Change In Plans

This short post is about departing from our small (but comfortable) cabin in the Catskills, leaving behind the remaining semblances of normalcy and stability, and actually starting to travel as a family. It is also about a short, strange visit to the house we sold and moved out of in June.

We set off this morning, and arrived today at the first of many strange and exotic ports of call (a drum roll please) … Morristown, New Jersey.

The trip to Morristown is serving a number of practical purposes:

1. We took the kids to our wonderful family pediatrician to get vaccines. It was pretty awful to watch someone stick big needles in our children’s small and vulnerable arms, but both kids were very stoic, almost businesslike, about it. India and I are getting our vaccinations tomorrow (plus a couple more for the kids)
2. Zola is having a long-awaited, eagerly anticipated sleepover with his friend Matthew. For the last two weeks, Zola’s first words on waking up have been, “Only X more days until I sleep over at Matt’s!” This morning, he woke up with a huge smile, and said, “Today is a very great day.” We love Matthew and his family, and we hope the boys have a wonderful time (and sleep at least a little bit).
3. We were able to visit actual, physical Citibank and Chase Bank branches, and do our banking without going into Manhattan, which makes life a little easier
4. We filled our travel-medicine kit, and stocked up on other some travel supplies

As part of the trip, we stopped by the house in Pottersville, New Jersey which had been our home from August 2004 until eight weeks ago.

On the June morning, when we moved out, the circumstances were not really conducive to us having an emotionally satisfying “Goodbye old house, you were a good old house!” moment as a family. India and I were in two separate cars, and the cars themselves were absolutely stuffed, Clampett style, with luggage, household possessions, and junk. We were racing for the airport, and everyone was feeling nervous about missing our flight. On top of all of this, somehow our cat, Wilbert, had been put in the car with me and the kids. I am pretty allergic to cats, and even from within his little carry case, Wilbert was emitting enough dander to fog the air. I felt vaguely like I had been teargassed while suffering from a bad cold. In short, we skipped the tearful farewell.

Today, when we pulled into the driveway (the new owners were not at home), a strange thing happened. No one said anything for a while, and then Zola said. “I can’t believe they put that big metal rain gutter on the roof.” India replied, “That metal gutter has always been there, sweetie.” Then there was silence for a minute, and then I said, “Goodbye old house. You were a good old house.” And then we left. No one even wanted to get out of the car.

We still have a lot of affection for our friends and neighbors, and we have some happy memories from our time in that house. Any emotional connections which had built up for the house itself, however, seem to have evaporated quickly. Suddenly, we feel like the travellers we are becoming- cut adrift from home and hearth.

Tomorrow we set out for Falmouth, Maine, to see my sister and her family. The journey has begun!

This post is an introduction to our three-year-old daughter, Tallulah.

As a Dad, this seems easy: she is beautiful and perfect in every possible way. Imagine perfection in a small human being, and that is the right description. Leaving aside my (are they obvious?) paternal biases, I will try to gin up a little more nuance and backstory.

Having Tallulah required a great deal of medical assistance, exceptional determination on India’s part, and some unknown amount of luck. In February 2002, India and I lost a baby girl in the 27th week of pregnancy. We named her Graca Riverside Baird, and we scattered her ashes on the side of Lion’s Head mountain in Cape Town. I don’t know if that is considered a miscarriage or a still birth, but it was a shocking, horrible, and painful experience. Holding that tiny, still baby in a room at St. Luke’s - Roosevelt Hospital may have been the saddest moment of my life.

In the year after losing Graca, we had four miscarriages. We delved deeper and deeper into the strange world of medically assisted reproduction, once losing twins in Weeks 11 and 12 after our first cycle of IVF. After our second round of IVF (with genetic viability testing of the blastocycsts before implantation), and with India giving herself twice-daily heparin injections (in case undiagnosed blood clotting had been the problem), we finally had a baby who made it through the first trimester. My incredibly determined wife (maybe the most compliant heparin self-injecting patient in history) and I sweated through months of checkups and ultrasounds, trying hard not to raise our hopes too much.

Finally, in November 2004, we had a Tallulah. We should give a big shout out to Dr. Amos Grunebaum (superstar high-risk OB/GYN), Dr. Orly Ettingen (superstar women’s health specialist), and Dr. Owen Davis (superstar IVF doctor) and for all of their colleagues at New York Presbyterian/Cornell Reproductive Medicine Institute. They were individually and collectively amazing.

Within hours of Tallulah’s birth, the memories of sadness and tribulation were largely replaced by the joy of our new baby. The three plus years with Tallulah, who we call Lula or Lu, have been almost a pure pleasure. She is very funny and sweet. She is hugely opinionated and bossy. She is ridiculously good at puzzles, and she loves to organize her toys and clothes. Even at age three, she seems to have a lot of common sense. At this stage, every day with her feels like a blessing. My understanding is that things may get a little rockier in the ages between about 12 and 24, but in the meantime, we feel so very fortunate to have her in our lives.

Lu started nursery school this year. As an example of her being “hugely opinionated”, she fired her first nursery school after going for five days. She just declared, “I am finished with the Cottage School,” and made clear that she would not go. Neither India nor I was crazy about the place either, so we withdrew her. She loved her second school (Pottersville Nursery), and she really loved what we called “Suzy School,” where a wonderful Peruvian teacher would come to our house and teach Lu and her friends for a few hours each week.

We are a little concerned about not having Lu in school this coming year: she is really ready for the structure and for the socializing. I am also a little concerned about the health risks (or “losing her somewhere” risks) oif taking such a small child on this big a trip. Although we probably won’t get a leash, we are finishing a course of travel vaccinations, and we will hold her closely and make sure she is easily identifiable (e.g., India got us all Medical Alert bracelets already).

We also don’t have any sense for how much of this time, and this trip, Tallulah will remember with specificity. My understanding is that episodic memory develops around age three, but who knows? At the very least, we hope it all blends into a warm “I had a very happy childhood” feeling that she carries with her for her whole life.

This post is about celebrating the completion of 1,000 miles on my bicycle in the last 35 days. This is a small victory, over an arbitrary and self-imposed challenge, but it still feels great to be finished. More importantly, the summer of riding itself was really spectacular.

In the combined ten years prior to this summer, I would be surprised if I had ridden even 500 miles cumulatively on a bicycle. I got a new mountain bike a few years ago, and enjoyed riding on a few summer weekends, but it did not add up to much.

When I left my job, in late May, I wanted to set some quantifiable goals, knowing that this would reduce the risk of dissipating and/or slipping into a funk. Knowing nothing about cycling, I decided to buy a nice road bike, and I set the 1,000 mile goal (publicly, vocally and repeatedly). To be honest, the original goal I talked about was 1,500 miles, but an experienced Beaverkill cyclist persuaded quickly me that this was just not feasible.

Initially just on the mountain bike, and then much more so on the new road bike, I have been out riding hard nearly every day. I picked up a couple of hundred miles just going back and forth to camp with Zola (Thanks for the company, kid. I really enjoyed the time with you, and learned more about Pokemon than any adult has the right to know).

I picked up another couple of hundred miles riding to places where I normally would have driven: to dinner at the Inn or the pub, to friends’ houses, to swimming, to baseball.

The rest of the mileage came from going out on long rides into the Catskills, generally by myself. The longest days were about 60 miles, but mostly I would go 30-40 miles - over mountains, along rivers, through woods. I have never really liked, nor felt entirely comfortable, being alone. This summer, riding by myself, I think I got a lot more comfortable with my own company: thinking, singing, swearing, sweating.

I rode about 95 miles in the last 48 hours, somewhat desperate to finish before we leave tomorrow. This afternoon, I got back to the house after a 35-mile ride, and found myself at 998 total miles. Zola rode the last two miles with me, telling funny stories about a sleepout he had this summer at camp.

There were many sublime moments in the 1,000 miles: enjoying the childish freedom of racing along the flats, feeling the laser focus of terror while bombing down big hills at 40+ mph, immersing myself in the beauty of the countryside. I greatly enjoyed the company of my son, my wife and daughter, and the friends I rode with. I also really enjoyed the time alone.

This is a small accomplishment, even in the not-so-grand scheme of things. That said, I feel tired and happy, and that is pretty good.

This post is about the anxieties that I am feeling as our departure becomes imminent.

Over the last few days, I have become increasingly edgy: short with India and kids, bothered by noise, and generally irritable. Even my clothes feel uncomfortable. As India and I spent a few hours today going over detailed elements of our daily plan, and assigning tactical tasks to each other, I felt anxiety bubbling up in me. To my discredit, I take this out on those I love, and am probably not very nice to be around.

This is a complicated mix of emotions, and is difficult to describe coherently (and without sounding like a neurotic or spoiled brat). I am definitely excited about the trip, and about spending time with India and with the kids. I think that my professional situation (more about that later) worked out for the best, and I have no regrets. For once in my life, I am not even particularly worried about running out of money, and about facing some horrible abyss called “running out of money.”

I have been able to identify some of the drivers of my anxiety:

• Awareness of not fitting in and being like everyone else - a sense of “otherness.” This becomes more acute on Mondays (when “everyone else” goes back to work), and has become more acute as camp has ended, and the very busy social time at the Beaverkill ended with it. I have a latent “what will people think?” worry.
• Fear of the unknown - not places, or situations, or people, but a fear of not having a routine, or a home, or any roots for a long period. As India talks about travelling for a full year from now (and she makes clear that she would travel forever if it were feasible), my anxiety levels go way up. I guess I like routine and consistency and predictability more than I had previously thought
• Abstract fear that, for some reason, I would never be able to re-engage with the world, and I would flounder around in unemployable limbo forever. This fear is less about money and security, and more about stature and having impact in my life. It may not be intellectually realistic, but I am discussing (uncomfortably, I might add) the world of my feelings.

Maybe all of this anxiety is normal and will dissipate once we actually get under way. I hope so, both for my own sake and for India and the kids. Grouchy old Dad. Over the next few posts, I will add some context to these feelings, and try to understand them better. I will also finish the descriptions of the family, and describe how we came to have this opportunity.

Despite the picture, this post is about us shifting gears as a family: winding down our idyll time in the Beaverkill, and really preparing to leave on the first leg of our travels in two weeks.

Camp ended on Friday, and many of the families have gone off for their “rest of summer” activities. We had our last baseball game on Friday afternoon - Beaverkill Bearcats beat the Shin Creek Slammers 20-6 in a real pitchers’ duel. I am at 934 miles on the bicycle, closing in on the 1,000-mile goal in the next couple of days (I hope). Even our little stone hut in the pasture is nearly finished.

India has been working feverishly to book travel, and accommodation, and activities. The Spain- Morocco-Tunisia-Turkey-Italy itinerary is in good shape, with details completely firmed up. We are still wrestling with how best to home school the kids (Zola in particular), but aside from that we pretty much know where we will be and what we will be doing.

We have also been shedding assets. Our lovely friends in NYC, Patty and David, bought our Volvo from us yesterday evening. It felt like a significant step away from our suburban existence to part with the station wagon, but we are glad that the car will be well loved, and that they will think of us (fondly we hope) when they drive it. David made the transaction incredibly easy, by being very organized. It felt vaguely disreputable as we sat on Riverside Drive last night and swapped the license plates, but I guess this is how it is done.

India also had a physical and got most of her vaccinations today, while Zola and Lu and I saw our old neighbors from New Jersey. A good time was had by all (except India, who was getting a lot of needle sticks).

When we got back up to the Catskills this evening, we swam in the pond and sat in the sun. The kids can definitely sense the shift in our attitudes, as we get serious about the trip, and the departure date looms. It is nice fro us to have a few more days here, clinging to some sense of normalcy before we start the perpetual motion machine.

This post is a further attempt to describe our eight-year-old son, Zola.

After years of being an absentee father and husband, it has been wonderful for me to be with my family all day every day. In particular, Zola and I have spent a lot of time together, particularly riding bikes to and from camp (he has ridden nearly 200 miles this summer). During these rides, I have gotten to know my own kid a lot better.

Rounding out the quick chronology that I started in my last post: Zola attended the start-up Willow School in New Jersey (http://www.willowschool.org/) for three years (kindergarten, and Grades 1 and 2). Willow is arguably “the greenest school in America,” and has won a lot of awards for the beauty and environmental sustainability of the buildings. There were a lot of things that we liked about Willow, but I had concerns about the intellectual rigor of the curriculum, and (more importantly) about how the school repressed the boyishness of our little boy. Zola’s talkative exuberance and physicality seemed to get him into trouble, particularly in the elective classes that saw him once or twice a week. By the end of second grade, Zola really started to view himself as a “bad kid.” His self-confidence and his deep-rooted enthusiasm were lower than I had ever seen them. Poor guy seemed really beaten down by the experience. Maybe these are just the rationalizations of any parent.

At any rate, this summer it was great to have Zola back in the Beaverkill camp (which nourishes the boisterous enthusiasm), and to see him reverting to what we think of as “his old self, his real self.” As objectively as I can tell, that real self is:

• Fundamentally a very kind, generous, earnest and loving kid
• A great extrovert, getting deep enjoyment and psychic energy from being around other people
• Intelligent and curious (many of the questions he has asked on our bike rides -about history, and science, and human nature- have been touchingly thoughtful)
• A very good and enthusiastic reader, and an impatient and reluctant writer (somthing we will work on a lot during the coming year)

He inherited most of these characteristics (except the extroversion and reluctant writing) from his mother.

I worry that he inherited my intellectual laziness, which I only outgrew as a graduate student in my 20s. This is another area we will try hard to work on in the coming year.

This feels like a reasonably good description of our son at eight. I should add that Zola loves Pokemon, he really thinks he should be allowed to drive the ATV on his own, he knows an enormous amount about animals, and that he is a wonderful brother to his three-year-old sister.

I am greatly looking forward to spending this special time with Zola, and to seeing our travels through his eyes. In the next post, I will attempt the easier task of introducing his sister.