Light Skin/Dark Skin

Number 102
December 30, 2011

“Does he have light skin or dark skin?”

This query has become Owen’s common rejoinder when he is introduced to a new name: someone Daddy knows, a football player, a name in the news.

I wish I had a handle on the genesis of this line of questioning, but it seems to have simply appeared. Perhaps Owen observed through the ever-truthful lens of sports television that there are people standing right next to each other who have skins of different color, even though they wear the same outer skin, which is to say a uniform. I simply don’t know.

At school, he is surrounded by kids of different color. His core posse includes an African-American, an Asian-American, and a tow head who happens to be Jewish. Some of these kids have parents of different color. And in his class are a number of mixed kids, like himself. There are mixed-race families, two-mommy families, adoptive families, et cetera. The United Colors of Benetton, right here in Oakland.

For some reason, however, it is important for our youngster to make these kinds of designations, to separate people into these two very large corrals.

His inquiries are certainly innocent. I typically provide an answer but attempt to steer the questioning into a new direction. At least one time, I responded, “Why does it matter?”

That one was processed not at all. And that’s fair. I suppose I could make some feeble attempt at discussing race in our mixed family and our rainbowed community. But when it comes to race, about all I know with any confidence is that color-blindness among adults is a fallacy. Color is a celebration; try to let people tell you who they are.

There is a point during development after which you become aware and then acutely aware of racial distinctions. In my mind, it is unavoidable, as racial characteristics are imprinted as part of our patterns for recognizing individuals. In fact, I would argue that we first identify an individual’s race before the identity of the individual, that color is the most superficial, literally and figuratively, of designations about other people.

My wife, who is of Asian descent, tells the story of her introduction into a new social group in which everyone mistook her for “Millis,” the token Asian-American woman in the group. She laughs now at all of the “Hi, Millis” memories but feels bad for Millis, for whom this group was supposedly her peeps.

But in time, color should fade into the background; I periodically have a re-awareness that a good friend of mine is half-Japanese. His race simply doesn’t register.

Where I grew up in the burbs, we didn’t have much variation. I suppose my first awareness of people of different racial backgrounds came in second grade. My chief rival in class was Dai, a smart girl who had come to California from Vietnam. She and I did battle for gold stars throughout the year. I had no awareness of the challenges in her life, of how hard it must have been to assimilate into a new and very foreign culture through school. She was pre-filtered experience. She simply was.

Which makes Owen’s line of inquiry curious. Why does it matter at this significantly earlier age?

When confronted with a new name, the other whammy coming out of the kid’s mouth these days is the following: “Is he alive or dead?” Here again, we see this pattern of innocent classification, an act of bucketing the world into the above-ground and the otherwise without regard to any of these fussy adult sensibilities.

And that’s maybe all that it is: a youngster trying to organize the world before him.

These broad strokes will, over time, become subtler and more refined. Already, he has self-identified as, “A little bit dark,” and he has color-coded our family from lightest (me) to darkest (himself).

In time, this classification won’t matter. In time, Owen will meet kids who look as Asian as his mom and have the last name, “Smith.” He’ll meet blond and blue-eyed kids who are fluent in Spanish. He’s already met the post-racial world right here in Oakland, and more exposure to it will lower the fences around his corrals. He’ll become aware of color but will care less and less about it. We’ll call this phase the Light and Dark phase. And I’m looking forward to the psychedelic color explosion before his eyes.

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Sex Ed

Number 101
December 16, 2011

The other Saturday, Owen was swinging the Question Hammer all afternoon and evening. Parents of young, often tired, kids know this one. It is the repeated paddling of your eardrums with Why. Without the polite interrogative at the end. Why. Answer me now.

Most of them, we managed to parry. But a few of them, I and my BS degree were unable to handle, so I am passing them up the advanced degree chain. To whit:

“Why do I have nipples?”

Ex post facto, I could dig up some links to more learned explanations as to why male humans have nipples; we’ll be receiving this one again. What remains is the growing awareness, as a parent, of some of those moments and facial expressions of my mom, when I had asked or demanded something, for which there was no time, energy, or knowledge to explain, and received that somewhat crumpled gaze on my mother’s face which reflected the continuing struggle to stay abreast of her kids.

Later that evening, Owen was in the tub and fiddling with his junk. I was too tired to lead or suggest another activity.

“What’s the round thing next to my penis?”

I tried to parry. “It’s part of your penis.”

“I know. But what’s it called?”

“It’s called a testicle.”

“What’s it for?”

In our family, we are not shy or shameful about nudity in the house. The kids can scamper about without clothes, and they can watch us dress. Questions come up, and that’s just fine.

The function, though, of our different body parts opens a whole new round of discussions. Many of them can be deflected with alternate functions. The why of the penis is to pee. The why of the vagina is to let babies out. The why of the testicle is one big Why, and there is no alternative. “To cause gut-sickening pain when smacked by a soccer ball?”

We had had four long years for which to prepare for the inevitable. In that time, I had tried to formulate and parameterize the future sex discussion. Would we discuss sex only, as a biological imperative? Would we venture forth into relationships and the emotional meaning of sex? Would we talk about Mommy and Daddy? Would we allow our kids to put the pieces together, eliciting a potentially horrifying realization? I had muddled together some half-hearted positioning on the matter and had banked on at least four more years to organize the speech.

Sex ed happens in third grade, right? Right.

The pause between my son and me dilated until it became clear that Owen would not tolerate a fatherly non-answer. It was eight o’clock at night, and I’d been up since three a.m. Opening this box would take at least another thirty minutes of pounding from the Question Hammer to get it closed again. I had no reasonable answer for a bright and cranky four year-old. I had no Jedi deflection, no clever rejoinder. I honestly served up this flop: “I don’t really know.”

Owen mulled that one for a moment.

“Do I have a testicle in my butt?”

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Montessorry, Charlie

Number 100
December 2, 2011

In September, we were pulled into the vortex of Back to School Night, which funneled into yet another video on the ideals of Montessori.

I am a big fan of Montessori. In terms of early childhood education, the curriculum emphasizes age-appropriate development of the individual, and each of our kids has thrived in the self-directed environment.

These videos are punishing, however. Through the soft-focus cinematography, we parents are subjected to perfected Montessori environments. The classroom segments are instructional for us, but when the camera turns toward the Montessori-ed home, it’s something of a knockout blow to our nascent careers as parents.

Take one video, for example.

The off-screen narrator is a calm stay-at-home mom (strike 1), who has received her Montessori certification (strike 2). Both she and her husband, she says, have decided that the pathway forward for their family involves her staying at home to care for their two very well-mannered boys (strike 3), who are about 4 years and eighteen months. These delightful cherubs gather toys from the neatly sorted bins stacked against the wall (strike 4) and play with them on the colorful rug placed in front of the bins (strike 5). As she describes the structure of their calm and clean home life (strike 6), her two very well-mannered boys gather the toys and return them to the bin (strike 7). No voice is ever raised (strike 8).

Their dinnertime is the civil affair of which we all dream (strike 9). The boys are silently scooping food from their bowls as Mom and Dad both help to serve them (strike 10). There are no cranky tears (strike 11). There are no spills (strike 12). Mom and Dad do not look tired (strike 13).

Some months later, a quick tour of our family home reveals that we have whiffed on just about everything Montessori.

Those plastic bins have been replaced by IKEA shelving overstuffed with every little goodie, it seems, that has been given to our kids since birth. Teething rings and rattles are mixed in with library books, and half the contents have been vomited out onto the floor, where they will remain until Daddy completes his weekend sweep. Papers, crayons, toys, play cups, and crumbs, crumbs, crumbs have pockmarked the living room, the termite mounds of tiny people. At any given moment, one of our two kids may be loudly tumbling through another physical or emotional bruising, generally perpetrated by the other.

Our bedroom is no better, with heaps of clothing growing up the corner walls. As far as providing an exemplary Montessori home, we have failed.

It’s good, in a way, to see an idealized version of what our kids could be doing at home. In another way, though, who cares.

That video, of course, did not include the outtakes after the credits. There was no blooper roll of kids having tantrums, frazzled Mom and Dad, or any form of physical intervention. We did not see or hear “cut” once.

And that doesn’t happen in home life. The camera is always rolling. Our life at home is very much focused on the present. What needs to be done right now? What ails which kid? The eye may wander a bit to the future but rarely further than the weekend.

These things to which we’ve been exposed through video, these canned moments in the past, do not receive much screen time in our family life. We’ve bought some of the Montessori “materials,” the physical objects used in the classroom, but they receive the same scattered attention as any other thing grabbed off the shelves. The Montessori mindfulness, those moments of detachment that enable parents, teachers, and guardians to smoothly navigate through difficulties with little ones, cannot calmly and rationally push to the side the roil of emotions and obligations of the moment at hand. And there is no pill for end-of-day fatigue for anyone no matter their age.

The dichotomy of behaviors in the classroom versus behaviors at home stuns me at times, but the ones I understand are inside our front door. We can bring a little Montessori home. We can build a loving and safe home. But, our family cannot live Montessori.

And I’m ok with that.

That Montessori perspective, however, that sense of detachment that our kids’ teachers put on everyday they work with little people, would be wonderful to close up in their lunchboxes, along with the leftover spaghetti strands and uneaten slices of carrot. Two orders of that to go, please.

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Departures

Number 99
November 18, 2011

The other weekend, we had to say goodbye to Tommy and Rachel.

Eight years ago, over a dish of guacamole at their house, Margaret and I met. A good friend since college, Tommy and his wife Rachel had been conspiring to introduce us for months. It took them buying a new house to finally bring us together.

In our early years, the four of us visited regularly. Then they had Lena, and our gatherings shifted earlier in the day. One evening, I turned to see both of them falling asleep on the couch. Time to go, Margaret.

And then they had their second. And we had our first. As their lives moved into preschool, we were still figuring out how to change a diaper. When we gathered, conversation suffered the interruptions of parenting small children. That crawl across the ridge to Berkeley happened less frequently. It was reassuring, though, to have the relative expertise just over the hill.

Tommy’s in real estate. His saga involves the redevelopment of an office building near Berkeley BART and an apartment building on Piedmont Avenue. Both projects were in full swing when the crash hit. He scrambled to find contract work, which led to a full-time offer in Orange County.

This is not a career move. Tommy has an MBA from an elite school and 15 years of experience in the field. Yet he did what any responsible breadwinner would do: you take the job, the move, the two hours each day through the gut of LA to stabilize the financial foundation beneath your family.

The evening was warmed by a catered Mexican feast and margaritas. We shared a table on the back lawn with their friends, Matt and Ken. It’d been over a year since we had seen them, yet they hadn’t seen Tommy and Rachel in over a year. Now that our mutual friends will be in LA, we joked that they’ll probably see Tommy and Rachel more frequently. Us? Still in diapers, with our second.

Right after college, I tried a year in Orange County. Days drifted into weeks, until I discovered a longing for what had been. Before the year closed, I was back in Berkeley, sifting the artifacts of my college life.

But you can’t go back, I learned. Many of Tommy and my friends had graduated, and those who remained were buzzing around midterms and parties. Feeling like an outsider, I hunkered down on the north side of campus and tried to scratch my way into writing. Life began to pick up steam: a job, a move to the City, and onward into maturation.

They’ll be fine in LA, I know. Both grew up in LA. Rachel’s parents still live there. The job, the area, the LA experience, these are all known things.

A few cold fingers of breeze began to crawl up the hill from the Bay below. Owen was beginning to act up. Time to go, Margaret.

At the car, I thanked Rachel for introducing Margaret and me. “If it was meant to be,” she shrugged. “It was meant to be.”

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Rock and Roll Redux

Number 98
November 4, 2011

Lately, I’ve been craving rock and roll. No tuneful slow ballads. Fill my bones with pounding drums, driving bass, and thundering guitars. Bring it.

On the bus, I want no part of the weary commuter conversations next to me or the last emails of the workday. I want Joy Division. I want The Clash. The Sex Pistols. The Jesus and Mary Chain. Do I date myself here?

As the other commuters wander through the pages of the next digital novel or browse their regular RSS feeds, this aural foray into surly youth-dom strikes a peculiar internal chord. I am now persona non-grata in the mosh pit, and a full-body embrace of my playlist would turn into a pair of busted eyeglasses and a swift kick in the ribs, which would now take weeks to heal.

After a full day of reading and writing text, though, I have no gas in the tank to consume more text, however pleasurable it may be. That whole program of pursuing leisure reading in the evening just doesn’t work after a full eight hours mired in technical copy. The evening is a mental gutter.

How is it, then, that punk and alt rock have a place in my inner space? What is it that awakens the venting young man for this sing-along with the disenfranchised?

When I saw some of these bands as a kid, the goal was always the same: get as close to the center of the stage as possible and bounce and sway and sweat until your ears rang for two days. That catharsis, that release of feeling that has nothing to do with school or family or future, could sustain me for a week.

Despite the unfolding of two decades of life experience, those messengers still hit the right chords. Yes, the volume may be turned down a bit now, and the lyrics may ring a little off-key. But the will to shape my life as something not derived from the morning news stream, the dictates of office politics, or grotesque overconsumption remains. Distrust. Resist.

Yet I join the commuting herd to downtown San Francisco each day. Willingly.

That will to continue the fight for some sense of independence is easily trumped by the biological imperative of protecting and providing for the family. My wife and kids will have a home, in a good and safe neighborhood, even if it means routing my daily vector around the magnetic pole of a downtown job.

I am not looking back, I know. I don’t want to go through being a teenager again. For all of the liberty, at the time unappreciated, there is too much to say for the present, for the suffusing warmth of family life and the blossoming of two lovely little people.

What I take forward into the future is an appreciation of the present, this random shuffle of rock’s past. For when Owen and Kiki hit that age where music rises to a prominent point in their lives, a return to the songs of our teen years will surely remind my wife and me of the struggle to become a man or woman. Rock on, kids. Think for yourself. Hug your friends. And be home by midnight.

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The Big Choice

Number 97
October 21, 2011

My wife’s friend, a seasoned New York journalist, was passing through the East Bay while working on an article about women her age who suddenly choose to have babies. Babies everywhere, and often without a man in the picture.

This woman, “Colleen,” admitted that working on the piece was a means of exploring the choice against the dwindling grains of sand in her personal hourglass, when she felt little urge to have children. In her mid-thirties now, Colleen seems–

Owen has just entered the room. “Daddy, what’s that?” Time to take a break from this, to hold the boy, to serve some breakfast, and maybe to read some stories.

A few days pass.

Resuming: In her mid-thirties now, Colleen seems to have boiled it down to a binary proposition: either retain her transcontinental career and New York lifestyle or settle in with a child, a TBD guy, and a middling nine-to-fiver.

Modern urban living can invite this kind of paralysis. You build up your career to an economically sustaining standard. You acquire your own apartment. And in your off hours, you bounce among a wide range of friends and activities, a perpetually bubbly champagne of life experience. If one doesn’t work, you’re on to the next one: the next city, the next lover, the next scene.

All good stuff when you’re in your twenties. But you can sustain that well into your forties without interruption. You can build a self-sustaining, kinetic life that is essentially unchanged until your body is too old to handle it.

For a woman, that blankets your reproductive lifespan. When we were in New York City last summer, many of the middle-aged women looked, it seemed, at our kids with a bit of wistfulness in their eyes. How unfair to be on the clock like that.

Colleen does seem to have a good handle on the parameters. She is aware that there may be some compromise in her career; witness Owen’s pre-dawn interruption of this piece. Colleen doesn’t think it’d be hard to find a guy with whom to have a baby, willing or otherwise. She’s right about that, too.

Initially, the pro-choice movement focused on the issue of abortion, but advances in medicine and a global adoption network now make the family choice largely in the hands of women. It is empowering for the woman yet does undermine the traditional family. If you have plenty of girlfriends who are single moms, why stay with Dad through thick and thin? That avenue away from the two-parent family has gotten wider and wider.

I was largely raised by a single woman. It’s a hard and lonely route. A man may no longer be necessary to start a family, but a good one can be damn helpful in raising one.

But in the end, it does come down to a women’s choice. In that sense, this sweeping change in demographics, this aging of new parents, this movement toward families of various structures and arrangements, returns to a deeply personal one.

Do I want a child? And am I prepared for it?

The first, you know in your bones. The second, you never know until you know.

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Possessives

Number 96
October 7, 2011

This morning, Kiana used the dish towel to dry her hands. “Kiki hands,” she said. Then, she marched through the entire family, helping to dry off dry hands. “Dadda hands, Momma hands, Bro-Bro hands.”

She’s learning her possessives. In a big way.

A few minutes later, Owen awoke and came into the kitchen. In no time, they were squabbling over who had what right to which part of the couch. Later, this evolved into a battle of wills over an unopened bottle of flavored water.

Here we go.

One couch, one bottle, one lap – two kids. Welcome to the endless war over relative scarcities, family. And with it, I put on the striped shirt in my new and permanent role as referee of the scraps.

Instinctively, we have begun siding with the younger. Since Owen is all of four now, he has the experience, forbearance, and judgment to step back and thereby smooth things out. Yeah, we’re gonna have to rethink that.

Kiki grabs or Owen grabs, and in the push and pull, one or both starts shrieking. In our residual hovering over our formerly infant daughter, we move pretty quickly to get in the middle, to separate, to sort things out. No one ends up happy, and toys get lifted up the cliff to their crowded cave on the top shelf.

We’re not ready for this, I think. We have no plan. We have no policy.

When I was a kid, the rule was writ: after two days, it’s the whole family’s. Dissatisfying and wholly unenforceable, this policy drove my four siblings and me crazy. Maybe therein lay its genius; instead of battling over the possession, we fought over the intangible policy. With more angry words and less bloodshed, it’s surprising that none of us ended up as lawyers.

We lobbied Mom and Dad vociferously for adjudication and enforcement but rarely with satisfying results. As the youngest of four boys, possession was very difficult to maintain. What I learned, then, was that the only way to safeguard possessions was to place them behind my locked bedroom door, which did not promote good sharing at all.

Even as a teenager, I told my siblings that the computer was off-limits because it “needed to rest.” Ask my sister about that one.

Right now, Margaret and I seem to be refereeing possessions along ownership lines; if the toy is Owen’s, he gets some jurisdiction over it, unless Kiki picked it up while Owen was doing something else. Owen cannot grab it out of her hand just because he realizes it is there. And items like favorite blankies get returned immediately to their rightful owner.

It’s not working.

I stumble along, trying to find the right words to get things sorted with a minimum of tears and wails and a tired eye wandering over toward consistency. Distraction is becoming less effective in this arena. Two kids enter; one leaves with the toy, and one leaves in tears.

With the arrival of young Kiana’s assertiveness, the fourth dimension has opened below us, and the whole family is tumbling through it without a clue of where we are going.

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Swimming with Owen

Number 95
September 23, 2011

“I don’t want to go swimming,” Owen wailed. He threw himself on the ground.

During the previous swim class, Margaret reported that Owen refused to get into the pool. With Kiana in her arms, she did not have the means to do more. They tried for ten minutes before she took home two dry kids.

This time, I arranged to work from home to go to the lessons with him. Daddy brought a different approach: the “hey, let’s go have fun” style, backed by greater will to get him in the dang water.

I sat in street clothes and negotiated with the young fellow poolside, my bare feet dangling in the water. Owen wore his new swimsuit and stared down at the water and the sunny young woman imploring him to jump into her arms. Note to self: if we are unable to cross this divide in the next dozen years, return to this exact spot.

Oh, how we battled! Cajoling, bribes, the works. At this age, there is no reason why. Nor, I suspect, would there be a why if he was sixteen. He Did Not Want To Go Swimming.

Yet being a non-swimmer, or even a mediocre swimmer, is not an option in my family. I am not the Great Santini, but my kids will know how to swim reasonably well.

For most, “knowing how to swim” essentially means that in placid, enclosed, and warmed water, they will not drown. For short periods of time, with some anaerobic thrashing, water can be endured.

But there is no more mastery in that than being able to run three miles without stopping or picking your way through the chords of Owen’s favorite song, “Iron Man. ” I am neither a distance runner nor a guitar hero, but the difference here can be a matter of life and death.

Until a swimmer is comfortable with his head underwater and motoring forward with an economy of motion, the water remains an alien planet. Your relationship to water is unformed and cannot indeed be formed until you remove the urgency from your strokes. You need to find that little glide.

My kids will not become city kids afraid of the pool or beach, even if they never extract a third of what water means to me. The family has committed to swim lessons, and swimmers we shall be.

But at four, what is a commitment, Pop?

I looked down at Owen, silent and slouched, his cheeks puffy from tears. I hate seeing my son like this, particularly at my instigation. He’s a wonderful son, and we had given it a good go today. The teacher had since returned to her more willing pupils. The breeze was picking up. I pulled my feet from the water.

It galled me, this failure of mine to inspire and convince. Yet I took solace in giving up the battle for the greater, future victory for both of us. I carried Owen to the car.

The next lesson after that, Mom and Dad both got food-poisoning, and we had no will to go to the pool. Owen will be a non-swimmer for another year.

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Copycat

Number 94
September 9, 2011

These days, Owen is copying behavior quite a bit, often whatever his dad is doing. “I just copied you,” he says with a gleam of triumph.

For example, he reaches behind himself and feigns a wince, “Owww, my back.” Nothing wrong with preparing a bit early for having kids, son.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to learn a lot, good and bad, of what I am impressing on him.

All of this is natural, of course. Kids learn as much from experience as from observing what others, older kids and adults in particular, are doing. I can be rolling along, talking to Owen while doing something else, and turn to discover those dark eyes focused like a laser on his dad.

It makes me jump a bit, this sense that a voracious and beautiful sponge is soaking up so much of this hodgepodge I put out into the public world.

I try to be careful with what I say and do, to step with care from stone to stone across the foggy pond of my son’s experience. But I do misstep. Ker-splash, and we all get a little wet.

Yet looking back at my own childhood, I have no early recollections of the specialness of my father; he was simply Dad. He seemed to know a lot of stuff, and some of it he struggled to teach me at a young age. It wasn’t until later that I realized my dad’s essential brilliance (really, he’s brilliant) and basic incapacity for day-to-day parenting.

I have no memory of seeking him out for answers, looking to him for specifics or boasting of him to my pals. All of these activities, my son engages in. Perhaps, though, he will not remember them.

Four years and one month into it, parenting remains a huge everyday responsibility. The physical labors have begun to subside with the older one, but we now have entered the more subtle and in some ways more challenging months of shaping and growing the individual. Those ever-vigilant brown eyes are watching. I’m not sure he even blinks. No breaks, Dad.

Do my missteps help or hurt?

On the one hand, we are forging patterns of behavior that get trotted out into the public world. Some are better kept at home; witness the endless variants of “poop” talk.

And there are more malevolent forms, such as Owen turning to his sister and yelling, “Why did you do that?” I hear this and simply cringe. I hear and recall those terrible moments when I wish he’d had the wherewithal to spit back, “I did it because I’m 5 and by the way, you’ve lost it. Nice work, Dad.”

On the other hand, these missteps are conducted in an otherwise safe environment. Owen may be copying behavior of his parents at home, but he intuits that it is safe to explore these areas among family. In that sense, we are succeeding.

But the yelling has got to go.

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NYC

Number 93
August 26, 2011

Over the last Fourth, we took both kids on their first vacation together. Hello, New York.

Before we met, Margaret had lived in New York City for several years. New York, it seems, gets into your blood and leaves a bug that either poisons you or requires periodic feedings. If you’ve never lived there, you don’t get it and probably never will. I accept this.

However, a vacation with young kids isn’t a vacation. Vacation strategy is all about island hopping between family-friendly environments. Doesn’t sound like New York at all.

But Owen was old enough to maybe remember some of it. The trip was on her frequent flyer miles, we had a nice place to stay, and we’d get a chance to visit my brothers upstate, too. Time to gear up, Dad.

Our first daytrip into Manhattan carried us on the Metro North to Grand Central Station. Fellow riders had kindly given us a set of facing seats, which we blocked with the stroller to make an effective kiddie corral.

From deep in the hot tunnels where the Metro Trains arrive, we climbed the ramp to reach the brilliant tile floors of Grand Central Station. Forward I pushed the family Winnebago loaded with precious freight into the main lobby where the bright, churchly windows welcomed us to Midtown.

We connected to the cross-town shuttle to the station closest to Central Park, and into the hot day we rolled. During our trip, the temperature never dropped below 90 degrees. The heat and the East Coast humidity took a toll, on this California-born daddy in particular. The kids in the stroller were mostly shielded from the sunshine, but they started to twitch and crab under the onslaught. There’s another reason, I thought, that City people raise their kids in New Jersey.

In Central Park, Owen and I managed to play on the big rock, with me scrambling to make sure the little guy didn’t take a jostle and a tumble. While Kiki had a stroller snooze, we ventured over to the carousel and later wandered up into the Seventies for food. After lunch, my back had begun to bite. The children were wailing. It was time to go.

And Margaret was now 20 feet ahead of us. She seemed to be scanning the streets and shops for the old New York, a place lost among her single years. Sorry, honey: you’re married with kids now, and most of your New York grad school pals have moved on. Even your edgy neighborhood has gentrified.

“Next time, can I just go by myself?” she asked.

To myself, I computed the challenge of taking care of the kids by myself at home versus having to struggle along through simmering streets and bustling crowds with an overloaded stroller. Home wins. “If you’re really, really good,” I said.

The following day, coming around the tip of the island, I will never forget our first glimpse of Lady Liberty’s face. Among the crowd gathered on the starboard side of the boat, I was struck by how dark America had become, how much my kinda-brown family had become New York. Reflected in all these faces, America the Beautiful still is.

Nor apparently will our youngest forget, as she continues to find the “Statue of Ruby” wherever she looks.

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