MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

This morning Maya is watching Aladdin. You know, the whole poor boy loves princess, meets genie who grants him three wishes, wishes to be a prince so he can marry her, blah blah blah. Why won't she fix the couch cushion? Maya really likes Aladdin.  ( Actually I like it too. The songs are catchy and the dialogue is very funny.)  You can tell because she watches almost the whole movie in silence, staring glassy eyed at the TV.  When she gets really engrossed in a show she will sit in any position, on the top of the couch, on the floor, directly in front of the TV so close I start sounding like my mother. ("Don't sit so close to the TV, you'll ruin your eyes!" Is this true? Is Maya going to go blind??) Watching Aladdin always makes me think about wishes. We, as a culture, really like wishes. We wish on shooting stars. We throw coins into fountains and wells. We make a wish before blowing out candles, when an eyelash gets stuck on our fingertip, when we scatte

I just finished reading a book about a man named Chris McCandless who walked off one day into the Alaskan wilderness to "live off the land" and never made it out. If you are interested in his story go here:   http://www.christophermccandless.info   or read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. For the purpose of this blog it will suffice to say that he was an intense person who felt that his true calling was to exist deep within the wilderness with little to sustain him except for his wits and the clothes on his back. I would never do this. I think trees are pretty but the woods make me very nervous. I do not like to be places where my cellphone does not work. I do not like to be too far from other people. I do not like bears unless they are behind a barricade in the Bronx Zoo. I would barely last 2 days in the wilderness. It is not my thing. Martial arts is my thing. But all these blog posts about being evaluated for promotion and going off to watch people fight in tournamen

“Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”  ―  A.A. Milne Yesterday was Maya's pre-k "graduation". They don't call it that, they call it a "moving on ceremony". I approve of this since graduation implies being finished and Maya has just begun her schooling. Not to mention, she is not going anywhere, except for the kindergarten classroom down the hall. Still it is an emotional time for these preschoolers and their mommies. (Not the daddies. I am not saying  the dads are not proud. Just that they are not emotional.. Also they are too busy thinking about football season returning in August and what they are going to grill this weekend. Who me stereotype? Never!) The kids in Maya's class sang three songs for us. They got a "diploma." We took a lot of videos and photos with our cellphones and IPads. We ate breakfast together. Then the grownups went home and the kids went about their day. Despite

Next Wednesday is Maya's last day of pre-k. There will be tears shed (mine), phone numbers exchanged, summer playdates scheduled. After all the farewells and the thank yous and the have a nice summers, Matthew and I will face the horrifying realization Maya will now be home with us, every day all day, for the next two months . There is no standardized testing in prek. (Although the way education reform is currently trending it wont be long before there is) But I can tell you that her teachers did a great job. She has a ton of friends. She loves school and is excited to learn new things. She can read small books , do basic arithmetic and draw a garden full of rainbow colored  flowers . She is absolutely one hundred percent emotionally and academically ready for kindergarten . And if she wasn't I trust that her teachers would tell me. Most of the recent education initiatives in NYS have been about testing. Apparently three hour long reading tests for fourth graders with non

"In all my years of seeing and participating in the very individual sport of karate, I have never witnessed a group act more like a team then my students did this weekend."  Sensei Matthew Fremon (aka, my husband)  via Facebook. This weekend Matthew and I traveled with a group of our students to Rochester, NY for a karate tournament. Along with the 5 competitors were 4 other students of various ranks and 3 friends and family members who had all come along on the 6 hour drive just to support the team. If you add the numerous phone calls, texts and Facebook messages from people back in NYC that were nervously exchanged  throughout  the day it adds up to over 25 people personally and emotionally invested in the success of 5 karate students.  Our dojo came home with 2 third place awards, 2 second places and 2 first places. Everyone who competed got a trophy or a medal in either kata or sparring.  I am incredibly proud of them but this is not my story of the weekend. The

I have a very specific Tuesday morning routine. My Jump, Kick, MOVE! class is at 11:30. I like to get to the dojo by 10:15 or so, set up the room for my class, and then go to my favorite coffee shop, endulge in a bagel and a cup of coffee and write or sometimes just daydream. It is my quiet time, the hour or so before I start my longest workday, and I am very protective of it. Parent comes too early for class? Sorry I am at the coffee shop. Phone is ringing.  That's  what voicemail is for. This cozy time is my favorite part of the week and I get very angry when you mess with it. Especially if the "you" is the mother f--- ing MTA. Here is a truthful account of my morning. Get to the Bedford avenue station at 9:20 with a train right there in the station. Huzzah! I hurry on only to hear the joyful announcement "ladies and gentleman we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us.. Please be patient ." No NYC transit I will not be patient . Not after yeste

Yesterday at the playground I learned something new about myself. I no longer care about water guns. I used to care. I used to be in the camp of all toy guns are bad, if Maya wants to shoot water she can use a spray bottle (she did, its fun but not the same). But that was before I chased her around shooting water at her. That was before I taught her to hide behind a tree and poke the gun out to surprise daddy.  Maya does not know what a real gun looks like and I doubt she understands what it actually does. Matthew and I are not gun people, we do not keep one in our house nor do we plan on ever owning one. Occasionally the bad guys in her movies carry guns but she has not seemed too interested in this. She likes karate moves and pretending to air bend. (From the Legend of Korra.) But no one can deny the appeal of sticking a water gun in mommy's face and pulling the trigger. The argument against toy guns is of course that gun play is not nice. A toy gun fight is mimicking a

“..(jiu jitsu) is to protect the individual, the older man, the weak, the child, the lady and the young woman from being dominanted and hurt by some bum because they don’t have the physical attributes to defend themselves. Like I never had. ” Helio Gracie A lot of people have read my most recent blog post. I really appreciate this. I mostly write for me, because I enjoy it, because I feel passionate about something, because I need to get something off of my chest. But I am not going to lie, I love that people are reading it. What writer does not like to make people think, or at the very least, to entertain someone while they are bored at work, or on the bus, or in the bathroom. (Wherever you read is fine with me, I don't mind. We all read something in there!) But this last post generated a lot of comments, and your comments made me  think. What exactly did I mean by that blue belt post anyway? Was I just being funny? Am I more frustrated with my training than I thought? (I actu

As a kids karate teacher I am often trying to get my students to not focus on promotion. Don't get me wrong, a new color around your waist is an excellent motivator. But I hope the kids will ultimately come to class because they love karate , not just because they are punching the clock (so to speak) on their way to a new belt. When I first started studying jiu jitsu it was all about the thrill of something new. I just wanted to learn how to do all these awkward techniques with their odd Brazilian names . I didn't care that I was a white belt, on the contrary I loved it. It had been a long time since I was a beginner. About 8-10 months into my training a bunch of the people in my class got blue belts. I knew I wasn't ready for a promotion yet. But still, when the woman who was my partner almost every day got her new belt tied on right next to me I felt a little wierd. Ok fine, I was a bit envious. She was definitely better than me, but she was not that much bett

The wonderful thing about four year olds, and children in general, is that they are always changing. Babies learn to do thrilling things like smile and coo and hold their head up and eventually to walk and talk. Preschoolers draw butterflies that actually look like butterflies, do gymnastics tricks, learn to read. Every day Maya becomes more and more like Maya. She picks her own clothes. She wants to wear headbands. She has shows she likes to watch and food she won't eat. She has favorites. She has a best friend. They both change constantly. In general I love all of the little quirks that make her Maya. I love the way she says "agai-yen" (again) with a slight country accent when she wants more tickles. I love the fact that she prefers to poop naked. (Fast forward to sixteen year old Maya: "Mom, you put that in your BLOG??? I hate you!!)  Even the personality traits that cause fights (like her annoying refusal to wear sneakers and the fact that she bursts into tears

Last night Matthew and I went to a concert. A big grownup concert. (Not Laurie Berkener.)We saw Radiohead at the Prudential Center in New Jersey. To be honest, I don't know much about Radiohead, except for a few popular songs from ten years ago. But I recently learned that my husband had never been to a live concert. Me, I used to be a band girl. I dated musicians in college. I carried drums and crammed into the backseat of cars with six other people on the way to some dank basement club. And I went to a lot of real concerts too. I slept in a dusty field for a weekend and listened to Phish play four hour sets. I've seen the Rolling Stones at Giants Stadium. I saw Aerosmith and Counting Crows and Dave Matthews Band. I even went to see Meat Loaf. (Go ahead and laugh but it was a pretty good show!) I haven't been to a real concert in years but it was inconceivable to me that Matthew had never gone. So I went to my friend Patrick (who happens to be a musician himself) and a