The words are tumbling out of Tin’s mouth – today he finally said Loca and he said Yellow and this added to the growing list of keys, more, Mama, Mommy, Tete, moon, bayou, ball, down, up, cup, NO, yep, yeah, boom, Heidi. We’ve been saying smile to him lately and today he got it right on cue. I was taking a photograph of him in his crib with the Zebra that was a stand-in for…
I spent the evening with a friend who is still grieving over the death of her toddler daughter and she seemed to feel as if everyone was ready for her to quit grieving since it has been two years. I asked her how long grief lasts? Another friend was telling me that her partner is still grieving over the loss of his father five years ago. Is New Orleans still grieving five years after Katrina?…
We’ve spent a relatively quiet Saturday with only a trip uptown to buy some new jammies at Angelique’s for Baby on Magazine and stopping by Design within Reach to look at something that would work for a stand up desk for me. Tin was hungry so stopped in at Whole Food for pizza which he devoured (the child has a hollow leg, I’m convinced).
I had to run to Lakeside Camera because my camera broke and I was developing a disposable that I bought but for those reasons I found myself in Metairie twice this week and right by what is the Cajun Kosher Deli on Severn. The first time I stopped in and bought some bagels and whitefish salad – yum yum yum. This time I went back for whitefish salad but they had just baked some noodle…
It’s TGIF and the end of my first week back from vacation and re-entry was a touch, um, how do you say in English? Challenging – yes that’s it. There is nothing like being away away and not thinking about bills, work, phone calls, errands, you name it – not thinking period. The nanny left this afternoon after having washed all of Tin’s sheets and changing table cover and I continued to finish up final…
SIMPLE Tatjana is in New York working on her fourth book and I asked her to look around and see if the New York Times is right and that men’s fashion is veering towards Americana and Ralph Lauren and sloughing off the Euro look. She said all she has noticed is that everything is called Simple there – Simple Cafe, Simple Restaurant, Simple Store. Obviously New Yorkers are in the mood for Simple. Meanwhile, I…
T’s friend’s nanny, Tata, introduced Tin to the world of Flamenco and then every day for the mere payment of two to four Maria cookies, Tin would dance Flamenco with Tata in her kitchen. He learned many Spanish words – baile flamenco, silla, dale un beso, and most important galleta (cookie).
If you listen quietly to Tangiers you hear labor, birds, sea, footsteps on cobblestone, German cars humming, more birds, music, Arabic, French, Spanish, the call to prayer. If you glance up from your hot mint tea sweetened to the point of honey you see a lady in a bright pink hijab and djelaba getting out of a cab wearing Jackie Onassis sunglasses, the white caps on the blue Atlantic through the ancient white washed walls…
In Tangiers we stayed at the Dar Nour guesthouse run by a lovely French couple (and I mean lovely, like rock star lovely) and our room was just enchanting as they have peppered the entire guesthouse with their own personal belongings and books and photographs and art and rugs and whatnots, plus the view off the terraces were stunning. At the top is a tri level terrace that gives you a panoramic view of Tangiers…
An ad came across an email spam that had this headline – really? I thought, pishaw. I’m 51 and sometimes I look younger and sometimes I don’t but the truth is it is all relative. My fondest images in my mind are of my grandmother with her elder face – and I love that Tin has T’s mother’s older face to have fallen in love with as well. He carries around a photo of Tete…