It’s the time of year when a few brave Christians dare to express themselves in this society where they are an embattled minority, unable even to openly celebrate their festivals without fear. /sarcasm
Mookie is pretty happy spending time with us, for a sixteen-year-old. But sometimes we drag her along to something that we want to do, and that was the case this evening, when we took a map “The 415 Guy” (that’s what he calls himself) made of notable Christmas displays, and drove around looking at a bunch of them. It was fun. I think even Mookie had fun, though mostly she did some kind of linguistic world-building on her phone in the back seat. (At one point, Joy said, “You’re pretty quiet back there, M.” Mookie said, “Witty remark.”) At the one display that inspired us to actually get out of the car and walk around, she was willing to get out as well. Nativity with reindeer included, penguins riding on a polar bear (I wonder whether it was the penguins or the bear who made the 12,000 mile migration), several snowmen . . . it was quite the mix. But fun in an OTT way. The last leg took us through the neighborhood of St. Francis Wood, where the houses are huge, the grounds all look kept by professional gardeners, and those who put an inflatable on their property are probably visited by armed members of the Upperclass Taste Police. Sure enough, Mookie observed that all the lights there seemed to be white. The jokes, they write themselves.
Author Archives: Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Junior year
And just like that, Mookie was off to 11th grade.
This kid!
I have to burst my buttons in public. Over the last few years, Mookie has developed a passion for languages and begun to excel at learning them. So she opted to take the Advanced Placement exams in both Spanish and French this spring.
Spanish, she learned via immersion school K-5 and other experiences, most significantly our six months in Mexico in 2010 and her close friendship with a native speaker for the past almost two years.
French, she learned on her own, using the app Busuu, Discord servers, and such practices as watching French TV shows and listening to all seven Harry Potter audiobooks in French. She has never taken a French class.
Nor was she taking a Spanish class this spring–she took City College’s course for Spanish-immersion-graduate high schoolers in the fall, and decided that was enough–so without a course to guide her, she was going to have to be very disciplined in her preparations. Joy bought her the AP exam prep books for both tests so she could learn what to expect and take practice tests, and then she worked her patootie off. “I just wrote three essays in Spanish” and “I spent the day writing French emails” became commonplace statements in our house this spring.
Never underestimate the power of a bright mind fueled by a burning passion. She just got her AP results back: a 5 on both, the highest score.
You go, Mookie!
Owned again
Mama: You might have heard that summer began on June 21, but . . .
Mookie: Actually, no, I didn’t.
Mama: What?
Mookie: I didn’t know that.
Mama, spluttering a little: This, this is like Sherlock-Holmes-level stuff.¹ Are you also unaware that the earth goes around the sun?
Mookie: I know that, but to me, summer is June, July, and August.² How would I know what day summer “starts” on?
Mama: Because it happens every year . . . ? Never mind. You totally killed my punch line. My punch line was going to be, “You may have heard that summer began on June 21st, but you were misinformed. It begins today!” (points to toenails, illustrated here)
Mookie: That was never going to work as a punch line anyway.
SNAP!
Mama, sighing resignedly: Okay. I’m heading out. I love you.
Mookie, with a tone of profound tolerance: I love you too.
¹Read A Study in Scarlet if you don’t get the reference. You’ll thank me.
²In meteorology, she is correct, but I had been distracted enough and it was time to get back to my point.
Behold the new junior
Last day of sophomore year! Since last August, this one learned chemistry, geometry, and way more than she ever intended about Romeo and Juliet. She learned journalism and was a reporter and writer for the school magazine. She took a college Spanish class, then prepared for the French and Spanish AP tests on her own and thinks she did well; since she can do nothing language-related in moderation, she also studied Mandarin and read extensively in German and Italian.
She did 30 hours of online study and passed her written driving test, and has pretty much learned to drive (many hours of road experience are still required before she takes the road test this fall). She’s a careful and confident driver. From being an inexperienced and inexpert swimmer, she learned to swim with proper strokes (her teacher said they were very clean), and to dive. For the final, she demonstrated enough endurance to swim continuously for almost an hour. No doubt some of that came from having taken up rock climbing, running, and weightlifting this year; our daughter the self-proclaimed gym rat does one or more of those three things five days a week.
No wonder she’s tired.
Easter hunt
Mookie invents terrific games. For Easter, she made us an egg hunt, but only the first item was an egg. It was an orange plastic one, nestled in the orange flowering plant we had just been given at Passover, and inside the egg was the first message here, plus a quote from a book. When we figured out what book it was from, we took that book off the shelf, opened it and found a quote from the next book.
Her aesthetic sense extended to also putting the slip at the same page where the previous quote was to be found. It was elegant. It was also a lovely tour through books that all three of us know and know that the others know. My mom was also there, and although naturally, she isn’t quite as entwined in the Morgenstern bibliographic ecosystem, she recognized some of them too, and enjoyed watching the search unfold.
If you recognize more than a few, you and we must have very similar taste in books.
Painting proceeds
.. with more to come. I’m experiencing some vicarious excitement. It’s not so much with the painting; although I’m happy for her, I have no particular desire to replace the bland ecru of my own bedroom walls. No, what I love is the rearranging of the furniture. When I was young, I used to rearrange the furniture in my room periodically, and it was a source of great happiness. First the imagining. Then the measuring and sketching what would go where. Then a thorough tidying and cleaning, for which I was much more motivated than usual. Then the actual moving of furniture. And then the first few days in a “new” room, with the strange thrill of displacement that came from unfamiliarity, and the relishing of what it created: a little nook made by this bookcase, a new perspective through a window. And always, some rediscovery of books or other belongings that I had forgotten about until I had to move them.
I haven’t done something like that with my own space in decades, except once or twice with my office. Living with another person is a big part of it–I’d have to propose and confer. The office is purely mine, but no room in our house is. And then, there aren’t a lot of ways to reconfigure either our bedroom or the living room. But now I’m thinking that maybe the bedroom, at least, could be changed around a little . . . hm!
In the meantime, I’m particularly looking forward to the stage when the painting is done and I help M. move her furniture out of the living room and into its new locations.
Vacation week project
We are painting Mookie’s room this week. I’ve been taking all the screws and nails out of the walls and now I am spackling. I love to spackle, and I love to say the word spackle. Spackle spackle spackle.
I also love this invention: spackle that goes on pink and dries white, so you know when it’s ready to sand. I don’t love to sand, but whatcha gonna do.
Our supervisor. Sometime today, the bed will be moved away from the wall and covered with drop cloths. I wonder if she’ll stay for that part of the process.
Rite of passage
We are at the DMV. Second time today, fourth time total. Although the Slough of Bureaucracy sucked and clutched at our ankles, we emerged and have successfully run the Paperwork Gauntlet. It truly is like a rite of passage, with painful initiations, odd rituals like giving one’s thumbprint, covering one’s left eye and reading line A1, covering one’s right eye and reading line B5… M. is now undergoing the Trial By Writing. On the other side lie adulthood and freedom, sort of.
ETA: She passed! We went to a quiet alley near home and she had her first driving lesson. It was fun to relive the thrill of that experience. It has been a long time, and I had almost completely forgotten how exciting it was to make a car stop and go and turn for the first time.
Sixteen
Taken during a happy birthday call with her Bubbe. She’s so grown up.
Mookie's Mama 