so….”
“No, Julia, listen to me. Everybody your age and older in Hollywood has extensions. Everybody you see with long hair. Mariska and Julia and Sharon Stone and—”
“Sharon Stone,” I said. “Please!”
“Julia, this haircut is cute, but it says one thing. It says…Mom.”
Sold.
[ five ]
I had told Catalina that I would pick up Sammy after school that afternoon, so I had the cab drop me off on the corner of Eighty-fourth and Broadway. Then I walked a block west to the double-wide town house that heralds the letters MMS from a rainbow-colored flag waving piously above the front door.
The Multicultural Montessori School had been called the Riverside Montessori School until sometime in the mid-eighties, when Elaine Mayhew took it over. Elaine is a white, upper-middle-class woman who grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey, received her master’s in education at Columbia, and has been married and divorced twice. Elaine hates her type, and if her clone had a child she wanted to get into Multi, that child would almost certainly be rejected. The ideal child at Multi would be a Rwandan adoptee raised by a pair of biracial, trilingual lesbians. Every holiday at Multi is marked by an angry passage penned by Elaine in her monthly Parents’ Memo, outlining why the particular holiday is hurtful and exclusionary and thus, while of course families are free to practice the rites surrounding the holiday in the privacy of their own homes, there would be no school celebration. The October memo reminded us that our children would not be allowed to wear costumes on Halloween because the holiday’s origins may be found in rituals of pagan Christianity. Celebrating Thanksgiving? Why not celebrate all forms of genocide? Instead, suggested Elaine in her November Parents’ Memo, consider inviting a Native American neighbor over for a meal in the spirit of atonement. (I imagined a mad scramble by all three hundred Multi families to locate the one Native American family on the Upper West Side. What a coup it would be to have one’s child say he hosted an atonement dinner!) The winter holidays would obviously not be acknowledged at Multi, and Elaine would appreciate it if parents would keep in mind, while considering holiday decorations, that “not all of your child’s playdates understand your traditions. Trees, stockings, and candles can be confusing, alienating, and hurtful to children who don’t share these idolatries with their own families.” I knew better than to expect a Valentine from Sammy—everybody knows it was
Saint
Valentine—but I still held out hope for a Mother’s Day card that first year. What could it hurt to have the kids scrawl out a card for their mom? Maybe a little handprint pressed into a slab of clay? It could hurt plenty, explained Elaine in her April memo, if, for example you are being raised by two dads.
It was clear, after that first year at Multi, that in Elaine’s mind, the ideal world would be inhabited by people who all looked different and were multiculturally diverse on the outside, but inside were in intellectual and spiritual lockstep with one another. Every speech Elaine gave was peppered with language about “celebrating difference,” but celebrating different religions or holidays was not tolerated. I tried tossing this out once or twice at cocktail parties where there were other Multi parents, but it was usually met with an appalled silence, or worse, robotic statements like, “We’re glad our children are growing up in a time of greater sensitivity about differences.”
As I approached the school, I noticed the usual group of predominantly white, upper-middle-class “difference-aware” parents standing and talking among themselves. This group was slightly outnumbered by the brown-skinned, working-class group of caregivers who were “difference aware” enough to keep themselves slightly set apart from the parents. The kids hadn’t been let out yet, so I slowed my pace
“No, Julia, listen to me. Everybody your age and older in Hollywood has extensions. Everybody you see with long hair. Mariska and Julia and Sharon Stone and—”
“Sharon Stone,” I said. “Please!”
“Julia, this haircut is cute, but it says one thing. It says…Mom.”
Sold.
[ five ]
I had told Catalina that I would pick up Sammy after school that afternoon, so I had the cab drop me off on the corner of Eighty-fourth and Broadway. Then I walked a block west to the double-wide town house that heralds the letters MMS from a rainbow-colored flag waving piously above the front door.
The Multicultural Montessori School had been called the Riverside Montessori School until sometime in the mid-eighties, when Elaine Mayhew took it over. Elaine is a white, upper-middle-class woman who grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey, received her master’s in education at Columbia, and has been married and divorced twice. Elaine hates her type, and if her clone had a child she wanted to get into Multi, that child would almost certainly be rejected. The ideal child at Multi would be a Rwandan adoptee raised by a pair of biracial, trilingual lesbians. Every holiday at Multi is marked by an angry passage penned by Elaine in her monthly Parents’ Memo, outlining why the particular holiday is hurtful and exclusionary and thus, while of course families are free to practice the rites surrounding the holiday in the privacy of their own homes, there would be no school celebration. The October memo reminded us that our children would not be allowed to wear costumes on Halloween because the holiday’s origins may be found in rituals of pagan Christianity. Celebrating Thanksgiving? Why not celebrate all forms of genocide? Instead, suggested Elaine in her November Parents’ Memo, consider inviting a Native American neighbor over for a meal in the spirit of atonement. (I imagined a mad scramble by all three hundred Multi families to locate the one Native American family on the Upper West Side. What a coup it would be to have one’s child say he hosted an atonement dinner!) The winter holidays would obviously not be acknowledged at Multi, and Elaine would appreciate it if parents would keep in mind, while considering holiday decorations, that “not all of your child’s playdates understand your traditions. Trees, stockings, and candles can be confusing, alienating, and hurtful to children who don’t share these idolatries with their own families.” I knew better than to expect a Valentine from Sammy—everybody knows it was
Saint
Valentine—but I still held out hope for a Mother’s Day card that first year. What could it hurt to have the kids scrawl out a card for their mom? Maybe a little handprint pressed into a slab of clay? It could hurt plenty, explained Elaine in her April memo, if, for example you are being raised by two dads.
It was clear, after that first year at Multi, that in Elaine’s mind, the ideal world would be inhabited by people who all looked different and were multiculturally diverse on the outside, but inside were in intellectual and spiritual lockstep with one another. Every speech Elaine gave was peppered with language about “celebrating difference,” but celebrating different religions or holidays was not tolerated. I tried tossing this out once or twice at cocktail parties where there were other Multi parents, but it was usually met with an appalled silence, or worse, robotic statements like, “We’re glad our children are growing up in a time of greater sensitivity about differences.”
As I approached the school, I noticed the usual group of predominantly white, upper-middle-class “difference-aware” parents standing and talking among themselves. This group was slightly outnumbered by the brown-skinned, working-class group of caregivers who were “difference aware” enough to keep themselves slightly set apart from the parents. The kids hadn’t been let out yet, so I slowed my pace
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