New York missive no 151 - Alliums

When I shared some photos of alliums in Battery Park on Facebook a friend wrote that they are “improbable.”

That’s absolutely right. They are large balls of thousands of purple flowers, like fireworks frozen at their moment of maximum burst. They balance stably – improbably - on a tall stem that doesn’t wobble.

Often before work I walk around Battery Park. During the weeks after Mum died the alliums were out in bloom, clustered like sentinels alongside the pathways. In a lovely cross-continental connection, when I arrived at their house in London, there was an allium in a vase in the middle of the kitchen table.

Each of those flowers say so many things. “Stop, and marvel”, being one. And “anything’s possible.”

I have planted six allium bulbs in our garden. They’re currently lying out of sight beneath the ground (and today, beneath a layer of snow too). Let’s see if they emerge in the Spring. I’ve tried tulips, hyacinth and crocus too; hedging my bets.

New York missive no 150 - death through children's eyes

There’s a certain ruthlessness with the way that children talk about and apparently accept death. On the day that Mum died, I went over in my head what it would be like to tell the kids when we brought them back from school (we had managed to walk them to school just after I heard the news, as I needed the day to start absorbing it myself first). I imagined something like a grown up reaction; of us all sitting on the step at the back of the house, and both of them starting to cry, and holding them close. Instead, JNH said “I knew you were upset about something like that this morning.” CMH stayed quiet. Then they went back to playing.

A bit later, they said that “Gaggie and Popo’s house will just be Popo’s house now.” And when we all arrived there together the week of the funeral they went bounding into the house and out to the garden just like on our Summer visits, as if nothing was different, as if there wasn’t a glaring absence.

But it’s only “apparently accept” of course. Instead, they just have their own ways of responding, ways that are uniquely those of a child and that keep us surprised. One evening Dad was babysitting for them with my friend G. Apparently CMH came downstairs in his pajamas, took a framed photograph of all us from back in January, the last time Mum came to visit us in NYC. He sat silently at the table looking at it for a while, before going back upstairs. This weekend, we rode the Roosevelt Island cable car for the first time, and as we soared up above East River exclaiming at the view, CMH said: “There’s just one thing missing: Gaggie.”

Mum died just nine days after her Seventieth birthday, so for a while in their house there were birthday cards and big helium “70” balloons alongside a rapidly growing sea of condolence cards. When we all arrived as a family – that time the kids bounded into the garden – Dad decided it was time we got rid of the balloons, but we didn’t want to burst them. So we let them off into the sky. All three of them floated fast up to the right of the house. JMH said: “They are going to see Gaggie.”

New York missive no 149 - It sounds like a peacock whistling

"It sounds like a peacock whistling."

So said CMH about a sound. It would take you a long, long time to guess which sound - you probably never would.

It was the sound of one of those "fidget spinner" toys set on the ground and spun right next to a sheet of bubble wrap, which it rubbed to make a rustling whir.

New York missive no 148 - Today

There's never complete peace. In a quiet park you can let your mind drift and for a moment all will be still. But birds chirp, dogs bark, car breaks squeak on a nearby street and the wind blows.

You could call these distractions, or alternatively the necessary interruptions that keep us present. Without them the knowledge of the emptiness behind us and ahead of us would be too much to bear.

Today Mum died.

NY missive no 147 - A Master of the Universe on the 5 train

Since last November our office has been based down on Wall Street. When Dad was visiting recently he asked if there are many “masters of the universe” hanging around down there (he had just read Bonfire of the Vanities). As it happens the area’s more diverse than you would expect – it’s not just bankers. But I did encounter one up front recently.

I’d stayed later in the office than usual to interview people in SE Asia, and got the 5 train from Wall Street station around 9 or 10 pm. Unlike the rush hours when the trains are packed, my carriage was relatively empty. There were about eight people in total, spread out sparsely on the seats.

Two Wall Street types in suits came in, sat opposite each other, and one proceeded to regale the other at top volume about his latest business developments. It struck me that that man had absolutely no consciousness whatsoever of any other person in the carriage than himself and his colleague, who was far too eager an audience. On and on he went, his voice filling the carriage. He spoke lingo much of the time, about dynamics between departments and challenges in his new role that he clearly wanted to portray he was taking completely in his stride. He talked as if he knew the answers to everything, and as if what he was talking about, was everything.

This went on for two stops. When they got out, I heard him continuing at exactly the same speed and tone as they ascended an escalator, until finally they were out of earshot.

NY missive no 146 - Change, venomous soup, windowsill and Lemony Snicket

Change as opening up new doors

After 13 wonderful years I'm moving to work at a new organization in mid-April, shifting from international human rights to community organizing in New York City. Of course there are mixed emotions but I'm excited about the opportunity to help build alliances between labor, social justice and environmental groups in this city that I've loved since it became home in 2007 - all the more so in the current political climate.

Through the process of letting people know about my move and reading their responses, I've been reminded of Jhumpa Lahiri's beautiful New Yorker essay on shifting from writing in English, to writing in Italian. It's not about a change of career per se, but a change in context, and the way in which this has implications beyond the change itself:

"One could say that the mechanism of metamorphosis is the only element of life that never changes. The journey of every individual, every country, every historical epoch - of the entire universe and all it contains - is nothing but a series of changes, at times subtle, at times deep, without which we would stand still. The moments of transition, in which something changes, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember. They give a structure to our existence. Almost all the rest is oblivion."

I like the emphasis on change, rather than progress. As Trump's administration is reminding us pretty much every day, social "progress" is ephemeral, and in response the fight for justice has to be continuous.

CMH's soups

While I cook in the kitchen, CMH likes to make "soups" in a saucepan on the floor. The base is water, then he adds all kinds of things. Last weekend, he was making a soup for Barack Obama who was apparently coming to visit at 6am the next morning. Today, JNH got involved too and they got creative with a "venomous soup". The ingredients included lumps of green watercolor paint that quickly dyed the whole thing, salt, peppercorns, butter, flour, turmeric (the yellow wasn't strong enough to influence the bright green), blades of grass, peanuts, pieces of a blue sponge, and a floating cork.

We thought it could inspire a story called the "Venomous Sea".

The carefully-planned windowsill

Only important things get placed on JNH's windowsill.

At the moment, there's his cup of water (a permanent fixture), along with a Chinese china tiger (he was born in the year of the tiger), a wooden cat, a spider robot that M and D bought him at the London Science Museum last year and that he re-discovered today, and a couple of superhero masks. The items on the windowsill apparently help to protect him while he sleeps.

Only so dark for children

JNH loved the first book in Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events." It tells the story of three children who are orphaned when their parents supposedly die in a fire, and their lives proceed from bad to worse as they move from one crazy guardian to another. In the same way as with the Roald Dahl books, the fact the story was interspersed with humour, vivid characters and imaginative adventures kept him engrossed and unfazed by its underlying darkness and devastating happenings.

Then he spotted commercials for the series on Netflix. But after three episodes it was clear the bleakness was too much and poor kid said he didn't want to see any more because it was giving him nightmares. C and I went from loving his engagement with the story to feeling like bad parents for freaking him out. It reminded me of when I saw Nightmare at Nine Elm Street when I was 10 at a friend's house. I spent the rest of the Summer thinking that Freddie Kruger with his long metal fingers was coming up behind me to grab me. Minor trauma in the bigger scheme of things.

NY missive no 145 - Myth-releasing ice blocks

JNH likes to make up stories on our 15-minute walks to school. This morning the sidewalks were lined with snow following a heavy snow-storm yesterday. JNH broke "ice rocks" (aka lumps of frozen snow) along the way, by dropping them on the ground. He decided that on the day that all the ice rocks in the world are broken, all the world's myths would come true. The Loch Ness monster the yeti and so on, would be real.