Last Wednesday Huck and I got home from school for a very brief break before going to our favorite event of the year, MuMa (Muscota Museum of Art) at the Cornerstone Church across the street.  While Huck did his homework I did what I’ve been obsessively doing several times a day for the last six months: checked Craigslist for a Fayetteville house to rent. And there before my eyes appeared the listing for what was surely too good to be true: a beautiful 3 bedroom home in our favorite area of Mount Sequoyah, just a few blocks away from our friends Bob and Amy. I knew I didn’t have much of a chance, what with living in NYC and not being in Arkansas for several more days, but I picked up the phone and made the call.  The next few hours were devoted to finding a Fayetteville friend to go see the house for us that evening.  Bob & Amy were on their way back from LA, but their good friends (and now our good friends who we can’t thank enough) Liz and Brian dropped everything to do this for us, giving us a dose of what Fayetteville people are like.  Meanwhile I was attempting to sell children’s art work while simultaneously texting like a madwoman.  Our Muscota friends were rooting for us, constantly checking in to see what the latest was on the Fayetteville Dream House as it came to be known.  Troy was his usual cool trusting self, with the attitude “if it’s meant to be, it’ll be,” which is simultaneously great and awful. We got home and Liz sent me pictures and talked me through every square inch of the house, assuring me that it was as beautiful as it looked online.  I filled out the application, sent it to the owners, and stared at the ceiling wondering what would happen next.  What happened next was these wonderful people emailed and said they would save the house for us.

So here it is: our Fayetteville house on Rebecca Street!  Not only is it the most beautiful house you ever saw, but it also has a swing set in the back yard, poles for our hammock, French doors in the master bedroom that lead to a patio in the side yard, French doors off the dining room that lead to a porch that leads down to a patio in the back yard, many built-in shelves and cupboards throughout the house, heated floors in the beautiful full bath and laundry sun room, and a separate garage that is perfect for Troy and Huck’s long dreamt of art & science studio.  And best yet?  The owners are two of the nicest people you ever met and have passed on the mantle of hosting the Pumpkin Carving Party in the back yard, to which they would like to be invited.

I’m working on the invitations now.

(Our favorite spot on the top of Mount Seqouyah, a walk from the house!)

Huck and I just finished reading “A Cricket in Times Square” by George Selden, and it didn’t take long for me to see Chester Cricket as a kindred spirit.  He lives in a beautiful cage in a dirty old subway station in the most magical place on earth, but he longs to be back where he came from, surrounded by trees and grass. What makes his days and nights at 42nd Street matter are his family the Bellinis and his friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat.

Last weekend we said goodbye to Uncle Ronnie, Aunt Dottie, Broadway theatre and the Bronx Zoo.  Four of my favorite things.  Ronnie and Dottie treated us to the beautiful musical “Once” on Friday night followed by a nightcap at the Marriott overlooking Times Square. Sunday afternoon our dear old friend Charlie accompanied us on our last visit to the Bronx Zoo, what with our membership expiring in a few days. And sometime in between these two milestones, we even sort of said goodbye to the beautiful old cherry blossom trees in the church-yard, for they will soon be removed and hopefully re-planted elsewhere during the renovation.

To say we have a lot of happy memories (and pictures) immersed in all of these locations and people is like saying it’s been a long winter.  If I had a pet cricketer I’d have him put these feelings into a heartbreaking song that would make even the most hurried New Yorker stop for a listen.  And then I’d join him on that train out of Grand Central.

“There was all of his love, and goodbye too, in that one chirp.”

We’ve just come off several days of birthday high that included a little bit of spring, a little bit of winter, dinner with friends, “Goodbye New York, Hello Fayetteville” t-shirts, lunch outside, a trip to the Met, a rainy road trip, the Central Park carousel, a wipeout that required a nose Bandaid for Huck, ice cream filled with lots of toppings, several homemade cheesecakes, Stardust Memories, calls from Kansas, the promise of a heavenly massage, some amazing books, a Dusty Brown concert complete with requests, and my first ever Surprise Party!

Troy and some neighborhood friends somehow succeeded in lying to me for weeks as they plotted to give me what I’ve been wanting for years.  I thought we were dropping Huck off at our friends Nancy and Scott’s for a sleepover while we met Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Dottie for ONCE on Broadway.  So determined was I to be on time to the show, which would have meant catching our friends heading into the party headquarters apartment, that Troy actually pretended to slice off part of his finger with a butcher knife to delay me.  From the kitchen he yelled, “DO NOT COME IN HERE!  WHATEVER YOU DO!” knowing that if there’s a chance I’ll see lots of human blood, I will stay far away.  I began to feel lightheaded and had to put my head between my knees while Troy acted his guts out in the next room and Huck, innocent to all the deception surrounding him, comforted his poor little mother.  Troy finally got the bleeding to stop, although he kept feeling dizzy and had to lean against things, which slowed us down some more.  I arrived about ten feet ahead of my slowpoke family at exactly 7:02, which was seven minutes past when I wanted to be there and two minutes past when I was supposed to be there. (Apparently I’m not easy to plan a surprise party for, what with my controlling punctuality.)  The next thing I knew people were jumping out of rooms and yelling surprise and I was confused and disoriented and literally spent the entire party trying to piece together this new reality. And the reality was we were seeing ONCE the following Friday, and for this night I was surrounded by dear friends feeling special and frazzled. And Troy’s finger was FINE.  (I may never get over that part.)

So the April Birthday Train has left the station – and in the midst of it we marked 22 years of Jonny & Troy Togetherdom – leaving us feeling happy, in need of a nap, and very thankful!

(Huck’s thinking, “So I’m NOT going to a sleepover?”)

Dusty sings my favorite U2 Song!

About 24 hours before the first day of spring I stepped out of our building into a beautiful winter wonderland.  I was headed to my book club with a smile on my face and felt that familiar feeling of walking through Bedford Falls on Christmas Eve.  Those ten or so blocks to my friend Nancy’s cozy apartment reminded me of all the reasons I’ve loved this little neighborhood in this huge city, and for a split second I questioned all our plans to pack up and leave in 108 days.

Of course the next day the snow had turned to freezing rain, the kind that soaks through your waterproof boots and hits your face like extra sharp nails.  I was back on track to bid New York adieu.

The next week was spring break and I took Huck to one of his all time favorite places, the Hall of Science in Queens.  During the very long subway ride I thought about the many, many visits to this place over the last few years.  Like everything nowadays, this time felt different, what with it being near our last and also Huck is so much smarter than me now.  He understands all the optical illusions and scientific displays and explains things to me more than I explain things to him. The circle of life and all that.

So before we really got going with our exploration I made him accompany me to the bathroom.  He’s at that age they call “middle childhood,” much like I’m at that age they call “middle age,” and I’m having a hard time deciding what I’m supposed to do now that he’s getting so tall and old and smart.  Does he come into the ladies’ room with me or do I make him stand in the crowded museum and get kidnapped?  Apparently I decided I’d better bring him with me, because that’s what I did.  Less than one second later, a woman saw me and my boy in the girls’ bathroom and did not like what she saw.  She must not have had time to make a good decision either, because she immediately performed a spot-on impersonation of a terrible New Yorker, the kind that soaks through your waterproof rain boots and hits your face like extra sharp nails.  I tried to explain my unique situation, but she said I should have thought of that and brought a male companion along.  I wasn’t sure that was the best advice I’d ever heard, so I held onto Huck and we took the world’s longest walk to the toilet stall, where I shoved him in and locked the door behind us like we were running from the cops.  She kept yelling at us through the stall until finally there was silence.

I did my business and washed my hands in the now empty bathroom, and we slowly made our exit.  There she was a few feet outside the bathroom with her large group of children and chaperones.  As we walked by her she hissed the word “SICK!” loudly into my ear, so I did what any mature, responsible adult would do.  I reported her bathroom harassment to the nearest security guard and spent the rest of the day terrified to see her again.

The whole thing was a ridiculous reminder of why it’s good to treat others respectfully, because it feels so awful when people don’t.  It was also an absurd reminder of how sensitive I’ve become to the eccentricities of this city and its people who are all out to get me.  And lastly, it was a heartbreaking reminder of how much things change when your baby grows up and gets closer and closer to being a young man.

We three are smack dab in the middle of Change.  The season is slowly, painfully trying to change, leaving us unsure whether to wear our warmest winter gear or flip flops.  Our church building is beginning a huge renovation project which means we now work a few blocks away in the basement of an episcopal church right across the street from the George Washington Bus Terminal, leaving us unsure how to work the printer and where to find paper clips.  And now we’re officially at that moment in time where every big event carries with it the all-important phrase “the last,” leaving me unsure if I took enough pictures and appreciated everything enough.  Of course all of this change leads to something beautiful: spring, a new and improved church building, and Fayetteville.

Back when I was pregnant our friend Michael was showing me some of his latest drawings, and one of them reminded me of Troy.  He was experiencing anxiety about fatherhood and this new life we could barely imagine, and so the image of an old man looking up at the stars with a hint of anticipation on his weary face seemed to capture Troy perfectly.  At our baby shower a few months later Michael gave us the drawing, and it’s been on our bedroom wall ever since.

I think I feel like that old man most of all.

I spent the afternoon with Huck the other day.  It was the end of his spring break and Momma had work to do and I realized I could easily blow off my job responsibilities and just go do something fun with the boy.  All we had to do was figure out what that something fun would be.

At breakfast we decided to keep it simple: let’s go see a movie. That was that.  I went to work, Jonny and Huck joined me for lunch, and as we ate Huck started to back-pedal a little on the movie idea.  I told him that’s okay, we’d think of something else.  We floundered a little bit trying to come up with a better idea.  Rock-climbing, book store, museum; nothing was getting us riled. Mommy couldn’t take it after a while and finally left us to our own devices more than a little disappointed.  She had such high hopes for our afternoon.

“Whaddya want to do, kid?”  I asked.

He just looked up at me.  I started rattling off some more ideas—things to do in the Big City: Times Square, Central Park, Battery Park –-I reached for an oldie but a goodie: we could hop on the Staten Island ferry and see the Statue of Liberty out in the bay.  That could be fun –and free!  Huck wasn’t interested.

And then I remembered, the kid’s been wanting to go to the top of the Empire State building.  He’s asked us about it more than once, in fact it was the one thing he said he wanted to do before we leave New York.  He’s in a play at school about the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty getting into a fight about who’s the better New York landmark.  The Building that King Kong Climbed has been on his mind.

“Hey! What about the Empire State Building?”  He looked at me with an elfish grin.  He wanted to go.  “It’s a perfect day for it!  The sky’s clear, it’s not the weekend, we got the whole afternoon —this would be the perfect day to go to the top of the Empire State Building!”  His grin turned into a smile.

“Yeah,” he said, “Let’s do that!”

“And listen,” I said in a hush, “Let’s surprise Mommy.  Let’s not tell her until we get there.” His eyes twinkled.  “We’ll text her a photo from the top of the building!”

His smile grew.  “Yeah,” he mouthed silently just in case she was close and eavesdropping.  We’d show her we knew how to spend an afternoon in the Big Apple.

“Let’s go!”

And we did.  We took the A train down to Penn Station.  We walked along 34^th street past Kmart and Old Navy and Macy’s and Herald Square.  We entered the Empire State Building through the main entrance at Fifth Avenue and we stood in all five lines and traipsed up six flights of stairs.  In just under two hours of hatching this plan, father and son stepped out into the open air of the 86^th floor observation deck and looked out at our world from way up yonder.  It was pretty cold up there that particular April afternoon.  We didn’t last very long.  So we felt we really got our money’s worth having paid the extra fee so we could go all the way up to the observation deck on the 102^nd floor.   It was nice up there; quiet and warm.  We hung out, took pictures, looked at buildings and tiny little taxi cabs.  We looked north to the George Washington Bridge to see what our neighborhood looks like from miles away.  We looked south and could barely make out Lady Liberty standing out in the bay.  We looked at the sky and all around.  Then we texted Mommy with a pic of Huck standing in front of an incredible skyline and blew her mind!

We looked out at the city.  We took some more pictures.

“It’s not as exciting as I thought it would be,” he said.  I gave him a fatherly look of befuddled amazement.  “It is exciting,” he continued, “I just thought it would be even more exciting.”

I have to hand it to him; he’s right.  

However, we both agreed that we were glad we did it anyway.

Now we still had plenty of daylight to burn and a whole city full of opportunities.  Of course, he really just wanted to head back to the church and “hang out for a while.”  So after a quick stop in a comic book shop and a soft pretzel in Herald Square, we walked to the subway and headed back uptown.  We got to our neighborhood just north of the GW Bridge and went to our second home, the church building at the corner of 181^st and Fort Washington Avenue.  I’ve worked there since the day we found out Jonny was pregnant.  That is to say, I’ve worked at that particular church all of Huck’s life.  We climbed the stairs to the gym and played around up there for a while.  I had made some ‘sock comets’ that I’d been wanting to show him.  He thought they were alright.  Twirling a tennis ball in a panty-hose leg is pretty entertaining, let me tell you.  Letting that sucker go and watching it fly up into air is down-right thrilling.  Oh, it’s no trip to the top of a skyscraper.  But it’s still plenty exciting.  And good.  I was sitting there thinking about how good it was to be able to take the afternoon off in a city full of people working themselves around the clock; how exciting it is to just decide on a lark to go view a world famous tourist attraction; how fun it can be to play with my son.

That’s when Huck said, “When we move to our new home –our new house in Arkansas, I wish we could find a house that had a tunnel in it.  A house with two tunnels, actually.  One tunnel that could go to a church like this one and another tunnel that could go to a building like my school.  That way we could finally live in a house, but then I could go down in the tunnels and no one could see me and I could just pop up in a school like my school or in a church like this one.”

Well, Huck, maybe when we get to Arkansas we’ll find a house just like that.

This year’s Spring Break was all about Troy and me becoming excitable college basketball fans in between filling plastic eggs with candy, getting our apartment ready for open houses, and visiting family (who are friends) in Virginia.  Troy donned a Wichita State Shockers mask and sang a fight song that our friend Dan wrote and put on YouTube, and next thing we know a Kansas radio station began playing it.  Huck spent a day as a part-time employee at our church preparing for all the Easter festivities while his parents ran in and out of rooms in a frenzy, daydreaming about a peaceful Easter someday.  Just before the Shockers made it to the Elite Eight, we were filling our suitcases and rental car with travel equipment while simultaneously trying to leave our apartment clean and shiny when I noticed Huck had secretly left a wet, wadded up toilet paper roll on the floor in the bathroom, which looked exactly like a piece of poop. When I said how embarrassing that would have been for the real estate agent to find, I swear his eyes twinkled a little bit.

A few hours later on our way to my Uncle Ronnie’s and Aunt Dottie’s home, Huck was trying to explain something to me (as usual) and I wasn’t quite understanding (also as usual), and when I finally figured it all out he very sweetly said, “I’m sorry if I made you feel dumb just now.”  I thanked him for being so sensitive and told him that I was fine.  ”Because you sounded really dumb,” was his reply.  And this is what I like about children.

Speaking of children, we were with a lot of them during our four days away.  My cousin’s kids Bryce, Carter and Emma were spending spring break with grandma and grandpa, so we got to tag along.  There were slumber parties every night, gigantic Chinese flaming flying lantern launches most evenings, a visit to the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, hot dogs at Snow White Grill, Star Wars marathons, Easter egg decorating, the delightful Mirror Maze at Skyline Caverns, lots of complaining about the chilly weather, and lots of basketball games on TV.  We tried not to remember that this was our last visit for a while.

We drove home Saturday, the Shockers made it to the Final Four, Troy & Dan’s video got 7500 hits, we had a whirlwind morning at the church, we hid some eggs, we found some eggs, and then we enjoyed one last Annual Easter Potluck with friends (who are family) at our old building overlooking the Hudson River.  And did we mention that we also got to be a part of a top-secret marriage proposal in Times Square for our friends Joe and Thos?  That happened too.

Goodbye, New York Spring Break.  And Don’t Mess with the Shockers.

Dan & Troy’s Video: Don’t Mess With the Shockers

This morning we were treated to a beautiful dance performance at Huck’s school based on an Aztec myth called “Musicians of the Sun.”  Muscota’s wonderful dance teacher Heather read the poem and played a drum and occasionally ran across the stage herself as the children transformed the gym into a magical place with her choreography and flowing costumes.  Huck’s class began the dance with “Ruler of the Night,” a piece with lots of intense poses as the one who “ruled the stars and cared for the earth as if it were his child.”  If ever I had a fantasy that Huck was a professional modern dancer (and believe me, I have), today it felt like it came true.

(Huck’s in the front row as far away from my camera as possible in this video.)

When Huck first joined the delightful Washington Heights Jazz Choir back in the fall of first grade, a Brooklyn friend of ours giggled and said, “Only in New York!”  And truly, where else can a five year old (all the way up to age 12) learn and perform jazz standards from a professional like Louise Rogers?  Huck will miss his Thursday rehearsals across the street at the Cornerstone Church, and we moms will miss our Thursday coffee hours here in our living room.  Over the last two years Huck has developed quite the confident (and sometimes aggressive) jazz-like singing voice that always makes us smile. Come to think of it, it might be a good thing we’re leaving as I’m not sure his vocal folds could survive too many more seasons.

This time around Huck got to do some drumming at the concert, and he joined good friends Parker and Lu for one of the sweetest trios of “Blue Moon” ever, which can be seen in the video below.  Thanks to our special friend Susie who has been to all four of Huck’s jazz choir concerts over the years, because she just can’t resist these beautiful little voices singing like Ella Fitzgerald, or the sight of Huck in a tie.

Farewell, Jazz Choir!  And thanks for the giggles.

The big finale to Huck’s 8th birthday celebration extravaganza was a slumber party with three good friends last Friday night.  We lost Kadin at midnight to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with a 103 degree fever and pneumonia, we lost Luca’s bottom tooth sometime thereafter, and we lost our Internet connection in the middle of a Netflix movie. Valentino excitedly declared the slumber party cursed, though there was a lot of fun going on too, what with the balloons and the Mike ‘n Ikes and the pop song singalongs.  Once everyone left on Saturday Huck sat down with a new notebook and wrote about the blast he had as I began stripping the apartment of all signs of birthday. To show how much sweet stuff we’d eaten over the past week, no one ever noticed that I threw away the last half of his lemon-lemon birthday cake.

I’ve said it 428 times, I’ll say it again … Happy 8th Birthday, Huck!

Happy 8th birthday to our boy who made us all stay home together today and eat popcorn ‘n bacon for dinner!