My latest story in Columbus Alive.
Had a lot of fun seeing and writing about this one. The pictures are hilarious.
I also made it into my first blog carnival this week: The Carnival of Good Stuff.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Here is a stab at my first blog collaboration, with its topic, “Childhood Dreams,” courtesy of the Crazy Hip Blog Mamas.
This is a tough topic to write about without sputtering into platitudes and cliches, so I’m going to take it literally, and write about a few day and night dreams I had that I can still remember.
Most of my early childhood memories took place in a house on the water in New Jersey, where the backyard, house and front driveway were all bordered by feather-topped bulrushes. My friends and I would taunt each other about seeing the faces of monsters and masked people poking through the tall reeds, sometimes until we actually started to believe that we could see them.
Once, while playing with friends in an ocean cove on a beach in Sea Bright, I stepped in something squishy and awful. Fear of Jellyfish made me jump and swim back to shore without looking back. An hour or two later, two boys I knew had retrieved a small squid from the area. It was partially decapitated – a cephalopod Nearly Headless Nick that they gruesomely stuck inside of a clear sandwich bag and gleefully taunted me with. The sight of it wasn’t nearly as disturbing as the realization that I was likely the squid’s killer. I started to stay out of deep water, believing that a mother squid would soon be after me for revenge.
When fall came and hurricanes flooded my backyard, I lay in my bed and imagined a mother squid, laying in wait in the cul-de-sac behind my house, waiting for the water to rise high enough that she could exact her revenge.
Life soundtrack: Hollywood Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Symphony Orchestra Selected Hits, Theme From 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007
All weekend long at Comfest, this arch of rainbow balloons tormented Declan. The allure of the rainbow seduced him across crowds. It would catch his eye and off he’d run. Held down by two supposedly empty helium canisters, it was treacherous to toddler parents who knew that looking at the spectrum really wasn’t enough for little ones. They want to stand beneath it, to touch it if at all possible, and you’d just have to hope that you caught them before they pulled on the ribbon that held it all together and rolled the metal canisters right over their feet.
On Sunday night, the arch was attached on one end and sagging lower to the ground on the other. Declan ran in circles beneath the limp side and Dan brought it down to him. Soon, an entire gaggle of toddlers was running directly underneath the rainbow, or wedging themselves into sections where everything in their world became blue, or in Declan’s case, orange (pictured above). The laughter was infectious and constant – the most contagious display of unabashed child–ness I have ever seen.
But for some reason – I think maybe an older kid down the row started popping some of the balloons – the woman who had blistered her hands making the arch came up the row, upset and yelling “Let it go! This mine, get off of it now!” to, well, a lot of people who were under five years old. Even though there was less than an hour or two of daylight left in the festival, and the helium arch was flagging, she scolded Dan to let the balloons go, claiming he was preventing all of the other children from enjoying it.
This is the place where parents and people without kids often part ways. I know that before I had Declan, there were certainly times when I would have been on that woman’s side of the divide and wondered what in the hell we, as parents of wild, balloon-crazed giggle monsters were thinking. I know that I’ve put shiny objects in front of more than one little person in my time and wondered why there seemed to be no way to get them to leave it alone. If I’d put in the work that she did, I also might be too attached to watch my work destroyed, even though the arch’s death was clearly inevitable.
When a little child is one of the people you are closest to in life, and you accept their essence – their ability to sustain a state of joy – you know that there is absolutely no way that simply looking at an arch of balloons can compare to the unadulterated bliss those children had when they could run beneath, around and over them – how often do you get to touch an actual rainbow? Regaining a closeness to that simplicity is one of the most precious things about parenting a toddler, and you can often see a nostalgia for it on the faces of parents who have been there.
So I’m grateful to the woman who made the arch, I just wish that she had been able to experience some of that joy along with us.
Life soundtrack: Willie Nelson, Rainbow Connection, “Rainbow Connection:
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
As The Sopranos goes into its final three-episode countdown, actors keep making appearances on talk shows, reminding us that they first started filming the series ten years ago. That was right around the same time that Dan was holding staple-pulling, linoleum-laying and painting parties in a former library and used furniture shop, then gritting his teeth at commission and city council meetings as he encountered an unexpected and expensive fight to rezone the building.
Today, I also realized that 1997 was the year that Harry Potter first appeared on bookshelves in England, and his final volume is due this summer. (I was deeply relieved when I read this article on Salon a few weeks back, and found out that I wasn’t the only woman in her thirties who is steeling herself against the loss of these vivid characters.)
All I can say is, as far as endings go, at least we’re in good company.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Features of our neighborhood:
• Mango and papaya are at the front of the produce section in every major grocery store.
• Camp Chase. When we bought the house but were still waiting to move in, I had a dream in which people asked me “how’s the new house?” and I said “It’s great, except for all of these ghosts of Confederate soldiers. They make it hard to drive through the neighborhood at night.”
• A 24-hour jelly donut drive-thru.
• Westland Mall has hosted at least two child pageants and a gun show since we arrived. This Saturday’s Cinco de Mayo celebration/garage sale may be the city’s most authentic.
•We actually know our state representative, and he has already taught us the secret West side handshake.
• An ice cream stand with over 25 flavors of soft serve (?) !
• The only Mexican/Filipino grocery store in town that I am aware of.
• Discount warehouse cheap liquidation factory outlet clearance everything. On sale now!
• Taquieras everywhere. Dan is visiting a tortilla production line this weekend.
Plan B version 127 for our uncertain future: Dang if this side of town doesn’t need a decent bookstore and coffeeshop with WiFi.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
We have had a rough couple of weeks. You can read about it here (my husband’s business).
There is too much to say about this. Closing looks basically inevitable at this point, it’s just a question of when. After many sleepless nights, I am working on at least trying to do something positive and focus on collecting and preserving the legacy of the place.
Within hours of putting out this notice through Internet channels on Friday, we received about 25 emails where people laid out some of their memories, and they keep coming in. There are some incredibly moving testimonials that aren’t just about particular shows, but the deep sense of personal loss people feel over the shutdown of their countercultural home – a place that helped to shape some part of their identity (for better or for worse), even if they haven’t come though its doors in some time.
We’ve had our moments where we’ve lamented the shows our son won’t get to see. And the fact that he won’t be old enough to remember running around on the stage where his parents got married. I cannot imagine ever wanting to lay eyes on it again after we have left. (This is assuming that whoever is signing the lease that is undermining and forcing Dan out might leave the stage standing. I almost hope they do not.) I definitely will not miss the stress Dan has endured under this landlord for years.
At any rate, these are going to be a long last couple of months.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Before you believe any too-good- or too-strange-to-be-true news this April 1, you might want to check the latest findings at the Museum of Hoaxes.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
We took our first mom and baby yoga class when I was still counting my son’s age in weeks. Because the instructor was also a preschool teacher, the small talk on the very first day revolved around the process of enrolling kids in preschool. Her main message was that we not wait – we should get our babies on wait-lists months, if not years, before we wanted them to start school.
This is a bewildering situation, given how mysterious children can be, and how long it may be before their personalities, abilities and learning styles come to light. I’ve looked and asked around casually, comfortable that he’s probably best off at home. But in the past three months, Declan has revealed his incredible ability to memorize and retain information. As the year began, he mastered his shapes in one week, colors in another, the next he was counting to twenty and identifying numbers up to nine pretty handily. He forms sentences about subjects that I don’t remember talking to him about in the first place. Yesterday, we took a walk in a park. As we started up an incline, he repeated “walk up hill!” over and over. He’s blowing my mind.
Just a few months ago, the periodic visits with kids at library reading hour, COSI and the park seemed like enough outside stimulation. Today, I’m having a hard time finding any preschool with programming for children under three – I was hoping there might be one that just does a half day or two a week for that age nearby, but no luck.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
