April 15, 2104--NY,NY: Stick-Figure Children

During our second day heading north on I-95, bored by the unchanging landscape and relentless traffic,  after running out of interest in making a list of out-of-state license plates (amazingly, we saw Alaska and Hawaii within 20 miles south of Richmond), we turned to anxieties about all the things that likely changed in Manhattan while we were snowbirding.

"I know you're worried that your Danon yogurt will cost $2.00."

"You bet I am," I confessed. "For me it's a litmus test for the cost of things more generally. Like how much maintenance we have to pay for our apartment and how much it will cost to park in our old garage. Probably $700 a month," I intentionally exaggerated.

"Forget how much they be charging for a double espresso at Balthazar."

"Remember," Rona reminded me, "we doing more eating at home and when we do go out for coffee we've been going to The Smile and . . ."

"Where my cortados will probably be $7.50."

"Can we change the subject?"

"Good idea," I said, cursing the car from Ontario that cut me off. "Those Canadian drivers," I sputtered. "They shouldn't let them in the country."

"It helps our balance of trade," Rona said, showing off that she has an MBA.

Reading my mind, she smiled. "While we're being driven off the road check out that bumper sticker."

I squinted into the glare. "What does it say? I can't read it."

"Our Children Are Not Stick-Figures."

"Huh?"

"That's what it says. Though I have no idea what it means."

"I think I know. I think . . ." I cut myself off. I'm trying to stop repeating everything.

"I'm totally puzzled."

"You remember those Baby On Board signs?"

"I do. Every car in suburbia seemed to have one."

"And remember how that morphed into things like Poodle On Board?"

"Or Mother-In-Law On Board."

"I remember you hated them. You can be such a curmudgeon."

"I cultivate my inner curmudgeon. It's one of the things that helps keep me centered when so much seems like it's spinning out of control or getting stupider."

"So what's with the stick-figure business?"

"Haven't you noticed that affixed to the rear windows of half the SUVs on the road . . .  I hate those too."

"SUVs?"

"For the life of me I can't understand the fetish about them. With gas creeping again toward $4.00 a gallon people are still buying them even though they get 15 miles to the gallon."

"I guess they make people feel safe."

"Maybe they're getting ready for the infrastructure to collapse and the oceans to rise."

"My, you make it so pleasant to drive 1,200 miles together."

"Sorry. I can be such a grump. But people put stick-figure decals on their SUV rear windows, one for each member of their families."

"What?"

"You heard me. Look, check it out, look at that SUV from Quebec that nearly drove us off the road. It has them." I pulled closer, tailgating, so we could take a closer look.

"I see," Rona said, "But be careful. I don't want us to get killed while looking at stick-figures. But, you're right, there appears to be a mommy stick-figure decal and a daddy and . . ."

"And it looks to me like a little girl, an adolescent boy, and . . ."

"And could that be a dog stick-figure?"

"They're members of the family too, aren't they? Dogs, I mean."

"I suppose so."

"To keep us from falling asleep in this traffic let's see if we can spot a two-daddy family."

"Or a family with a stick-figure anaconda. They're becoming more and more popular as pets." Rona was finally getting into it.

I made a face.

Finally, back in Manhattan, after unpacking and making a round of obligatory phone calls, we went through a week's worth of newspapers we had shlepped with us from Florida.

"Look at this," Rona said, all excited. She passed last Thursday's New York Times Style section to me. "More of the same."

"More of the same what?" I was still racing through Wednesday's paper.

"Like the stick-figure business."

"'Three-Seat Strollers'? That's the story you want me to read?"

"Yes, about how there's an increasing number of affluent families with three children."

"So?"

"So according to the article, on the Upper East Side in the year 2000, 49 percent of the richest families had two or more children but now the percentage is up to 59 percent, with a decided edge to three children."

"And, what's the big deal?"

"Some are claiming, if you'd read this, that the third child is a 'status child.'"

"I'm not following this."

"With two kids you might be able to get away with a two-bedroom apartment; but with three you need at least three. This shows you have the money to buy a place that size. You know what a fortune it is. Especially Downtown and on the East Side."

"You mean it's no longer enough to have a second home in the Hamptons?"

"Everyone has a house out there."

"Or a Range Rover?"

"Ditto. Two or three from New York nearly ran over you an hour ago when you were dawdling in the passing lane."

"I was going 80."

"What can I tell you, they wanted to go 90."

"So now when we go to the Met or Modern uptown we'll get run off the sidewalk by a three-seat stroller?"

"Now you're getting the picture."

"Do you think my yogurt will really be $2.00?"

January 3, 2014--Ladies of Forest Trace: Are You Limping?

Like clockwork, for decades, at precisely noon on Sundays, my mother would call. In fact, she was so regular in doing this that it would generate genuine concern if she was even a minute late.

I would look at Rona, she would look back at me with a worried face and I would ask, "I wonder if anything is wrong."

"She's probably on the phone with someone else," Rona would say, as much to calm herself as me.

Invariably, on those rare occasions, when she placed her call a few minutes after twelve, she would say, "I was on the phone with Harriet. She called and I couldn't rush her. I know you must be worried," she would say, "But I'm fine," and knowing we might be skeptical, she would add, "I am. I really am. Fine."

Last Sunday the telephone rang at the stroke of noon. "Is there something wrong with your voice?" my mother asked even before I could ask how she was.

"I don't think so," I said to assure her and by attempting to sound stentorian.

"It doesn't sound good to me. Your voice."

"I'm fine. I really am." In truth I was feeling well, though I am quite capable of not always telling her the full truth about my health, knowing that if I do, or cough while talking with her, she will begin to worry and in the process begin herself to not feel well.

"You sound scratchy too," I said. "I think maybe there's a problem with the connection. Hang up and I'll call you back."

She did and I did. "How's that?" I asked when we were reconnected.

"You still sound sick. Are you sure you're not hiding something from me?"

"I'm not. Really. But you don't sound so hot yourself," I said, in an effort to lighten the mood and relieve her concerns about me.

"Let me go upstairs to get another phone," I suggested, "Maybe there's something wrong with this one. Hold on. Hold on. I won't hang up while I'm going upstairs."

When I retrieved the phone from my night table and turned off the one from downstairs, I asked, "Is that any better?"

"Not really." My mother said, also continuing to sound as if she had a sore throat.

"Are you really all right?" I asked, turning the tables on her. "You're not keeping something from me, are you?"

"I'm not. But what's going on with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you limping?"

"Limping?" I said, feeling confused. "I'm fine. As I said."

"I don't believe you. You're limping. I know you are."

"I'm not. I'm not." I felt guilty that I was beginning to become annoyed with her unending uber-concen about all aspects of my well-being as if I were still a child. "I'll tell you when something's wrong. I always do," I said, trying to calm her with a half-truth.

"By the way," I added, "What makes you think I am?"

"What?"

 "Limping."

"I heard you."

"Heard me?"

"Yes."

"How? When?"

"When you were walking up the stairs."

"Really? You heard me walking up the stairs?" I was truly incredulous at her inventive ways of keeping track of me.

"Yes."

"How?"

"The phone."

"The phone? I mean--"

It was beginning to dawn on me. I'm sometimes slow about noticing all the manifestations of her monitoring strategies. "You mean you heard me coming up the stairs because I was carrying the telephone? We do have a wooden staircase that amplifies sound and--"

She began to chuckle. "Since I don't always believe you tell me the truth, I have my methods for keeping up with you." She was by then laughing.

"You know, Mom, for an old lady you're really something."

Feeling good about herself, she said, "That I am. Something."

Before I could tell her how much I love her, she hung up. She didn't want to be late for State of the Union on CNN. One of her favorite Sunday TV talk shows.

October 10, 2013--"I Just Want to See My Mother"

Dateline Any Day, BAGHDAD:

"A suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives on the playground of an elementary school in northern Iraq on Sunday morning, killing 13 children and the headmaster, police said."

The report in the New York Times, beneath a modest headline and buried deep in the A-Section, went on:

"Many children who survived the attack were seriously wounded and were sent to larger, better-equipped hospitals in the Kurdistan region of Iraq for treatment, medical sources said."

The brief article concludes--

"'I don't remember what happened,' said a sobbing boy named Ali, who suffered wounds to his face and legs. 'I just want to see my mother.'"

July 4, 2013--Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People

On Monday, the Chinese government enacted a law that requires young people to tend to the "spiritual needs of the elderly." The Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People statute.

Who would have thought that a country that so reveres the elderly would feel the need to pass such a law. Aren't the young already culturally oriented enough to do this without compulsion?

Apparently not.

In the law's fine print, children are required to go home "often" (this suggests that traditional families are breaking down with youth migrating to the coastal cities) and to occasionally "send them greetings" (I assume via the social media).

Unusually, the law does not proscribe any punishments or penalties if its injunctions are not followed. I suppose they will see how it works; and if children continue to ignore their parents and grandparents, who knows, maybe the young will be sent away to the countryside to be "reeducated."

Having said this, according to a report in the New York Times, parents feeling abandoned by their children have been suing them for "neglect," and winning!

Having just spent a week in South Florida, mainly among the elderly, it is clear that Florida even more than China needs this kind of legislation.

Over one dinner, for example, we heard about Sara, who lives in New York with her third husband and four children but "is so busy with her fancy friends and shopping that she never comes for a visit. And when she does, she can't wait to go home. She stays in a hotel on the beach--not with me--and can't wait to get back to the city after spending only two night in Florida."

Another dinner companion had nothing but complaints about her "good-for-nothing son."

"We scrimped and saved so Alfred could go to Cornell and then to medical school, but now what do we get in return? When I call I talk to his answering machine or when he finds a little time to work his mother into his busy schedule he puts me on the speaker phone. In the background I can hear him talking to one of his salesmen. He's not the son I raised."

When I told an 85-year-old, who had very little good to say about his grandchildren--"If they walked in the room now they wouldn't recognize me. That's how often they come to see me"--about the new law in China, even though he had spent the previous half hour complaining about Obamacare and all the money he is spending to "bring socialism to America," he very much approved of what the Chinese government had done to take care of their elderly.

"We could use some of that here," he said. "These young people have no values. All they care about is their friends, sleeping all day, and staring at their smarty phones."

When I said that the Chinese law is an example of the sort of big government he was just criticizing, telling people how to live what should be their private lives, he dismissed me with a wave. "Nothing's perfect," he said. "But I do like Chinese food."