Variations on a Mall

The girls and I are just back from four days in the the snowiest mountain village I have ever seen, and I will post pictures from that soon. But right now I want to tell everyone in Vienna (and anyone else who can see ORF 2) that a film by my brilliant wife will be showing on Austrian TV tomorrow night, the 7th of February, at 23.05. It's called The Gruen Effect, and it's about Victor Gruen, the inventor of the shopping mall. It's a great, smart, groovy movie and if you watch it you might even learn something! Here's a synopsis, and be sure to tune in tomorrow night!

The Gruen Effect (52 min)

Victor Gruen couldn’t possibly have known how much he would change
the world. The world famous Viennese architect is chiefly remembered
as the inventor of the shopping mall. His “green” ideas spawned cities,
which ultimately became shrines to the Gods of consumption and the
free market. This documentary follows Gruen’s dramatic escape from
Nazi controlled Vienna in 1938, his subsequent adventures in booming
post-war America and finally his return to Vienna in the 1960s as a
committed socialist. The life, work and critical humour of this exceptional
architect serve as a starting point for an examination of the cities in
which we live today. A portrait of a man who, in keeping with the motto
“cars buy nothing”, has had a lasting influence on economics, politics
and, above all, consumers.

Director:Katharina Weingartner and Anette Baldauf
Production:co-production: Wailand Filmproduktion and ORF
Language:german | original version
Format:4:3 Letterbox, 16:9, PAL, HDTV
Length:52 min
Available:worldwide

Girls and Boys

What the hell happened to the rock?

So I'm sitting there last night, glazing over in front of GoTV (our MTV), and it's all whiny boys singing within the lines, thinking inside the box. Vampire Weekend (channeling the Feelies), Tocotronic (aping Bryan Ferry, sort of) and Girls (conjuring up the ghost of Evan Dando, for gawd's sake!)--who gives a rat's ass?! It doesn't seem to matter where they're from--Austria, the US or England--a creeping suckieness has attacked all the dudes with guitars.

The only video and song I liked was Florence + the Machine's "You've Got the Love." It's pretty retro too, but at least she's got the voice. A leggy "hottie," hanging off of a giant glittering moon and belting out an old fashioned disco anthem. And I mean, belting it way out. She sings like she can't keep that big voice inside her for one minute more.

There's a trend here. I haven't heard a male band or singer that I cared about in forever. All the new music I've really liked in the last two years is made by women. Cat Power, Amy Winehouse, LaRoux, Lady GaGa, etc. etc.

In short,

Boys with Attitude and Three Chords--0
Women with Guts and Ideas--5

a few choice quotes

I am the Decider.
George W. Bush

There is no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women and families.
Margaret Thatcher

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde

Be kind, be kind, be kind.
Henry James

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare

I know I ain’t doing much/But doing nothing means a lot to me.
Bon Scott

If your pictures are no good, get closer.
Robert Capa

One way to take a good picture is to get yourself into a good place, then wait.
Ellen Wallenstein

When you live with someone, you learn a lot about yourself.
Don Blashill

I know you love me, and I love you, but I love you in a different way.
A former girlfriend

That relationship was like Vietnam: I got my ass kicked, and I shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Henry Rollins

If there is a subtext, you can bet I haven’t read it.
Ricou Browning

Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able….
Strunk and White

Strassenbahn Stop

Drinks with Condi

Here's an interesting update on Condaleeza Rice and her search for a huggy bunny she can call her own. After I read it, I found myself wondering, 'What if, what if.........?' The lights went low and the background details started to blur, and I got this glazed look in my eyes. What if I was out on the town, and one of those ancient Tyrolean yodelers on the Strassenbahn knocked me over and I suffered some temporary long-term memory loss, and somehow I ended up at Champs, the sports bar underneath the Marriott, just because the only thing I could remember was their half-decent cheeseburger? What if I walked in and saw an attractive, vaguely familiar woman, who had just recently cut her hair again and now looked like a more worried Halle Berry, sitting bolt upright with an economy size ice tea? Wouldn't I approach, and say something like,

"Um, excuse me, aren't you-."

And wouldn't she say,
"Why, hello, you. Pull up a chair and rest your boots."

“Okay… I’m actually looking for someone to-“

“Love?” she asks, cocking one very determined eyebrow.

“Er-“

“You really cut to the chase, don’t you, Tex? What do you do for a living?”

“That’s the thing,” I say unsteadily. “I’m a little confused right now. But I think I’m a teacher.”

Somehow these words have exactly the wrong effect on Condi. She softens, and her eyes get bigger and browner. “You know, that’s just how I feel,” she purrs. “Sometimes a situation changes, and so much change is involved that it’s hard to know exactly how much of the changing is due to this particular transitional phase, and how much is due to weapons of mass destruction.”

“Uh.....huh.”

“But I think of myself as a teacher, too.”

“--“

“Tell me, Tex—is it okay if I call you Tex? I was with a guy from Texas for awhile and you, well, you remind me of him a little. Fine. So, Tex, how do you feel about bad guys?”

“You mean, like disruptive students?”

“No, the bad guys. You know, Bin Laden, Putin, Jon Stewart, John Kerry?”

“Look,” I say, as my head begins to clear, “I think I might need medical attention.“

“Okay, bottom line, Tex: I’m a pretty good cook, and I’m sitting on my groceries.”

“Whoa, you’re Condoleezza Rice! I’m so outta here!!”

“Wait, don’t go yet! Your glass is half empty and we just met!”

the Great? Outdoors

One of my colleagues is also a male American knucklehead married to an Austrian woman. We sometimes share a bitter laugh over our wives inscrutable ways. Both his and mine believe in fresh air and wilderness expeditions on Sundays. I believe in padding around in slippers and pajamas for as much of the weekend as possible.

I was thinking about him Sunday as we were putting on our hiking boots and checking the train timetables. The weather was gorgeous, so it was hard for me to argue for padding around. Anette suggested we take a trip to the old village of Hainburg.

On the train, Adinah and I drew pictures, while V. got bored, got screamy, then got asleep. Anette is always so patient. Outside our windows, Vienna waned into farm fields and lonely mills under a warm winter sun.

In Hainburg, we saw ten minutes worth of town, and forty-five minutes worth of playground. Adinah laughed and laughed, but I think the merry-go-round gives V. the creeps: too much dizzy-spinningness.

After awhile, we started down the inevitable hiking path along the Danube. (I like hiking, really I do, but I prefer that someone does it for me. Or at least brings nachos and beer.) It wasn't too bad. Until Anette said, 'Let's play hide and seek.' I groaned. For the rest of the walk, the girls would periodically run ahead, tuck themselves behind a scraggly bush or a tiny tree, and I would have to pretend I didn't see them. Then they would jump out and "scare" me. That was ghastly.

There we were walking a beautiful piece of river, goofing off on one of the rare sunny January afternoons in Austria. But I was drowning in a sea of cantankerousness, my friends. Actually, I was just hungry. After we stopped and ate some salami and bread, I was better.

We walked to the edge of a marsh, and broke off chunks of the ice sheets in the shallows. Then we threw them out onto the frozen river, and watched them break into ice cubes. All the girls "oohed" and "ahhed" and giggled.

Then we turned around and headed back to Hainburg. As we reached the quiet edge of the village, I looked around at the train trestles and the empty streets. I was hit by a sudden wave of longing for the US, for America, for my home. Sometimes I think I won't be able to make it here for much longer. Sometimes it feels like a long dream, and I wonder what's happened to me. Sometimes I just want to be back in the land I know, the one I understand with my eyes and all my senses and my body.

I don't know where this ache comes from so suddenly--is it always in me? I don't know how long I will feel this way. Somehow I still can't believe I'm going to live in this strange old place for the rest of my life.

Then the wave passed. I started taking pictures of the strange old place. 'Wow, that looks funny.' Hey, isn't that cute and medieval!' Click-whirr-snap.

So it goes.

Night Train

A Few Questions about Everything

Why do jellyfish sting people? Why are cold pizza and cold fried chicken so good, yet cold french fries beneath consideration?

Why are Viennese summers colder and rainier than New York City winters? Why do couples here--husband and wife, mother and daughter, friend and friend--sometimes dress identically, in the curious configuration they call 'partner look'? Does the Viennese subway map--one of the most useful and used graphics in the city--actually bear any connection to the geography of the city, or is it just an abstracted flower?

Why does Celine Dion continue to get work? Why did Heath Ledger have to go and die like that? Is Courtney Love still alive? What will Viggo Mortensen (sigh) do next?

Why do men always give an answer, any answer, even if the truth is they don't know the answer? Why do little kids ask so many goddamn questions? Especially ones we can't answer, like 'Why are grown-ups always in a hurry?' Why do so many women have to go around being beautiful in so many different ways? Why do people still think spies are sexy, even though we all know they are lying, cheating scum?

In a dream the other night, my father was alive and well--why did that dream make me cry? Why can't I get the folding done? When will I finally make an appointment with a doctor, a dentist and/or my accountant? Isn't it time to start planning for retirement?

Why does rolling in the grass make one itchy?

Flashback: The subway singer

(Readers note: the guy who types Euro Like Me has skipped town, so the Blog Drone 2000XdW will be posting a few of his old journal entries for him. I'd like to dedicate this one to Stacy, wherever she may be....)

March 1, 2004

Two weeks before Christmas, Adinah and I were swimming upstream against a tide of Manhattanism in the Thirty-Fourth Street F station. She was asleep and strapped into the stroller, I was on foot and on edge. Somehow through the crush of people, I heard some street musicians flirting with the beginning of a tune I thought I recognized. Let’s stop and listen, I thought.

The singer was a pretty black girl—twenty-two maybe, long straight hair, wearing jeans, a sweater, black suspenders, and a smile as big as Brandy’s. She was working a tough crowd. Hardly anyone had stopped to listen to her, but she was thanking everyone within hearing range anyway. Upbeat and invulnerable, she paced the dank concrete floor of the station, and started into Christina Aguilera’s “You Are Beautiful.”

The casual reader will be aware of this song—a stoopidly catchy teen power ballad allegedly about being freakish—and may, as I do, believe that it sounds sorta perverse (and patronizing) coming out of the mouth of a tiny millionaire and former Mouskateer who is currently working a look best described as skank `ho at a piercing convention. Coming from a Barbie doll diva who has simply changed her style while she continues to broadcast the blur of melisma and kiddy-porn music critics call “teen pop,” “You Are Beautiful” is less a hymn to non-conformity than a rationalization of Xtina’s latest makeover. I’m saying.

But the subway singer crooned it defiantly at the indifferent mass rushing by her, as if she was singing it to herself, a mantra she repeated to keep herself warm. She was weaving gold out of garbage, until “You Are Beautiful” was.

I pulled the stroller over, unzipped her day-glo pink snowsuit a little and woke Adinah. I wanted her to see this strong black heroine singing her heart out. I thought, “This is what I want Adinah to remember about New York and her time here.” The poetry of the scene—the frenzy of the crowd, the unrequited tenderness in the singer’s voice, the faint light in Adinah’s waking eyes—everything fused together. Then the cast of characters got transposed and I was singing to Adinah,

“ ‘Cuz you are beautiful
In every single way.”

I love this city and I love the life I’m living and I love this little girl and all the beauty that seems to just blossom around her.

Flashback: Sugar C. Jones

(Readers note: the lovable hairdresser who writes Euro Like Me is abroad, so the Blog Drone 2000XdW will be posting a few of his old journal entries for him. So sit back and cool yr. heels: This is a little flashback to the bureaucratic labyrinth behind our big fat international adoption....)

May.14.2003

Sugar C. Jones.

Voice like a tarpit. Lime sherbet polyester pantsuit. Blond middle-aged dreads. But before I actually saw her, I saw her nameplate—itself approximately sixty-five years-old, made of rubber, plastic and glue, like a chipped relic from a film noir movie--sitting amongst the tilting piles of her desk. Sugar C. Jones. But that's Mrs. Jones to you, pal.

In the middle of my paperwork day, as two simple tasks multiplied like a root system, and I realized that, in addition to catching a three A.M. bus to Washington D.C. for a visit to the Ethiopian Embassy and the US State Department, I would also need to send a fax and a Fed Ex package to Texas, make two visits to the New York County Clerk's office, another to the fingerprint crew over at One Police Plaza, set up a last minute rendezvous with our American social worker (whom I would then walk over to a notary to get a signature, another stamp and a seal,) then visit the New York Secretary of State, the Treasury Department, and the Authentication Section of the DC Office of Homeland Security--in the middle of this ratpath without-a-breadcrumb-trail, I found myself sweating from the forehead, perhaps only seconds away from going into a full-body twitch, and staring at yet another paperpusher who was telling me that my documents were not only not in order but that they were pretty much meaningless. And her name was Sugar. Sugar C. Jones.

"You'll have to separate these papers," Sugar was saying, her fingers folding and spindling my delicately bound and sealed adoption dossier, "And you have to get your social worker to notarize this form before I can authenticate it. You'll have to take this other form back to 1 Police Plaza, have one of the three supervisors over there resign it at the bottom, then bring it back to me. And you'll have to separate these papers."

"Wait a second," I sputtered, "Why do I have to go over to the Police Department again--this is an original and official document, and they've already signed it! I was told you would just notarize these papers and then I could take them to--."

"I don't notarize documents, I authenticate them."

"Wha-? I don't, I…?"

"I can only authenticate the notarization of notaries who are qualified with a stamp for New York County to notarize county documents for authentication. This, and this--matter of fact, a lot of these other documents are gonna have to be notarized and authenticated before you take them to the Secretary of State."

"I'm sorry," I whimpered, my head descending into my hands, "Could--could you please be careful with that--we paid a lot of money to have those documents bound like that…."

"Just a minute," Sugar C. Jones said, storming off with my dossier.

For a second, I thought she'd gone to get security. Somewhere back in the dizzy murk of my brain, it was beginning to dawn on me that the pantsuited Mrs. Jones was a steel wall.

She came back with her superviser, a man with a yellowish tie and a haircut and a head that somehow made me think, 'Rutabaga.' "He doesn't want to separate these documents," Sugar was telling this turnip man.

He didn't really tell me anything different, except that if I would go away and get all the necessary stamps and signatories on the relevant papers, then come back again, he and Sugar might be able to authenticate them without cutting the thin peppermint-striped string and paper seals which bound the dossier. Somehow this felt like a détente.

As I gathered up my documents and started for the door, Sugar C. Jones was still shaking her head and croaking, "I've never seen papers tied up in a book like that before."

my cool family top ten, Week of April 21

1) The way V. woke up this morning, held out her arms for a hug, and laid her head on my chest. Then bolted upright, looked at me very seriously and said, "Quargrum korum, quarum," as is she was telling me, "Actually, there is a difference--an important one--between lo-fat and no fat."

2) The way my wife evaporates problems, bitch-slaps challenges and re-edits her Power Point presentation in twenty minutes, with both kids screaming, while wearing those giant sunglasses and looking hot.

3) The way that Adinah beats me so efficiently and constantly at Uno, Mensch Argert Mich Dich (sort of the German Parcheesi) and Homer Simpson Memory, and then dances around the room yelping "I am the Champions, I am the Champions."

4) The way V. rolls into a room with absolute authority, even though she still falls down a lot.

5) The way Adinah looked from the back as she wobbled away from me, really riding a bike for the first time.

6) The fact that no matter how crazy busy and stressed out she may be, Anette puts it aside so we can all be together on Sunday.

7) The way V. sits in her hi-chair with pieces of rice in her hair and throws her head back and laughs, as if the only way to laugh is to laugh with your entire body.

8) The scientific experiments Adinah is conducting in the swing we've hung from our living room ceiling. (The latest project: can she write her name and play air cello while spinning around counter-clockwise and swinging back and forth?)

9) The way that Anette gets so excited whenever she goes to Caritas to buy used furniture or shoes for V.

10) The way that Adinah refers to whichever kid she played with today as her Best Friend.

a reprise

"Happy birthday, Adinah."

These were my first words this morning when we woke up. At the breakfast table, we opened her presents from us. Then we lit a candle for Adinah's first mother. Kidan.

Anette asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to the woman who brought Adinah into the world. I said yes, then I started to choke up, and I said, "Thank you."

Today is Adinah's day, and Euro Like Me will no doubt be dispatching its cub reporter to cover the festivities (which are rumored to include pony rides, Blind Man's Bluff and more than a few heart-shaped balloons.) But before the Birthday Blitz resumes, I want to take a moment to consider the other little girl in our lives: Miss V. Thinking of Adinah's biological mother set off something in me and what I wrote in my last post. So I want to continue a thought...and somehow address this force that rages red through me sometimes.

I've got anger. I know fury. It may have something to do with my father, but I can't blame him anymore. It's me. This anger is part of who I am. I can (usually) control it, but I don't think I can kill it.

And lately, I've been mad at V., and mad at her mom, mad at Hillary Clinton, and mad at the world. I'm mad because it's so hard to get a good night's sleep, and because I miss my wife, and because it sometimes seems impossible to find a quiet moment that's mine and only mine.

But I can't be mad like that anymore. At least not at V. or her biological mother. I can't because it's not right. If V. keeps us awake because she's in pain, it's not her fault--that's just the way it is. And as difficult as it is too accept, even if V. is in pain because of something that happened before we met her, I cannot be mad at her first mother. I don't even know her first mother.

So it really doesn't matter whether I get tired of being understanding and forgiving. Because I'm just going to have to keep trying to forgive and understand everyone in our house, and a few people outside of it.

I owe that to them, and to all the first mothers.

open mouth, insert foot

Today, I listened to a woman who should know better go off about how evil Islam is, how it's based on the teachings of a murderer, etc etc etc. blah blah blah. So I told this story:

In 2001, a little while after 9/11, I was walking down the street and saw a Muslim woman getting out of a car. She was in a full black hijab, but her face wasn't veiled. An older, hippie-esque couple was walking towards her just ahead of me, and the man called out to her, "Free yourself, sister!"

"Why?", she said. "So I can be like you?"

Peace.

Dedicated

So Friday was a terrible day at work. Then I saw the ghost. And then Friday night, Adinah had another asthma relapse, and kept waking up, hacking and crying miserably, while V. got another tooth and stayed up much of the night, babbling or howling.
At first, I fell asleep on the brown sofa with V. in my arms, and Anette took Adinah into our bed. Somewhere around one a.m., I deposited V. in her crib and crawled into our bed, as Anette and Adinah went back to her room. Then V. started crying again, so I brought her into our bed, just as Anette and Adinah returned. Now with the whole gang of four in our bed, I lay awake, troubled my day. Eventually I fled to the green sofa, where I sorta slept until six a.m., when Anette brought V. out to me. The kid fell asleep again on my chest, and I stared up at the ceiling until sunrise.
In short, a night like JFK International Airport.
When we were all finally awake, I looked across the kitchen table and discovered (again) that I am married to the sweetest woman in the world.
She offered to take the girls for the morning, even though it was my day. She put V. back down again for a nap and told me to take one too. She smiled that big lovely smile.
And she insisted we go to H & M so she could buy me a new pair of pants. It was only at the cash register that I realized she's trying to turn me into a woman. She knew I'd had a bad day the day before and she actually thought she could cheer me up by getting me a new outfit. And it worked.
I don't know where she gets all this sunshine. I think she must have a gene I'm missing. I'm nice because I want people to like me. She's nice because I don't know why. Sometimes it seems like she's sweet because she likes our life together. Then I think, no, it's got to be something else.
She must have a hidden agenda underneath all that sugar. Right?

Sturm and Twang

Vienna being about three to six months behind the US in movie premieres(and fifty to 100 years behind in manners), I've only just recently seen two movies that my friends in America probably saw ages ago. Two documentaries about two musical phenomenons so unrelated as to seem to belong to two different planets: Joe Strummer, of the Clash, and the Dixie Chicks.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten is a one-dimensional love letter, featuring, um, campfire testimonials, and cameos by people like Johnny Depp, who appears in full Pirates of the Carribean drag, using the sort of wack hyperbole that gets rock critcs burned at the stake. It manages to turn Strummer, the driving force behind a super influential, maybe even important band, into a barely compelling poseur. Thirty years later, it made me wonder why everyone made such a fuss about the Clash. I remember a guy in my hometown named Polar Bear--he always said the Clash were phoneys.

On the other hand, as far as I can tell, The Dixie Chicks don't matter at all. But Shut Up and Sing: The Dixie Chicks, by the master documentary director Barbara Kopple, turns the band into heroines. Flawed, occasionally bitchy, and smart, chicks who spoke out against the invasion of Iraq, and paid a price for it. It juxtaposes scenes of Donald Rumsfeld lying through his teeth with scenes of three women who, clever as they are, still can't quite believe how unpopular some opinions can be. Four years later, it made me wonder again how that big-eared monkey from Crawford, TX, managed to con the nation into the disaster we call the Iraq war. And it made me wonder, again,
What's really going on in the US of A?

Earth to Bennetton:

I've been walking by a jumbo poster of this Benetton advertisement for about two weeks now, both with Adinah and without her, and I'm thinking,'How the hell am I supposed to explain this to my four-year-old daughter?' Should I tell her, 'Some people don't eat enough.' Or "Some people get paid a lot of money to eat too little?' Or should I just cut to the chase? 'Well, honey, patriarchy sucks and the fashion industry is a bitch.'

Seriously.

Images like this are so everywhere that I usually have to look twice and then ask myself, 'Okay, is this worse than the rest?' And it is. These females of indeterminate age look so sick that looking at them makes me feel ill. Surely that is not the effect Benetton wants to have on it's audience.

And alright, okay, full disclosure: I'm a guy. I like skinny women. But I liked J-Lo when she was still a Chicana and she had back. I also thought Aretha was hot because she was big and she made her own clothes and she didn't give a fuck.

For some reason, this image made me think of Paul Newman. You know, the dreamiest guy that ever played a hero (until George Clooney, that is). There's a movie from the seventies where Paul Newman plays a businessman who is defamed by a well-meaning, but careless journalist, and at the end, he tells her his reputation is ruined. "And who do I talk to about that?" he says.

So it is with this picture. Who do I talk to about this? I'm not mad at the models--they're probably nice people, and they're in a f**ked up business. But please Mr. Benetton, what are you saying to my little girl? How am I supposed to explain this carrot and anorexic schtick to her?

Good Hair Day

This week, our daughter Adinah is experimenting with two things: afro-puffs and temper tantrums. This has set off all sorts of red alerts here, because according to many of our most highly paid experts, taking care of your kid's hair is job number one for adoptive parents. And any idiot knows that tantrums, and how you deal with `em, are what separate the superdads from the amateurs.

I don't know much about afro-puffs except that the Lady of Rage rocked them and this Angry Black Bitch once posted something very funny and sweet about `em. But once we decided to try it, my wife set to work on Adinah's hair, and suddenly she wasn't just a beautiful four-year-old Ethiopian kid, she was a beautiful little girl. It was amazing how much more feminine she became with a hair-do. (The lesson I learned: humans who make an effort with their hair=females; humans who don't bother=males.)

Naturally, the tantrums are a lot less fun. Anette and I are at a complete loss as to what they mean and where they come from, but we're certain we're not to blame. (I almost always check to make sure Adinah is in another room whenever I can't figure out something mechanical [like a paper clip] and need to yell "F*ck!" and then throw it.) It must be something she's learning from other kids at Kindergarten. All I know is, sometimes, our little princess just...loses it. The other day, she asked me to draw a picture of a pink cat for her, so I drew a pink cat with whiskers and a cartoon balloon that said "Hi, Adinah!" and I left it on her desk. She got home from school, took one look at it and started bawling. I had drawn the cat All Wrong, Papa!!

Her hair and her hissy-fits got together to try to kick my ass on Tuesday. When I got to Kindergarten to pick her up, one of the Tante (aunties) at kindergarten had tied a long braid of colored beads around one of Adinah's afro-puffs. It was a pretty cool addition, and gave 'Deanie an Adam Ant sort of look. But two hours later, when I suggested that we might need to take the braid out when Adinah took a bath, mama mia, she let me have it. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Screaming, crying, whining, quieting down, then more screaming. I tried everything: taking a deep breath, walking away, reasoning with her. More screaming, more crying. Then she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she screamed and cried some more. Finally, I said to her, for the third or fourth time, "Deanie, you have to try to tell me what's wrong, and then we can try to do something about it."

"I wanna show it Mommy!"

"Show what to Mommy?"

"My hair!!"

Oh.

And that was it. An hour later, when Anette got home, Adinah was back in operational mode again--eating, chatting and telling me about her day. We showed her braid to Mommy, then Mommy very gently untied it, and I got the kid into the bathtub.

I told Deanie it was really great that she had been able to tell me what was wrong because then we were able to take care of the problem instead of just fighting. But I was actually proud of both of us.