No Goodie Bags, No Peace!

A Giveaway That Won't End Up In the Trash. We Hope.Last summer, the season that my boys turned 6 and 8, I told them we were done with goodie bags. "I just don't want to perpetuate the plastic junk," I told them. "We're going to give everyone a book instead."

There were, unfortunately, grumbles.

In order to ban goodie bags, it is important first to understand why they hold such appeal. The joy is all in the discovery. When those small hands first hold that bag, anything at all could be inside. Oh, the variety! The discovery! But one day later (and sometimes sooner than that) all that treasure is on the floor of your home. And unless mucho money is spent, the things in that back are sub-standard. There may be an underwhelming box of crayons, or a bouncy ball, or a molded plastic figure. Or candy.

So to try to capture a bit of this magic, my turning-8-year-old I bought a stack of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. They are published by a little Vermont company, and many of the titles are the same as when I was reading them.* We wrapped them in different papers, and nobody knew what title they were getting until they opened them at the end of the party. 

My younger son was trickier, because not all the kindergarteners read (including my own.) But then we happened to find a paper airplane book to give away, and peace reigned in the kingdom.

This year, I stuck to the same No Goody Bags policy. My now-9-year-old and I chose sketchbooks. I found a dozen fancy-feeling hardback books at Blick.com. We personalized them with each child's name on the title page. 

Et voila! A gift we can be proud of.

*Dating myself! Again. 

Thank you to Megan at http://www.sortacrunchy.net and Your Green Resource for linking to this post! I adore Your Green Resource.

Mama, What is a Pedestrian?

Both of my sons were born in New York City, and my younger child came home from the hospital on the M96 crosstown bus. By the time my kindergartener was 18 months old, he easily did a 1/2 mile to the farmers' market on foot. We gave away our bulky stroller when he was 3.

In New York, everyone is a pedestrian. 

Then, we moved to a rural area. Now we grow our own tomatoes, cucumbers, blackberries and garlic. The peas are climbing up the side of the barn, and my kids have their own tree fort. But we buy milk, and travel to school, in the car. 

On today's trip into town, my 8 year-old saw a sign reading Pedestrians 500 Feet. And that's when he asked me: "Mama, what does pedestrian mean?" As I processed the question, it occured to me that the word's very definition was one of those little end-of-civilization moments. 

"Pedestrian" is from the Latin "Pedestr-" which literally means to go "on foot." But the other meaning of the word is the equally common, pejorative term meaning "commonplace, ordinary." In classical times, only commoners went on foot. Fancy people went on horseback. And now they have imported cars, with or without leather seats.

When I was growing up in 1970's Michigan, this was the case. We were a struggling one car family, and while my father was at work, my mother and I did the grocery shopping in our little neighborhood store, hauling our goods home in my little red wagon. In high school, it was blaringly obvious that the other riders on my city bus route were either students, like me, or the disadvantaged. In a car culture, only losers walk or take the bus.

In many places, that's still true. But now things are shifting in an uncomfortable way, and in light of the obesity epidemic, walking is now offered as a simple health cure. Magazines like Prevention  and Forbes run "Best Cities for Walking!" lists in their glossy pages. And the cities that make those lists, not surprisingly, are expensive ones like Cambridge, Seattle, Ann Arbor, and San Francisco. 

My friend Elaine has lately been on a three year quest to move her family out of suburban Pennsylvania, and back into a real city. The moment she decided she needed to get out of there was the moment new "Walking Prohibited" signs were posted alongside the roads in her area. 

The CDC studied the question of how many kids walk to school, finding that in 1969 42% of kids walked or biked to school, and by 2001 that number was down to 16%. And distance was usually the problem. In 1969 87% of the kids who lived a mile or less away walked or biked, and in 2001 that had fallen to 63%, meaning that many children who were near enough were still walking or biking.

We took our first family trip to Disney World this year. The first part of the park you see inside the entry gate is "Main Street," where dozens of adorable store fronts await you with their Mickey trinkets. A child walking near me gasped "It's like a little city!" 

Oh, the novelty of walking past those tidy doors. And behind us, on the other end of the monorail, our rental cars sat in one of the cheerily named sections of one of the biggest parking lots in central Florida.

Food Allergies and Mother Fear

I adore Feeding Eden, the new memoir by Susan Weissman. While I do not have a child with food allergies, I find the topic endlessly fascinating. From the flap copy: "What do you make for dinner when your child has such severe allergies that even one bite of the wrong ingredient could be deadly?"

I have always understood that cheerful mothering is founded upon the ability to banish the suggestion of disaster. Those catalogs stuffed with childproofing gadgets promising: "Finally! A solution to dangerous hard bathtub walls," or touting that mesh thing through which babies are supposed to suck a strawberry without choking. They always made me want to scream. Parenting is tough enough without fate suggesting extra ways to suffer.

Author Susan Weissman was dealt a tricky hand when her infant son Eden became so sick at such a young age. Allergic to a long list of foods, it took years for their family to come to a place where every day didn't seem to promise disaster. In the youngest children, allergies are so very difficult to diagnose. And Eden was born before the latest slew of allergen labeling laws, which made Weissman's road that much tougher.

The allergy details are very interesting, but Weissman really shines when she's describing good old Mother Fear. After a particularly grim (and unexplained) allergic reaction, one emergency room doctor told her not to get crazy: 

"How wouldn't I know Crazy? Let me count the ways. Despite the doctor's counsel, Crazy and I became as intimate as lovers. Crazy became my stalker, my unwelcome houseguest, and even my muse. I see Crazy int he shadows of other parents, the parents with children like Eden. When I try to tout my sanity to teachers and friends--'Oh, I try not to get too crazy'--Crazy laughs its ass off in the corner."

As I write this, one of my kids is at hockey practice and the other one is climbing a tree. A hasty trip to the ER is potentially part of any parent's day. Only willful ignorance of that fact (and carefully fitted helmets and mouth guards) allow me to forget to be afraid. Weissman, forced to acknowledge daily risk so much more often than most, exercises for her reader the delicate balance between fearful and smart.

I predict this book will be around for a long time. It will become required reading for the parents of food allergic children. And for the rest of us, it's a thoughtful conversation with our very own brands of Crazy.

Is it Lunch, or Is It a Game?

I am made slightly uneasy by the trend toward cute food.

This is difficult to admit, because I don't want to squelch others' fun. But I'm uncomfortable with the message that sandwiches are tastier if they're cut into a heart shape, or that crackers need to be adorable.

Recently, Pepperidge Farm introduced fish-shaped bread, which sells at my local store for $4.65 per pound, as opposed to $2.66/lb for the same brand's sliced bread. The fish bread promises a "deliciously soft texture and fun, crust free shape!" The cynical girl in me hears: the inmates are running the asylum. 

But my kids are 6 and 8 already, and they're both tremendously flexible eaters. So when my kindergartener asked if he could make the "tic tac toe" sandwich he found in his "cookbook" I said yes. 

A couple of years ago I mentioned to another mother that a certain type of shaped cracker had a nice, clean ingredients list. But she said "I don't buy shaped food." It was the first time I ever heard another mom share my grinchy hesitation. And while I adore food blogs, the proliferation of top shelf food styling and photography can feed our insecurities. A midday gander at Pinterest suggests every cupcake should resemble the face of a perfectly cheerful monkey, and every bowl of oatmeal should sport a raisin and raspberry smile.

If there's a gene which makes people acknowledge the appeal of cute food, I may be missing it. But--hang on--I had it too as a child. I remember begging my mother to let me make "candle salad," wherein half a banana stood on its cut surface, projecting from a canned pineapple ring. There may have been a "flame" made from a maraschino cherry and cool whip. As gross as that sounds, I once felt about it the way I now feel about fresh guacamole. (Come to mama!)

My son enjoyed the work of cutting ham and cheese into thin strips with a real knife, and didn't make a stink when they kept breaking. The cheesy Xs had an advantage on the diagonal of this sandwich, but then they melted under the broiler. Even that didn't ruin his fun. 

And then? He ate the whole thing.

I Cannot Give My Child a Dog

My younger son, age 6, has made every effort to demonstrate his love for animals, and his will to care for a pet. His desperation reached a new level last week when I found the following heartbreaking note in his room:

Dear Santa, Please could you leave behind a reindeer for me to take really good care of.

This is a kid who wants a dog so badly that he's now exploring all other conceivable options. (He wants a dog or a baby. The request for a baby is... beyond the scope of this blog post.)

The little man in question is the most nurturing child I have ever met. There is no doubt in my mind how well and with how much empathy he would treat his pet, and I'd love to give him the chance. But unfortunately both of his parents are severely allergic to dogs and cats. Even the tiny and hypoallergenic poodle who is a member of our extended family sets us off.

Even knowing that I'd have permanently itchy eyes and an ongoing sinus infection, there are days when I consider giving in. Though I have no trouble saying no to my children's aquisitive desires, this one knocks me back. As Adam Gopnik wrote recently in a New Yorker essay:

The unwritten compact that governs family life says somewhere that children who have waited long enough for a dog and want one badly enough have a right to have one.

I kind of agree with him. But there's no way to try this out. Giving away a beloved pet because mama can't breathe sounds even worse than never getting the dog at all.

What would you do? Any advice on how to stop feeling guilty about this? My best idea: we're thinking of getting chickens in the spring. At least they live outdoors.