Santa Bin Laden

"Ho ho ho!" someone shouted so loudly Little t gasped "oh no!" and threw the bag of raindeer food she had been scattering on my parent's lawn and turned to run into the house; a trail of sparkles and cheerios in her wake. Quickly assessing that the ranch slider was too far a distance she instead jumped into her dad's arms. Christmas Eve in New Zealand's Bay of Plenty and we were home for summer.

Fake santa remained hidden but it did the trick with Little t. She ran to bed a believer.

My husband and I were married six-weeks after he proposed and that was five years ago so I believe in impulse. Though we'd dated for about a year and a half we'd never lived together; never discussed serious things like marriage until he asked me to be his wife in a cafe in Cairo. I was in the middle of a story and he stopped me. "I think we should get married" he said. When I asked him why he said: I liked the way you told that story.

Tameem is muslim, born and raised in Canada to an Egyptian father and an Italian Jewess. He's a total mix of both religions and cultures and I never thought twice about marrying someone from another faith or culture, if anything I found it interesting. I wasn't raised with religion, I think the only thing my dad, who is a hypnotherapist, ever called our family was "spiritualists". Loose.

There was never any pressure on me to give up anything or convert to anything in marrying Tameem, I didn't even change my name. It was only when I was pregnant with our first child and the subject of Christmas came up that I realized I was somewhat attached to a tradition that mean nothing to him. I didn't even realize I was attached to it until I was asked not to celebrate it. No tree, no decorations, no Santa for the kids and no Jesus as the son of God. For someone raised with Christmas, no Christmas for your kids?

Like a lot of people there are some things about Christmas that I have issues with:  the stress people feel in having to spend more than they can afford on gifts, the pressure not to disappoint your kids. But my good memories of Christmas are of my sisters - lying on the lounge floor of our nana and poppy's farm house, watching the Christmas Eve movie. Going to bed too early and enjoying the fantasy, which faded out quite naturally as we grew up. Feasting for days with our family, which includes 35 first cousins and up to 70 people for dinner or tea (that's another serving of dinner, at night). Crates of brilliantly colored fizzy drinks that turned into more interesting fizzy drinks as the we got older, new clothes on the summer lawns and beach and river swims. 

This year my daughters got to experience some of this, with loud and generous aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and tents on the lawn. You sort of forget about lawns.

Bolt Bus

I like catching buses in the dark, early morning. I mean buses that carry you substantial distances, between cities, not commuters to work. When I was a kid my parents would regularly drive me and my three sisters 10 hours down country (North Island, NZ) to visit family. One time, because our vehicles were never fancy, our van broke down in a two-bit rural town in the middle of nowhere and hours from home. I loved this trip because I remember boarding a bus in the middle of the night and journeying up the country in total blackness as we were far from street lights. The only visible thing being the fluorescent indicator strips that ran along the floor to mark the isle; these orange gold lines and the quietness or traveling through the night. I wonder if that’s how Little t felt on the Bolt Bus that took us to Seattle, from Vancouver, and back again on our way to and from New York. Empty seats and hot coffee and the temperature somehow feeling colder when you drive into the first sunlight of dawn.

5.20

The sound of the front door of our Bed-Stuy sublet swinging open into the darkness of 5am had Tameem jumping exposed and swearing from our bed, in anticipation of... I'm not sure what really? Death? There had been some action in our apartment building in the month we'd been there, so surprise arrivals in our living room in what felt like the middle of the night.... "she's lucky I didn't go George Zimmerman on her," Tameem said, when we identified her as being the woman we were subletting off.

"Sorry," she said lazily to Tameem and I, both standing there: half-naked and white-faced. "I should have texted from the cab to say my bus got in early."

Sublets are an interesting experience. You're effectively living in someone else's very personalized space and they seem to both take it seriously that you're paying to be there and then not really. "Take your time though," she said. "No rush."

Leaving New York was always going to be strange. How can you ever say goodbye to a city like New York? And we'd agreed to be out earliesh, sort of around breakfast, which in our minds meant around 8am. I'm pretty sure even dairy farmers have breakfast at around 8am, despite getting up at 4am for milking. From my limited knowledge of farm life I think I remember this from my nana's breakfast service. Dancers from Pennsylvania? I'm not sure. I guess they consider breakfast to be whatever time the bus gets in. 

Tameem put on pants and went to fetch the rental car from JFK. I started moving around, packing up our last little bits and learned that "take your time" meant 30 minutes. By 6am our host wanted her place back.

"OK if I go in?" she said to me, meaning the room where ayah (6 months) and Little t (three years) were sleeping. She decided it was definitely time to put her suitcases away.

"Um, they're still sleeping, but I guesssss," I said. "Thanks," she said. Genuine smile; lights on and the kids up. Now there were four of us moving around awkwardly. 

"OK if I give you half your deposit back in cash and the other in a cheque?" she asked. Turns out that although we'd given her cash it was no longer available in this form. Turning it back into this form meant she had to pay $7 to get it out at a bank machine and instead of doing that she'd decided we could drive around Brooklyn looking for her bank to cash her cheque before leaving town or pay bigger bank fees ourselves up in Canada. No, I said, for what felt like the first time in New York. She stomped off to the bank machine, phoned her mum a million times and then and stomped back.

6:45am:  the vibe beginning to crackle, she set up her computer in the lounge and snapped at our three-year-old. "Don't do that!" she said. "McDonald's for breakfast?" I said to Little t.

The place was packed. In the line up in front of me two African American women chatted about their type two diabetes. "I got to watch my kidneys," said one, pouring sachet after sachet of sugar into her coffee-type drink. 

Fluff me

I think there are plenty of people getting stuffed and fluffed in New York and the bears of Fifth Avenue are no exception. The way they go from flaccid and deflated to full to bursting so suddenly, as the white stuff is pumped into them hard, it seems almost violent. 

For 50 to 100 bucks you can take your own bear home. "Stuff me" and "Fluff me" their signs insist and adults seem to get really excited about this. I guess their kids do too? We stumbled into Build-A-Bear Workshop I imagine the same way many parents do: not wanting to, but with a well-meaning granny in town.

Factory lines of pink and rainbow bear casings awaited us, all hanging by their chicken necks from shiny silver hook. Gaping holes at their navels indicate where the rods go in - that's where the stuffing happens. The fluffing happens at a separate table, complete with a wide range of appropriate accessories, from brushes to lotions.

When we took "Rainbow" up to the counter to sign the adoption certificate, the attendant didn't give us the sort of congratulations that seemed fitting for my Jewish Italian mother-in-law. "She's not even looking up at us! Where do we swipe the Visa? Why isn't she looking at us? Perhaps she's had a bad day?"

Now a sigh from the staff member. Now she looks at us. The look was inappropriate. Are we taking Rainbow? Are we leaving Rainbow? I looked at him: stuffed and fluffed, he didn't seem to care. He looked pretty done. My JIMIL calls the manager. "It seems that your cashier needs to take a break," she says. "It's clear from the service we received." Somewhere in the bustling out of the shop the clasp on Rainbow's $3 suitcase snapped clean off. I made a vague promise to return it (100 blocks from our apartment) on principal. Somewhere on the subway home Rainbow disappeared altogether.

I think he got what he wanted.

Open mic

I'm a New Zealander married to a Canadian and cultural differences exist. They're subtle, granted, but nothing highlights how American Canadians are than the way they take to the stage. They bound up there like labradors; the big bowl of food being recognition and applause. Any audience will do. Like the know-it-all kids on those American TV shows their theatre sports confidence levels are just higher.

The Canadian I married is also a musician so being on stage is as comfortable as Sunday dinner at your parent's place, maybe even more so depending on your parents, but he went next level in New York.

"I think I'm going to go to a couple of open mics," he said to me, gesturing to a couple of comedy clubs we were walking past in Greenwich Village. His total research included  sitting in for 15 minutes of comedy at one of them and deciding that New Yorkers are super friendly and totally supportive of people giving it a go. Besides all his friends tell him he should do it because he's funny. You know, the way all your good friends tell you that? I think that's the only way people decide on friends: are they funny? Does that mean we're all amusing? Or is there really a lid for every pot thing with people? I think it's the later because we're definitely not amusing to everyone we meet. Some people really dislike us. Some people really disliked him.

"SHUT UP!" an angry guy yelled at Tameem. His steroid pumped voice was not messing around. After failing to get any laughs for some minutes on his first go at it he had decided to insult the crowd, blaming them for not laughing. The "shut up" - lots of emphasis on the "sh" - created even more silence. A bubble of silence within a bubble of silence within a bubble of silence. He had to turn it around so out of his mental sleeve he pulled his dirtiest work. "Oh my god!" a woman gasped in a truly horrified whisper that was so full of emotion it carried across the silent audience to Tameem on his silent stage. This is where he got down and this is where he left but he didn't go home.

This is where most New Zealanders would go home, I'm pretty sure, but he's North American. So instead, crushed, he decided to go directly to the next open mic comedy stage and get up. It didn't put him off that some of the angry and hurt audience members from the first place were seated in the audience. Reviewing his notes he decided not to insult the crowd, but still had to try out the dirty joke that so offended the previous female. Much better. As well as affirming that New Yorkers are friendly he learned that Hasidic Jewish guys are funny.

Hasidic Jewish guy: "So our religion forbids us from watching television and people are always asking me: 'aren't you bored?

 "Yup"

Philippe

When we moved from Manhattan to Bed-Stuy cafes within walking distance were limited to McDonalds.  Great Hispanic cuisine was available pretty much 24/7 but getting a coffee required effort, so when Tameem and I found the unassuming little French cafe not too far from our subway stop we were happy. Fresh croissants made daily by the owner and good coffee, it was a nothing flash establishment that offered respite from the surrounding discount stores and their dusty smelling plastic goods.

The first time I went in I was with my husband and both kids, but from then on it was just me and Little t. It gave us somewhere to go when we both needed to get out of the apartment and it had things for both of us. Me: coffee and her: pastries, Scrabble and a Rubik's Cube. I realized that both of these games are now retro when I started worrying that she'd damage them and upset the hipster crowd who frequented the place. Then I felt awkward about this whole notion: preserving the kids' toys for adults? Adults into kids' toys minus the kids.

Alone with my daughter I ordered croissant and coffee and was surprised that the owner threw in a couple of mini apricot danishes for her. "I love New Yorkers," I thought," so friendly, so welcoming." The owner worked his kitchen like a galley chef; white t-shirt rolled up at the sleeves, begging for a pack of cigarettes. A regular pop eye, or seasoned sea dog; he looked like he'd lived a good life but a hard one. It was amusing to see him take the money off a woman in front of me who was ordering breakfast and then tell her to get rid of the coca colas she'd brought in with her. So French it came off as rude and so French he didn't give a shit.

The second time, more free pastries for Little t and a high five out of her. For the record she didn't initiate this. People are always initiating high fives with kids and the kids often look as uncomfortable as you feel about giving someone a high five.

The third time, more free pastries at the counter and then a bag with more croissants dropped to our table. "You got some pastries!" Little t celebrated. "No, it's too much," I said, embarrassed. "Please let me pay," and then I saw the note scribbled on the bag complete with a introduction, phone number and invitation to call.

I always thought that a kid or two and a wedding ring would be major blocks for men but apparently not in New York. Or maybe just not for French men. Anyway it would have been good if my first reaction was "wow, that's flattering," which of course it is. But instead it was "damn it, now where am I going to go for coffee?"

I figured he'd missed the ring, so as I packed up, a bit red faced, I decided to casually say thanks but married on the way out. It was hard to find a break in his stream of customers, but I caught his eye and mouthed "thanks, but sorry I'm married" pointing at my wedding ring. "Text me" he mouthed back.

For weeks afterwards Little t asked me to take her back to the scrabble place.

Laundry

Certain people stand out as memorable on trips and the guy who ran our local laundromat  was one of them. Him and the jewellery guy (I don't think I can call him a jeweller) who sold rings off one of those curb side tables in Greenwich Village. I liked the jewellery guy because he was on the money about some people in my life, going off nothing but their star signs. For example: "Virgo's are great but they talk a lot and take really long showers." He wasn't a hippy, I think he was a Pakistani married to a Capricorn. Anyway, I bought jewellery off him that caused skin conditions but I'd go back if he was still around. In a way it was interesting to see what steel does to somebody else's flesh.

The laundromat guy was the same, I found him during our first week in Soho and formed a fast loyalty that meant walking 15 blocks further than necessary with two suitcases of clothes and sometimes in the rain.

When we first met I asked him if it was better to drop off laundry (have it serviced) or do it ourselves and he said "tourists usually get us to do it but locals do it themselves." I don't think he was really right about this as most locals I met in New York didn't do their own laundry and there seemed to be quite a few German couples in there washing the contents of their backpacks but whatever. I liked his sloppy mainland China look of jandals (flip flops, thongs) wellfed belly with his tee shirt rolled up to show it off and the way he was with my kids.

While I purchased rolls of coins and small boxes of detergent he flicked through pictures of his son and filled me in on the Chinese film playing above us. 

Rich kids are mean

The New York Observer

I got to set these twenty somethings straight!

I think it's true that there are more characters on the streets of New York than in other cities. Or maybe they're just louder so you notice them. In any case, it makes for a less lonely place.

I particularly liked the conversation I overheard while walking back from SoHo's Vesuvio playground to our sublet one perfectly warm afternoon when all the adults appeared to be on lunch break.

A happy trio in front of us, two men and a lady, all in business casual, had the air of just finishing up at a restaurant and one of the men, a large African American fellow, suddenly exclaimed: "I got to set these twenty somethings straight! I'm a 42-year-old married man and at the office they come up to me and say things like 'mmm you smell good' or 'I love your shirt, where did you buy that?' They lean over the office equipment in front of me," he continued, "and they do fist pumps when I say something amusing."

The woman in the group was slapping her thigh and laughing so hard she was bent at a right angle to the pavement. We had to walk around her.

Malcolm

Sometimes when I'm in a city and traipsing around historical sites I feel like someone else (a parent) has organized it and I find myself most interested in the street vendor out front or the pencils in the gift shop; something I can amuse myself with until everyone has had enough and we can go.

There is good stuff on the periphery though and I found this to be the case at The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial & Educational Center in Harlem. In the foyer, on your way past the public toilets to the elevator that takes you upstairs to the exhibition I found the modest audio recordings of snippets of Malcolm X's and Betty Shabazz's life.

The one I liked the best was the voice of one of their six daughters who spoke about how much admiration she had for her mother who worked and put her and her sisters through college after their father's assassination.

She also said her mother always baked a plate of oatmeal cookies for her father when he came home at night. He would take them into the study and share them with his girls  while they watched television and discussed current events. After he died Betty continued to bake the cookies and would leave them outside the study door, as before, but broken in half now, so the girls could continue the ritual and still feel like their father was there in spirit.

Signage

Signage tells you a lot about a city. For example, I knew that Auckland was the love of my life when I flew over the Auckland Airport sign after being gone for three years. I'd failed to appreciate its qualities. It was like I was seeing it for the first time with its good looking font: gentle and unassuming yet so current. Like Auckland, it surprises you with how good it actually is.

New York signage does the same. It speaks of the city's personality and it's one I like: quite audible, in your face and a bit non sensical. Wandering around I've learnt that "Dolphins rape people". Good to know for that trip to Maui. Maybe some people are into that?

I've also learnt that people in New York are rich enough to have their own personal jewelers and feel a bit smug about it; that there are some dick signs that speak just as effectively to the hetro and homosexual crowd; that there are some dick signs that shouldn't combine the word dick with certain images (why is it always the Germans with their penis and knife combos?); that you can get a blowie in China Town for less than a buck or eat penis a different way in soup

Getting high

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One of the first things I was told by a New Yorker this summer was that locals don’t really walk the High Line, on account of it being crowded up with tourists.

I’m glad I didn’t listen because it turned out to be one of the things I liked most about Manhattan.

Just knowing it is there is sort of relaxing. A break into nature, but the kind of break into nature that I like: one with urban views, street art, good coffee and the option of buying a fridge magnet (I have a growing appreciation) and a t-shirt you’d actually wear. Overpriced, whatever.

I was expecting Asia sized crowds, like the time I bailed on a Great Wall of China day trip, somewhere on the outskirts of Beijing, understanding no Mandarin or the subway system or where I was staying.

In photos the Great Wall looks kind of spiritual – empty and desolate, winding its way through the clouds. In reality there are only crowds and it’s a weird feeling to be in a crowd that crowded in the middle of nature. It’s unnatural. No buildings, no coffee and no t-shirts (you'd actually wear), just a whole lot of nature and thousands of people. Kind of like being on a battlefield or something.

So after finding no peace on the wall and then the tour leader pulling into the fourth (friend’s) jade factory I pulled out. I thought that some of the other people might have joined me because I’d had some vocal support in the mini van but there was just a lot of blank faces staring at me when the door rolled shut. Later my host explained Confucius society.

Well I think I’m not made for a rules-based culture (Canada!). Obviously innovations like the High Line come about because people are allowed to try things out. A small, elevated park that runs along an old freight rail line for about twenty blocks and spits you out in another cool neighbourhood? All wispy sea grass and beach foliage. Perfect.

Getting to peer into people’s backyards (backyards in Manhattan!) and tiny apartments and say things like: why would you have a massive TV like that in such a tiny apartment? It’s like having a friend over who takes up all of your living room. So big you can smell him and he smells like meat.

Ghettotastic

“Don’t be such a pussy David!” was what woke me up at around 3am, I think, judging by that feeling that it’s way past midnight but far from dawn. It was a woman chastising David. She sounded about 40.

It was clear that they were standing right outside the bedroom window because they weren’t yelling and yet everything was crystal clear. I could hear David’s feet were a bit uncertain, like he wanted to respond to her challenge but not with his whole heart. I imagined he was wearing white no-name sneakers and unfashionable jeans. He obviously wasn’t moving fast enough so she said it again, “You’re such a fucking pussy David!” That did it. Both pairs of shoes scuffled away from the window and down a few steps that lead into the courtyard.

When I'd invited my best friend Renee to come and stay with us from New Zealand we were subletting in SoHo. When she and her baby and her man, Steve, arrived we were here in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Pros and Cons. They now slept in the lounge.

The yelling went on for some time and it was pretty clear that the drugs, booze and lateness had moved the party into that 5am no man’s land where bad things happen because climbing down is no longer an option; you’re in it up to your thighs.

The gay guy who David was arguing with made some kissing noises at him. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” David screams. “I’m going to go and get my gun and come back and fucking kill you.”

Renee was out of her bed and hovering over her daughter’s cot. An impassioned reference to guns in America just one small window away had her planning our exit, but then our bedroom lit up blue and red. Strobe lights through the window indicated more guns had arrived.

The cops’ shoes were the last thing I heard as I drifted off to sleep. Soft black kick your head in rubber that made its way towards the noise.

In the morning the apartment building had a seedy feeling; even more so than usual.

It rained and when I opened the front door to look out into the entrance of the building the woman in the apartment opposite us was taking her five dogs outside for a walk. They all started pissing simultaneously when she opened the door onto the street. A river of yellow urine joined the rain, spreading out and coating the pavement in one sticky sheet.

American Art

You’re a revolutionary. A real little shit disturber and the kind of critic those modernists were after:

The thing I liked about Graham was that he was a gentleman. A free man, unburdened by children for his New York museum visits and yet he burdened himself with ours.

One of the best things about traveling is that you make friends with people you probably wouldn’t have if you’d stayed in your hometown, or not in the same way. Something about experiencing uncomfortable things together makes you family.

Also from Vancouver and also in New York for the summer we spent hours with Graham checking out the city. Including the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Like the MoMA, the Guggenheim and others, the Whitney generously offers free admission to the public for a few hours once a week. The queues appear intimidating until you realize New York knows how to move them.

A line that did a square block around the MoMA took 15 minutes to clear. It was not long enough for me to decide whether or not the guy in front of us (white, well dressed, in his twenties) was actually enjoying the classical tracks he was playing on his small ghetto blaster. His face showed no expression, like he was preparing himself for the three panels of white that awaited him inside. For the record I quite liked that piece.

To prove all the clichés about young kids in museums wrong (yeah even the ones that are supposed to be designed for them) we took our four-month-old and three-year-old to all of them. Little T liked the helicopter at the MoMA, James Turrell’s light installation (or the “red room”) at the Guggenheim and the ginger biscuits at the Whitney. As the biscuits fell outside of the exhibitions in the café downstairs she instead proved the clichés right.

Her dad spent most of the two hours we were allowed in there on the stairwell landing of each floor, where she left trails of crumbs on the obsidian black floor.

Under threat of “last chance”, (to do what exactly? leave, as hoped?) she was allowed to rejoin cultured society on Edward Hopper’s floor. As luck would have it they were just in time to join a guided tour led by one of the curators. Little T stood quietly, as agreed, in front of the painter’s revered Nighthawks; the masterpiece everyone awaited news on. Hands on hips in her little green dress she waited for a moment of silence. “This painting is fuckit,” she said.

Aleppo

I spent a year living and working in the Middle East (Cairo; just before the revolution), which was long enough to realise that a lot of what we read about this region doesn't match up with what life is actually like there, or the people.

Staying at my brother-in-law's in Ottawa reminds me of this contrast. Anmar is Syrian, born and raised in Aleppo. His family spent time in Saudi Arabia before moving to Vancouver. A successful engineer, with a beautiful wife and two equally beautiful children, the best thing about Anmar is that he’s Syrian.

What that means to me, his house guest, is that I’m going to be stuffed with restaurant quality meals at least twice a day - and good restaurants at that. Aleppo to me is a series of dishes that I will think about for months afterwards.

Every morning begins with omlettes, pancakes or crepes; oatmeal with nuts, spices, maple syrup and cream; fresh figs with yogurt; pita with molasses and tahini; espresso and teas too numerable to count.

The days consist of pizza made from scratch; ful medames (fava beans); ka’ak (bread sticks flavored with spices like cumin, anise and cherry pit) and trays of cinnamon buns that take 24 hours to make and are coated with caramelized walnuts.

Most countries in the Middle East have a different take on similar dishes and Syrians go for lots of fresh vegetables and yogurt.

When I think of Aleppo I picture Anmar's warm kitchen and their mezzanine floor of Lego.

He calls my daughter karabeej (sweet biscuit) when he chucks her up into the air.

Latest article for Speaking of Children magazine

Summer 2013, (pages 8 - 9)  

New York is in my chest

I didn’t realize New York was in my chest until I left the city to drive up to Ottawa for a week to visit family. Driving upstate and into Canada the air gets colder and apparently cleaner (like the people?) unsettling the material I’d accumulated in my lungs and releasing it in a strange range of colors from pollution through clear.

We chose the no GPS option for our rental car as we had hand written our Google map directions in pencil on one of those pads of paper that realtors give out - the ones with their faces on them. We didn’t bother to print off the map and casually decided to begin our drive by detouring an hour and a half in the opposite direction to have breakfast (lunch…) with friends in Hamden, Connecticut. Google maps is ambitious on time. It took 11 hours from our vegan pancakes to Ottawa. The baby did not like the car seat and we woke the house up when we arrived at 1am.

As we had no map to look at for perspective we questioned and fought about every turn off, every city we passed through or anxiously looked for. I have never waited for a man the way I waited for Binghampton.

About an hour and a half from the Canadian border I seriously considered stopping feeding the baby entirely and getting someone else to move her on to sandwiches. One nice thing about my time in New York though is that I have done enough field research to write a piece on divey hotels, or 2 stars **. It will go something like: avoid them in cool cities where people want to be (NY) but give them your business in Syracuse.

A 2 star hotel in Queen’s Village will just make you feel depressed about your life; temporarily transporting you to a tenement reality, where you cannot bath your babies because the tub is too filthy and the sink is plugged with hair. One bed is considered plenty for the four of you and the staff clean the place every morning by spraying a can of ‘Pine Fresh’ down the corridors in big sweeping arm movements.

Wafting through this you’ll arrive at the breakfast buffet, where you’ll alter your children’s sugar levels permanently. They’re young right? When you notice that the family at the middle table has a couple of buckets of fried chicken at 8.30am you think to yourself “that’s actually pretty smart. Lots of protein.”

NY C.R.

I sort of knew my time in New York would not be complete without seeing him. That he would pop up somewhere from between the cracks, when I was least expecting it.

I guessed I might be pretty shaken up by this and it was made worse by the amount people were talking about him. Like some sort of crazy celebrity; front in centre of people's thoughts - especially the ladies. He wouldn’t, it appeared, fade into obscurity, like a small ugly piece of history that was easily left behind.

With all this thinking about him I realized I’d given him the power to grow to twice the size of what is regular and then last night there he was, standing in the middle of our Bed-Stuy kitchen; still in the light we’d thrown on but certainly not moving. He was massive! At least as wide as two thumbs put side by side. A grand daddy, a general in armor so black and shiny it seemed almost impenetrable.

We shrieked and ran out, offering up typically pathetic suggestions to “squash him with your shoe!” Though I couldn’t think of any sole thick enough for this, or any leg that would want to accompany it.

My husband grabbed the kill spray from the top of the fridge and sprayed him hard. He moved in that awful sideways scuttle under the sink, where we could no longer reach him.

At 1am I went back into the kitchen for a glass of water and found him in the middle of the floor giving it all up. A foamy white fluid of insides was seeping out from under his shell, making his little legs swim. “God forgive us”, I whispered and I have never been religious.

I thought of small children and regular adults and war. So the New York cockroach, now we've met and when I see his little grandchildren scurrying around the place I think of him.

Cone head

Walking past the dog run at Washington Square Park I overheard a conversation between two dog owners:

“Oh I’m so sorry,” said the woman. “For both of you. Because it’s just so upsetting when anything happens to them.”

She was talking about the man’s dog, who appeared to have some minor lacerations to his face due to a dog fight. It wasn’t clear who started it.

“Yes,” he replied. Looking hangdog himself. “He had to wear a cone for a few days.”

Before coming to New York I often remember reading in the editors' bios of certain publications I liked: “Lives in Brooklyn with his wife and dog.”  There were of course variations on this; either a different borough or gender (she lives with her husband etc) but the dog was a constant. The dog, or sometimes a cat, seemed to have replaced kids.

Pup Culture is just around the corner from our Soho sublet. It’s a thriving doggy daycare, which seems to offer somewhere to park puppies all day, where they get to run around with other puppies in a pen and staff clean up their piss and keep them from humping each other or fighting, too much.

In a clever business move two large windows look into this pen from the street, drawing attention to the daycare and bored staff member on duty, who hang out all day with a spray bottle and roll of paper towels. They do bend down from time to time to give the pups a bit of a pat or rough house and every now and then emerge with a few on a leash to stretch their legs around the block.

The dog biscuits at Trader Joes (super market) look so good in this town I’ve almost gone to reach for a packet, twice now.

Front pack

The worst thing about wearing the front pack every day in New York is that people don’t actually realize I’m wearing a front pack. This sounds good, right? Because even in black and all organic cotton it still cancels out any good outfit I’m wearing. It seems that wearing a baby, no matter how cute, just turns whatever you’re wearing into one look: mother. Mum, if it’s a woman, or really progressive dad if it’s a guy.

The fact that people don’t notice that it’s a front pack sounds good, but it’s not. After chatting with someone on the street for awhile they’ll say: “hey, you’ve got a baby in there!” And then they confirm my worst suspicion: that they thought I was wearing a backpack on my front! Like a tourist! Which I am, of course, but not that kind of tourist! The kind who worries about thieves silently tiptoeing up from behind, slitting open the backpacks (like the gypsies in Rome do right?) and grabbing all their belongings.

I don’t get it. Two little legs dangling down from my waist?

Anyway, it’s left me contemplating why backpacks are so much cooler than front packs? I mean, even if you wear a baby on your back, it looks way cooler.  Maybe it’s to do with how even small babies look huge when carried in front packs. Something to do with squashing down the height of the person carrying them or something; widening them out. The way they sit make your hips jut back a bit, encouraging a slight waddle.

I should say that the front pack is highly convenient in a city like NY, where most subway stations don’t have elevators, so if you’re using a stroller you’re carrying it and the child up flights and flights of stairs. But as a parent who cares somewhat about outfits and aesthetics, it’s a bit of a rock and a hard place: front pack or stroller? Lose lose.

Anyway, I finally cracked and asked my husband to wear it for a while – so I could be free of the front backpack look for a day and it actually made me feel worse seeing him in it. Not that other guys don’t like great in theirs; it’s just not his style. Something about the way people glance at him when he’s wearing it. I know we’re not really supposed to say anything about how men look in front packs that’s anything other than really positive – so I’m hesitant. Instead I’ll just relay the words of the super cool Latino corner store proprietor across the road from our Bed-Stuy sublet. “Eh,” he said to Tameem, when he stopped in on his way home with Ayah. “You eva seen the angova?

Yeah, you look like that guy in the angova.” Ouch. Zach Galifianakis.

My dad came up with another one for him on Skype the other day: “You look like Che Guevara in a front pack."

How could they do that to Che Guevara?

North of manhood