Bi Cycles

Everybody's got something to hide
 'cept for me & my bicycle..
photo by my savior of the day,
https://www.instagram.com/maryelizx/

I got this bike from a Cat in Wyoming, on my way to start college in Utah. She got it for a song and only wanted the leather saddle. It fit me perfectly, and has been more dependable than any man I've yet to meet outside of my family... (Except maybe the Holy Trinity) It has traveled with me from Utah to Ohio, from Ohio to NYC, from NYC to Ohio and back to Utah, and went to Berkeley and Yakima with me last summer. I love to ride it to work and to church and along rivers and up mountains (and down again, whee!!!) I am a speed demon, and unlike my bother J have yet to be tarred for my sins... Dad, thanks for letting me keep my training wheels until you pointed out that I wasn't even using them anyway, they were never touching the ground. Thanks for teaching me that it's about the circle, not the up and down. Thanks for teaching me that you pace yourself, and you take turns in front and turns drafting, and you go in a zig-zag up the hill so that your lungs don't explode... Mom, thanks for telling me when I was still in elementary school that giving birth was like riding your bike up a mountain to see the sunset but even better because you got to take a baby home with you afterward. SJW thanks for being the strong silent type who gets his son to sing the song "bicycle" while sweeping the garage. (Or for marrying a woman who did that.) MW thanks for having more bicycle wheels than anyone can shake a stick at, and for letting me have the pleasure of finding the long lost one. Juju, I love you and yes, sometimes it sucks. But we will never break up, ever for eternity. I'm not temple divorcing you, so don't even ask. NG, you have produced more wonderful humans and provided them with bikes and let me be the first one to see Ra roll over and sit up on a bike. PC if you don't love bikes already you will soon. Also, you may yet prove to be just as dependable or so than this bike. Why doesn't it have a name? I don't think it even has a gender...

Near George Washington Bridge in
Manhattan...
Photo by Elizabeth Leitzell,
http://eleitz.com/about/

Little v touching a bike as we pass,
with her in her stroller trike...

The bike artisans confer... 

Again, EL/LE... http://eleitz.com/about/ . My sexy legs...

I know, you don't believe it, but I am a Mormon...

This video explains very succinctly one of the big reasons that I'm a fan and an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/LDS/Mormon church. I love my family, all the different crazy branches of it--Mormon, Jewish, Sikh, Mexican-American, Romanian, Punjabi Indian, European mutt. I'm constantly amazed by the similarities that pop up across the ethnic and generational divides.

I am grateful for those that have gathered and retold and recorded stories of my ancestors

-GSG (Bapu) for tape recording his parent's telling their crazy life stories (Beji was a hoot and a half, and a strong independent woman & loving mother) and for taking me on a military-march style tour of Punjab, where he was raised Sikh before moving to America to attend college and join the crazy Mormons, who's doctrine made more sense to him. Thankfully, for the benefit of all his brothers and consequently nieces and nephews, he did not abandon his family when he switched religions, and he is somewhat responsible for a vast number of organic rouge grapes being produced in Cali & for bringing Kansas the plant genetics genius BG.

-GoGo for asking her mother-in-law all sorts of questions about her family: how she grew up in Canada as the child of Romanian immigrants and how she managed a mental illness with motherhood with the support of an excellent husband and father Julius. (who was also a haberdasher, just wanted to throw out that word. No mad hatter, as far as I know.) GoGo has shared these collected stories with her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and also with me. (I need to record more of her memories before it's too late and will be eternally grateful that she took such an interest in her husband's family history.);

-I miss Mom/Grandma Betty frequently and am so glad that I got to know her personally and hear her stories, even if I often refused to learn the lessons that she was trying to pass on. (It is with very typical family stubbornness that as she would attempt to tame my tangled locks and my eyes would sting with tears, I would listen to her recount how she had been too proud to speak up when it hurt when a family friend had combed her hair at my age, and although she was counseling me to do the exact opposite, I refrained from telling her how painful her combing was because I was strong and thought I had to prove it.)

-The actualy Aunt Flo, for helping her children put together a book recounting stories like that of fireman/dairyman/cotton farmer Daddy Joe, my great-grandpa and the youngest son of polygamist Helaman Pratt, who raised his families in Mexico once polygamy was outlawed in the US/Utah. Daddy Joe's mother, Bertha, was having no luck finding a husband in Utah, and so moved to Mexico after visiting her sister and becoming the 4th wife to her sister's husband. After Helaman's death, the two sisters set up household together, with Bertha teaching school to support them financially and her sister raising the children and managing the household full time. I'm related to Mitt Romney through this line, somehow.

Hopefully my facts aren't too mangled. These are the stories that are in my brain and heart and inform my identity as a proud Caucajewmexdian. As I type these, I see that all 4 branches held women, strong and faithful matriarchs, of great power and influence for good in the world and their families. I am honored to live in their legacy and hope that I add my own stories worth passing down!

Craftiness with Ji. Martha would be proud.

Part 1

Obviously, I need a stylist for our next production. Ji looks fabulous, but I am a little too laissez-faire for my own good sometimes...

Stay tuned for Part II...

Transcript

Ji and I are going to make episodes for a cooking show. I was experimenting today with taping, and although the camera angle didn't work, you mainly see my chest and Bapu's back while he's eating lunch, I had to share the transcript. Although maybe I'll pull just the audio at some point, as it's hard to convey the way that a 3 year-old says "What?" Also, you have to imagine him making his two-face face the whole time, with one side of his mouth held in a grimace.

Olivia: “You punch cookie dough, I don't punch cookie dough.”

Ji: “What?”

Olivia: “I said, 'You punch cookie dough, I don't punch cookie dough.'”

Ji: “What?”

Olivia: “I roll cookie dough with a rolling pin”

Ji: “Uahh... I punch it!”

Olivia: “You punch it?”

Adventures in parenting

Got to practice my parenting skills (or lack thereof) with Ji (pronounced Gee) and Ra today. (My 3 year and 10 month old nephews.) My sister Ju fixed a plate for Ji with 2 varieties of hummus-- (one with beet & one with basil), veggies and multicolored chips. "Umm, pink hummus, my favorite!" said Ji. Ju laughed. "It's not funny," he scolded. He asked if he could sit on the floor to eat, and I let him. There were too many exciting things to do, so he only ate a few bites here and there. At lunch he wanted a roll with cheese, and got very upset with me for spreading hummus on half of the roll. So I ate that half, and was going to eat the rest of his hummus, but he protested about that too. He did finish it.
     
Ra let me try out babywearing (yes, it's a thing) for a few minutes at a time, then he'd lean as far over as he could to let me know that he wanted to roam free on the floor. I need to sweep before I babysit him again. He was very good at batting my hand away when I tried to see what he had in his mouth. He also has a habit of chewing on his tongue, so it's hard to know when he has something else in his mouth. He was very disappointed when I closed all the doors along the hallway, he stopped at each one to check that it was closed.

One of the favorite activities of the morning was playing with large  styrofoam pieces from electronics packaging that Uncle Paul was getting rid of. Ji built things with it, while Ra banged two pieces around.

Although I spent most of my time playing with the boys, I did manage to make some vegetable stock and scald and cut up many preaches to freeze. I also managed to clean up after the boys and leave the house slightly cleaner than before. Ji did manage to get red marker all over his hands, and I didn't notice until he was using the toilet and I was trying to figure out where the pink marks on the toilet were from. As I cleaned off his hands best as I could, he asked "What bird is red?"
       "Cardinals are red. They have a pointy tuft of feathers on the back of their heads. There are lots of cardinals where Grandma and Grandpa Z live."
       "I'm a cardinal," he informed me. "Do they have red hands?" He asked.
Later I realized that Ra's pants were wet because I had sat him down on the bath mat which was wet. Luckily he was wearing a onesie, so I just took his pants off. He had already repeatedly kicked his sandals off.

I was glad to see N when she came to pick up the boys, and I hurried to get a to work for the afternoon. But I am looking forward to having them again next week. As I told N, it was fun but a little exhausting. She knew just what I meant :)

Adoration

 I started substitute teaching to fill in the gaps in my work schedule. So far I've mostly been at elementary schools, often in 2nd grade. (My niece keeps asking me to sub for her class.) Although the pay isn't that great, there are some great benefits, as you can see by these fan notes.

I did write a quick note back to her before school ended. Aren't kids great? It's nice to know that 7 year old girls think I'm pretty.

Stories about Dinosaurs

I was raised with boys. I have a brother that's just 18 months younger than I am, and another brother 2 years younger than him. (I also have a brother that's 9 years younger than I am and a sister who is 13 years younger. But there is enough of a gap that much of my childhood was informed by my first two brothers.) Growing up primarily among boys affected some of my habits and interests, as I'm sure having an assertive (that's a more positive word than bossy) older sister affected theirs. For example, I probably would not know very much about dinosaurs if not for them. They were crazy about dinosaurs when we were young. My parents are the type of parents who were happy to encourage any interest that would lead to learning, and so we got library books about dinosaurs, went to museums to see fossils (my dad even arranged a tour of the unseen part of a dinosaur museum with a friend of his who worked there. We got to see how they uncovered and cleaned the fossils), and even took a trip to a place where there had been a significant fossil find. My brothers and I knew the correct names for each dinosaur, what the difference between a carnivore and a herbivore was, and much preferred the video of Maya, which tells what a dinosaurs daily life would have been like realistically, to that of any of the Land Before Time movies. (It was very upsetting to us that they didn't use the correct names for the dinosaurs in The Land Before Time.) Dinosaurs were a prevalent theme in our lives. I don't really think that much about dinosaurs on a day-to-day basis now, but something reminded me of my childhood love of dinosaurs the other day, and several memories surfaced. So I thought I would share them here.
* * *
The other day, I saw a woman walking a three-legged dog. The dog's front right leg was missing. The dog didn't seem at all bothered by it's disability, it moved confidently and happily along. However, I found myself thinking: “Why would you want a dog who was missing a leg?” But then I remembered a toy dinosaur that I had when I was little—somewhere around 5 to 8 years old. It was a plastic inflatable Apatasauraus, my favorite dinosaur, about 16 inches long and 10 inches high—just the right size to tuck under your arm or snuggle with. Although maybe not as naturally cuddly as a stuffed animal, I thought nothing of including her among my favorites. I think that a plastic dinosaur made more sense to me than a stuffed one—they were cold-blooded, after all, and didn't have fur. I had gotten her from a dinosaur museum that I had visited with my parents and brothers, and so she had those happy memories associated with her. One of her legs, I think it was the back right one, wouldn't inflate. I don't remember if we discovered this before we bought her or after, but rather than being upset about it, the defect endeared her to me. Sometimes I would rub the place where that leg met the body. I loved that dinosaur, and felt very protective of her. I named her “Pat.” (Clever, right?) Once I even insisted on taking Pat to church. I put her on the floor, next to the coat rack, with my boots during the services. When church was over, she wasn't there. I was devastated. My father patiently searched for the church with me, and finally found her—deflated, in the garbage can. I don't know if someone saw the bad leg and assumed that she was no longer wanted, or if it was a teenage prank, as my father guessed. But after being dusted off and re-inflated, she was just fine. I wonder whatever happened to her. I wouldn't be surprised to find her carefully packed in a box in my parent's basement.
* * *
My brother S especially loved dinosaurs, and at the age of 4 had plans to become a paleontologist one day. He wasn't the most adventurous eater. One night at dinner, my father attempted to get him to try something that he was refusing to eat, by saying, “But what about when you are a famous paleontologist, on a dig in the Middle East? They won't have the types of food there that you are used to, so you'll have to try new things. Why don't you start practicing now, by trying this?” S prompted replied, “When I am a famous paleontologist and I go on digs, I will bring a whole refrigerator full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with me.” I don't remember my father having a response to that.
* * *

I don't remember how this game started, but it was probably my father's invention. Whenever anyone said “Parasauralophus,” which is a dinosaur with a ridge that protrudes from the back of it's head, they were asking to be tickled. We referred to it as “the tickle word.” If one of us kids said it, our dad would chase after us and tickle us. If he said it, any one, or sometimes all three, of us would attempt to tickle him. Usually we didn't want to be tickled. But we delighted in trying to come as close to saying the tickle word without actually saying it. Sometimes we would team up—I would say “Para”, J would say “Saura,” and S would say “Lophus.” Other times we'd start out the word, but end it some other way. My dad would sometimes try to catch us off guard by holding up a toy Parasauralophus and asking “What dinosaur is this?” We had to make some rules for the game. One that my mother insisted on was that if we were at the table, we couldn't tickle. She made this rule to keep the game from interfering with dinners, but sometimes we would yell “Parasauralophus” and then run and grab hold of the dinning room table, claiming immunity. When we were teenagers, the game persisted with our younger siblings, cousins, and even the children in the daycare my mother ran. But now we were part of the adult team. One of the girls invented a new rule—she added an anti-tickle word, “bubbles.” If you said bubbles, it cancelled out Parasauralophus, and you couldn't be tickled. It's a great idea, although almost makes the game too easy. It will be interesting to see if this game continues into the next generation, and if the tickle word stays the same.

A Lemon and a Star

A friend lent me a wonderful book, A Lemon and a Star by E.C. Spykman. It's about four siblings and their adventures, set in the early 1900s, which is when my great-grandmother was a girl. The friend who lent it to me said that it is based on the author's childhood, and is the kind of children's book that adults often enjoy more than children. (I did read some to my teenage sister, and she thought it lacked plot. I enjoyed the rambling quality.)

Here's an excerpt from the second page:

"Her intention had been to climb up to the middle of the old maple at the lower end of the barn field, unpack, and set up housekeeping in a place of peace and quiet, where in the cool shelter she could concentrate on hating Theodore. It had seemed a good idea. The maple stood alone and the approach of enemies could be seen from all sides. The brook ran along one side of it for water and Aunt Charlotte's vegetable garden stretched away on the other side for food. But now she was on her way home, because it had not worked. Living in a tree was quite impractical. Nothing would stay where you put it."

Later, something said by the 8-year-old Hubert:

"Nobody'll marry me," he said, "till I've got a mustache and that takes years."

And:

"She liked sitting with Hubert doing a rather risky thing thought up by Ted."

My First Celebrity Crush

I don't often have celebrity crushes, but the one that stands out most in my mind is the first one I ever had, at the age of 6 or 7. I was in love with Billy Joel. I knew that he was too old for me, so I fantasized about marrying his son. (As it turns out, he doesn't have a son, just one daughter, who is 4 years younger than I am. His third wife, who he divorced last year, is my age. So I guess that I do have a shot at him, although he is 32 years older than I am, and I've moved on in the last 20 years.) Somehow, this crush came up at work awhile ago. My boss was surprised, since he doesn't consider Joel to be very good-looking. But at the age of 7, I loved the photo of him on the back of the greatest hits album, with his crazy-curly hair, almost a fro, and his jean jacket slung over his shoulder.

In our home in Utah, my parents had a record player, along with a selection of records from their lives before children. My mother often put on records for my brothers and I to dance to--although our definition of dancing was loose--more often marching or hopping around in a circle. There are photos in my photo albums of us in over-sized tee-shirts, probably our pjs, rocking it out. We did learn to be careful not to dance too close to record player--it had a tendency to skip when you jumped up and down right next to it. One of our favorite albums was Billy Joel's Greatest Hits. As a matter of fact, that was one of the first CDs I bought as a teenager; I think my brother and I bought it together. When I was leaving for college, we fought over who got to keep it. I won. He later bought another copy. (This was before we had i-tunes and could have continued to share from the one copy.)

Today I pulled up i-tunes on my computer to listen to some music while cooking. Billy Joel's Greatest Hits came up. It's funny to think back about the ideas I had about certain songs as a kid. I often took the lyrics very literally--I imagined the woman in "The Stranger" jumping ninja style to give him a swift kick in the face. My very favorite song from the album as a kid was "Only the Good Die Young." I am baffled by this now, and unsure why, or what exactly I thought the song was about. I wanted to be a good girl--I guess that the idea of dying young sounded somehow romantic. I remember envisioning volcanoes erupting during the song, I have no idea where this image came from. I certainly had no idea what he was really talking about. I did, and still do, like "Just the Way You Are," "Tell Her About It," and "She's Always a Woman," for pretty straight-forward reasons (although that last one is a little twisted, if you think too much about it. I still like the sentiment). "You May Be Right" is another good one. At the lyrics "turn out the lights, don't try to save me," I envisioned him left alone in a dark room, trying not to be sacred of the dark. "Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair" brought an image of a row of beauty parlor hair-drier chairs. I think that we even had a mini-record of Alvin and the Chipmunks with a cover of that song. Why anyone thought it made sense for the Chipmunks to sing that particular song is beyond me. For the song "Goodnight Saigon," I remember my mom telling us that Joel had not gone to Vietnam himself, but knew many people who had. When I was in high school, we had a Vietnam vet come to talk to us, and he used the song to start off his presentation, which was very powerful.

Another song that has a very different meaning for me now than it did when I was younger is Cat Steven's "Wild World." As a kid, I always imagined it as a father singing to his daughter (I think that the lines "I'll always remember you as a child, girl" and "don't be a bad girl" gave me this impression). He was giving her advice as she grew up and left him, even though he was having a hard time letting go of her and letting her be an adult. One day a few years ago, listening to this song after being in a relationship that I wished would have lasted, I can see it as him singing to a lover who is leaving. I wish that I had the same grace and goodwill towards my ex as he expresses.

Given my love of Billy Joel and Modern Dance, I am surprised that I didn't see the musical ballet "Movin' Out," which is made up of several of Joel's songs and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. It was showing in NYC when I was in for my internship during college. Maybe I didn't see it because ticket prices were too high. Or maybe I didn't want anything to dilute my memories and associations of the songs from childhood.

Dreaming again

Do you ever dream that you are waking up? Sometimes, in the morning, when I need to get up but can't yet, I'll start to dream that I am waking up, getting out of bed, and going into the bathroom. But then I'll realized that the bathroom that I am in is very different from the real bathroom in my apartment. So I'll try it again. I'll get up, walk into the bathroom...no, still not right. When I slept in a loft bed I would be convinced that this time I really was getting up, going down the ladder, I could see each step, feel my body moving. But then I'd get to the bathroom, and it just wouldn't be right. I'd have to start all over. Sometimes I'll go through this 8 or 10 times before I really do wake up.

I reminds me of a nightmare I used to have as a kid, where I'd be in this huge house with lots and lots of rooms. I was lost and scared. So, I'd start to look for my parents room. "I just need to go up the stairs, to the end of the hall, the door on the left," I'd think. I wanted to wake up and really go to my parent's room, but instead I'd just try to go to it in the dream. It was the same helpless feeling, where I was trying so hard to really do something, knowing the steps to do it, but not being able to really get it done.

Once I dreamed that my bedroom, which is on the 4th floor of an apartment building, had a back door that lead out to a grassy hill. People were picnicking and enjoying the day. I wish that were true.

Tour de Manhattan

Cycling is my family sport. My dad doesn't watch football games, he watches the Tour de France.
My dad, brother, and I used to ride the local bike trails on weekends. Our favorite was the path that ran up Provo Canyon to Bridal Veil Falls. In college, I started regularly riding the Jordan River Trial, along the river all the way out the to lake. Riding next to the water, with tree hanging above, was so much better than riding on the asphalt trying to avoid car fumes on the way to campus and back.
Now that I live in NYC, I enjoy riding the bike trail along the Hudson River. It does get me closer to the water and away from the cars. I need to make time for it more often.
These photos were taken by my good friend and fellow photographer Elizabeth Leitzel last summer.

I made the short list

You would think that since I'm in my late 20s, am done with college, and have held the same job in the "real world" for at least 2 years, I would be comfortable thinking of myself as an adult. But much of the time, I'm not. I still often feel like a 17 year old who is waiting for life to really start. But every once in awhile, something happens to me, or I do something, that make me feel like I really am a grown up after all, and life is the way I imagined adulthood would be.

One of these moments come one summer in college, when a friend and I got together and canned cherries. When I was little, my mom canned every summer, and often we'd get together with her sisters and mother and have a huge canning party. My brothers and I would help wash the fruit, slice or pit it, and neatly slide each piece into the jars under adult supervision. So by doing the whole process myself, including the actual sealing of the jars, I was taking my place as one of the women. When I told my grandmother that I wanted to can, she gave me her old canning pot and jars. I looked through some cookbooks and searched online, and then called my grandmother to find out her exact method. (For one thing, she uses much less sugar than most recipes call for.) Then my friend and I bought a couple of boxes of cherries and other supplies, and spent a Saturday afternoon canning together. A smaller group than my aunts and grandmother, but a enjoyable one none the less.

Home canned fruit is so much riper and tastier than store canned. My grandmother had cherry trees for many years, and I so she would often serve us bowls of home canned cherries, giving us an old lid from a jar to spit the seeds into. My mother would usually get some of the cherries from my grandmother's tree, and we had apricot trees. She would can apricots and also make jam, which she would give out at Christmas. We loved all the canned fruit, there would usually be peaches and pears too, but she'd tell us that we needed to save most of it to eat for the winter. When I canned cherries, I probably only did about 9 bottles. I did try and keep the last one for a special occasion, but it never quite came. I think I finally ate it before I moved, so I wouldn't have to worry about it breaking during the move.

A few months ago, I was telling my dad about another adult moment I had experienced. (Now I can't remember what it was exactly.) He shared with me his one of his pivotal adult moments. It was when he was discussing sprinkler systems with a friend, since he was going to have one installed in the front yard of the house he'd recently bought. His friend pointed out that this was something only adults would talk about. I laughed about it, but was also a little shocked, because at that point in his life, he already had 3 children, of whom I at age 5 was the oldest! I always assumed that having children would make you feel permanently like an adult, but I guess I was wrong. Of course, I also assumed that marriage and children would come naturally and in my early 20s. That I would be a mother before I was an aunt. (I'm not married, and don't have children, and am not yet an aunt. But I may be an aunt before I am married, and I decided one day on the subway that if I don't get married, I'll still adopt at least one child.)

Tonight I got a call from the husband of that very same friend that I canned cherries with. At first I was surprised that he was the one calling me, but suddenly I realized what he must be calling about. Their first baby had been born! (This is the baby that I made the pink sweater for.) She arrived a couple days ago, and is now at home with her parents. Both mama and baby are doing well, and dad was dispatched to call with the news. I forget her size and weight, but her middle name is Eve.

This is the first time that I have been called personally by proud new parents! Usually I find out later by email (or blog) or through a family member passing on the news. But I'm a grown up now, and have close friends who are having babies, and are calling (or having their husbands call) to tell me about it. Hurray!