Missing the Home in Hometown

When you’re a kid, you’re told to live up to your potential. As a chronic overachiever, I’m a little obsessed with that. So it was disappointing to realize that my hometown hasn’t held up its end of the bargain. On a trip home for Independence Day, my family shared some of the best my hometown had to offer. While I loved it, I couldn’t help but feel that the town is undervaluing some of its best resources.

I was happy living in the epitome of upstate New York suburbia, but by the time I reached high school, I also felt that things could be better. I knew that my town didn’t have a sense of place or provide me with a grounding other people had. Most of my fondest memories (outside my house) were in different towns altogether. The closest we had to a downtown was the mall, but malls are never true community places. Living in walkable towns and cities, from nearby Ballston Spa to Oxford across the pond, was revelatory. What I experienced in those places shaped a lot of my priorities when Chris and I looked for our own house.

So returning is always a little weird, realizing how different my assumptions and basic operating procedures no longer fit. Biking at night or during rush hour is near-suicidal. Walking anywhere is a challenge both because of distance and parking lots. The mall is still the center of retail. (Okay, so most of my current city’s center of commerce is a road surrounded by strip malls. At least we’re trying to improve.) There is zero mass transit.

But there are some similarities that still warm my heart: the dedication of volunteers, public spaces that have community buy-in, and beautiful natural places.

Our first stop was one of the town’s community-run firehouses, where my father-in-law is a volunteer safety officer. Despite the many things I disagree with my father-in-law with -from politics to food – I have immense respect for the many hours he’s given back. Before the engines headed off to the Independence Day parade, we received a personal tour. Sprout had the honor of sitting in a tiny truck that actually drove, which captivated his attention to the exclusion of everything else. Later on, a firefighter lifted him up onto the seat of a real engine, the height of which alone was startling. We even got to meet the official firehouse dog, an affectionate red bloodhound named Ruby. As we took the tour, I noticed small indications of the dedication and time these men and women put on the line for their community. Everything from the kitchen to the awards case spoke of great personal commitment.

Later, we visited a more historical testament to the willingness to volunteer: a giant wooden playground. The playground at the Commons (what I said the Adventure Playground reminded me of) was built about two decades ago by community members. Between hard labor and donated funds, our community made this awesome structure happen.  Chris and I both remember our parents pitching in and actually constructing it. We kids were assigned low risk odd jobs like soaping screws and sanding wood. I always thought of it as one of the few places in my hometown that had a distinct character and was a reflection of the people in it.

After it was built, I spent hours scaling its steps, peering out of its towers, and hanging upside down from its monkey bars. My hometown has very few playgrounds outside of schools, so it was special. Besides, all of the little passageways made it superb for hide and seek.

I couldn’t wait to watch Sprout experience those same joys. For the most part, he did. Following him, I spent a lot of time ducking into short passageways and climbing over walls that weren’t meant to be climbed. He especially enjoyed scaling a steep ramp and tiptoeing over a stack of tires that made up a bridge between two sections.

The playground at the Commons. Towers and climbing structures with a castle theme painted black.
Unfortunately, The Commons looked the worse for wear. The wood had been painted black, which gave it a weirdly somber tone, and even that paint job was peeling a little. Some sections were bordering on splintery. Parts of the playground that had broken – like cross-bars and a mat-like bridge – were just removed instead of replaced. There were bits here and there that showed signs of active maintenance, but they were few and far between.

What was the most disappointing was not the difference from my childhood memories, but the fact that the city wasn’t respecting the hard work the community members had put into it. The town’s lack of upkeep seemed to reflect their lack of interest in cultivating public spaces and engaging the larger community in them. As the firehouse showed, there is a real spirit of community alive and well in my hometown. The government just needs to tap into it.

The last mini-field trip we made was a tromp through a wildlife preserve to see a heron and osprey nesting area. Just getting to the trailhead was a challenge. There was no parking and no sidewalk, so we had to walk in the shoulder of a 40 mph road. The trail was narrow, overgrown and muddy.

But oh, what a swamp! To the left, five or six heron nests, conglomerations of random sticks in the notches of bare trees. Juvenile birds stuck their long necks out, chattering to their parents. With binoculars, we could see into the nests, getting a surprisingly close view of their awkward adorableness. As we left, two siblings got in a squawking match, tussling over some perceived slight. To the right, a huge osprey nest looking like it might fall out of the dead tree, one parent nearby chasing away intruders. A songbird kept swooping by the nest, perhaps trying to steal an egg or two. In the pond, a beaver dam was managing the water flow without revealing its residents. As we approached, a few frogs hopped into the water, perhaps sensing a grabby toddler on his way. Dragonflies buzzed the surface, flicking the tops of reeds. I reveled in it and while Sprout had a limited understanding of what he was seeing, he definitively enjoyed tromping through the woods.

Although I loved that we could visit this site, the path seemed both under-maintained and underutilized.  In addition, there was no signage that it existed from the road and walking from the parking lot with Sprout made me nervous. (I probably would have calmer if he wasn’t with me.) Just a sidewalk or pedestrian path in addition to the shoulder would help a lot. With a few additional resources, this trail could be available to more people without compromising its special nature.

My trip home reminded me of both the promise and the challenges my hometown faces in trying to remain vibrant. I hope that the community itself can realize the amazing potential they have available today and capitalize on it in the future.

Guest Post on Urban Planning and Parenting

I have a guest post up at local urban planning and smart growth blog Greater Greater Washington (welcome folks from over there!): If you want a place to welcome kids, make it urban.

Drawing on my experience growing up in a suburban environment and raising a kid in a semi-urban environment, I consider some of the best parts of urbanism that can make places better for kids and parents.

Here’s the first couple of paragraphs:

A child’s surroundings can make all the difference in what and how they learn, and urban places can offer what kids need for healthy development. Here are some ways we can make places kid-friendly.

While zoning meetings aren’t exactly a hot topic on parenting blogs, perhaps they should be. Our neighborhoods’ physical structure strongly influences how residents can raise children. Within the cultural conversation around the Meitiv’s, the Montgomery County couple who Child Protective Services investigated for allowing their children walk home from a park, little of it has been on how communities could make themselves better places for children.

Read the rest at Greater Greater Washington!

Guest Post: Kidical Mass Rockville Kick-Off

Biking, and particularly family biking, is a passion for me. I want to make our roads safe and fun for everyone to travel on, including children. So to help encourage families to bring their kids on bikes for both recreation and transportation, I lead Kidical Mass rides in our town. Kidical Mass is a national movement to support family biking and we’re one of five of them in the Washington D.C. area – one of the highest densities in the nation!

We had our first Kidical Mass ride of the season last week and it went really well. Thirteen people including six kids showed up to ride to ice cream. I’ve written it up on our Kidical Mass Rockville blog, so check it out!

The Season Starts off Right with Italian Ice!

Reading it Up in the Suburbs: The Gaithersburg Book Festival

Hearing one of your favorite authors speak is one of the great joys of being a fan of authors who are still alive. For such purposes, we have the huge National Book Festival in D.C. Unfortunately, while it’s still attracting amazing authors, it hasn’t been nearly as appealing since it moved off the National Mall to the Convention Center. While it was easy to stand in the back of an outdoor tent and leave if Sprout got fussy, it’s much more difficult to be adaptable in a smallish, packed room. Fortunately, we’ve found a less glamorous but more inviting alternative – the Gaithersburg Book Festival. As Gaithersburg – the suburb just north of us – isn’t exactly known for its high culture or literary scene, I didn’t expect much. But my low expectations turned into pleasant surprise when we attended the Gaithersburg Book Festival last weekend.

Walking in, there were two very welcome things I noticed that the National Book Festival doesn’t have. The first was a gaggle of local food trucks serving a huge diversity of food. The National Book Festival has a couple of crummy tents selling boring tourist food like hot dogs and terrible pizza, so this was a big step up. We brought a picnic because we were trying to stay cheap, but I appreciated their presence.

The second was a table run by Book Crossing, a worldwide network of people who want to share and trade books with each other for free. Because I’m ridiculously susceptible to the lure of free books, I browsed the kids’ table. It doesn’t count if it’s for my son, right? I picked up a counting book with lovely nature photos (Counting on the Woods) and was moved to see that it was in honor of a little girl who had passed away. Reading her story on the family’s Facebook page , I was almost brought to tears. She was from suburban Virginia and died after getting hit by a car while riding her bike. As a family biking advocate and someone who wants the roads to be safe for everyone, I am both saddened by the circumstance and honored to be able to celebrate this little girl’s memory through this book.

Strolling through the Park that hosted the Festival, I was struck by how much larger it was than I expected. There were tents beyond tents, a sea of white points dotting the landscape. The children’s area was almost as large as the National Book Festival. While they didn’t have an entire Magic School Bus trailer or PBS tent, they did have Clifford the Big Red Dog, a whole tent of kids’ entertainment, and most importantly, a fenced playground. The tents were also a lot smaller, which made it much easier to hear and see the authors.

We wandered by the children’s entertainment tent just as they started a puppet show of Where the Wild Things Are. It was a very different set-up than I had ever seen – they used paper cut-outs of the characters, switching out the backdrops and lighting as the scenes changed. The puppetry was pretty simple, with the puppeteers wiggling around characters on sticks, but it was effective enough. Instead of having the characters speak, a narrator read the book, accompanied by music. Hilariously, the parts in the land of the Wild Things had an arrangement of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida as the background music! Not what I would have chosen, but its melodic darkness was surprisingly appropriate.

Next, we caught the ending of a talk by the author of Goatilocks and the Three Bears. The author recruited a few members of the audience to play the various parts in her book, including the three bears, the eponymous goat, and the house itself. As more than half of the “actors” were kids who didn’t quite know what was going on, it was pretty adorable. In the background, they showed the book’s illustrations, which involved said goat gobbling down not only Baby Bear’s porridge, but also his chair and bed!

Finally, the talk our family was waiting for arrived – the author and illustrator of Dragons Love Tacos! This book is so beloved that Sprout renamed Figment the Dragon to Taco because of it. The collaborators (Adam Rubin and Dan Salmieri) are a couple of youngish guys, close to Chris and my age. They joked that they knew what kids thought were funny not because they had kids but had never really grown up. (I admit that’s one reason I love reading to Sprout. At least the first time, most of his books are pretty awesome.) As an example, they mentioned that when they first met, one brought the other a taxidermied squirrel as a present, toting it around town the entire night. Anyone who has the guts to do that deserves some credit in my book.

Dan Salmieri holding up a copy of Robosauce

They then offered us the first look anyone in the general public had at their new book to be released in September, Robosauce. Unlike Dragons Love Tacos, I immediately loved this book. I won’t ruin it, but it has a surprising and cool twist that makes it both unlike any children’s book I’ve ever seen and very much in the new tradition of using books as objects in ways that iPads can’t replicate. We’ll definitely be picking it up for Sprout when it comes out.

Adam Rubin and Dan Salmieri with a monster picture created from children's suggestions

This is our blurry photo, but the one on Dan Salmieri’s Instagram is much better.

To keep the energy up – an hour-long talk for kids is long – they played a game. They asked members of the audience to name different objects that could be body parts of a monster, from a monster’s hair to its ears to its feet. The kids came up with some very interesting answers, from microphones for a head to cupcakes for hands. The best one was a oil tanker car for a neck, which was promptly followed by a very loud, long train whistle – the park backs right up to the railroad. As the kids volunteered ideas, Salmieri drew a cobbled-together beast, which ended up looking rather scary-adorable.

To wrap up our time at the festival, we made a stop at the playground while Chris got Sprout’s book signed and then headed out via the book tent. We already own Dragons Love Tacos, but I wanted to buy Sprout a commemorative book from the festival. In celebration of spring and gardening, I picked up Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt. The Gaithersburg Book Festival tent also had three major advantages over the one at the National Book Festival. It was run by Politics and Prose, one of our very few local bookstores, whereas the National one is run by Barnes and Noble. It had a little kids’ corner with chalk and crayons, which was great while we were waiting for Chris to check out. Lastly, it had a program where you could buy a book for the Book Festival to donate to a needy family. We decided to share the Dragons Love Tacos love with another kid who might not have his or her own library at all.

While I didn’t know what the Book Festival was going to be like at first, I appreciated its geographical closeness to us (rather than having to haul all the way into D.C.), intimacy, and kid-friendliness. We’re very fortunate to have such a great celebration of books so nearby!

Tour de Cookie is Good Enough for Me

I am a big fan of food-based bicycle rides. Maybe it’s because I have fond childhood memories of biking to Lakeside Farms for apple cider donuts or along the Lake George bike trail for ice cream. Or maybe it’s because they combine two of my favorite things. Either way, the Tour de Cookie, which features 7 to 11 different cookie stands, depending on the route, is close to my ideal ride. Plus, it benefits a local group that connects abused and neglected children with needed services. Yummy desserts, biking and benefiting a good cause? A few months ago, I said, “Count me in yet again for this year!” Plus, I wasn’t the ride alone – my parents traveled down from upstate New York and I would be dragging Sprout in the bike trailer.

While I had done the Tour de Cookie previously, I was slightly nervous about my readiness level. While I was seven months pregnant the last time I did it, I wasn’t dragging a trailer with a nearly 30 pound kid. Even though I ride every day now, it’s only a mile each way to the Metro without kid-towing duties. In contrast, the Tour de Cookie is 12 miles, plus another four miles from my house to the starting line and back, for a total of 20. In addition to my own capacity, I was also a little paranoid about whether or not Sprout would be okay being in the trailer for that long. Sure, he loved the ride a few weeks back, but that was only 3 miles with a break in the middle. At least I wasn’t signed up for the 40 mile long route!

One executive decision that helped both of us was the choice for Chris to drive Sprout to the start and then home again after the ride. I still needed to drag the trailer those 8 miles, but it was around 30 pounds lighter. In addition, the section we rode back and forth on is bumpy and a glorified sidewalk at best, so I was very glad he wasn’t present.

Being a bike advocate for the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee, I couldn’t resist (or maybe get out of) volunteering in some way. Thankfully, I got the simplest job we had – the person pointing the way and cheering for people starting the ride.

Bicyclists at the start of the Tour de Cookie

From my viewpoint, I had a great perspective on the diversity of participating riders. The Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association’s Women and Bicycles group had a great turnout, with a bunch of women clad in their distinctive teal jerseys. I nearly yelped when I saw three people riding a triple tandem bicycle, something I didn’t even think existed. The family biking contingent was in full force, with tons of parents with trailers and kids on their own bikes for the short route. I wish I had Rockville Kidical Mass business cards to hand out.

Bicyclists on a triple bicycle in the Tour de Cookie

Shannon and John (Rootchopper) at the Tour de Cookie

My location also made a perfect meeting space. Earlier that morning, fellow blogger John (also known as Rootchopper) at a Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel tweeted that he was at the registration desk and – knowing I was going to be riding – was looking for me. A few tweets later, he walked up and introduced himself in person! Right off, he said, “I love your blog.” As I don’t have very many readers, it warmed my heart to know at least one fan (who isn’t my mom) truly enjoys it. (Plus, he said my kid is cute, so super bonus points there.) Because we’re bloggers, we obviously took a selfie. I was rocking the sweet neon ride marshall vest.

Once I made sure everyone knew where they were going and had been thoroughly cheered, it was time for our merry band to take off. Sprout tried to climb in the trailer without prompting and didn’t even fuss with his “bike hat.” My parents followed me like the world’s slowest peloton as we rode to the first stop at Thomas Farm Community Center. Even though it was first, it was probably my favorite cookie stop across the entire seven-stop ride. The Girl Scout troop running it made homemade versions of beloved Girl Scout cookies, including Tagalongs and Thin Mints. I tried to share a peanut butter one with Sprout, who wasn’t the most cooperative. At first, he only wanted the big piece. Then, once he accepted the smaller one, he just walked around holding it without even trying to eat it. The thought patterns of an almost two-year old continue to elude me.

The rest of the ride was a pleasant ramble around Rockville’s Millennium Trail, a bicycle beltway around the city. We got stuck behind a very large group of adults and kids who were far less familiar with the best practices of group riding (like passing on the left or riding in a line) than we would have preferred. That’s rather inevitable with a short, family-friendly ride like this though. My mom – who is used to a much quicker pace – said it was the most relaxed ride she had ever been on. Of course, she’s never been on one of our Kidical Mass rides! Sprout only whined twice, both times because his helmet fell in front of his eyes. Understandable, and a quick fix. He seemed to enjoy the whole thing, especially our second major stop, where he gobbled down a chocolate-heavy granola bar he shared with my mom. Multi-generational family cycling at its best. I enjoyed that stop too, as it was at the top of the biggest hill on the ride. Eventually, the movement of the trailer lulled him to sleep and he was snoozing by the finish line.

From cheering others on to the delicious cookies throughout the route, the Tour de Cookie was a great celebration of and for our local cycling community.

Baltimore, White Privilege and Who I’m Really Worried For

Trigger warning: Racism, police violence, children in harmful situations

With the conflict coming to a head in Baltimore, a few people that know we live in Maryland have asked if we’re all right. Fortunately, we live nearly an hour away from the affected area. But all of the recent protests, stories of injustice, and tragedies have inspired a lot of thought in my mind, especially because we live in a historically African-American neighborhood. These stories have brought into relief both how much I don’t experience due to white privilege and my concerns for families other than my own.

Until the last few years, I wouldn’t have said I had white privilege. Class privilege, certainly – I knew I had loads of unearned advantages by being born into an educated, upper-middle class family. But racial privilege? Nah – I had black friends who seemed just as well off as I was. That was all solved with the Civil Rights movement, right?

Then I started reading, a dangerous action if you want to keep your misperceptions of the world. I read about how Lavar Burton – the host of Reading Rainbow! – had to teach his son to be submissive to the police. How a young man couldn’t bring a TV to his friend’s house in Dupont Circle for fear of being mistaken for a thief. How black women (and men) regularly have people touch their hair and bodies without asking. How the African-American community was barred for decades from purchasing houses by federal law. And of course, reading recently about the police brutality and exploitation against people of color in so many communities. In short, I started learning about how systems of oppression work, that class and race discrimination work both independently and hand-in-hand.

But it never quite got personal until I moved to my current neighborhood nearly five years ago. Early on – perhaps the first week I was here – I was walking to the Metro to a friend’s party in DC. I was bringing a six-pack of semi-expensive beer and forgot to grab a reusable bag. A few blocks in, one of my new neighbors spotted me and waved me over. They explained that I really needed to put the beer in a bag, as the police had a heavy presence in the neighborhood and would surely notice it. They kindly gave me a plastic bag to hide it. While I knew carrying a six-pack right in public was kind of gauche, I was pretty sure it wasn’t illegal and would have never considered getting police attention for it. The very idea that the police could reprimand – or worse, arrest me – for something tacky but legal, was both horrifying and incomprehensible.

Similarly, I was walking through my backyard in the early evening a few months later, when a cop yelled at me from his cruiser in the street. As I was just looking at the flower box on our shed, I was completely caught off guard. At first, I didn’t even acknowledge him, as I had no idea he was addressing me. He angrily demanded to know what I was doing there, while I struggled to explain that I was at my own house, still baffled as to what potential crime he was accusing me of. Apparently, he thought I was scoping out our shed to steal something, when I was just observing the sorry state of our flowers.

In both cases, I realized my shock was a huge sign of white privilege. Black people are uncomfortably used to having these interactions, driven by suspicion, on a regular basis. So many things I assumed – that I could peacefully walk down the street or in my own backyard – are assumptions people of color never have the luxury to make.

In the context of those experiences and the stories of so many, I don’t worry about my son and my family. I worry for the children in Baltimore who are missing their free lunches because school is closed and are instead watching their neighborhoods being taken over by martial law. I worry for the kids in hundreds of D.C. homeless families and the many risks they face, the potential of being lost forever to their parents like Relisha Rudd. I worry for the black and Hispanic kids in my neighborhood who go to the park alone, not worrying because their parents are neglectful (they aren’t), but because police have been calling Child Protective Services inappropriately in our county and they’re even less forgiving of people of color. I worry for the black kids in my church whose mom has to yell at them for running between the pews (after church) because she understandably wants them to respect places of authority. I worry that the submission to authority will become all too needed in their everyday lives.

So while I appreciate people’s concern, I ask for that concern to be turned elsewhere. If you want to help, the Baltimore Sun has a list of opportunities both for local volunteers and giving money to important community organizations. While education and books can’t stop systematic racism, libraries can offer vital community services and refuges for kids. The Ferguson, MO library accepts donations through their website. And of course, the NAACP has been working for racial equality and justice for decades.

One of Martin Luther King Jr’s less well-known quotes is: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” If we care about justice, about equality, about vulnerable children, we too must demand that freedom for all.

Women’s History Month Role Models – My Friends and Family

Photo: A woman in a pink shirt in front of a bike. Text:

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and women who have been major leaders in advocacy movements. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

What do you say when someone asks who inspires you? For me, it’s often the people I have a personal relationship with. Our greatest role models can be right in front of us.

My mom: My number one female role model in my life has always been my mom. As bonkers as we make each other – in that special way only mothers and daughters can – we love each other deeply. As a teacher in an inner-city school district, my mom instilled in me a dual love of learning and service. She was unrelenting in her dedication to her students, buying thousands of dollars in classroom supplies and more than once seriously considering fostering or adopting a student. She taught me what the word “privileged” meant before I ever heard the term, emphasizing that I was lucky to be both physically and emotionally taken care of. Reminding me that many children had neither of those – often, children she worked with every day – she taught me be grateful for what I have and help those who don’t. In her retirement, she’s volunteering at the local nature center and food bank. She’s also the one who inspired my love of cycling. While my family had always gone on short bike trips, her decision to bike 500 miles across New York State during my junior year of college motivated me to sign up for the AIDS Ride for Life. It was the first time I had ever done a major ride and made me a convert to cycling advocacy. In my family, my dad’s mom was the another major influence, whom I’ve written about before.

 

nancy-breen-at-first-carl-henn-memorial-ride.jpg

My friend Nancy, at the first Carl Henn Memorial Ride. 

Nancy Breen: On the bike front, Nancy Breen, the chair of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee, is another real inspiration to me. I know she’ll probably raise an eyebrow at her name being on the list, but she totally deserves it. She’s been the chair of our all-volunteer committee for several years now and it’s a pretty thankless job. Besides motivating us to get into gear, she’s spent endless hours with our city’s Mayor and City Council, whose meetings regularly run to midnight. She’s spoke in front of local policymakers on topics varying from police training to bike lanes. And she does all this in the very male-dominated field of bicycle advocacy. In fact, I think Nancy is a big part of why women are well-represented on RBAC and our concerns are heard. I’m also putting a major shout-out to my friend Sophie Chan-Wood, who does a lot of our group’s marketing and is the Rockville Roll Model for the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association’s Women and Bikes program.

Sister Lucy Poulin: Lucy is the toughest nun I have ever met. Admittedly, I haven’t met that many nuns, but she is a total badass. She founded Homeworkers Organized for More Employment in the 1970s in very rural Maine and still runs it. (She had co-run it with fellow awesome nun Sister Marie Ahern until two years ago, when Marie passed away.) What started as a simple co-op for crafters expanded to a substantial network of services including multiple homeless shelters, a food bank, a soup kitchen, a land-trust program that helps people build their own houses, an alternative high school, and much more. In addition to the main campus, she’s the matriarch of a rambling farm property. Chris and I volunteered at HOME for about a month and stayed in a plumbing-free house next to a lake at the farm. We ran the summer day camp, which at that time was down to 3 girls. Two of the girls were sisters and came from an incredibly tough background – they lived in one of the homeless shelters and their mom was a user and seller of illegal prescription drugs. Living and working there was super-hard and rewarding. But we had the luxury of it being temporary. Lucy deals with some radically difficult people, both those seeking services and volunteers, day in and day out. I saw her frustrated and even angry, but never impatient or mean. Most importantly, she created an atmosphere of fundamental equality. If you were more than a short-time volunteer, no one made the distinction between you and someone who needed paid work. It was never said but widely acknowledged that we all needed to be there, even if it was for different reasons.

Sylvia Robinson: Sylvia is another local activist that is the heart, soul, and backbone of an essential community organization. Leaving her steady job, she sunk her entire life savings into pursuing her dream of establishing a community center for her neighborhood. Housed in a impressive and historical but crumbly brick building in the DC neighborhood of Pleasant Plains, the Emergence Community Arts Collective hosts dance classes, children’s summer programs, poetry open mics, swap meets, and support groups. Through the organization, Sylvia has also led several projects delving into the history of the neighborhood, with a particular focus of highlighting the contributions of black women. I had the pleasure of knowing Sylvia when I volunteered for Ecolocity, a Transition Towns group that focused on sustainable food. She gave us free space for meetings and events as well as use of the building’s yard for a community garden and mini-food forest. Despite the fact that running your own non-profit is relentless, she was always willing to give our group time and energy as well. I’ll also offer a shout-out to my friend and fellow Ecolocity volunteer Gerri Williams, who now lives in Duluth, MN and co-hosts a radio show.

All of these women are dedicated to their greater community without losing sight of the individual relationships that truly make up that community.

Who are the female role models in your life who have inspired you the most?

A Halloweening We Will Go

Halloween is a holiday that is a hell of a lot more fun with kids. I love Halloween, but as an adult, I’ve found it oddly dissatisfying. As a teenager, I imagined celebrating Halloween as an adult would be mysterious and attractively dark, like a Victorian masquerade ball. But instead, I found out that people’s costumes are less interesting, parties are less well-attended, and it’s just another excuse to drink. While I suspect adulthood in general would be disappointing to my teenage self, I did rekindle my love of the holiday this year through a series of activities with Sprout. With a kid, you once again have an excuse to participate in all of the Halloween activities you remember nostalgically.

Our Halloween started early, with the Silver Spring Zombie Walk followed by a whole week of activities. My newly retired mom came down for the week to celebrate with us, bringing Sprout’s costume with her. She sewed all of my beautiful, original Halloween costumes, so of course we wanted her to make Sprout’s as well. (Unfortunately, her craftiness did not pass on to me.) We ended up picking a dinosaur, as he refuses to wear hats and it was the one toddler costume that didn’t need head-gear to be recognizable. Although I wasn’t impressed with the photo on the pattern envelope, my mom turned the costume into something spectacular. She found scaly, shiny green fabric that gave him a lizard-like feel. She added spikes up the back even though the pattern didn’t have them. She raised up the tail so it didn’t drag on the floor, increasing its aesthetic attractiveness and scientific accuracy. (Although I don’t think any dinosaur with spikes walked upright.) It ended up coming out better than the most expensive store-bought costumes, and of course, it was made with love.

Fortunately, Sprout really liked it. He didn’t fuss while we were putting it on, except for the head piece. (We have exactly two photos with the hat, both with me trying to shove it on and him in the process of pulling it off.) At first, he had a lot of difficulty sitting down because the tail got in the way. But once he figured that out, he seemed to enjoy the costume quite a bit while it was on.

That was a particularly good thing because we put it on him as often as possible. Early in the week, he wore it to a Halloween party at one of our town’s community centers. Despite the variety of activities, he spent most of his time sticking googly-eyed stickers on a pumpkin. But he was far from the only one enamored by the stickers and the fact that he didn’t try to eat them is definitely something for the win category. Later that week, they attended an party at the local kiddie gym that teaches his movement class. There, he cemented his tendency to be a bit of a thrill seeker by going down the baby roller-coaster multiple times all by himself.

Of course, Halloween evening was the pinnacle of the activities. I worked from home that day, so I was able to enjoy the whole evening with my family. We started the night with the annual neighborhood Halloween parade. The fact that my town and its neighborhoods put on numerous events is one of my favorite things about where I live. The parade had close to 75 parents and children, with a full spectrum of adorableness. Among the kids, there was a lightening bolt, a police officer (with his dad as a prisoner!), the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon, a train, a truck with working headlights, a bunch of princesses, Pooh Bear and Piglet, and many others. I wasn’t the only parent in costume either – quite a few adults got in on the action, with funny hats and full costumes. There was even a friendly dog in a purple and green tutu, which slobbered all over Sprout’s face when he got too close. We dawdled along, with the pace being slow enough that Sprout could walk on his own in parts. When he started going too slow and backed up the group, I would scoop him up and hustle to catch up to the rest of the group.

After the parade, we did an abbreviated trick-or-treating route. He was too little to know what was going on, but he also likes trying new things. Also, we knew our immediate neighbors would love to see him in his costume. At first, he was confused as to why he was standing in front of a closed door and would turn around towards us. When someone finally opened the door and greeted him, he got really excited. By the last house, he had the routine down pat, except for the words, of course. Our neighbors were so charmed that they gave him handfuls of candy.

For his hard work, we allowed him to eat a single piece of candy. As most candy is either too small (choking hazard), too chewy (ditto) or has peanuts (haven’t introduced yet), it was surprisingly hard to choose one. We finally picked an Almond Joy and plucked out the almond to avoid the aforementioned and ever-present choking hazard. He loved it, gobbling the whole thing right up. I’m not looking forward to the day he realizes what happened to the rest of his candy.

The one single disappointing thing about Halloween was that we didn’t carve a jack-o-lantern. We left our hard-earned, beautiful pumpkin outside since we picked it a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, we had a number of warm and rainy days. By the time we went to carve it, it was so mushy that it wasn’t structurally sound. As it was the night before Halloween, we just used Sprout’s pumpkin with way too many eyes instead.

Parenting offers you the chance to see the world through your kids eyes, but this Halloween, I also remembered what it was like to see it through the eyes of myself as a kid.

Just Shambling Along: Bringing a Kid to the Silver Spring Zombie Walk

As toddlers often have a loose grasp on the mechanics of walking, they sometimes lurch or shamble. So we thought it was appropriate to bring Sprout on his first Zombie Walk this past weekend.

A Zombie Walk is pretty much what it says – loads of people dress as zombies and then shamble along a route. Moaning, saying “Braasinnns,”and/or gently teasing bystanders is highly encouraged. A town near us has been hosting a Zombie Walk for the past several years and they’re immense fun. Like the Renaissance Faire, they’re an opportunity to dress up and become something radically different for a little while. As someone who gets Very Concerned about Big Issues (and sometimes stupid little ones), the idea of playing something totally brainless has a certain appeal. Unlike most zombie movies, Zombie Walks (or at least the Silver Spring one) aren’t meant to be scary at all. Instead, they wholeheartedly embrace the camp aspect of zombies, recognizing that often the zombies in movies are more interesting and sometimes more sympathetic than the protagonists.

Before heading out, we zombified ourselves. In the past, I’ve actually gone as a specific type of character – I was an activist zombie one year, decked out in as many buttons as I could find and holding a placard saying Occupy Graveyard. This year, I wanted do a family theme. While there are some very clever (and gross) costumes people have created with baby carriers, our inward facing Ergo-Baby doesn’t quite have the same Evil Fetus costume potential. Plus, Sprout’s too big for it now. Instead, I wanted to do an idealized 1950s zombie family. I put on my purple button-down retro-style dress for myself, so I had my part down. While they weren’t exactly period-appropriate, we dressed Sprout in his skeleton pajamas so he could fall asleep in the car on the way home. Unfortunately, Chris didn’t want to fuss with a suit. He did put on a button-down shirt, but it wasn’t quite the effect I was going for.

For the makeup, we used gray water-based make-up on Sprout. The application process wasn’t all that different from putting sunscreen on him, which he’s used to, even if he doesn’t like it. Chris and I both used oil-based makeup to provide more color, and I dripped fake blood around my mouth. (I used corn syrup and red food coloring, which is less drippy, cheaper, and easier to wash out than the store-bought stuff.) Unfortunately, our makeup ended up barely visible in the poorly-lit street. Afterwards, Chris commented, “Our faces just look dirty.” I guess we needed more green and less gray.

People dressed up as zombie versions of Thing 1 and Thing 2 at the Silver Spring Zombie Walk
Arriving at the starting point, we found a broad array of interpretations of the theme. A zombie family with everyone dressed in wedding gear celebrated the mom and dad’s real-life anniversary. The dad was holding a sign saying “To have and to hold in life and undeath.” Zombie 1 and Zombie 2 were the undead versions of Thing 1 and Thing 2, holding the decapitated head of the Cat in the Hat. The prince’s kiss seemed to wake up Zombie Snow White, despite the fact that she was actually dead. Zombie Sharknados got props for a clever costume idea in general, but points off for it clearly just being their Halloween costume with zombie makeup. Zombie Elvis was decked out in sequins, strumming a guitar, and singing versions of the classics tweaked appropriately for the audience. There were even a few folks facing the invading hoard with panache – Shaun from his eponymous movie was there, as was a church lady of the Dana Carvey sort with a Repent Zombies! placard.

We didn’t quite match up, but our one saving grace was having the darn cutest zombie on the walk. While there were a number of other kids there, and even a few around the same age, none of them were quite as prominent. We hauled Sprout up on Chris’s shoulders so he could see everything and be seen. As we walked, bystanders gave numerous, “Look at the baby zombie!” and “He’s so cute!” We even had a number of people take photos. While I’m not fond of strangers taking photos of my child, it’s inevitable if you participate in an event like this.

For his part, Sprout seemed to enjoy it. Most of the time, he had his “I’m taking it all in” expression on his face. I think he especially liked being up on Chris’s shoulders and seeing everything. The only problem was that he kept sticking his finger in Chris’s ear! We joked that he was trying to dig for tasty daddy brains.

I had a couple people I told about the walk ask if Sprout was scared; I can definitely say he wasn’t. While he gets startled easily, he isn’t old enough to understand why this would be scary. I think he just interpreted this as “another weird thing mom and dad are doing,” along with all of the other weird things we do. Heck, it’s not that much weirder than Disney, which has a giant mechanical bear singing about murder on one of their classic rides. As he gets older, I suspect we’ll take a couple years off between when he’s old enough to understand the concept of zombies but too young to appreciate their camp aspect.

To sum it up, my kid has been to some weird events. But with parents like his, weirdness is inevitable.

Old-School Childhood: Cabin John Regional Park

Old School Childhood_ Cabin John Regional Park

I’m a pretty radical progressive in a lot of ways, but I have serious nostalgia for a lot of kids’ activities. I believe children should spend lots of time exploring and that playground equipment is meant to be used “creatively.” I’m also a fan of kitschy stuff from the 1950s and 60s. So it warmed my heart to visit Cabin John Park last weekend with Chris, Sprout and my in-laws.

Cabin John Park is old and shows it. While the surrounding area is one of the richest regions in the country, you wouldn’t know it from the park. It’s neither shiny or trendy. Which is not to say that it’s dilapidated. Rather, it feels worn and comfortable, like a well-used armchair.

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