’re Huck).  It was a pretty chilly, windy day which helped teach the children the phrase “hold onto your hats.”  The drama teacher Dayna, who wears a different fancy hat every single day, built a Shakespeare’s “Tempest” hat that was so tall she had to kneel down on the ground in order to exit through doors (as one of the pictures below reveals).  And the principal Camille, who is very new to the school, was THE MAD HATTER!  On her hat were the names of every single student, teacher and staff member at Muscota, since that is what she’s learning right now.  The whole school (and all of us parents that came to take pictures) then met in the gym for some singing, some showing off of hats, some applause, some laughter and some dancing.  Hats will never be the same.

And as if that wasn’t enough, then came the Mad Hatter’s Ball last night where Huck planted his own Venus Flytrap, had his nails done, got a tattoo, made a purple bead necklace, got inspired to learn the Macarena dance, and played in a cardboard tunnel with his girlfriends for an hour straight.  All this fun and we haven’t even gotten to the actual Halloween festivities.  YET …

We’re not allowed to call what’s happening around here “autumn” anymore because Huck has a friend in his class with that name and it would be too confusing.  Our FALL so far has been filled with costume preparations (our home is full of various black pieces of clothing with glow-in-the-dark skeleton bones carefully painted upon them and sometimes I find a paper mache skull head in our oven), doing “homework” (reading many books to Huck and listening to him read many books to us and then logging them onto many sheets of paper that his teacher checks), missing Max (well, maybe just me), working on our play (which Troy and I have been writing for the past year and may be getting ready for a public staged reading) and just to make things interesting Huck got strep throat followed by a terrible rash (a reaction to the antibiotics) causing him to stay home from school a total of three times in nine days.  The thought of Huck missing out on all the Halloween festivities which officially begin tomorrow and don’t end till late Sunday evening was very scary for this mother.  Treats from now on please.

Here are some pictures from our Fall Walk on Sunday, which was right in between the awful strep throat and the horrific Halloween-like Rash of 2010.  Happy Fall, everyone!

Last week Huck kept mentioning that his name was all over the school play yard.  I assumed he and his friends had written their names in chalk on the blacktop or something.  After a few days of this misunderstanding he finally took me out there to see for myself.  And indeed, his name is clearly spelled out on every single black ball of the rope climbing mechanism.  He claims all those balls are his (obviously) but promises to share them with everyone.  When Huck saw this first picture he exclaimed, “There’s me surrounded by all my balls!”

Let’s hope this doesn’t lead to more school yard problems.

Today Huck returned to school after two days away recovering from strep throat.  He spent the weekend in awful pain, mostly sleeping and hardly eating anything at all.  By Monday morning the miracle of antibiotics began doing their thing and by Tuesday he was almost back to normal.  We kept him home yesterday to be safe and by mid-day his delightful energy had returned.  The two of us needed some fresh air so we took a walk to the park and found a bench in the sun to read our latest Andrew Lost book followed by a nice lunch at the Greek diner up the street where I witnessed the return of Huck’s appetite.  Several folks asked Huck why he wasn’t in school  and he would awkwardly tell them, “I have a strapped throat.”  It was nice having my boy back home with me again.

But today he’s happily back at school and he’s wearing a purplish shirt.  Troy and I are also in purplish shirts (we really had to dig in the closet for that color), taking part in GLADD’s (The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Spirit Day to honor the six young gay men who committed suicide in recent months due to homophobic bullying.   The message to these young men and women is that “it will get better.”  If they can get through this difficult time in their lives,  they will one day see people change their attitudes and love them for who they are.

And that’s all any of us can hope for our children, that they be loved for who they are.

A couple weeks ago Huck came home from school on a Friday telling me of an incident at recess.  It seems a couple of kids from the other kindergarten class didn’t want their good friend Luca to play with Huck because he wasn’t in their class.  Luca and Huck are old friends and had been encouraged by their parents to find each other at recess so they could play together.  Apparently the boys successfully separated the two and Huck spent the rest of recess by himself.   Troy insisted that it would work itself out, that it was hardly a case of serious bullying, that teachers and parent helpers would take care of it.  I spent the weekend talking to Huck and encouraging him to tell the boys, “We can all play together!” while fantasizing about conducting a required kindergarten seminar called “Huck is a Wonderful Child and You Must All Be Friends With Him.”

Happily, it did work itself out.  First of all, the parent helper on the playground that day talked to the boys and relayed the story to Luca’s mom so she could be aware of what happened.  One of the boys went home and told on himself to his mom (a good friend of ours) and they spent the weekend talking about it, too.  By the next school day he was holding Huck’s hand, aggressively and lovingly being his friend.  (I was the parent helper at recess so I witnessed this from afar with a relieved smile on my face.)  Apparently all four of the boys play together at recess now, finally accepting that it’s okay to mix classes.  Obviously I don’t mean to compare this situation to the homophobic abuse that those five teenage boys endured, but bullying is punishing someone for being different and it’s never too early to put a stop to it.  Especially with a group of cute, compassionate five year olds who were more than willing to make things better.

When I was in kindergarten a couple boys threw rocks at me during my walk home one afternoon.  One rock drew blood as it hit my mouth and I cried all the way home, alone and terrified.  I needn’t have been scared, for my dad marched himself to the school and told my teacher what had happened.  She then contacted every parent in the class and warned them of the boys’ after-school antics, and the two of them were kept after everyday for several weeks to let the rest of us children get home safely.  I’m sure the adults’ response was a little over the top, but the point was made.  Abuse of any kind would not be tolerated, and I felt safe.  (And I should point out that those two boys’ bullying careers ended that day.  They were quiet, kind young men all the way through high school and I should probably look them up on Facebook.)

Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase, Asher Brown and Billy Lucas were older than Huck and his school buddies, but only by a few years.  We parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends need to be ever vigilant to teach our children how to treat each other, as well as how to be treated.  Of course this begins with how we grown-ups treat the people in our lives who we see as different, difficult, weird or even wrong.  We can’t force everyone to love our kids the way we do, but I’m very happy that Huck’s lonely recess turned itself around and some new friendships were made.  And I think it was because the moms were on it.

Happy purple day.

Once again thanks to friends with cars, yesterday we enjoyed a trip out to Whightman’s Farm in Morristown, New Jersey for fun at a pumpkin patch/apple orchard.  Huck and his friends enjoyed throwing hay on each other during the delightful hay ride (which I almost fell out of ), picking out their pumpkins, getting lost in the various mazes of hay, corn and ropes, and playing in a corn pit.  We ended the day with the most fun of all: the pumpkin sling shot.  Our three day holiday weekend was packed with ridiculous amounts of fall-like fun (in summer-like weather) and ol’ Mom and Dad had a hard time waking up this morning.  But not Huck.  He was up and at ‘em ready to return to school.

Thank you, coffee.  I love you.

Yesterday’s Harvest Festival once again found our Washington Heights community gathered at Bennett Park in the beautiful sunny weather to celebrate all things fall: pumpkins, haybales, scarecrows, cupcakes, spin art, pies, live music, Gone Fishin’, burlap bag races, face painting, coffee, apples and donuts!  A whole lot of families showed up to enjoy the totally free event, thanks to neighborhood businesses that graciously gave their time, money, food and supplies.  Several kids I know spent the day running up to me with their plastic spider rings or glow-in-the-dark vampire fangs as if these things were marvelous treasures.  I smiled and quietly said a prayer that their cheap new toy wouldn’t fall apart in three minutes, reminded of how easy children are to please.  My job was to gather and organize the volunteers, and as I looked around the park at over 100 moms and dads proudly wearing their orange shirts and bringing fun energy to their craft/game/activity/what have you,  I once again felt very happy to live amongst them.  So if you’re reading this, you wonderful volunteer you, I hope you’re feeling the love.

One of our highlights was meeting actor Matt “Harry” Wilson from the PBS show “Cyberchase” who was our celebrity pie contest judge.  Being one of the nicest people on earth, he sat on Manhattan’s highest natural point with Huck and me for a few minutes while the two of them searched for Huck’s favorite element (Hydrogen) on his Periodic Table of Elements belt.  A periodic table of elements belt!!! Cyberchase will never be the same.

The only problem we tired, dusty organizers faced was getting folks to leave the park so we could clean up.  Our wonderful neighborhood face painter Donetta continued to decorate little cheeks for two hours after the festival officially ended because her line was so darn long.  We felt very badly about this, and while talking about it at home Huck gave the following suggestion: Next year we should have underground compartments that people stand in holding signs that say HARVEST FESTIVAL IS CLOSED.  At 4:00 bells would ring and the people in the compartments would then push a button and pop up to the surface, thus telling all the people to go home.

We’ll take it under consideration, Huck.  Thanks for all your help.

These days it’s all about getting ready for the Harvest Festival this Saturday and celebrating autumn by making miles and miles of paper chains that fill our apartment everywhere you look.  Troy and Huck began an ambitious project over the weekend of spelling HAPPY HALLOWEEN with orange and black paper chains.  After a lot of hard work they finally completed the first H, and that is how our front door is now decorated.  I have high hopes that one day they will get to the A.

One of the only perks of having your mom organize a neighborhood event every year is that you have a say in the prize selection. Weeks ago Huck took the Oriental Trading catalog and  spent many minutes carefully circling the things he thought I should order for the festival and putting a large H on the things he felt he should own.  All the loot finally arrived and Huck was very happy to come home from school on Monday to a few “soft body parts,” a “neon sticky eyeball,” and some other disgusting objects waiting for him on his desk.   Then we served some to Troy for dinner because we are very sneaky Halloween people.

Yesterday I helped out at Huck’s school for lunch.  He and his energetic classmates happily entered the cafeteria and took their places at the same kind of tables I used to sit at in the Grace E. Stewart multi-purpose room in Salina, Kansas.  I quickly figured out the routine: Huck always sits in the same spot and always between his new best friends Isabella and Oriana.  In fact, the three of them sat so closely together it was as if they were attached.  They seemed like old friends as they ate together and chatted, and any anxiety I have felt about School Lunch faded away when I realized that there are dozens of parent helpers like me practically begging the children to let them open things.  Plus there’s lots of smiles and laughter.  In summary, School Lunch is fun.

Over the weekend Huck got to see Troy and me act on stage for the first time as we took part in a children’s play reading called “Boris and the Really Boring Books.”  I don’t know what he thinks of his parents secretly being actors since it’s not been a part of his life until recently.  He loves his drama teacher Dayna and when I try to tell him that we too are drama people he gives me a slightly skeptical look.  I’m not sure what he thinks when I get so excited to do the drama warm-ups and tongue twisters with him.  Also over the weekend we had dinner with my high school drama teacher Mrs. Webb and her husband Mike who were visiting New York.  Again I got very excited telling Huck that Mrs. Webb was MY drama teacher just like Dayna is HIS drama teacher and again I got that look.  On the other hand, he takes great pride in his grandpa being an artist and  enjoys sharing his art knowledge with his art teacher Maggie.  “The reason I know so much is that my grandpa is an artist,” he apparently told her.  Ah well.  Maybe someday he’ll accept us for who we are.

Also over the weekend we got to celebrate our old friend John’s birthday with Shana AND we had a good old fashioned river outing with Kadin, Tiffany, Brian and baby Viviana.  With all the exciting change going on in our lives (including the beautiful autumn weather), sometimes it’s nice to go back in time for a relaxing evening and afternoon with old friends, birthday cake and hammocks.