Chim cheree chim cheroo

We just saw Mary Poppins. The show, not the person. Not the movie either, though my parents do own a copy. I mean we saw the show, like, the Broadway one, only it wasn’t on Broadway, it was at The Fabulous Fox, here in St. Louis, MO. The Broadway show is on tour, see, and it toured itself right over here, and my mother, who is a sucker for musicals, and a sucker for Mary Poppins, and a sucker for her granddaughters, took us, by which I mean she took my daughters and myself, while G, the Boy, and Zayde (my father) stayed home. So we just got back, and the girls are eating pizza and singing “just a spoon full of shu-gah helps the medicine go down” and telling Zayde all about it, while G sits on the couch trying to watch TV and being bitter, because the one TV in my mother’s house that has refused to work properly since we got here is the one in the den, and G looks forward all year to the week he spends in my parents’ house sitting on the couch in the den flipping through Law & Order and the History Channel until all hours of the night. Like for example, the TV just got all screwy smack in the middle of Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech, and in fact, it went dead right before he said “tear down this wall.” I mean really. The poor man (G, not Reagan).

Oh, but Mary Poppins. Wow. Just wow. The kids were enchanted. I was enchanted. My mother is still enchanted, and is glowing more than the four of us combined. I’d glow a bit more, but I’m still wearing eye makeup, since a trip to The Fabulous Fox requires eye makeup, and eye makeup makes glowing uncomfortable. But the show was wonderful, truly, especially “Step in Time.” They didn’t do it until the second act, and BOY was I worried they weren’t going to do it at all, since the show was almost unrecognizable when compared to the movie. But thank God they knew better than to cut “Step in Time,” or I might have had to leave in protest, and then my mother and my daughters wouldn’t have had a ride home.

You know, this vacation needed a bit of salvaging. It isn’t over yet, but we do leave St. Louis in less than two days, which means it’s basically over, and, well, the whole G’s cousin dying thing sort of pulled the plug out of this trip being the fun and recharging getaway that it is every year, at least for G and me. Not surprising.

But now I’ve been recharged. This show was my spoon full of sugar. Now I have to think of something that will salvage it for G. Telling him that I might leave him for the guy who played Bert probably won’t do the trick, but maybe I’ll be able to fix the TV? Who knows.

So, since I last described stuff we did, we have done the following:

• Gone swimming in the P family’s pool
• Gone swimming in the R family’s pool
• Gone to City Garden, this unbelievable place that appears to be designed to allow my inner child to play in all the fountains I’ve ever wanted to play in
• Gone back to the gigantic mall so my kids could play more games and bring home more dumb pieces of plastic (I’d have preferred the zoo, but this was what they wanted)
• Gotten my kids haircuts in preparation for getting pictures taken (they look ridiculously adorable)
• Gotten pictures taken of my kids, and may I say, more outrageously gorgeous pictures have never been seen of anybody. You are really missing out by my not posting them here.
• Watched numerous movies, new and old, with my parents
• Gone through the box in my mother’s attic that was labeled “Miriam’s Barbies,” and the box is now gone and many of the contents will be coming home with us (heh)

The girls have been dividing their time in the house between watching TV, watching movies, playing with what’s left of my old Barbie dolls and Barbie apparati, putting on shows for whoever is lucky enough to be sitting in the living room when they enter, coloring, playing card games, playing board games, playing the piano, and having conversations with my parents.

The Boy has been spending his time scooting madly from room to room, calling out “Bah-bee? Bah-bee?” (that is, “Bubbe”), and when my mother answers, shouting something along the lines of “AH-GAH-DOCK!” – and then calling “Bah-bee?” again; causing trouble of all sorts; being cute; and above all, searching for Babysitter Allison. That is, “Ah-dee.” You have to see this to believe it. So far he has looked for her behind every bedroom door and every closet door, behind the fireplace screen, behind the front door, out each window, and (this is my personal favorite) in the cat door that my late cat Jinks used to use to get in and out of the basement. I dove for the camera as quickly as I could when I saw him doing this, but he moved on before I could get the shot. So you’ll just have to take my word for it. Imagine my son sitting in the hallway outside the basement door, holding the cat door open and poking his face into it, calling “Ah-dee? Ah-dee?” Because surely this was where he would finally find her. Priceless. My mother thinks his obsession with hunting for Allison is one of the funniest things she’s ever seen, which of course it is. “Where could we possibly be hiding her?” she says to him. “She’s not in the fireplace, I promise!” Then he usually smiles and says “AH-GAH-DOCK BAH-BEE!!” and scoots off like lightning to say “Ah-dee?” while looking behind something else. One might begin to think this child doesn’t know who his mother is. Which might in fact be the case, since he has yet to say “Ima” while looking behind anything. At least as far as I know.

Also, on Shabbos I actually dragged my bones and my son’s bones out to shul, which I had no interest in doing last Shabbos, but which I was sure to do this Shabbos because it was the aufruf of the brother of one of my childhood friends, and I knew my childhood friend would be there, which she was, and I got to see her, which is awesome, as well as funny, since she lives in Teaneck, but I don’t see her until we happen to meet up in St. Louis. Go figure.

So I got to say mazel tov to her and to her family, and I got to say mazel tov to her brother, though I sincerely doubt he knew who I was, nor do I think he found it especially funny when I commented that he should let his fiancee know that he’s only six years old. He did laugh, however. It’s so wonderful to come back and see so many familiar faces, as well as numerous unfamiliar faces, and numerous faces that are slightly familiar and which I discover belong to people who I thought, once again, were six years old. But they aren’t. In fact, most of them are at least 20, which just goes to show that time doesn’t stand still outside my life in New York.

So the aufruf included a gigantic kiddush, catered by the photographer from my wedding, who has since become a caterer, and so I got to hang around and see people for quite a while, which was great fun. Especially because people’s reactions to my kids are always awesome.

“They’re gorgeous!”

True.

“Where did those curls come from?”

Satan.

“Which is the one who was sick?”

The one in the white dress who’s dancing around with a bowl full of cholent as if she has no care in the world.

“Your son is adorable! Hi there! Good Shabbos!”

AH-GAH-DOCK!!

“RS is a blonde version of you!”

Lies.

“R is a clone of you!”

If you say so. People often say she looks like me, which I think is only because she isn’t blonde like the rest of them. But when people who have known me since I was a year old (literally) tell me that when R walked into shul, their immediate thought was “Wow, Miriam got short” - well, I might actually start to believe she looks like me.

I haven’t gotten short, by the way, but I’ve apparently gotten plump. No one at shul in St. Louis said this, but someone at the wedding we attended in New York the day we left made some comment about my dancing prowess, and then added “And you’re even expecting!” Heh. Incorrect, lady, though I did burst into tears at more than one point during Mary Poppins tonight, which would suggest the same thing, but it’s not like she knew that was going to happen. So I smiled and said “No, I’m not, I just never lost all the weight after the last one!” and the poor woman looked appropriately mortified, but we immediately launched into a sympathy-fest about how hard it is to lose those last however many pounds, and I immediately proceeded to make G’s life miserable by constantly whining about what a cow I am. Mooo.

I don’t really get it, though. It’s true that I never lost it all, but all my old clothes still fit. And I don’t think I looked especially pregnant at that wedding, though it’s true the waist was cutting into me a bit. Feh.

Anyway, among the old friends I saw on Shabbos was one of my oldest and dearest, EMF, who lives here with her husband and 4.6 kids, and she came over on Shabbos afternoon and we hung out and talked and had the most excellent time. There’s just something about spending time with people who were with you from kindergarten until 12th grade. And when they’re not around, there’s something about seeing their parents still living in the same place and looking almost the same as they have your whole life. Is it possible for some things never to change? No, it isn’t. I know that. But Shabbos in St. Louis sometimes comes close.

Anyway, here we are. We have no particular plans for tomorrow, other than to begin packing, which will include gathering the ten million little pieces of Barbie parephernalia from the family room floor and thereby allowing my mother to breathe again. Heh. She doesn’t quite cope with mess and chaos as well as I do. And by “cope,” of course, in my case I mean “ignore while slowly going insane inside.” But she doesn’t ignore, and she goes insane inside quickly, not slowly, and before you know it, she’s gone insane on the outside too. So I’ll be glad when she has her floor back again, though I won’t be glad that my son won’t be scooting across it. A mixed bag, like everything else.

Time to take off the eye makeup. Or feed the birds, or perhaps… fly a kite. Step in time, step in time, never need a reason, never need a rhyme, over the rooftops, step in time.

Tags: Friends, Husband, Kids, Relatives, Summer Road Trip, The Boy