Camping: Take Two (Year Old) – Harper’s Ferry and Brunswick Family Campground

August 9, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

I think I’m turning into the dad from Calvin and Hobbes. Except instead of our adventures “building character” for my kid, they are doing it for me! In our second camping trip, some things went very right compared to last time, but others went very, very wrong.

I tried hard to learn from last time, bringing both lower expectations and a few extra pieces of gear. Unfortunately, I repeated the very first mistake – look up where the campground itself is, not just the national park! As it turned out, the campground was literally two states over from our destination, Harper’s Ferry. As Harper’s Ferry sits on the intersection between West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, thankfully it worked out to only a 20 minute detour.

My other efforts were more productive. We arrived there earlier, packed the car more efficiently, and set up faster than last time. We even had time the first day to head into town, eat ice cream, and gaze out over the meeting of Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, dotted with colorful inflatable rafts and tubes.

Not everything was quite so cheery though. Only two weeks ago, a fire ripped through several of the town’s historical wood and stone buildings. (Check out their GoFundMe page if you want to help.) A whole chunk of the block was black, charred and disintegrating, right in the middle of their tourist season. Rather than ignore it, we explained to Sprout both what happened and how people were helping each other recover. In particular, we connected it with the theme of LeVar Burton’s book The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm, which has the theme of how friends can help each other heal after traumatic situations. While I don’t think he really understood the magnitude of what happened, it was good practice for future conversations like this.

Other parts of the trip also reminded me of both the value as well as the challenges of neighbors. Camping creates an easy intimacy, with everyone sharing the twisted perspective that it’s a really awesome idea to sleep on the ground protected only by a little fabric.

This camaraderie was doubly-intense in this particular campground, which didn’t have assigned campsites, only a shared space under a grove of trees with a scattering of picnic tables and fire pits. Sprout was an immediate point of connection, with fellow campers commenting on his cuteness and encouraging him to pet their dogs. A kayaking instructor putting boats into the river even chimed into my conversation with Sprout, saying that he started bringing his son with him in the boat when he was only 6 months old. But despite his encouragement, we were content with watching dogs fetching balls, wading in up to our knees, examining clam and snail shells, and spotting tiny fish darting about.

But not all of our interactions were quite so pleasant. It started with our neighbors on one side blasting Southern rock deep into the night, with a call out about every 15 minutes to “Turn it up!” I didn’t bother getting Sprout to bed until quiet hours were supposed to start at 10 pm. All the white noise in the world wasn’t going to drown that out.

At 10 pm, I held out hope when it paused momentarily, then lost it again when it started back up a few minutes later. When those people finally went to bed at 11, our neighbors on the other side picked up the slack with an enthusiastic game of beer pong and multiple rounds of the Happy Birthday song.

Normally, I’d be mildly annoyed but understanding. However, I was sharing a tent with a two-year-old who wanted to join in the fun and knew there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop him. Not long after I put him down and left the tent, Chris commented, “Well, there’s not much he can do but sit in there and play with his toys. At least until he finds the zipper.” Literally seconds after the words left his mouth, we heard a zip and saw a little blond head sticking out. So much for that plan.

I headed in there to lie down with him, to no avail. Chris eventually got bored and joined me, but all we got for our efforts was a toddler climbing on us like it was his own personal bounce house. Across the tent, over Chris’s legs, up his chest, plowing into my head, back to his own sleeping bag and around again. And again and again. It was a toddler rave, complete with uncoordinated movements and the drug of severe sleep deprivation. But I couldn’t blame Sprout for his shenanigans – after all, they were clearly having a good time outside! Unlike last time, when I nearly melted down myself, I just shrugged and laughed. (Even when Sprout imitated my tendency to call out to my husband in whiny frustration – he yelled “Chrisssss!” at the door. Of course, Chris thought it was hysterical.)

Once the party finally calmed down at 12:30, Sprout was still way too wound to calm down voluntarily, so Chris stuck him in the car and drove around until he finally passed out.

Camping should be celebratory – of nature and people – but I do hope it’s not quite that celebratory in the future.

Montgomery County Had Some Farms – E-I-E-I-O: Montgomery County Farm Tour

July 31, 2015October 17, 2022 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

“Eat your vegetables!” is a stereotypical parenting phrase, but I want my kid to not just eat them, but also know where they come from. While we’re farmers’ market regulars, the Montgomery County Farm Tour offered a unique opportunity last weekend to get hands-on with some plants and animals.

Of the 19 farms participating, we decided to visit just two, considering limits on time and toddlers’ attention span.

Our first stop was Homestead Farm, which offers pick-your-own fruit, as well as a number of vegetables at its farm market. While they offered produce for sale, they also had quite a few animals, which were a big hit with the kiddie set.

I especially loved the set-up they had for their goats. Goats are known for their climbing skills and complete lack of fear. They’re notorious for scrambling up on roofs. Rather than fighting this instinct, Homestead had the brilliant idea of giving them something to climb onto. Above our heads were two platforms connected by a walkway. There were even little baskets that visitors could use to haul food up to the goats!

Other animals at the farm included chickens, pigs and a llama. Sprout gave us a running commentary – “Chickens inside!” he’d proclaim. They seemed to be his favorite for some reason – perhaps the crowing or their feathers’ pretty colors. I tried to use this fondness to convince Chris we should raise chickens, but my suggestion was thoroughly ignored.

The orchard was next up, ready for all of our peach-picking needs. To keep him busy, I assigned Sprout the responsibility of placing – not throwing or dropping – the peaches into the box. Of course, it took a couple of tries (and then a couple more) before he moved from violently bruising them to putting them down gently. Despite his assignment, he wanted to actually pick some peaches himself. Thankfully, a lot of the peach trees were short, with fruit within his reach. While I was highly skeptical of his peach selection abilities, he picked quite a few that were perfectly ripe. There must have just been so many that it was hard to go wrong. Like any time you go fruit picking, our hands were bigger than our stomachs. Peach jam and cobbler, anyone?

Our second stop on the farm tour was Star Gazing Farm, a sanctuary for abused and abandoned farm animals. As the animals roam very free there, we were allowed to walk right up to them. Again, the chickens were popular, with Sprout exclaiming, “Chicken, chicken!” and looking interested when the guide showed us a freshly-laid egg. I took the opportunity to connect it to one of his books, Me…Jane, which shows a young Jane Goodall watching a hen laying an egg.

The farm must have made him feel safe, because Sprout even worked up the nerve to touch one of the animals. Every time we’ve seen farm animals, he’s been perfectly content to look and not touch. He backs off quickly if the animal even looks at him. But for whatever reason, he judged the sheep was unthreatening and gingerly reached out a hand to stroke its wool. After a few pets, he declared, “Soft.”

Besides looking at the animals, the farm also had a sheep shearing demonstration and offered a variety of knitted goods made by volunteers for sale. The hats and sweaters were ridiculously inexpensive for hand-made goods, probably less than the price of the wool. I got winter hats for myself and Sprout for $25!

We rounded out the day with a little picnic of PB&J sandwiches, lemonade and watermelon. Our tour of local agriculture offered a small taste of the many farms in our area and what they produce.

The Three Stages of FaceTime with a Toddler

July 29, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

As I travel very rarely for work, my two-year-old son isn’t very used to the idea of it. The last time I was gone for more than a night was in December, which I suspect he doesn’t even remember. So I don’t think my goodbye really sunk in when I left on a four day work trip last week. To keep in touch, we FaceTimed every night and went through a very distinct stage each time:

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Very, Very Big Planes: The Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum

July 23, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

“Big planes fun,” was Sprout’s assessment of our latest outing. Big is a bit of an understatement – one of the aforementioned planes was the space shuttle Discovery – but he has a limited vocabulary. Nonetheless, he definitely expressed enthusiasm when we visited the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Virginia this past weekend with old friends of mine and their son.

We weren’t planning on visiting the Air and Space Museum this weekend, but when I saw on Facebook that my friends Greg and Laura were visiting D.C., I had to reach out. Because their son – who just graduated kindergarten – is really into planes, they planned on hitting up both of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museums.

While the one on the Mall is more well-known and receives more visitors, the one in Virginia is better. It houses the “big planes” that can’t fit in the smaller facility. When NASA retired the space shuttle program, the museum actually replaced its test shuttle with one that’s actually gone to space. I teased Greg and Laura, who live in New York City, that they have the hand-me-down, as NYC now hosts the test shuttle previously at the D.C. museum.

Front on photo of the Space Shuttle Discovery in front of an American flag

The Discovery Space Shuttle

I don’t think Sprout comprehended what the shuttle was, but he was definitely impressed by it. Up close, the size alone is pretty overwhelming. We tried to explain it had been up with the moon and stars, but I suspect that was lost on him. However, he at least seemed to understand when we said fire came out the back of it. Personally, one of my favorite things about it is the scars from actually being in space. Its panels that protected the astronauts from radiation are faded gray and even white in places, compared to the shiny black of the test shuttle.

After the shuttle, my friends’ son wandered over to the military planes, which held zero interest for Sprout. I think they’re fascinating for older kids with some sense of history, but they don’t have the inherent “wow” factor of some of the largest exhibits. I tried to explain the Blackbird spy plane, which is virtually undetectable by radar, to him. Unfortunately, I think my explanation of what a spy plane is translated into what a toddler can understand came out pretty garbled.

The Blackbird spy plane

In our quick survey of the museum’s exhibits, the next stop was the Concorde, one of the fastest commercial passenger planes ever flown. In past visits, I’ve spent hours stopping at each placard, reading the details carefully. With a small, continuously moving person tugging on my hand, no such luck. This child can stand still for 10 minutes waiting to “watch trains” in the heat without complaint, but can’t wait for 30 seconds for me to read something. He had company on that front though. My friends’ son doesn’t read yet either (or at least enough to understand museum displays), so once he looked at a plane, he charged ahead. I barely had time to provide another brief description of the Concorde – confounded by “accuracy” and “details” by Greg, the engineer of the group – before moving on.

Taking a glass elevator up to a wide catwalk offered an alternative view of the planes, many of which were hanging from the ceiling. We spotted a few “baby planes,” one-seater recreational flying machines that looked more like toys than aircraft. They looked scaled to our kids’ size, but way too dangerous. Those would make me a literal helicopter mom.

We wrapped up the tour with an IMAX movie, in the museum’s theater that actually has a curved screen, not just a flat one. To add to the awesome, the movie, titled Journey to Space, was about the space shuttle program and narrated by Patrick Stewart. A nerderiffic trifecta. While we weren’t sure how well Sprout would do, we figured we’d bail at the first sign of antsiness. We didn’t want a repeat of the Monkey Kingdom incident.

But we didn’t need to wonder. Sprout was transfixed the entire time, hardly wiggling at all. The only time he took his eyes off the screen was when they showed the shuttle taking off, which was very loud. When he heard it, he’d turn around in my lap and wrap his arms around me. Then he’d turn his head slowly back towards the screen, definitely interested but a little unnerved. I loved watching how his curiosity overcame his fear. I also loved that I was able to watch the film withour interuption, as it had a lot of imagery of space and great interviews with astronauts.

Before returning home for naptime, we all ate together in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, McDonalds runs the food service for both Air and Space Museums. I had the foresight to purchase sandwiches earlier, but not quite enough to realize that I either should have brought a way to keep them cold or bought ones that didn’t need it in the first place. No one seemed to get sick, but next time, we’re packing PB&J.

The nice thing about getting everyone sitting in one location was that I actually got to talk to my friends. In the museum itself, we were following our respective children, not wanting to restrict their spirit of exploration but also not wanting to lose them. Sitting down and eating, it was s lot easier to keep an rye on them while also having a conversation. Greg and Laura are actually some of my oldest friends, who I first met in junior high and then became friends with again in college. I visited them in New York City when I did the Climate Ride and it was amazing to realize how much things had changed since then. Between the two couples, we’ve had a kid, moved houses and changed jobs multiple times. While I see what’s going on with them a little via Facebook, it was good to connect in person. I love my friends in D.C., but there’s something special about moving through the phases of life in parallel with people you have known for a very long time. I wish our family didn’t have to go home so soon, but tired toddlers are cranky toddlers.

Old friends, little kids and big planes turned out to be a pretty good combination.

The Type of Neighbor I Want to Be

July 21, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Last week, I found out that my neighbor across the street, Wilma, had died. I hadn’t seen her around in a while, but it was still very much a surprise. She was one of those people you always assume will be there. She was the definition of a neighborhood institution. While we were friendly, I wish I had been as good of a neighbor to her as she was to the whole neighborhood.

Wilma grew up down the block from her current house, around the corner from her grandparents. My neighborhood is a historically black community and her family was a fundamental part of its foundation. She told me stories about when she was a kid and everyone had apple trees and chickens that ran amuck on the sidewalk. After men came back from fishing, multiple families would come together and share a big fry up. The city didn’t provide many services – there are still some houses with wood-fired stoves because it took so long to get gas service – but they preferred being ignored to being harassed or worse.

As Wilma grew older, the neighborhood began to develop problems, namely crime and drugs. While it had always been poor due to systemic racism, it had previously been safe. But in the 80s, It was one of the main gateways for drugs into D.C. There was at least one murder (and probably others). It had enough of a reputation that even when we moved here in 2010, the landlords from our former apartment warned us against it.

But Wilma wasn’t going to let that stand for long. As the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood, she ran the neighborhood’s advisory board. The board represented community needs to the city government, ranging from concerns about large trucks on the streets to over-development. She was the Commissioner of the local Housing Authority and advocated for better, more affordable housing. By finding private funding for the project, she was a big part of the movement to replace the run-down subsidized apartments nearby with new integrated, multi-income townhouses. Since then, our county has largely moved towards integrated subsidized housing because it’s more respectful towards low-income folks and prevents a lot of the problems caused by ghettoizing people. Her efforts largely contributed to the fact that my neighborhood is safe enough that I feel comfortable and happy raising my son here.

Needless to say, that was all before we moved in. I wouldn’t have known about any of it if Wilma didn’t make an effort to be as welcoming and friendly as possible towards us from the very beginning. As Chris and I are a young, upper-middle-class white couple – the epitome of gentrifiers – she had every right to be skeptical. But she never was. She opened us with open arms, frequently saying hello to us from her porch. Although she didn’t think it would be successful – at first – she loved the fact that I was growing vegetables in my garden. And when Sprout came along, she absolutely adored him. She was always asking after him and what new milestones he was passing. By making us part of the essential fabric of our neighborhood, she made us comfortable enough that we wanted that for ourselves too.

When I found out she died, I was struck by a deep loss. Regret that I hadn’t checked in on her and helped her when she was sick. Regret that I had never expressed my appreciation for her. Sadness that Sprout wouldn’t be able to grow up with this wonderful older black woman as one of many diverse role-models. Sadness that we lost such an important person to our neighborhood.

Wilma was truly a good neighbor to everyone around her. With her absence, it will be up to the rest of us to reach our hands out to help each other in honor of her memory.

What neighbors have you had that affected you?

Missing the Home in Hometown

July 15, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

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.

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

July 9, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

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!

A Stellar Second Birthday Party

July 8, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

I know I’m not a “Pinterest mom,” but my mom borders on being a Pinterest grandma. Thankfully, that came in very handy the weekend before last when we hosted Sprout’s second birthday party. Despite the fact that we had to change venues due to flash flood warnings, our Teddy Bear Picnic party ended up being a lot of fun for kids and adults alike.

Knowing this is probably the last year I can pick his party theme, I picked one he would like but wouldn’t choose himself, like dinosaurs or trains. As Teddy Bears’ Picnic seemed like it would be a common theme, I thought it would be easy to find ideas for decorations.

So like a stereotypical suburban mom, I searched Pinterest. While I found a few great ideas, I was rather disappointed. Instead of being overwhelmed by choices, I found two things: 1) the same cute ideas over and over and 2) photos of incredibly elaborate displays with no instructions on how to do them. After looking at several of the posts that fell into category 2, I realized the authors didn’t make the posts with the goal of helping others out. In most cases, the photos were of parties that were run by a party planner, catered, or at least had 90% of the stuff purchased from an expensive bakery. As I have neither the budget or inclination to take any of those options, these photos were pretty, but useless.

With that in mind, I talked to my mom and we chose a few crafty ideas that she could help with. Unsurprisingly, she did an awesome job. She made an adorable pair of bear ears for Sprout – because you better go in disguise to the Teddy Bear’s Picnic – that he actually kept on for a long time (aka more than one minute). While I just asked her to frame the lyrics from the Teddy Bears’ Picnic song in an ordinary picture frame, she went above and beyond by creating a border of picnic tablecloth. She also dragged some decorative old-fashioned picnic baskets out of the basement and her office. I can’t imagine how much paperwork she cleared out of the one.

Unfortunately, as cute as everything was, it couldn’t change the weather. As early as Friday, with a 90% chance of thunderstorm, it was obvious we needed to relocate the party from the park pavilion to an indoor location.

So I took the decorations, red and white tablecloths from the party store, and every teddy bear in the house and headed down to our finished basement. This was part of the executive decision to stay the hell out of everyone’s way this year, as opposed to last year. Both Chris and my mom have exacting visions for their projects that don’t exactly match my areas of competency. While last time I had the excuse of Sprout waking up for hours on end at 2 a.m., I would rather avoid having a panic attack and being miserable to my family again. Instead, I picked up toys, laid out picnic blankets, and arranged stuffed animals and books as artfully as I could manage. With the blankets and camp chairs, it was an indoor picnic, but still definitely a picnic.

In the meantime, Chris and my mom were whipping up delicious picnic food. Using a cookie cutter, my mom cut peanut butter and jelly and peanut butter and honey sandwiches into bear shapes, then drew mouths on with frosting.

She also made little driving bears with Milky Ways, M&Ms, Teddy Graham’s, and melted chocolate chips. (For Americans, the Smarties referred to in the link are like giant M&Ms, not the hard little things everyone picks out of their Halloween candy.) Chris made a deconstructed eggplant parmesan salad with cubes of fried eggplant, roasted tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil leaves, olive oil, sherry vinegar, and shaved Parmesan cheese. He made it ages ago and I adored it so much I still remembered it seven years later.

And of course, the cake. With this birthday cake recipe and the buttercream frosting recipe from culinary school, it was definitely the tastiest cake Chris has ever made. It was darn cute too. White frosting with lines of red colored sugar created a picnic blanket. Piping of green frosting around the edges made for convincing looking grass. And stuffed bears from Amazon (12 for $10!) around a piece of honeycomb, on top of a piece of Saran Wrap, made an adorable picnic. It was shockingly hard to find those little bears. We almost had to fall back on Care Bears, of all things.

Before we started, I wanted to see Sprout’s reaction. Last year, he didn’t have a clue what was going on, but this year, he’s already well-versed in the concept of make-believe. I’ve drank enough cups of pretend tea to know that. When he turned into the room, transformed into a teddy-bear fantasy, a big smile spread across his face. He was happy earlier in the day, but this was wonder. It made every bit of decorating worth it.

Once everything was ready, we waited for our guests. And waited. And waited. D.C. guests abide by the “fashionably late” idea and getting little kids out the door is a fight against entropy anyway. Just as I was getting genuinely nervous, our guests started arriving. Even though we had far fewer people show up than invited, it was the perfect number. If we had more, it would have been too crowded in the basement.

As it was, we had 4 kids running around, 1 infant, and a bunch of adults, both parents and not. The setting wasn’t as exciting as a playground, but they enjoyed our toy kitchen and little slide. They were self-sufficient enough that the parents could relax and talk, which everyone appreciated. I always like being able to see my friends.

But my favorite part of the whole day was just before we cut the cake. I held Sprout up to blow out the candles. As the lights were off and everyone was singing, he smiled quietly, his eyes shining. He knew everyone was singing to him out of love.

Later that night, he kept saying, “Happy day.” Happy day indeed.

Bringing Peru to the National Mall: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival

June 30, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Every year, the Smithsonian brings a little piece of somewhere else in the wide world to the National Mall. Although not well-known by tourists, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is a fantastic event that I always look forward to attending. This year, the Festival focused on Peru, making for a slightly surreal but very satisfying experience, considering I traveled there just a few years ago.

While seeing my personal experiences laid out as exhibits was odd, I was so glad I could share them in a concrete way with Sprout. One of the main tents focused on the highland Peruvians’ yarn-dying and weaving traditions. On our trip, we visited a mountain village, where we saw the women making elaborately patterned scarves and blankets with traditional tools. I still have a scarf I bought there, made of intertwining strands of pink and blue llama wool. At the Festival, they had a more modern version of the set-up, using a portable stove. Inside stainless steel pots, red dye bubbled and produced billows of steam. Sprout loved looking into the pots, feeling the heat and smelling the odd odor of cochineal, a bug used to make brilliant red dye.

Photo of dancers in full costume and masks waiting to parade as part of the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmen de Paurcartambo

I forgot to take a photo at the Folklife Festival, so here’s an actual photo from our trip.

Similarly, there was a whole tent devoted to the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmen de Paurcartambo, an amazing festival that we happened to attend through happy coincidence on our way into the Amazon basin. I had never heard of it before our trip; now I was reading a plaque about it on the National Mall! The costumes used in the festival are all bright colors contrasted with black, topped by detailed, grotesque masks that represent 13 different stories in Peruvian culture. Seeing the masks brought back memories of the little convenience store selling cheap plastic versions and the energetic dancers winding down the cobblestone street. Even though we didn’t get to see a dance demonstration, Sprout liked the bird-headed costume, probably because it was pretty obvious what it was.

Other tents highlighted parts of Peruvian culture we completely missed on our trip. Neon-colored posters with elaborately swirly writing were familiar to me, but until then I didn’t realize they were part of a specific art form called Chicha silk-screening that emerged from Cumbia amazónica concert posters. Nearby, an artist was filling in a giant version of the word Liberte over purposely painted graffiti on a huge wall. Afro-Peruvian music provided a soundtrack that I grooved to with Sprout hauled up on my shoulders. A radical radio station that promotes social justice issues in the context of native groups broadcast in both Spanish and English in the next tent over. Seeing the broad array of cultural and political diversity of the country that filled in some gaps in our trip made me value it all the more.

While we had little chance to talk to the people (I had to get back to work), one of the things I like the best about the Folklife Festival is that the staff members are actually from the country and culture being highlighted. They actively choose to share their lived experiences, both the positives and negatives. Unlike some exhibits that put cultures in a convenient little box, the Folklife Festival doesn’t shy away from the economic, social and cultural challenges people face. It also allows real conversations to take place, a cultural exchange that is often very difficult for people who face financial or other barriers to foreign travel. At a previous Festival, I chatted with a Welshman about the political aspects of my favorite band, who are from Wales. As I want Sprout to be exposed to a variety of people’s experiences and backgrounds, the Festival offers a unique opportunity to do so each year. Lastly, it offers an “in” to improve our understanding of our own community. We have a number of South American immigrants in our area, many of them from Peru. At our town’s Memorial Day parade, we saw groups wearing costumes very similar to those we saw on our trip and at the Festival. Whereas I would have just seen them as pretty costumes before, after our trip, I better understood their cultural context.

I wish I could have stayed longer and seen all of the exhibits, talk to the man fixing his fishing net or caught a dance demonstration, but I was so glad we could bring Sprout to the Folklife Festival. It was a really good reminder of why I love living close to the Nation’s Capital.