To My Cousin's Baby, on her Second Birthday

Dear E.W.E.,

Two years ago today, you were on your way into this big, crazy, challenging world.

This year has gone by in a blur.

It feels like yesterday that I was carefully placing balloons in your house while you took a nap before your first birthday party.

The biggest change this year has been in your speech. You use your words (FULL SENTENCES!) now to express your joy, pain, frustration, fear, and anger.

Just this evening, your mom and I were chatting on the street. You were wearing your bright yellow chicken helmet, after having scootered all the way to JP Seafood and back from dinner! After a while, your mom scooped you up, but she and I kept chatting.

Finally, having had enough, you said, very clearly, "I want to go home."

And off you went. To take a bath, get ready for bed, and sleep through the time of day you were born.

You'll wake up a 2-year-old!

A big, boisterous, babbling 2-year-old.

This year, you have stepped solidly into your fearlessness.

You LOVE being upside down, and going down slides, waterslides, and even on amusement park rides!

I will never forget how, when you were just barely one, your mom and my mom visited me at work. I gave you all a tour of the club and then we stopped in the gym to chat with my coworker there. Your mom put you down and you walked right onto the basketball court, unafraid of the big teenage boys playing there, determined to grab a basketball.

You stopped the boys in their tracks.

And I know that was just the beginning.

Happy birthday. I love you.

Love,
Auntie Pretzel

Welp, that month sure went by fast!

August went by in a whirlwind of a trip to New York (the first in years, in which I ate, drank, sang karaoke, drank, played cards, saw Moonrise Kingdom and The Dark Knight Rises, and drank), got a (second) migraine my first day back and work that seemed to be the precursor to a sinus infection that kept me sick and up with a cough for about two weeks (after getting a short course of antibiotics, it was only LAST night that I slept through the night without taking a cough suppressant), leading two big field trips at work (one to Crane Beach and one to Water Wizz near Cape Cod; the second of which I rode all the rides with the kids, including the scariest, most intense water slide I've ever been on--so intense that the wedgie I got while riding it hurt my butthole for minutes afterward), and lots of insane prep for our fall programming.

(Apologies for the terrible grammar in the above paragraph.)

Oh. I also asked for a raise and got one.

So. Go me!

I had an idea this month for a new weekly (monthly?) column. One in which I will write weekly letters to the kids that make the most significant impact on me at work.

This was inspired by Cheryl Strayed, who writes this column, and whom I met at a book signing this month. Her book tiny beautiful things is exquisite. The kind of book you read and then start over right away.

The problem is, I can't decide who to write to first.

It's been an incredibly moving summer, in terms of the young people I work with.

There's the teen who asked me a question in a program I am helping run that made me out my own prejudices in a room of judgmental and convicted other teens. There's the one who heard about this incident and shut me out for weeks until he helped me run the field trip to Water Wizz. There's the teen whom I feel legitimately is my friend, who was duly rewarded with a trip to Disneyworld this summer. There's the teen who helped one of my programs succeed with her great leadership and maturity. There's the 10-year-old who had a super tough spring with me but ended up being the star of the summer and performed in our Extravaganza in four different acts. There's the incredibly creative 9-year-old who seriously excels in everything he does at the club.

I can't pick one to write to as my flagship new column.

Maybe the start of fall program will make it all clearer.

So, here's to another beginning.

Overheard at Work, vol. LII

Who else is utterly shocked that it's August?

As you can see from my previous post, I've had an insane couple of weeks at work. This culminated in me getting a migraine late last night, just before I take my first vacation since January. (I'm not entirely surprised, but it sucks nonetheless.) Took the morning off to sleep in a bit and then headed right back into work. Relieved and looking forward to getting a small break!

"Isn't Ke$ha just like a drunk Taylor Swift?"--teen, as he and his group were discussing artists to emulate for a music project

"She's a bumblebee!"--teen, describing her friend who is both Asian and Black

"No one waves nowadays."--teen, cutting me down and yet potentially speaking truth?

After the community-building training we did last week, the teens that participated and I were inspired to walk around the city and club with signs offering "Free High 5's!" So, before I left work at one point this week, I walked around the whole club carrying one of the signs, and one 12-year-old stopped me to say, "Excuse me, the only signs I'll read say 'Free Tacos.'"

I can't say I blame him.

A Banner Week

This has been a very intense and magical week in my professional life (and it's not over yet).

Tuesday, I spent the day at an asset-based community-building training with a group of teens from work who will be involved in a year-long art-social justice program. We were one of five groups of teens and staff from other organizations, totaling to about 75 people in the room.

Here are some of the things we did as a large community that day:
1. Crossed the large circle as quickly and directly as we could, without touching anyone else.
2. Crossed the large circle as quickly and directly as we could, touching at least 6 knees.
3. Crossed the large circle as quickly and directly as we could, touching at least 6 bellies.
4. Crossed the large circle as quickly and directly as we could, touching at least 6 noses.
5. Crossed the large circle as quickly and directly as we could, hugging at least 6 others.
6. Circle danced to Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There?"
7. Learned two choreographed, circle dances, one based in Celtic tradition and one based on switching partners.
8. Played a large game of Musical Chairs.
9. Played a large game of Musical Chairs, in which chairs are taken out but not people and in which everyone still needs to end up seated.

Wednesday through Friday, those same teens and I went to an Undoing Racism training.

Here are some of the things we did:
1. Solved a puzzle
2. Drew an illustration of a "poor neighborhood."
3. Identified systems of oppression
4. Identified internalized racial oppression
5. Defined racism
6. Explored examples of racism in our organization
7. Brainstormed next steps to undo racism in our organization

This weekend, I have been attending the Arts and Passion-Driven Learning Institute through the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

So yesterday, I went straight from undoing racism with 13 teens to sitting in a concert hall surrounded by old white people.

Yo-Yo Ma is the founder of the Silk Road Project and Ensemble, which resides at the Arts in Education program at Harvard. The Silk Road Ensemble is a large group of musicians from around the world who create and collaborate around new work and take their improvisation and curriculum to schools around the world, as a means of exploring learning through and in the arts.

Here are some of things I've done in the last day and a half, as part of this program:
1. Cried twice at the Silk Road Ensemble performance
2. Watched a parody of Lady Gaga's song "Born This Way," created by 2nd graders called "Snakes were Born This Way"
3. Created a story using sound, voice, and language, including Mandarin, about getting caught in a rainstorm
4. Been part of a human table that street acrobats flipped over in Harvard Square
5. Played bumper cars with a desk on wheels with Yo-Yo Ma (we're pretty much besties)
6. Been told I look familiar by more than one person (and that I look Latina by one)

I am about to curl up in my bed and get ready for the half day more of training that happens tomorrow.

Yo-Yo already told me he won't be there.

That's right, I called him Yo-Yo.

Since when is this my life?!

Yep.

A couple of my friends shared this on Facebook, one even commenting that listening to stories like this all day is her job.

Mine too.

Except the kids at my job would have ended the story after the milkman died.

*sad trombone*

Overheard at Work, vol. LI

We're three weeks into our summer programming, which is kind of bananas.

Summer means we are open all day long, as opposed to just afternoons. My schedule has made me a day walker again, and also someone who wakes up before 7 AM every day. I've adapted nicely, I think.

I've been collecting quotes for several weeks since the days pass in a flash of hundreds of kids and that often means that nothing particularly stands out from the cacophony.

"I can't be showing all my goodies to people who don't eat candy."--my colleague, talking about something in the vicinity of sex, I think.

She's also the person who said this: "Ryan Gosling's nostrils are so sexy, I want to crawl up in them."

"I'm a grown man. I have chin hair."--teen, when his age and maturity were questioned.

"Lemme see your tweets."--teen, while riding on the train home with me. It didn't strike me as vulgar until I relayed the story to my roommate, but I'm pretty sure he really just wanted to see my twitter feed.

"Fruitcake!"--12-year-old's epithet, which she used when I told her the plum she was eating was beautiful but she couldn't eat it in the room where we were.

Me, to my sick supervisor: Do you need ibuprofen? DayQuil?
Supervisor: I need "Eye of the Tiger."
Cue me singing it to her, while jumping around her office, while she shadowboxed with a belt around her head. Yep.

12-year-old while playing Bananagrams: Tier. Like tier of a cake. I watch Cake Boss too much.

I'm Real Tired Because I Dreamed This Right Before Waking Up

I had a dream right before I woke up (at 6:45, bleh).

It was super vivid then but now, less than an hour later, it's already begun to fade.

Something about how everyone (including my mom and my friend from work) slept really late and made us late to go see Neil Patrick Harris (referred to from now on as NPH) in a Broadway musical called The Entertainer.

And I was so pissed because I haven't seen a Broadway show in years and nobody seemed as upset about it as I was. And we kept stopping to buy snacks and just kept getting later and later. And my friend was like, "Oh, you owe me money for snacks." And I was like, "You owe me money because we're missing seeing NPH in The Entertainer."

And then NPH was actually with us and wanted to buy 11 pistachio muffins for some reason.

And then I saw him fly through an open window where Coby Smulders, who was sort of dressed like a man because of something that had happened earlier, (she plays Robin on How I Met Your Mother, by the way) was waiting with candles and then they shared their first kiss, and NPH was like, "Totally worth it."

(The pistachio muffins were for her, the symbol of 11 months of something.)

And then the theme song from Perfect Strangers played.

So basically, my subconscious writes sitcoms.