November 07, 2015

My New Nephew Emerson!

November 07, 2015/ Laura Parker

I look a little happy in these pictures, don't I? I was. SO happy. So happy I could have exploded into little blue sparkles and helium balloons with "It's a BOY!" written all over them. Oh, how I love my new little nephew Emerson.

Last week I got to spend three heavenly days visiting my sister Megan and her precious little muchkins Paisley and Emerson. The trip happened in a very happy serendipitous way because awesome husby just happened to have some business meeting he had to go to in San Diego scheduled for a week after Emerson was born. I begged my wonderful Mother and Father-In-Law to take care of my munchkins and I tagged along on husby's work trip. My other sister, Heidi, and her family also had a different reason to be in San Diego at the exact same time so we met up, helped Megan as much as we could, held Emerson as much as we could, and played with Paisley as much as we could.

I had such a wonderful time and loved being close to my sister and "niecephews" so much that I bawled, sobbed, and sniffed the whole way to the airport. I'm really lucky that 3 of my 4 sisters live nearby and hate that Megan lives more than just a short car ride away. She needs to though so I just hop on an airplane as often as I can.

While in San Diego I rented a fancy car and reveled in my independence. I drove from our hotel in downtown San Diego to La Jolla, where my sister lives, every day to kiss, hold, snuggle, and squeeze Emerson as much as I could in the short time I had. Then I'd run off to play with Paisley , Sam, Jami, Heidi, and Glen at the Safari Park, or go out to a fancy dinner with husby. Husby and I also fit in a trip to one of my favorite beaches. He went surfing and my feet went exploring.

Sigh. It was SO wonderful.

Sam, Jami, and Paisley. Paisley loved, loved having her cousins to play with. Notice that she and Jami both chose to wear My Little Pony shirts.

Oh, how I love that smile and the girl who goes with it.

La Jolla Shores...this is my natural habitat. I adore how the sand sparkles gold in the sunshine.

August 25, 2015

NYC Date - Little Italy, Enormously Yummy

August 25, 2015/ Laura Parker

I had a goal, really more of a quest, to find the best bakeries in the city and doing so made fun dates. We'd heard tips about the bakeries in Little Italy so this night that became our "target area."

First off we found a romantic Italian restaurant in a more quiet part of Little Italy and sat outside on the sidewalk to people watch and just relax. I had them make a custom pizza just for me: pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, and artichoke hearts - yum. One of the couples around us had a baby in a stroller and we luxuriated in the fact that we were at the moment childless. Another group at a nearby table were made up of middle aged men out for a night of complaining. We reveled in the fact that we weren't sitting with them but were instead sitting with each other. It was a nice dinner.

Then we wandered hand in hand no where in particular, which is one of the delights of that city, but steering ourselves in the general direction of a bakery we had heard about. We eventually found Ferrara's where we promptly ordered a box of SIX lovely yummies and then went out to sit on a park bench and ate every last bite. You would have thought that after eating a whole pizza by myself I would be too full for dessert, but oh no! You'd have to see these desserts to understand. Here you go:

Spectacular, no? Ferrara's is a good idea.

After all that tummy stuffing we needed to do some more walking so we wandered over to explore Grand Central Terminal which was indeed grand and was also a terminal so weren't disappointed there either. The ceiling is made to look like a night time sky complete with little lights poking through the ceiling to imitate the stars and they were arranged to form constellations. All around were marble staircases and arches. The centerpiece was a huge and beautiful old fashioned clock marking the passage of time for all passengers. The entire building is somewhat dark and full of burgeoning mystery. As I gazed I couldn't help but want to write a story about it all. Maybe it was that the whole building reminded me of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Maybe it was because thanks to Harry Potter there is so much mystique in my mind about fancy train stations. Maybe it was because the constellations somehow reminded me of Percy Jackson, although I'm not quite sure why. All of it together felt adventurous and wonderful though and I marveled at the architect who for some reason felt to put pinprick constellations in the ceiling. Thank you, Grand Central architect.

August 19, 2015

NYC Date - MOMA (Museum of Modern Art)

August 19, 2015/ Laura Parker

Chris and I loved MOMA. I had 2 favorite paintings at MOMA and both of them moved me beyond words. So naturally, I thought I would write about them.

The first painting is by Pavel Tchelitchew and is called Hide and Seek. I've been thinking about this piece for weeks, unable to describe to others what it looked like. Yet I could spend pages talking about what I felt looking at it. To me that is what great art is.

Tchelitchew was a Russian born surrealist painter born to an aristocratic family. He moved to Berlin in 1920, then to Paris in 1923, and finally to NYC in 1934. I can see the influences that living in those places during those times must have had on him and his paintings. In 1940-1942 he painted this masterpiece and the Internet said, "Hide and Seek presents an apocalyptic vision of the childhood game of Hide-and-Seek during World War II." This painting is a mammoth - 6 1/2' by 7' and there is so much detail to discover in it and process that I could barely rip my eyes away.

So far this painting says to me things about the Holocaust not only as a mother and in view of how many children were massacred and how many children were ripped away from their families, but how the world at large lost a huge branch of its family tree. It talks to me about the horrors of war and that war in particular. It details innocence lost. As you look at it you cannot count the number of human and child figures you see and that is what was lost: it was innumerable, unfathomable, unmentionable. As big as that is, it also intimately depicts what one mother must feel at losing one of her children.

Below are pieces of the larger painting shown up close and by clicking on each image you can see them even larger:

What do you do with a DANDELION in this stage of it's life? You pick it up and blow, the seeds float away and are lost. Look at how one of the seeds is a child's face: scattered, blow away, lost.

See the blindfolded girl in the cheek of the child?

The second painting I fell in love with was Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth.

Wyeth was inspired in the painting of this piece by his neighbor who had a degenerative muscular disorder and was unable to walk. His father had also been killed at a railway crossing three years before and his work after that dealt with his grief. I felt an expression of so much grief and hardship, but overwhelmingly courage as I looked at this painting. The woman looks like she is determinedly making her way towards her house. It looks uncomfortable and like she has a long ways to go. She is beautiful and the light that shines on her and the pleasant color of her dress are in stark contrast to the rest of the painting. To me this suggests her value, her worth as a human being, her dignity. She is all alone and even though she doesn't have the use of her legs or even a wheelchair she is striving, even desperately so, although nothing in the frame of her body suggest defeat. She's earnest. I think she'll make it there.

I saw me in this painting and as I did so my throat grew thick and my chest tightened. Don't we all face what feels like and may even look to the rest of the world like insurmountable challenges? I may have the use of my legs but I have felt this way before; I think we all have. What do we do in those moments? Do we collapse on the ground refusing to move or do we pull ourselves forward with our face turned towards our goal?

I suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It's something that I hate and something that I fight every single day. Some days are worse than others. The worst ones end in panic attacks and this painting is what a panic attack feels like to me. I am all alone in my mind being tortured by an invisible enemy. Even if my husband is next to me there is no way for him to really reach me in the wasteland that is my head and body. My pulse races. I feel crippled. I wish I could run away but I can't because I'm stuck and the best I can do is try to crawl out of my misery. But that's just it, every time I have a panic attack I do as this woman is doing - I hold on, push through and somehow I make it back to safety again. Next time panic seizes me I'm going to remember the dignity and perseverance in the this lady's stature. I'm going to remember that just because I feel, and maybe am, broken that I still have value. I'm going to remember that I think she makes it to the house.

August 18, 2015

The Independent New York Adventures of Mrs. Parker - Day 2

August 18, 2015/ Laura Parker

I love my kids, I adore my husband, AND I really enjoy being alone.

Maybe it's that I never was alone my whole growing up. (Don't get me wrong, one of biggest blessings is being a twin.) Maybe it's because of the sparseness of moments alone between all the questions and needs of my children. (Understand that I am eternally grateful that they need and want me.) However, as I navigated my way around the city this day I luxuriated in the fact that no one there knew me, wanted me, needed anything from me, or even cared about me and I was all alone. Blessedly, quietly - even in the middle of an enormously busy city - alone.

I went on a tour of Radio City Music Hall and the uninterrupted room inside my head thrilled me. I digested every fact the docent said and tuned out as I pleased. I sat in an empty auditorium built for thousands and never felt so filled. What I saw and heard and learned was so unnecessary to my every day life and it delighted me.

Art Deco became beautiful to me and I appreciated how a style meant to be elegant and modern all those many years ago could still be now even decades and dozens of styles later. I marveled at stepping back into history and pictured myself a glamour girl out for an evening show. It was interesting to see the murals on the wall and how they captured such distinct caricatures. I was amazed at the technology of the hydraulic lifts in the stage. The lifts were so ground breaking back in the 1932 that during WWII they became classified military secrets, access to them was protected by military guard, and they were used as models in the construction of hydraulic lifts on aircraft carriers for WWII. Ever since my Drama Class obsession in Jr. High and High School stages have felt magical to me and it was extra magical to visit one so iconic.