Barbi Does Miami

mostly from my oxymoronic years between Miami and Milford

Category Archives: being mother


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betwixt and between…

barbi?

Barbi is back in Miami

Only I’m not quite back to being Barbi, and I wonder, was Barbi a character I created for living in Miami last year? Do I want to be Barbi forever? Do I want to do Miami forever?

Am I lost between Milford and Miami and me and Barbi?

me

I am lost between Milford and Miami and me and Barbi.

So, since I’m not Barbi, its kind of hard to blog  Miami style.

I’ll start with the kids, to keep the focus off me.

Iona is at DASH with lots of homework, fun homework like do ten art works using soy sauce, soap and candle wax and there are lots of cute boys so she’s tired but inspired.

Kiki and Leila? They’re fine too. Oblivious to the drama that goes on at their school.  That screwed-up underfunded, overpopulated public elementary school. And Miami Beach has many entitled super-moms running around (I admit to being guilty myself), who are all confused about wanting and trying to get “the best for their child” in this – classes too big, teachers too stressed, Gifted/not Gifted principals too scared, no budget for nothing, job insecurity, not good enough UNIVERSE. We’re all in it and we all feel lost in it, like there is no there, there, no truth, no path, no mentor or inspiration, its just a get-through-it-in-one-piece processing plant. BUT. The girls like their teacher, She’s funny, they say. Funny is good! They come home and do their homework, so they want to please her….

But me, I’m betwixt and between…

Husband was here for five days. We had a big meeting with a potential client (fingers crossed). Then he stayed for our early anniversary. We first met on September 2nd 1990 and got married on September 4th eight years later. Twenty years! But thats another blog, the love blog, the relationship blog. The pink lava lamp blog. Still I don’t mind telling you that being betwixt and between on your anniversary is very romantic. I can recommend the uncertainty, as if nothing can be taken for granted. There is no need for fancy hotel rooms with scattered rose petals, or a million candles around the tub, or a ring studded with meaningful diamonds. I take the flutter of betwixt anytime over all that. And the shiver of between…

But  he’s gone back for work in NYC. And my car broke down. It rains and its grey like Holland. So I rearranged the furniture. The designer couches and rugs and Arad chairs of our Tiesto bachelor pad are all muddled up.  We now have a TV corner, how bourgeois, and can, for the first time in a year change the channels lying down instead of  walking around the corner of the hidden designer shelving system. Much better. Its cozier  but also more photogenic  in a World of Interiors kinda way.

But I wonder, where do I start picking up on me? Am I working or caretaking? Am I facilitating or building an awesome third career?  Am I a writer, a fashion designer, a book designer, an environmentalist, a mother, a wife, a bill payer, check chasing, budget balancer (yes I’m definitely that ) ? Am I at home or am I lost in Miami?

Where is home?

Milford is home, because that’s where my heart is the fullest.

favorite spot, over the stream...

But the rest of my family disagrees. The girls think its boring and husband thinks its HillBilly… (my husband is so not HillBilly but I have an inner HB)

This kind of family division causes betwixt.

I be twixt. I be twixt in a who the fuck am I? where the fuck am I? kinda way.

Oddly I don’t seem to mind it. I may even like it. Its nothing like being bored or the feeling that I should be somehwhere else because I’m already somewhere else.

Maybe I don’t quite mind it because – did I tell you this already? – I got an order for 900 t shirts to be embellished with Plastic is Forever from Barneys!

Barneys New York!

Loomstate Tee with Plastic is Forever

For Spring 2011!

Thats a lot of beach plastic. Thats a lot of harvesting and cleaning beaches and I will post my progress on my Its a Man Made World blog.

So that is one person I WILL be: a beach-plastic comber, during September, October, November, I shall be crouched over the coral-pink sand of the Bahamas filling my bags with plastic garbage…

I look forward to it. Its just when I add all the other stuff I also have to do to that order. Thats when I start to be twixt. Like can I do it all? Be it all? Be here and there and there as well.

But maybe we all feel like that all the time now? Like what we do is never enough and at the same time too much. Too much choice of stuff like options for anti-aging, to name an example, so many ways, creams and pills and remedies that I may need but will never get around to trying.  Or all those causes, like at the check-out of Publix for helping poor hungry kids and at Walgreens for helping Haiti, and on FB posting pink ribbons for breast cancer, and an Inbox full of ways to help out in the Gulf, and then there are those PTA meetings I should attend. I want to do them all, end up doing none and then I feel guilty.

And what’s with making money all of a sudden? Someone has turned off the middle-class money faucet, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Obama.

Then I worry about Obama.

I can’t watch TV because I get too upset. About what those mad hatter tea-partiers are doing and getting away with. The bile they stir into their BP logo tea cups. The general ignorance of who funds and fuels (oil) their fire of hatred. And why? When I get on that train of thought I get so betwixt that between is not even an issue.

But I wonder, Milford versus Miami aside, do we all feel this way?  Like where the hell are we headed and how do we turn this around?

Are we lost because so much of our lives are no longer familiar?

Maybe familiar is out and betwixt is in…

Iona's eye by Iona


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The BlackBerry Diet – a novel by Barbara de Vries

“Youth is something very new.

Twenty years ago no one mentioned it.”

– Coco Chanel.

The BlackBerry Diet


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Barbi does the Hamptons

Well, I’m here in Easthampton. (We left the day after my glorious birthday party, which still reverberates like a happy crystal…)

But I’m not really.

Like I do not venture beyond the compound of our hosts. I know. Some of you will think, well, if she likes Miami Beach then what’s so wrong with the Hamptons?

I’ve been trying to answer that question myself. Maybe I’m even writing this blog because I want to figure it out.

I know its not the obvious. Its not the A-types that are too master-of-the-universe-ish to stop at STOP signs, that will steal the last smoked duck out of your shopping cart at Citerella’s, cause wicker-burn by using their wicker baskets as tools of advancement in the Farmer’s Market’s line, or give you the finger when you point out that there is in fact a line to get onto the Shelter Island Ferry. Its not them. All that stuff is kinda funny in its own Hamptons way.

No.

I’ve been coming here for more than twenty summers. I met husband here. He had a lovely Tech-Built home right on the beach. Every summer we spent a few weeks there (our days wedged between those of renters, siblings and parents).  Iona was christened on our beach and two years later we got married in the same spot, Iona frantically trying to plant her “flower girl” sunflower in the sand. The twins spent the first weeks of their life under a mosquito net on the deck overlooking the bay. We gave many infamous July 4th parties enjoying our (Devon Yacht Club) neighbor’s fireworks and were complicit in George Plimpton’s last wish to have his ashes blown in one last glorious glittering fire work shower over Gardiner’s Bay.

Then we sold the house, to Piccaso’s daughter Maya, and moved on. Still we come back every summer, stay with friends for a week or so. Husband has such yearnings here, for a childhood lost, for the way life used to be, for lost possibilities, expectations, friends and an ex-wife. He even wrote a book, Weekend Utopia, about the vanished dream that is the Hamptons.

But I don’t yearn. Not for the days when we first met here. Not for the years between then and having kids, not for my wedding day, the parties, the family dinners on the porch watching fiery sunsets… I enjoyed it all, but I don’t pine. Not at all.

So I wonder about this blanket of melancholy that covers me.  Here, now, just off route 27 in Easthampton. Could it be that  a layer of one of husband’s shadows hovers over me?  Like  one of his smaller ghosts is trying to rattle me? After all we’ve been together 20 years, like practically 24/7. I’m not trying to pass the buck, but shit, I’m happy when he’s happy so why not pick up on his melancholy?

It’s curious. We’re going home tomorrow, after the memorial service of an old friend’s mother, and I know I’ll be myself again as soon as we head west.

But.

I’m the kind of person who wants to know what bothers her now, right now, right here, analyze and fix it.

Maybe. In this case of Hampton Blues I’m just going to have to let it go….

Just breathe deep…

and let it go….

Iona connecting with a Hampton sunflower


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Barbi does Milford

or home sweet home….

There is, I realize, no place like home, and our house in Milford feels a lot like home, even while I’m still into de-renterfying mode, like why is our wireless network suddenly called Casa Cielo? Why is there no longer a phone in my office and where the hell is the egg tray from the fridge? I ask myself are these my pots and pans underneath this black crust? was that really a mouse running out of the fridge? And wasn’t my shower curtain  white and not ombre´ brown…? Every day holds another renter trail surprise and all lead to the inevitable conclusion that renting and owning are two different states of mind and thats putting it nicely…

Still, I have a gorgeous home. My home is me. My home is us. Alastair, Iona, Iain, Kiki and Leila. I wish I could carry my house, like a turtle or a snail, to Miami Beach and to Eleuthera, and everywhere else I fancy living.

You have a question? About the town of Milford? What is it like? Actually, its pretty cute but culturally a bit disappointing. I’ve been here 22 years and given the chance the good ‘ole boys still call me a newcomer. An accent (the UK Queens English), a past in New York City (and beyond), and a wardrobe that may include a few designer labels, will earn anyone here that title. Newcomer. Like immigrant. Someone who  does not belong. (A strange phenomena on this New Conservative American landscape, like really, which generation earns the righteous right to say they belong? First? Second? Third?)

The big disappointment came in the guise of Dunkin Donuts. On main street. Right next to the lot that had been bought and earmarked for our airy, lightfilled and green new library, designed by Fred Schwartz , the super fabulous architect from New York, who won the competition for this new building. Unfortunately to us, Milford’s new generation, the entire venture was perceived to be organized by so-called Newcomers. The ones that had lives in New York. Those terrible uppity outsiders who think they are better than everyone else. Thus the new library  split the town in two. The good ole boys did not want this library and riled their troops as if a nuclear power plant was taking root right in the center of their town. While we were in Miami a referendum was held in Milford Borough, population 3500, which sealed the fate for the county (population 40,000). Result: No modern-architect-designed-green-library would disgrace their cute “historic” town.

However. After citing that no chains like Dunkin Doughnuts, Home Depot or flat-roofed modern structures would find their way into the Borough center (“over our dead body “) the town officials somehow  thought that, instead of expanding the Milford mind,  Milford waistlines could benefit from some expansion. Dunkins opened and, insult to injury, it borders the proposed, and purchased, library site, overlooking the stream, the Knob and the Victorian walk along the Sawkill Creek, which no DD consumer will ever appreciate.

And while I’m at it, can anyone tell me what’s with that third new fireworks store, the first thing one sees when arriving – Welcome to Milford – Historic town?  For some obscure reason, this fireworks store is the only business in town, (who are they related to?) that doesn’t  have to adhere to the strict signage ordnance (cute, small and historic) and has its own patriotic (tell me what’s so patriotic about fireworks, their sound of gunfire?) huge banners and flags and other in-your face-paraphenalia that tells the newly arrived visitor, NOT, “welcome we are a cute historic town”, BUT, “howdy we are a loudmouth, keep small children indoors, gun touting, heavy-drinking, devil-may-care kind of place where Bikers are Welcome, liberals and librarians – Keep Out.”

So. I love my house. It is perfect. It fits me like a glove. But Milford, after showing years of improvement, the Fauchere, the Black Bear Film Festival, the annual Music Festival, the efforts of Dick Snyder, Sean Strub, Peter and Reggie, Hilary, Nancy and Darryl, Donna Hamilton, Alan Greenbaum, Jerry Beaver and Nancy Pitcher, and many others, seems to be slipping towards the appeal of the mass dumb-down culture, like the Dunkin Donuts and fireworks stores, Turkey Hill gas stations, smoke and lottery shops and tight Park Service regulations instead of organic farmer’s markets, funky independent boutiques and many good, cool bars, music/poetry cafes and restaurants.

But I know Milford won’t give up. We still have the Patisserie, the Waterwheel Cafe, the movement to renovate the old movie theatre, the Indigo Arts building with 7th Street Coffee, and all power to them. Yes to those who may have lived in New York, and who know the cultural trends and  call for originality, creativity and independence…

Speaking of which, Iona’s birthday, fourteen this time, was yesterday, July Fourth, and her adoring, adorable Dad, bought her a MACBook. She is in heaven while the rest of us are envious. Jealous of the speed with which she goes online, the perfectly white key board, the options and features that come with it.

Of course Iona had it all, call it fall-out from my omnipotent “singing telegram mother”. Birthdays have to  be the perfect balance between gifts and wrapping, appearance and content, guests, friends, family, cake, singing, food and love. I think I scored 80 out of a 100. A brief but loud spat with husband knocked 20 points out of Iona’s otherwise perfect birthday chart… but who knows, maybe, in the end, that’s the best gift of all – the lesson that perfection is a mere rainbow which stretches from one unreachable yard to another and that in reality God is found in the details, including the small imperfect details like fights and conflict, which complete the whole circle of our existence….

Celebration fireworks and dinner-theatre at J Morgans Puett’s  on Saturday night…

…the Mildred’s Lane saturday night events, our other home away from home sweet home.


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Miami Beach Round Up, ten best …

Remember? getting ready to leave Milford September 2009...

Nine months since I packed the car in Milford and headed south with three kids, six bags, and loads of movies. Nine months since we did what we wanted, in a fuck the consequences kinda way, like – get outta town – hop on the bus gus – life is a beach – fuckem if they cant take a joke – the experience will do us good – life is too short  – broaden the horizon – migrate like a nomad – follow the sun and live your dream…

So what was it like? Living the dream on the beach? It was just like life. But sunnier.  It so wasn’t Milford. It was so Miami Beach. But it was life nevertheless. Husband and I still had fights. So did the twins. We still had homework and laundry and rashes and crushes. I still got rejection letters and I still cared when they came. Only it was 78 degrees in February. Only some days we said lets have lunch on the beach, and I made sandwiches and we hopped on our bikes and ten minutes later lay in the sand, stood in the surf, without guilt, on a Tuesday afternoon.

When I look back there were some memorable moments, quite a few actually, like I have a top ten of my high and low moments of nine months at the beach:

Best Parties:

1. October>The Halloween cross dressing party for grown ups, after candy rounds with the kids, going back home and dressing up with husband, have a scotch in the bathroom while he tried to get into a bra and pantyhose, making myself up like a man, and leaving the house around 11 instead of coming home at 11. Coming home at 3 am. Drunk and stoned. Not done that in a while great start to our Miami Beach party season…

2. Which concluded with a party on Biscayne Point a few weeks ago when husband wore his pajama striped pale linen pants and I wore new white silk pants, and  our host dropped his glass of red wine at our feet, splashing it mostly over husband ‘s pants and within ten minutes of our arrival I’m sitting with my feet in the pool, for once wishing for high chlorine levels to help remove the wine stains, and look through the gauze curtains to my left only to see husband in his white y-fronts standing by an elaborate four poster bed while host holds up pant after pant, as if they’re at Prada together. Me thinks, well, thats the fastest A has ever gotten out of his pants at a party and how gay is that host? Not at all it turned out, he had buxom brunette twins in matching shorts and fishnet stockings launching around, bored and clearly waiting for the party to be over. One well-groomed older lady referred to them as “the hired help”. Still, it turned into one of the best parties when Tray Lockerbie, a young singer from Nashville stepped out with his guitar, sang a few songs and inspired three more musicians to come out, including husband. They jammed, we sang. We danced. Got home late, husband in different pants from the ones he left home in – a sign of a good time had…

Miami icons: Sam, Esther, Iran

3. Our  dinner parties at our Aqua Candyland Bachelor Pad like the one  in honor of Eyjafjallajökull and Zaha Hadid who could not make it home to London because of the ash… four fabulous Miami Matriarchs: Sam, Iran, Kathy and Esther, dishing and gossiping and one-upping with stories of their wildest Miami moments…

Zaha and Barbi in the Tiesto candy-land elevator

4. The twins birthday party by the pool, voted best party by them, in 90 degree weather, ten ten-year old girls and two boys (pretending they were at their own separate party) going wild. Iona came to the rescue, miraculously, like a pied piper, rounded them up and bossed them around into orderly games that included hula hoops, diving for prizes and water guns. All a sweaty, hamburger-scented blur to me.

twin birthday

5.  Top best moment beyond, over and above parties: Finding out that Iona got into DASH. A top-ten-ever-proud-mother-moment.

6. The “gifted” test of the twins. A controversial public school moment, where I bought into the system that separates the so-called gifted kids from the rest, and puts them in classes that are superior in method and level of teacher. Hm. Ok, some another time shall I rant about this. Anyway. To get there from here, my girls needed to get an IQ test of sorts. Now. You have to know that over the years opinions by various teachers on their intelligence and the ability to apply themselves have varied. I never wavered, but was often worn down by  negative reports that included notes like “unable to concentrate”, “reading impaired”,  “incomplete homework”.  So this test was a test. A test about who was right. Was my conviction just motherly love? Like Kiki said, “of course you think we’re smart, you’re our Mom!” She thought the teachers were the only authority, and when “gifted” teacher, Mr Spagnola, told their class that they were “the worst class in the school” the last nail had been nailed into their “see Mom, we’re stupid” coffin.

NOT SO.

my smart twins

They tested brilliantly. Smart, ahead of their age, eloquent, sensitive and insightful. A weight of self-doubt fell off my shoulders, the veil of insecurity was lifted from their aura. Just one silly test was all it took. I know its all relative, the Wizard of Oz is right about certificates, but, but, it was a good Miami moment.

7. The day I moved into my small sunny studio at Ofer Mizrahi’s utopian village alongside the tracks on 4th North Court. I’d had my eye on the small,  like 250 sq.ft, studio for months –  a palm-tree just outside the french doors, surrounded by young painters, designers environmentalists and architects. A place of my own to escape to… for more look under # 7 in my Worst Miami Moments…

8. My Mom’s visit. Showing her all my favorite things and seeing her health improve in the sun, surrounded by  granddaughters and love.

love

9. Getting my scarves into Base at the Delano Hotel, making clothes again, finding local women who can sew and bead and enjoy making my stuff while getting paid, and realizing that I can start my business here and help clean the beaches from plastic pollution and maybe make a difference in the environmental consciousness of Miami. All of which is recorded here:   http://itsamanmadeworld.wordpress.com/

blue beach plastic silk scarf

10. Marriage. We have been together 20 years this Labor Day. Twenty years is longer than I lived in Amsterdam by two years. Its ten years longer than my life in London. In twenty years everything happens. E V E R Y T H I N G. Jobs come and go. Money comes and goes. Parents die, kids are born. Friends die, friends are born. Dreams die, dreams are born. Together we lived in Tribeca and on 9th Street, we lived in an old terracotta factory on the Raritan Canal just outside Princeton which flooded during hurricane Floyd and a week later I was pregnant with twins. We moved to Milford, we built our dream house, we moved to Miami.

Alastair Gordon at Tiesto @ the Fontainebleau

Love. I learned that love changes. That love isn’t static but more like a pink lava lamp. Sometimes we are completely one, sometimes we are at odds, but we always come back together with more love, more intensity and more understanding.

Miami was his idea. We needed it, he said. We needed sun as in light, and parties.  He challenged us and some days this made me mad. Some days I did not want to be Barbi in Miami, I wanted to just be Barbara again. But now, a year later, he has left for Milford and I miss him. And I love him more for making us do this, and for taking me into our marriage deeper than ever before…

Alastair, Kiki and Leila leaving Miami Beach, back to Milford....

Iona and I are here for two more weeks, while she does her DASH summer camp and I enter ten more memorable Miami moments, coming soon….


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earth mother’s day

photo: Iona Gordon

Last week I got a FB comment from Tony, my former fashion PR in London. We’d lost touch for 25 years. It said:
“Wow you’ve become such an ‘earth mother’… What happened?!!!!”
Ouch. I thought. I’m not cool anymore. I’m not post-punk London groovy anymore. I’m not young and cutting edge and wild  a n y m o r e.
I’m an EARTH MOTHER!

SHIT.

I thought of cutting my hair and bleaching it . I thought of piercing my nose and tongue and moving back to London. I thought of me 25 years ago and I felt wistful.

Tony now owns a  forecast service, predicting future fashion trends and runs it from Melbourne. I guess the latest wave of Green fashion hasn’t reached there yet, lets face it fashion forecasting from down under must be quite a challenge… I’m being bitchy. I know, here:    ; )   … a blinking smiley should make Tony feel better.

So  this is what happened:

I became a mother.

I grew up.

I saw better, clearer and beyond myself.

and use this in my work…

So maybe now I’m an earth mother and maybe I’m proud of it. Maybe the earth needs mothers. Its not like the fathers have done such a great job over the ages with their offerings of virgins and plundering and raping and not picking up after themselves. Maybe it takes some global mega-mothering, you know, like mothers for wiping sooty volcano’s, tucking in trembling fault lines, putting bandages on gaping ozone holes, and cold compresses on raising temperatures. And how about a few volunteer mother surrogates against the extinction of the Iberian Lynx , Saiga  Antelope, Sumatran Tiger, Silky Sifafka and the South China Tiger?

If only.

If only earth mothers had father time on their side….


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easta at aqua

we got water

we got eggs.

this year I counted them. 25 each. 4 went unaccounted for. They’re with the single socks. remarkably peaceful and laid back Easter sunday.
Husband had to do taped interview, go figure, so without annual church guilt, his father was after al the minister and easter by far the most daunting religious holiday of the year for him, us girls did pajamas, colored a few more eggs, ate  proportionately more chocolate eggs than were colored, watched tennis, quick visit to Lincoln Road to photograph dogs, Iona’s plan for a blog: THE DOGS OF LINCOLN ROAD, swam 20 laps, dinner and to bed.

OOPS, i dropped the pancake


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Aqua is dry

Aqua has no water.

For 36 hours now.

About ten minutes ago the pipes gurgled and the battle cry “FLUSH – NOW” echoed between the Aqua luxury condos. As a result of over-enthusiastic flushing the water is off again, unable to instantly flood, what? 2000, 3000? 4000? toilets.
How many toilets between 51st and 63rd Street one wonders, how many dishwashers? How many sinks, showers and washing machines?

We just showered at our friend’s house. She’s away skiing. We fought over who’d get in first. I lost. I got last but longest. While waiting I remembered going camping, I did this a lot when I was a teen, and being everso grateful to be home as if the only satisfaction of being one with nature for days on end was the ensuing luxury of standing under warm running water until the hot ran out.

Yesterday, while I was having a swim ( yes there was still clean water in the Aqua pool), a women hunched by my side, and, while avoiding eye contact , filled two gallon-flasks. Stealing water from the pool! Really, how third world is that? That’s one tea party I do not want to be invited to (actually I can name a few others).

“Soon,” they tell us. “We’re working on it,” they say. “Divers have been in the water since four this morning,” they assure me. Divers? How? Really? Where there are divers there is water!  Aqua super heros!

Mommy, I hear a diver in the pipe! Aaaahh, good sweetie, things will soon back to normal…

Turns out our water pipes run under water, like along Indian Creek. Thats why, this morning on my way to get bottled water at Publix, I saw that confused crew of guys in fluorescent gear and flippers poring over a map, while leaning against a small shabby boat on a City of Miami Beach trailer.

Eventually  all becomes clear.

Meanwhile they’ve promised us Porta-potties. Whooppee!

as per e-mail:

” In the interim, we are working on providing portable toilet services for the community.”

See?

This means that, I, Barbi,  get to stand on line with the CEO of Mattress World and also mega property developers, drug dealers, porn kings and stars, famous DJ’s, bratty cokehead children of Russian billionaires, a gaggle of trophy wives with implants (Brazilian butt and breast), that MOSSAD lieutenant who flies the Israeli flag, droves of gay interior designers holding their noses, real estate agents, etc etc. Think about it,  what a perfect networking opportunity !

Meanwhile one learns from these “trying” situations. First off: I learned that Iona has a nervous breakdown when she’s unable to shower for 24 hours, and will refuse to leave the house. I also learned that the twins couldn’t care less. I learned that my hair is best hidden after 36 hours, but that husband, when I wear head scarf, will let me know that he doesn’t dig my “chemo” look.

Fuck off! I said and also learned  that my sense of humor, like the water, has run dry.

better times, the days of plenty….

satisfying results when operating jacuzzi

Leila?

Kiki?


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barbi in love …

home?

Its a crazy mess inside my head.

Every For Sale sign becomes a For Rent sign, everywhere I drive I imagine living. I ponder the beach versus the mainland, Sobe versus Brickell, the Grove, Downtown, North Beach, Normandy Isle. I weigh ocean-front condo against a home with a yard against a community townhouse. Then I’m sure again that Aqua, where we now live is perfect, and that I should  find a  more affordable place here. I’m turning into a real estate catalog. Every Miami for rent three-plus bedroom now has a place in my mind. 95% is unaffordable and other the 5%  is too small for our five enormous personalities. If its true that you become what’s on your mind then I’ll be a condo soon ( a gorgeous large but cheap one).

Yes, yes, yes Iona got into DASH and our nine month escape from the winter has turned into something very different. Oh its life-changing,  our friends say. Hell yes.  Like how the fuck do I patch this one together. Didn’t we just built a huge beautiful house that I love  back in Milford? Wasn’t it the perfect place for us? Didn’t we create a balance between living, kids and work, lots of lovely friends, in a picture perfect village? Didn’t I say, when we moved in three years ago, it was great to know that we’d never have to move again?

sweet home

But no, we had to go and fall in love.

Suddenly Miami is the perfect place for us. We ALL fell in love with the palm trees, the beach, the bays and canals and swimming pools, the gardens and parks on every corner. Miami is crazy  cosmopolitan, its not a white American city.  Its Cuban and Italian and Jewish and Venezuelan and Chilean and its loud and a tad dangerous and  hot and sweaty and gritty and romantic and we want  it. We don’t want to flirt with it anymore, we want to get married and have babies. Well, maybe no more babies. But we want to look after our three baby girls, do whats best for them. And Iona is in love with DASH and Kiki and Leila are like Miami, wild and intense and engaging and a tad dangerous.

Husband and I? Don’t know. I’ve always been a sucker for moving. I left home in Amsterdam when I was seventeen. But my bag had been packed since I was ten. Not because I hated my life. I’ve never moved because I hate my life. Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, London, New York, Princeton, Milford, Miami,  I always moved because those places nurtered me enough to turn another corner and experience more, learn more, challenge myself more and expand. Its never personal. Its just who I am.

And husband? We’ll let him speak for himself. He loves to swim and his goal is to swim in every pool in Miami and write about it. I’ll say no more I’ll just send you links, after all he’s the seasoned writer in this house.

Meanwhile.

I’m sitting in front of this giant puzzle and all the pieces are still strewn in front of me. School, home, kids, husband, dog, renters,  friends, work and money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. And Health Insurance.

And I’m going a little crazy…


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DASH – ing

Iona's self portrait

If every principal was like Stacey Mancuso the world would be a better place.
I’m writing this from the courtyard of DASH, the Design & Architecture Senior High School. Its awesome. Like really awesome. Like I wanna go here when I grow up. I now know that I never appreciated school, never, not even college in London, St Martins, Harrow, The Royal College of Art. But I’d really appreciate it now. Especially DASH. Iona is auditioning as I write this. And I’m having Couvade ( that’s when men get contraction pains when their wife is in labor) I’m having I wanna get into this school contractions, and like Iona I’m everso nervous for the audition. Poor Iona. Am I projecting? Bad mother!
So back to Stacey, and I’m not sucking up (yes, she’s funny and glamorous too) she just gets it. She gets kids, teenagers, what they need, how they’ll be their best when super motivated, super engaged, super challenged.

Never bored!

Iona’s Middle School teachers do NOT get it. They are angry. They punish. They fail to engage. Kids sleep in class. They text, listen to their I-pods. Like the gym teacher, who releases the entire class into the sports-field without any directions. She then disappears, sits around lazily, and the kids hang around in the grass, chat and listen to music. Then she suddenly stalks and punishes them by taking their music/ Ipod away. For a week, and if your parents complain she threatens, I’ll keep it for the rest of the school-year.
I want to complain but then they’ll be punished by doing one hundred push-ups without any sense that what they’re doing is for any other reason than breeding resentment.

So thats why I want Iona to go to a highs school like DASH. A place that sees teenagers as an endless source of creative posibility and not as juvenile delinquents. So wish her luck, fingers crossed and even send a little prayer if its not too much to ask.

Iona paints friend Josirus