Eight vignettes about power and (mis)understanding

and children, I guess

Dec 02, 2024

What is there to really say after November? I’ve been working on a longer piece of writing, which has had the effect of stunting my brain away from newsletter-format essay-writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how kids understand power, social dynamics, hierarchy, control, and influence, all topics that swirl around whose voices are dominant voices in our world. So, in some orbit of relevance, eight scenes from life of late:

Snow pants

It is 37 degrees out and much to everyone’s surprise, it is snowing on Thanksgiving, despite a forecast for rain all day. My kids want to know where their snow pants are.

“I didn’t bring your snow pants. I didn’t know it was going to snow,” I tell Ada, as she lays, prone on the couch, watching Octonauts with her four year old cousin in our Airbnb.

Ada is appalled and incredulous that I could have forgotten her snow pants and audibly scoffs in my direction even though she insisted on packing her own bag for this trip and rejected my attempts to help multiple times.

“Well, why didn’t you pack your snow pants?,” I ask, provoking unnecessarily.

“I OBVIOUSLY didn’t know it was going to snow,” she says, in a way that makes clear that what was obvious to each of us about it not snowing was not equivalent in any way.

Kombucha incident

At Thanksgiving dinner, my 83 year old dad insists the children need special drinks, despite the broad acceptance of water as the default and favored beverage. First, he offers them what he believes is a non-alcoholic sparkling cider, but it turns out to have alcohol.

“Oh really,” he says.

He insists there is a strawberry kombucha in the fridge, and offers it to the kids before finding it. Then, he cannot find the kombucha, and in the end, the kids drink water, to nobody’s complaint.

The next morning, while we’re cleaning out the fridge before we leave, he finds the kombucha that he’d promised the kids the night before and I can see him, across the kitchen, about to give Ada the bottle—of which there is only one—before we’re about to get in the car. I can see the strife it will cause between the kids, of which there are two. I can see the kombucha all over the car seats.

“NO KOMBUCHA,” I yell. “Nobody needs an entire bottle of kombucha at 9 a.m.”

My dad apologizes to Ada, on my behalf: “Your mama is scolding me. Im sorry she doesn’t like you to enjoy any kombucha.”

Wacky hat day

The Friday before Thanksgiving is “wacky hat day” at school and Ada has elaborate plans. She wants to make a bouquet of tissue paper flowers in every available color: yellow, red, magenta, light blue, grass green. We make a cardboard crown to support the hat infrastructure and she hot glues feathers and ribbons all around the edge.

One giant, paper flower is declared “too large and too red,” and cast aside next to the recycling bin.

After the bouquet hat is complete, Ada tries it on and declares that she hates it. It is too tall, too fat, too big, too embarrassing. She sees my face, which is trying to be stoic, but must be saying something else that is more judgmental. She changes course and says that she loves the hat. She can’t wait to wear it the next day.

The next morning, she hates the hat again. She hates it so much, but says that she feels bad for me. I tell her to wear whatever she wants, even though my not-caring that she’s not wearing the hat is not convincing to her. She plucks the large, red flower from the recycling and ties it to a headband and wears this instead.

“I’m just sorry,” she says, “about how hard you worked on that hat.” Then, she walks out the door.

Black Friday

While driving back to New York, we try and explain to the kids what Black Friday is, and who it benefits, and American overconsumption, and the nuances between big box stores and local businesses. It’s a fine line between educating and being pedantic. Jacob plays the Rolling Stones’ song, “You Don’t Always Get What You Want” and we hear ourselves being annoyingly virtuosic.

The point we are sort-of trying to make is to be judicious consumers, but as children with little purchase power, zero financial responsibility, and only a desire to work on their Christmas wishlists, this message, we feel, is lost.

We stop in Kingston for lunch and a short walk, and on the block from the cafe is a small boutique selling locally made artist goods, like ornaments, ceramics, scarfs, and handmade candles. I select a pair of candles as a gift, and Julian is shocked and befuddled.

He announces, loudly, to the shopkeeper that we won’t be buying them, at least not that day:

“My parents told me that on Black Friday, you don’t always get what you want.”

True, true.

Game of Life

At our Airbnb, they have the board game LIFE, which I haven’t played since I was 10. It’s been updated, but the core principles remain the same. You spin the dial and arrive at a series of life junctures: career, marriage, kids, real estate, investments, retirement, and have to make a series of choices about your future.

Marriage costs you $50k up front, but your spouse is worth $50k at the game’s end. Kids cost $50k a pop, but pets, mysteriously, cost nothing. A scientist makes a salary of $80k, but a chef, $70k. A cottage costs $120k, but an eco lodge runs you $200K.

At the marriage juncture, Ada has already purchased a beach bungalow ($120k) and a ski chalet ($150k), so she doesn’t have much money left, as she considers the cost of a spouse. She looks at me and Jacob as she weighs the decision:

“Soooo,” she says, “would you say there is anything actually good about being married?”

We tell her this is a decision she needs to make on her own. In the end, after much deliberation, she opts for a spouse because she would “like the company” and “he’ll be worth $50,000 at the end.”

Social status

We are walking to the neighborhood library to return three extremely overdue books.

After a few minutes of uncharacteristic silence, Julian asks,“How high is my social status on a scale of 1 to 1000?”

I tell him I have no idea how to answer this question.

He considers this, and says: “I think it’s about a 600 but it’ll be higher once I have telekinesis.”

Ada confirms, without missing a beat, that with telekinesis it would be at least 800.

Friendship bracelet

I find a large gallon-sized bag of multi-colored embroidery floss in the closet and Ada decides she wants to make a friendship bracelet with a chevron pattern. Her bracelet is 8 strings wide, and overzealously colored like a pride flag.

Julian decides, after watching Ada, that he too, would like to make a friendship bracelet. He chooses the colors of a flame, going from black to multiple shades of red to orange to yellow. It’s hard to keep the colors organized because of their similarity.

In the end, his bracelet is 14 strings wide, making it substantially broader than Ada’s. She doesn’t like that I am helping him get the pattern started, despite her speed, dexterity, and her own quick progress. She makes her displeasure known, and that night, one of his red strings is cut short, lopped off by 10.5 inches, as her investigative report later documents.

The next morning she is appalled that someone has sabotaged Julian’s bracelet. Who would do it? Who could be so cruel? She creates a document of record, taping the missing string to the paper, listing out potential suspects and alibis. Through a process of elimination, and persuasive reasoning, she convinces Julian that it was either his friend Caleb, who’d come over the day previously to play Minecraft, or Jacob.

Julian agrees with this conclusion because of how thoughtfully she has led the investigation.

Activity Book

We get a kids’ magazine in the mail that sits on the dining table for three weeks, to everyone’s disinterest. On Sunday morning, Julian flips it over and sees a word search on the back. He asks Ada if he can do it, and now aware that it exists, she, of course, says no.

Instead he flips to another page and surreptitiously does a page with mad libs. Two thirds of the way through, because he is laughing to himself, Ada realizes he is doing the mad libs, and, peeved that he has de-virginized the magazine with a pen, announces that this gives her the right to the word search.

Julian protests, and Ada grabs a pen, lunging for the magazine. Julian says that the word search belongs to nobody. Ada says that he already “used” the mad libs, so the word search “belongs” to her. I admonish both children about the futility of trying to own activities in a magazine that nobody wanted to do for the last 3 weeks.

They stare at me blankly and laugh, then, in their amusement proceed to forget about the word search entirely.

I … win?

Gift Recommendations:

I’m not planning to do separate gift guides this year b/c honestly, it’s all too much, but I put together a lot of recommendation guides for kids & tweens for The Strategist over the last month-ish:
I also have a Bookshop.org shop for my children’s book recommendations and stand by these all!
My go-to gifts, always and forever, can be summed up as Nice(r) Things For Daily Usage. Also, all mine and Jacob’s picks from last year.
- Great socks: Le Bon Shoppe Girlfriend Socks, Darn Tough for the warm stuff, Bonne Maison for the great patterns
- Food and drink things: Chili Cheeks chili crisp, a beautiful bottle of olive oil, a jar of luxardo cherries, a pack of canned negronis or phony negronis, a gift certificate to a favorite restaurant
- Delightful things made by creative people: These customizable guest check paintings by Julia Rothman, these mini prints by Anastasia Inciardi , a beautiful mug, ceramics and textiles by Chloe May Brown
- House things: Great glasses that can be used for water or fancy drinks, a fish spatula, a kinto coffee tumbler, an elegant cocktail shaker, an electric pour-over kettle from Fellow, a beautiful Welsh wool blanket.
- A plant.

Other recs:

To watch: I took the kids to see Wicked and it was so much more fun than anticipated. Elphaba forever!
To watch: “The Apprentice (movie not show),” which, however excruciating I find it to read the news these days, is great. It focuses on Trump’s origins and the influence of the infamous Roy Cohn on his tactics and learned bravado. Cohn is played by a terrific Jeremy Strong in peak method mode. (Related, this A24 podcast convo between Sebastian Stan and Colman Domingo, this interview with Jeremy Strong on Fresh Air ).
To watch: Mikey Madison’s performance in Anora is Oscar-worthy. What a feat of a role and a movie. Worth seeing in the theater for the sound design and immersive being-in-the-club 35mm cinematography. (Fun fact: Madison is Max from “Better Things”)
Just finished: Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?, quite the perfect, little, existential read for my solo travel to Amsterdam a few weeks ago. Rachel Cusk’s 2006 novel, Arlington Park, about the various flavors of mid-life entrapment felt by the young mothers who live in the neighborhood of the book’s title .
Currently reading: Rejection by Tony Tulahimutte. What an absolutely vicious book (so far). In a good way.
In the December queue: Wellness by Nathan Hill, Gliff by Ali Smith, and Health and Safety by Emily Witt.
To do: A dance class at Good Move in Williamsburg, where I went for my friend’s birthday and got to do some very cathartic choreo. Beginner-friendly.
To listen: The Talk Easy interview with Jesse Eisenberg, who is one of those actors who seems to only play versions of exactly himself. And, yet, he always seems slightly insufferable as a character but quite disarming and considerate as an interviewee.
To read: The IVF mix-up article in the NYT. Holy shit.
If you find yourself in Amsterdam: Rise Bakery in De Pijp, Oocker, a wine bar with the most incredible bread on the planet that I will dream about forever, the curried caesar salad at Five Ways Coffee Roasters, the paper goods at Misc Store, and walking, biking, good coffee etc.

I’m rounding out my year of books/movies and would love to know what you’ve absolutely loved this year and I should try and squeeze in before 2024 is out.

Making it Work

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