Here you are, close to celebrating three years under your belt, my sweet Enlai.  And just as I wished for you the moment I first saw you as a tiny dot on a screen, I wish you love.  A love that you know and feel.

I wish you more running through sprinklers, rolling down hills, and making sand and snow angels.  Perhaps this year I will consider building some sort of stick, leaf and rock repository so that you no longer have to leave behind your park souvenirs.

I wish you more jumping on beds.  And I hope you never lose your love of blankets and pillows – lots and lots of pillows.

I wish you more somersaults and the mastering of a cartwheel.

I wish for you to be sincere and for others to be sincere to you.  And when you’re with someone, really be with that someone.

I wish for you an appreciation of the Tumbleweed and Outer Space Crayola crayon colours.

I wish for you to remain one of the best storytellers I know.  You seem to have been born with a pilgrim soul, and I hope you will see, hear, smell, feel and taste stories along the way, telling some and keeping some for yourself.

I wish for you to always remain ticklish.

I wish that you will listen to Joe Cocker and Otis Redding songs loudly and while you’re alone.   And I hope that you will appreciate Chopin’s Nocturnes and the geniuses that are Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus.  I hope that Nina Simone will always sound familiar to you, and I hope someone writes a song just for you.

I wish for you to find passages in books that will never leave you.

I wish you more moments of utter laughter like the few times you had a serious case of the giggles while brushing your teeth and never actually brushed your teeth because the toothpaste ran down your front and dropped to the floor, followed by your toothbrush a few seconds later.  And the time you talked about pepperoni pizza in the car with your Uncle Ronnie.

I wish you teachers – both inside and outside the classroom – that make positive impacts on you.  And at least one teacher that makes you memorise an e.e. cummings, Bukowski or a Wordsworth poem. 

I wish for you to have a favourite t-shirt.

I wish for you to remember to say thank you and please, to hold doors open and to offer your seat to another who needs it more than you.

I wish for you to make tamales and homemade pasta along with friends and family.  And I hope you will never be far from a good bakery.

I wish for you to have long pub lunches in London and fried sardines and white sangria in Formentera.  I wish for you greasy burgers and not enough napkins in Los Angeles.

I wish you love affairs.  And even a broken heart.

I wish you will visit the Centre Georges Pompidou on a rainy evening and see the Tour Eiffel lit up through a rain-streaked window.  Or a visit to Santorini, with your own terrace to watch the sun set over the Aegean Sea.  I wish you a US cross-country drive, but not in an Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce and not under a tight deadline.  I wish you a bike ride in Nantucket and the beach to yourself for a few hours.      

I hope that you will find at least one piece of artwork that begs for you to stare at it for hours.

You, my amazing son, have brought happiness to so many people.  You have introduced me to a happiness I didn’t know existed.  Here’s to the adventures that await you and to knowing that I will always be here for you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have become that mom.  We’ve been visiting family in the States for the last few months, and I have become the mom who frequents the McDonald’s drive-thru.  The other day, while hollering into the microphone to the invisible McOrderTaker, I found myself asking whether she could throw an Incredible Hulk into our Happy Meal because we already had Spiderman, Iron Man, Human Torch and Wolverine.  

When we drove up to the first window to pay, the woman kindly told me that she couldn’t find any Hulks, to which I responded, “Oh, okay, well, how about Silver Surfer or Captain America?”  She said to give her a minute to check.  Minute up, and neither of these superheroes was available.  I told her that we would not actually be wanting the Happy Meal after all because we really don’t want any duplicate superheroes.  I left empty-handed.  She was probably annoyed.  And as we hightailed it out of the driveway, my son let me know he was still hungry.  There was no happy in this meal; this non-existent meal turned out to be sad.  Very, very sad. 

Three days into my McDonald’s Anonymous program, I dropped out and went back to the place oft referred to as the McDevil.  It was Silver Surfer or Captain America or bust.  And bust I did.  As I gave my order to the man, he was quick to inform me that they don’t offer Happy Meals before 10.30am.  I paused, took a deep breath, and asked the man if they served large cups of calm before 10.30am.  We drove away, again foodless and empathy-less, and my son said, “I like toast, ma, and cereal.”  Of course he does, but I seem to have developed this strange compulsion to contribute to corporate giants’ bottom lines since we’ve been here, causing me to forget about his nutrition and what he might actually like to eat. 

I can’t say whether it’s the consumer culture, the favourable exchange rate or a certain nostalgia for foodstuffs and other unnecessaries like Chip Clips, Ziploc Storage Bags with the Smart Zip Seal and doormats that say “Well, Butter My Butt and Call Me A Biscuit, Look Who’s Here” in my birth country that make me want to be the Commandant of the Consumer Team.  Whatever it is, I’ve turned into some anti-heroine.  (Note to self:  contact McDonald’s and ask them if they’d be interested in including Tremendous Capitalist Mom, Out of This World Purchasing Matriarch or Amazing Procuring Mother figurines in future Happy Meals) 

As self-appointed Commandant of the Consumer Team, I believe it is my duty to pop in regularly to the little piece of paradise known as Target.  Just as Selfridges and John Lewis in my adopted country offer dining places to enhance (read: extend) the shopping experience, Target does so on a no-frills basis.  It greets with you with a Starbucks inside to give you your “get shoppin’ kick”, and then a Pizza Hut to feed a growling stomach after walking up and down the first twenty aisles. 

Ask my little guy what his ma’s favourite place is, and he proudly responds, “TARGET!”  Ask him where he’d like to have an adventure – Disneyland, the zoo, the park – and he proudly responds, “TARGET!”  This answer and the fact that I have been planning our adventures of late according to the destination’s proximity to a McDonald’s or a Target are clear indications that we need to get the heck out of dodge.  Oh, are those the Ikea catalogue and the Toys R Us ads I see that just arrived in the post today? 

Warning: What you are about to read may contain offensive, albeit honest, content. 

I’ve seen it all over the last three years:  turquoise and black what-looked-to-be-satin bikinis, a strawberry and banana patterned pair which had seen better days (the strawberries were pink, not red), purple G-strings, black mesh thongs, and your good ol’ white cotton variety.

I don’t work at Agent Provocateur or Maidenform.  I am a mom who takes her little one to playgroups and the park, and these panties are what I have observed on fellow moms while seated in a circle during song time or pushing my son on the swings.

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My dad and son in front of:
Doug Wheeler
RM 669, 1969
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

When I was seven, my dad was my light.  My parents divorced, and he and I ended up living in a small apartment.  Our meals alternated between the scrumptious fare on offer at Wienerschnitzel and Winchell’s and while eating chili dogs and chocolate donuts with rainbow sprinkles, we’d listen to Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Minnie Riperton.    

My dad had a way of knowing how to lift my spirits then, just as he does today, and this often involves an element of art.  While we lived in the aforementioned apartment, my dad enrolled in an art class at a community college.  He came home on one occasion with a sketchbook, and I couldn’t wait to peer inside.  For what seemed like hours, I looked at anatomical drawings comparable to da Vinci’s.  And when he asked me to be his hand, foot, or ear model, I was honoured.  On a separate occasion, he brought home a stack of magazines and asked me to tear out pages of faces I liked.  I handed him my selection and was a privileged eyewitness to my dad’s uncanny awareness of the special relationship between charcoal and white paper.    

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It never occurred to me to not display my son’s masterpieces – and I wholeheartedly believe they are masterpieces – on our walls.  Whenever he creates a new one, I ask him if I can hang it on the wall, and he says, “Tac, tac, tac!”  This is because I tell him I need him to help me pull pieces of White Tac to put on the back of the masterpieces in order to make them stick to the wall.

We are currently visiting family for an extended period of time, and the first things I thought to pack – before clothes, Calpol, blankie, and favourite books and toys – were the masterpieces.  I’m not sure if it was more for me or for him, but I immediately fixed the masterpieces on the walls in my parents’ home.  And when my little guy’s cousins came over, he was so happy to share these drawings, paintings, collages, and sticker, cotton wool, stamp and leaf creations with them.  He introduced each work of genius, excitedly stumbling over his words while describing the contents.  He was so proud, and I was stolzgeschwellt watching and listening to him.

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My name is Lisha, and I am an enabler.  My son has had an addiction for the past two years and shows no signs of overcoming this obsession.  Because he is nearly three years old, one might imagine his addiction involves some sort of sport, imitating animal noises, or having tantrums.  In fact, my munchkin is addicted to stickers.

It all started with a sticker book his grandparents gave him when he was nearly a year old.  Because it had reusable stickers with those wax-like pages, we wore that book out until it had five of its 40 pages and 2 ½ stickers left.  Fearing a sticker meltdown, I bought more stickers and stuck them on the remaining handful of pages as my son slept.   Upon waking up, he went straight to the place he always went – his sticker book.  He opened it up, smiled from ear to ear, and probably wondered how the sticker fairy was capable of performing such a tremendous feat.

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Confession time.  Before I was a mama, I would sometimes “forget” appointments or special events such as engagement parties or birthday dos.  The minority of the time, I truly didn’t remember.  But the other big fat percentage of time, I gave preference to forty winks, a work deadline, or a hot date.

It appears that such behaviour started backfiring once I became pregnant, and to this day, I am being punished for breaking the Thou Shalt Not Pretend to Forget commandment.  I am becoming murky-minded and absent-brained.  Or is it absent-minded and murky-brained? 

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I admit to being somewhat apprehensive when I was next in a queue fashioned to walk through Damien Hirst’s “Mother and Child Divided”. I imagined that the glass tanks would shatter, and I’d be soaked with formaldehyde and smothered by cow and calf organs. Of course, my experience was not this, and to my surprise I had a very emotional response to the work: I cried. I’m not entirely sure why, but such is my intimate relationship with art.  

The effect was similar when I viewed Anish Kapoor’s “Past Present Future” and Berlinde De Bruyckere’s “Schmerzensmann IV”. I was a mess, and no amount of intellectualizing the work could keep the weepies away. And these were pre-mama days. Now, I’m a wailing fool. I took my tiny tot to see Cy Twombly at Tate Modern a couple years ago, and because the flood caused by my tears could not be contained, I was afraid Mr. Todoli would never allow me back on the premises.  

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My husband calls it the Black Hole, and any time I ask him to get the baby wipes or snacks out of my bag, he rolls his eyes, exhales for approximately 42.7 seconds and then says, “You know I won’t find them.”  My friends and family have also taken notice of and commented on the ebony monstrosity, asking if it’s really necessary to carry around enough contents to sustain a small country.

A month ago, the woman at the British Airways counter eyed my bag and asked if I wanted to check it in, and I told her that it was one of my carry-ons.  Her eyes turned as large as a bush baby’s, and I immediately said, “It’s malleable.  It looks big, but actually there’s not much inside, and it squishes down.”  My husband laughed under his breath, while I hoped she wouldn’t ask me to show her just how malleable it was.

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A friend of mine – one of nine children – once told me that the babysitters his parents decided to enlist were a couple hippies who lived down the street.  They made the little ones sing Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin songs while dancing around a pretend campfire.  Following this activity, they’d all sit down, combing and braiding each other’s hair and giving each other fake tattoos.  I told him his remembrances made me want to throw on some bell bottoms and watch Woodstock clips on VH1.

My own walk down babysitter memory lane was a tad different.  My older cousin watched us siblings, and as she microwaved our ice cream because it wouldn’t readily come out of the carton, we listened to Boy George asking if we really wanted to hurt him and Michael Jackson insisting that Billie Jean was not his lover.  Our parents let us rent a scary movie, and as we all viewed it together, my cousin covered her eyes for most of it, asking if we shouldn’t consider a different film.

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