@ Home in the World

OMG, I want to be this guy!

Seriously, can you imagine having this as an idea, and the guts to put it together?

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

My Russia

"Mama, will you draw my Russia?" asks the Pumpkin.

He and his father are the real artists in the family, but he insists and so I take the crayon and do my best attempt at something resembling St. Basil's or St. Petersburg's Church of the Spilled Blood. My attempts are always too asymmetrical, the onion domes too disturbingly phallic. But Pumpkin doesn't really know this, and is pleased.

His teacher told me a story of an international chamber music quartet that came to visit the school and play for the students. The musicians were from everywhere from Wyoming to Japan and they played music of all different cultures. When they announced a piece from Russia, Pumpkin once again said "My Russia!" and sat up with a smile. A boy from another classroom turned and said to him "I'm from Russia too." The two boys listened to the piece with rapt attention, happy to have connected with their heritage, and each other, in some small way.

It's hard to know what he remembers. He will often repeat the phrase "I was a baby in Russia," but the truth is that he didn't come to us until he was three years old. I think he knows more than he can really communicate.

Russia remains important to him, but he has crossed a threshhold. He no longer wants to be addressed by his Russian nickname. "I'm not __________, " he will say. "I'm __________!" The songs he sings now are all in English.

For both boys, Russia is a place of fancy buildings and stories. Most of their memories are wrapped up in the photos they've seen a million times. But a place you have lived in inevitably touches you and lives on inside of you ever after. Russia is a multi-dimensional study in contrasts; opulence and dilapidation; opportunity and struggle;  democracy and dictatorship. It is the coldness of the climate, and the gruffness of the people, broken open by the warm smile the director gives you when you say "Da. Yes, I will take this child, about whom I know so little, and make him my own. He will have a home with us."

Like their birthplace, the boys have struggled with transitions, clinging to the old, while trying to find their places in the new. Their challenges have brought me to the breaking point more than a few times. But more and more these days I can look at their little heads bent over their "work," or talk with their teachers about the difficulty they are having and the support they are getting, or watch the sheer joy they express when visiting with their grandparents, and I can think  --

Thank God they're here.

__________________________________

This week we mark five years with Tigger and three years with Pumpkin as part of our family. We celebrate the growth of both the children and the adults in the family.

We did it!

We're back. All four of us. Except for a brief episode involving wandering into the ladies' room on his own instead of following Piper and Tigger into the men's, we managed not to lose the Pumpkin.

This is a HUGE step for our family. For the longest time we despaired of ever going anywhere because of Pumpkin's sillycrazydevilchild behavior in new situations and his propensity for running ahead, ducking between strange adults ahead of us so that we have to barge past all these people to catch up with him. Trying to hold his hand in a public place results without fail in a huge public tantrum and in all these years, we have not been able to get past it.

So when we made the commitment to take this trip and take the kids, I talked to him every night about staying with us, holding hands in the airport, flying in a plane, not getting lost. Every night for three weeks or more.

And it worked. I'm not sure that I can express how grateful I was to be eating dinner outside a very nice restaurant looking out on the warm, moonlight spattered ocean with my kids behaving decently. You could almost believe they were going to be 6 and 7 next month. Six and Seven. And we survived.

We stayed in the same Deerfield Beach neighborhood I stayed in several years ago when the company I was with at the time had me working with a team based there. It was so weird to turn the corner on Route A1A and know where I was. I think the hotel I stayed in back then has since been consumed by the condo market, but the hotel this time was also right on the beach.  I didn't even know Howard Johnson's still existed, but that's where we stayed. OK, it wasn't the Embassy Suites, but it was pretty decent. It had a pool, that's all the kids cared about. I also have to acknowledge on of the wonderful restaurants we ate at on the second night. They are just getting started in that space and I hope they do well. The waiter was infinitely patient with the kids and the food (fresh-caught snapper picatta for Piper and a combination veal and chicken marsala for me; and a pizza which picky-eater Tigger pronounced "the best I've ever had.") was wonderful. If you are ever in the Boca Raton area try Cafe Viggiano (website coming soon). We actually got the kids to try and like fried calmari. It doesn't get much more adventurous than that when you are a kid. No, they stil don't know what it is.

I also had a tiny brush with fame while I was down there. On the way back from my training class, I crossed paths with Charla from the Amazing Race. I actually passed her in the car first, thinking "geez that looks just like Charla." While walking back to the hotel I passed her on foot, clambering into an SUV with a husband and new baby. Someone who had to be either her mother or her mother-in-law called her by name, so even if I hadn't been sure before, my suspicions were confirmed. It's kind of bizzare to feel the inclination to walk up to someone you've seen on TV and say "How are you?" like they'd have any clue who you were. Reality TV is weird like that. As heavily edited as you know it is, you still feel like you went on the trip with the people on the show.

Other than that, Pumpkin, and his alter-ego Curious George, were obsessed with the palm trees in Florida. He wanted to climb them, shake coconuts from them, and he would have taken one home if it would fit in his suitcase. There were no ripe coconuts to be had, but I bought one here in the supermarket when we got back and stuck it in his suitcase. He made up a whole story about how I got a ladder and climbed up the palm tree to get it for him, because that's what he would have done.

So, mission accomplished, I guess. We have finally broken the travel barrier. We are not quite ready for Europe yet, but I feel like we could go to Seattle to see Piper's sister, something we could not have done last year. It's funny, when I see commercials for diapers now, I am reminded that it has been two years since I've had to deal with diapers and that that particular phase of the boys' lives is over for good. This week, my littlest boy reached a milestone of similar import and he grew up a lot. We are, bit by bit, getting where we need to go.

Living la vida Boca

So I just happened to have to take this training class for work. The class just happens to be in Boca Raton. It just happens to be vacation week at the boys school.

See ya!

(Back at the end of the week)

Have Job. Will Travel.

I have to be one of the few people who enjoys traveling for work. It may have to do with not going on any of those trips that so many of my classmates went on - the language class related trip to France or Spain in High School, the semester abroad in college. Nope. Instead I gave up my 10-year reunion to go on my first business trip - to a conference in Atlanta. I had fun, and my classmates tell me I didn't miss much more than fat ex-football players. That was the beginning of more than a year of trips to strange places I'd never been - Mobile, Alabama, Dallas, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, Akron, Ohio, and others. My mother, even more of an East Coast snob than I am, called it my white trash tour, but I had a lot of great experiences and a lot of great stories. Did you know that Mobile claims the first Mardi Gras, that there is a gay neighborhood in Dallas? Kentucky was the most beautiful state I've seen short of Alaska and Hawaii. And you can go straight for a long time in Ohio. That's about all I have to say about that.

Not that I was any kind of road warrior. The one time that I had two trips on either end of a week, the mere sight of the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant as we were landing at Logan airport brought tears to my eyes. Apparently, there's no place like home.

Now that I am working again, it looks like I will be traveling again soon. We are talking about trips to Denver (been there, that's a good story), Orlando, and well, a conference in Las Vegas. Yep, that's right, Vegas, baby.

Now I could live my whole life without going to Vegas and not feel that I have missed anything. It's just not my thing. I've never even been to Foxwoods in all these years, because I couldn't stomach the idea of pissing away money one quarter at a time, and I'm loathe to watch seniors gambling away their Social Security Checks.

So yeah, the conference is in Vegas, in the Flamingo Hotel, of all places (apparently this is Bugsy Siegal's original hotel). Now I'm always entertained by a little retro kitch, but, uhm, eww, white patent leather?  Really, I'm surprised there's no mirror on the ceiling.

One of my coworkers is trying to find a way to go with me, and that would be more fun. What's the use of going all the way to Vegas if there is no one to listen to my rambling snark. Yes, I know that's partly what the blog is for, but really. Anyway, she's all excited about the prospect of going to some of the restaurants. Having seen this more than a couple of times (yeah, sorry, all kitch and no food, but trust me, there was some, and apparently it was good), I'm thinking that she might have to make a case to our manager. Not that such stuff would be within expense report limits. But, oh, crap, what would I wear?

Not Quite April in Paris

Some of you may have noticed the new button on my sidebar. You see there, the one that says Top Blog Mag?  I put that up a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled on their site from I don't even know where.

When I first found it, the site was just an idea, they hadn't even put out their first "issue," but since I'm fascinated with the different kinds of things that people are trying to do with the blogging platform, I picked up the button even though I hadn't anything to contribute at that point.

Now in their third issue, they posted a theme that matched something that I had been pushing around in the back of my head. Inspired, I got the story down on paper, edited it for length, and got it to them for Issue three.

Et Voila! I present a detour in our adoption story, the text behind the photo on my sidebar, and the realization of a lifelong goal, if only for a moment.

Comcast, Take Me Away!

Since becoming parents, we have been grounded, so to speak. And while I refuse to believe that our travelling days are over, they have been rather limited since our last trip to Russia, almost two years ago.

So we have taken up armchair travelling, courtesty of whatever interesting travel/cultural programs we can find on TV. We've watched every season of The Amazing Race. We catch Globe Trekker whenever we can, old episodes of Rick Steves, and other things that we have found on different channels. We have mostly been disappointed by the Travel Channel, every time we turned it on we'd find ourselves presented with shows on places like Las Vegas, Carribean resorts, and Extreme McMansions of the California Coast. Or at least that's what it should have been called.

But that seems to be changing. I think we were watching Top Chef when we saw an advertisement for Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. This is our kind of show. Bourdain, a New Yorker, really seems familiar to me, and not just because I read his book Kitchen Confidential a few years ago. He goes to interesting places and his show is adventurous with a healthy side of cynical. Part chef, part writer, and part traveler, he is like M.F.K. Fisher with a badass attitude. He is also not afraid to eat anything (better him than me). It is in many ways a weird food tour of the world. Food being an essential part of culture, Bourdain showcases local eateries, but also traditions, rituals, and secret clubs where food is at the center of the gathering. At some point this season, he will have a show based in Moscow and I am anxious to see his take on it.

The only problem here is that his show is on at 10 PM here. Both this and ER, which I have tried unsuccessfully to give up, keep me awake past my bedtime. Trying to balance both a consulting job and two children, one of whom wakes me at least once every night, has made a decent bedtime important again. And so maybe, just maybe, it is time for the DVR. Keep in mind, I didn't have so much as a television before my husband and I moved in together. Of course, I actually went out of the house a lot more in the evenings back then, so there was little need for a TV. I wonder how much Comcast is going to charge me for this service so that I can record the two or three programs I actually look forward to watching, as opposed to whatever happens to be on when my husband turns on the TV. This is why I could never get into LOST or 24; I can't make appointment TV. I have a family and a career, I need flexibility, people!