Spiritual Direction nyc

July 12, 2017

Warning: Possible Sightings of Extraterrestrials in Mankinis

beach

Day 27 of my 30-day writing challenge

My husband and I took the kids to the beach this morning. It was perfect beach weather – bright and hot, low humidity, no haze. But the water conditions weren’t great for swimming or, much to my son’s disappointment, for body boarding. The surf was rough and shallow, and the lifeguards were warning swimmers away from a riptide. We still enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, but we also got knocked around and scraped across the sand a few times, even those of us who stuck to the water’s edge. And we all ended up with an unholy amount of sand in our bathing suits. I hadn’t seen my daughter’s bottoms that full since she was a nine-month old with a guacamole habit.

Before we left for our vacation, I bought a new swimsuit. I purchased it with a very strict set of principles. It had to be small enough that my husband didn’t feel cheated, but large enough so that nothing that was supposed to stay in ended up out.

Here’s the thing: I’ve had three kids. I’m not in terrible shape, and I’m genetically on the small side, but there are certain realities about the post-pregnancy body. If I stand up straight, my stomach looks almost like it did before all my skin stretched out to make room for a trio of watermelons. Once I slouch or bend or scrunch, however, I look like E.T. I might as well forget about a swim and start phoning home so my peeps can come get me.

et-the-extraterrestrial-lifesize-replica-1

As it happened, any bathing suit I could possibly have bought on any planet in the solar system would not have compared to the attire of the person sitting right in front of us, shaded by his umbrella.

It was a mankini. And not just any mankini. A string mankini. A very, very, very tiny string mankini.

I live in New York City. I’ve seen lots of things. So a mankini sighting, while not visually appealing to me personally, was not particularly shocking. Nobody else on the beach appeared to even blink. I just didn’t know this was something people actually wore.

Coincidentally — or at least I hope it’s a coincidence, because if not, I can’t imagine what the universe is trying to tell me — I learned that mankinis existed only last week, after I finally watched the latest episode of Sherlock. I was underwhelmed by the episode itself, but reading reviews of it led me to a delightful interview of lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch by Louise Brealy, the actress who plays medical examiner Molly Hooper. In the interview, Brealy jokes that the Christmas present her character gave Sherlock in an earlier season was, in fact, a mankini. Specifically, a Borat mankini, invented by the actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, and somehow important enough to have its own website. I am not posting a picture of it, because it is not something you can unsee. Follow the link at your own risk, and keep plenty of eyeball bleach handy.

The great thing about seeing everyone so blasé about Mr. Mankini was that I felt I had no excuse whatsoever to feel self-conscious in my own swimsuit. I think E.T. himself would have felt right at home. Even if he had been the one wearing the mankini.

July 9, 2017

Chicken In a Biskit, Jello Molds, and a Bad Word from the Birthday Girl

chickenbisk01

Day 24 of my 30-day writing challenge

After a late night flight to the West Coast, and a day spent celebrating our birthday girl – she turned six today! – I’m sitting in my childhood home, jet-lagged and bleary-eyed. For some reason, I’m eating Chicken in a Biskit crackers as though my life depended on it, even though they taste nothing like chicken, and were obviously named by the same person who taught the Chick Fil-A founder how to spell.

We’re in town for the national conference of our denomination, which starts next week, and to see my mom and her husband, who still live in the house I grew up in. The house looks largely the same as when I lived here – an endearing, goofy mix of Asian porcelain dolls and Christian kitsch, primarily Precious Moments figurines and art with Bible verses on it.

Untitled collage

Contributing to the time-warp atmosphere in the house is the fact that my mother, who retains the Depression-era thriftiness of her parents’ generation – saves everything. I raided her bathroom for nail polish this morning (I needed it after my hair dye disaster two days ago) and found bottles that I’m pretty sure predate the Cold War, as well as enough hotel soap, shampoo, conditioner, and lotion to supply all the hypothetical survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

Most importantly, Mom has saved all of her Tupperware jello molds! All I need is an ambrosia salad and a church potluck, and it’ll be like I never left.

f7d7e0057686a703d2701c95b7c21051

Of course, many things have changed in the past decade, as well as since I first moved away twenty years ago. My mother remarried the year after I moved out of state for graduate school, and my sister and I have also married and had kids, so the old family photographs are constantly being mixed in with new ones. The trees are taller, the house is bigger (it was remodeled several years ago), and my old bed looks smaller.

In the category of new things I could do without: My daughter celebrated her sixth birthday with a some new vocabulary. She was losing a board game to her brother, and decided to express some good-humored frustration with a word we had never heard from her before. She said she learned it listening to Spotify. Is that where the kids are learning their swear words these days?

July 6, 2017

Backyard Barbecues, Beer, and Bad Jokes about Protestant Preachers

backyard20bbq20image202

Day 21 of my 30-day writing challenge

Yesterday, as is usual for most warm-weather holidays, we invited a horde of people to our backyard for a barbecue, a combination of church folks, neighbors, students, and friends. The kids played on the tire swing, bounced in the hammock, rolled in and out of the pup tent we’d pitched for the day, and walked around in Pigpen-worthy clouds of dirt.

pigpen-02

The adults contented themselves with cheese-stuffed, bacon-and-jalepeno-wrapped hot dogs, babyback ribs, and many other delights from the meat kingdom. Not to mention – because our crowds are always international – kimchi, turkish delight, homemade guacamole, and cevapi (a Serbian skinless sausage). There may also have been a teeny bit of alcohol on the premises, although nothing stronger than hard cider and fruit-flavored hefeweizen, which my beer snob husband surprisingly did not object to.

I grew up in a church that did not allow alcohol, although everyone freely admitted (contrary to other churches I knew of) that when Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana, it was actually wine, and not grape juice that had been mistranslated as wine by some non-believing Bible scholar who was already up to his tweed collar in hellfire and damnation. There were people who felt it was okay to have a glass of wine discreetly, in their own homes, but I never saw anyone drink in public and certainly not at a church event.

So it was a huge culture shift for me when I started attending a different denomination as a graduate student and found that not only was drinking allowed, but my church leaders regularly hunkered down in a bar not too far from the church office. My husband (then boyfriend) was an employee of the church, and he and the other pastoral interns and younger staff members would go out after work to The Ginger Man, a gleaming, wood-paneled bar in midtown Manhattan that boasts 70 beers on tap, in addition to whatever comes in cans, bottles, and kegs.

(Their website claims that Michael Jackson has called it “one of the finest beer bars in the world.” If that endorsement does not cause you to moonwalk immediately to their location, I cannot imagine anything that would persuade you.)

When my husband became an elder at the same church, he and the other the newly ordained boys went out for a celebratory pint or few. I warned them not to drink too much, or they might wake up in the morning with no memory of the evening and the complete text of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” tattooed on their chests.

Jonathan Edwards jokes are soooo funny, guys. You should try telling one at your next party.

Seriously, though, I think you’d need more than a chest to fit the whole text of that sermon. It’s a long one.

Fun fact (gleaned from Susan Stinson’s literary biography of Edwards, Spider in a Tree): George Whitfield, a contemporary of Edwards, and a key figure in the Great Awakening, was a preacher of such spiritual power and sublimated erotic energy that women fainted during his sermons.

Here’s George:

The senior pastor of my church (who did not hang out at The Ginger Man with the baby pastors) was kind and professorial, radiating intelligence, trustworthiness, and gentle humor. I admired him greatly, but never once felt like fainting in his presence. He reminded me of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker’s friend on the Muppet Show.

bunsen-beaker-web

* * * *

Including the gorgefest that was our barbecue, yesterday was not overly burdened by high-class or healthy cuisine. Everyone including Grandma and Grandpa had biscuits with sausage gravy for lunch, and I think the kids had instant ramen at some point in the morning. The whole day was the food equivalent of blunt force trauma.

My five-year old loved it. She rarely likes to say her bedtime prayers, preferring to let me do it, but last night she couldn’t wait to offer this up:

Dear God: Thank you for our friends and family and thank you that we had biscuits and gravy and noodles and a barbecue today. Amen.

It just goes to show: the Spirit moves people in different ways. Some eat, some drink, some pass out on the floor. However God might have showed up in your life today, I hope you, too, found something to be thankful for.

July 2, 2017

Rainbows over New York City

Day 16 of my 30-day writing challenge

This was the scene in New York City today, at 8 pm, during a light summer storm. My husband’s cell phone snapshot doesn’t do it justice – the sky was bluer and the rainbows brighter.

My husband’s parents are visiting from out of town, and we’re enjoying a few days of staycation with them. This afternoon we saw Despicable Me 3 with the kids, then took them to the grandparents’ hotel pool. My son is a virtual fish; my younger daughter is allergic to being even close to horizontal in the water. I’m trying to think of a metaphor that would do justice to the flailing and the drama – the only picture that comes to mind is those hens from the movie Chicken Run.

tumblr_m03v2apaac1qfu47lo1_500

(Because I am a pessimist of the highest order, I spent swim time trying not to think of recent CDC warnings about the high bacteria content of public pools. It did not help my paranoia that the hotel had posted more than one sign forbidding blowing your nose in the water.)

We finished the day with a trip to Jackson Hole Diner, home of one of the best burgers in the city and a jukebox filled with 50’s music, both of which made Grandpa very happy. My son was more excited to see an autographed photo of Ed Sheeran, one of the many celebrities who have eaten themselves into a red meat coma there.

I just realized! I think my son might be trying to grow Ed Sheeran (or some other boy band mate) hair. I’m not saying it’s a conscious choice, but it would explain his refusal to let me cut it, even after after he injured himself with his hair yesterday. I’m not kidding – he was in the shower, jerked his head around for some reason, and whipped a long, wet hank of hair directly into his eye.

But I digress.

The rain was starting as we arrived at Jackson Hole, and the double rainbow appeared a scant half hour later. We took turns running out to see, to stand in the sun and breathe the freshly-washed air.

It was one of those perfect moments where NYC feels a little like Paradise.

June 25, 2017

Let Us Now Praise Instant Ramen

ramen noodles (image from wikipedia)

Day 9 of my 30-day writing challenge

I did not have much time to write today. It’s a Saturday, which means THE KIDS ARE HOME ALL DAY. Also, my husband and oldest daughter are sick; worship band practice ran way overtime; and I discovered too late my packet of curry powder was somewhere between “scorching a hole through your esophagus” and “incinerating your head” on the scoville scale. This necessitated alternate dinner plans for everyone except my freakishly heat-loving husband, for whom the only plausible explanation is that he’s already shorted out every single nerve ending on his tongue.

It was, nevertheless, a leisurely day by our standards. Nobody had to be run to and from school by car, bus, or train. My husband didn’t have to dash between his two part-time jobs — three, if you count his pastoral gig — although he did have to work on his sermon. There was time for a trip to the park, free summer bowling at the neighborhood lanes, and a board game before dinner. And two and a half loads of laundry. (Always laundry).

As for our last-minute dinner, thank God for instant ramen. I say that in all reverence and respect. If it weren’t for ramen, I would have starved by now. If not at college, then certainly at my last job, where I ate it for lunch at least two to three times a week.

In my defense, I rinsed the excess oil off the cooked noodles, used only half the flavor packet (where all the msg is), and added greens, and sometimes egg or tofu, to make it healthier.

Most of the time.

Look, I know ramen isn’t pretty, and it’s got way too much sodium, and a billion years from now, when an alien civilization excavates our trash heaps, they will find bricks of curly, plastic-looking, desiccated noodles along with twinkies, spam, and saran wrap. But it’s fast and warm and yummy and has that lovely umami flavor that makes your taste buds really happy. It also reminds me of my roots in Hawaii, where you can buy the Hawaiian version of ramen, called saimin, from McDonalds.

My son took an impromptu family poll yesterday while we were on our way to the supermarket: If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, would you choose pizza or ramen? He and my younger daughter both picked ramen without a second thought. So did I. My husband wrinkled his nose. But he’s the white guy in the family, so what do you expect? (Okay, so my kids are half white, but in this case, their Asian genes dominated.) My older daughter wasn’t in the car, but she’s enjoying her bowl of ramen for dinner as I type, so I’m counting her vote in absentia. Besides, she’s a singer, and cheese clogs up her voice, so ramen it is.

It wasn’t planned, but we came home from the supermarket with a 24-pack of ramen. I’m just surprised we waited until today to break it open.

June 23, 2017

Tales from the Nail Polish Apocalypse

Day 7 of my 30-day writing challenge

A few years ago, Kelly Ripa won a “Best-Dressed” award from the New York Post for her “un-self-conscious” style. Her reported motto was, “If it’s clean, I put it on.”

Kelly Ripa has way higher standards than I do.

My kids go to school in clothes with pen and paint stains on them, with holes and hanging seams I haven’t bothered to mend. I do draw the line at offensive odors, but the truth is, unless it’s 90 degrees out, lack of odor isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator that someone’s pants haven’t been worn past their freshness date.

Last night, though, was the lowest we’ve fallen in a while. One of my sister’s colleagues needed to produce some promotional materials, and she invited my sister’s kids and my youngest daughter to be part of a photo shoot. We needed to be there at about 10 this morning, so I got ready ahead of time. I picked out two potential outfits – they needed to be solid colors, no logos. I checked my daughter over. She was clean.

At that point, I stopped paying attention. That was my first mistake. I was busy mentally writing my blog post for the evening when my daughter came into ask me a question. She wanted to know if it was okay to paint on paper using nail polish. She was clutching a bottle that I thought was a kid-friendly, water-based polish that was mostly empty and half dried up. So – again, not really paying attention – I said, “Sure!”

That was my second mistake.

Then, my daughter wandered into the living to ask her big sister for permission to use her nail polish. Her sister, assuming that the nail polish was to be used on, you know, nails, also said, “Sure!”

That was also a mistake.

(This is the diabolical genius of kids. They make sure that nobody in a position to object knows the whole story.)

Meanwhile, I’ve retreated to my room to actually work on my blog, and I have no sense of time passing until my daughter comes into my room again, waving a bunch of papers that are completely covered in nail polish. Which I expected, so that was fine.

What was not fine was what I discovered when I started to help my daughter clean up. First of all, I discovered that the polish was not the water-based, easily washable color I’d believed it to be. It was the full-on, salon-grade, hard-as-a-diamond stuff. Second, I discovered she’d been painting not just with a brush, but with her fingers. She had polish smeared on her shorts – shorts that she had not worn before that afternoon, mind you – on her legs, and all over her hands. And the polish color? A bright, shocking crimson.

Remember, we have a photo shoot in the morning. And here’s my five-year-old, looking like she’d just bathed in the blood of virgins or some other pagan sacrifice.

I dumped her in the tub, googled “how to get nail polish out of clothing,” got out the acetone and paper towels, and got to work trying to undo the disaster.

I never did get the polish out of the shorts (thanks a lot, internet), but I did manage to clean the kid, by dint of soaping her within an inch of her life, then scraping off each fleck of polish with my nails. I even managed to do a load of laundry before bedtime, which meant that my daughter made it to her photo shoot this morning with not only clean skin, but clean underwear. Double win for mom!

I thought she had a clean dress, too, but I realized after we were already in the car that it had a spot on it.