Wild Words

A book I’ve been reading to my 4-year-old lately, in anticipation of her Mimi’s visit from Texas, is The Keeper of Wild Words by Brooke Smith.

The story is about a Mimi, who is a writer, and her granddaughter. They go outside to learn about the wild words in danger of disappearing thanks to Oxford Junior Dictionary‘s decision to remove 100 natural words and replace them with 21st century tech words, primarily.

Brooke Smith isn’t the only writer to mourn the disappearance of these natural words. English poet Malcolm Guite responded with a sonnet, “A Lament for Lost Words” on his blog. My daughter knows that I write poetry too and takes Mimi’s speech very seriously.

When I was reading this book to her before bed the other night, she told/commanded me TO KEEP WRITING.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because if you don’t, the wild words will disappear.”

It took me a minute to register what she was saying. “Do you mean if I’m not writing the words in a poem, you think they will be gone forever?”

“Yes.”

“But what will I do if I’m not writing poems? You know I can’t be writing poems all the time, every day” (unfortunately).

“I’ll save the words for you, Mommy.”

Just like the granddaughter in the story, my daughter has become my “Keeper of Wild Words.”

What a title! At the back of the book, there’s an envelope provided to place the reader’s own wild words. My daughter and I have decided wild words could also be words she’s learning from other books that aren’t used much anymore.

Enter Beatrix Potter. Having never read them myself as a child, I’ve delighted in discovering this world with my daughter. Potter wrote these books in the early 1900s and you can tell. My daughter and I have learned “soporific” and “perambulator” and we try to say them in phrases throughout the day so that we remember their meaning. I knew it was working when she exclaimed at dinnertime: “This meal is so satisfying I think it will have a soporific effect.” (Sometimes she sounds more like a 70-year-old.)

Notice how you can get the definition of “soporific” by context.

Hiking amongst Herdwick sheep, the kind that Potter raised and bred, in the Lake District in 2019.

But it’s not only the language that feels strangely fresh. It’s the entire world Beatrix Potter has created where there is real danger and she’s not afraid to name it. Peter Rabbit grows up without a dad because of an “accident” in Mr. and Mrs. McGregor’s garden (see pic below). Does my four-year-old have questions about this? Yes. Does she like Mr. McGregor? No. Does she get scared when she sees him on the page or when I read his lines in a deeper voice? Sometimes (so I don’t do that anymore, and we move through the pages featuring him more quickly).

In teaching our daughter, my husband and I don’t dwell on tragedy, but we name it and move on when appropriate. She is learning about life and, well, loss and death are part of that. I had a lovely visit with a friend the other day who just had a mastectomy. With my friend’s permission, my daughter had the chance to ask her her burning questions about it. My husband has a brain injury from multiple concussions and works as a prison chaplain and so my daughter knows that some people have a tougher time, that life isn’t fair. Some people don’t have homes or families; some people don’t stay married; some people would make great parents but don’t have any kids; some people die far too soon.

Do any other children’s books come to mind that don’t avoid or sugarcoat reality but present it in age-appropriate ways? I’d love to know as I think this is lacking in many children’s books.

Me and my keeper of wild words.

Speaking of wild words, I have my own growing list. On and off since 2020, I’ve participated in CV2 (Contemporary Verse 2)’s annual 2-day poem contest. You are given 10 words and have 48 hours to write a poem using all of them. The contest, as well as their 3-word mini practice contests leading up to the big one, has introduced me to some amazing vocabulary:

• nubivagant
• wrest
• insomnolent
• lacuna
• broadside
• peristeronic
• ensorcelled
• pith
• scrubby
• putative

Fun fact: my poem “POP!” published in talking about strawberries all of the time, was a result of a CV2 mini contest using “effervescent,” “barometric,” and “chesterfield.”

Their upcoming 2-day poem contest is this April 19-21 and I can’t wait! Granted, I’m looking after my four-year-old and twin babies on one of the days but inspiration can come amidst chaos, right? Right?

Lover

Most of the time when I go down internet rabbit holes once the kids are in bed, it’s a waste of time. (And yet I keep doing it…) But some evenings I’ll come across a nugget that makes all those clicks and YouTube videos worth it. 

Such was the case the other night. I ended up listening to Jack Antonoff describe the moment he saw his bride Margaret Qualley on their wedding day.

It was the first time I was just frozen and it felt like 30 years of cynicism was exiting my body.

Jack antonoff

Why has this not gone viral? This is such an authentic, romantic, and non-cliché description that I’m still thinking about it days later.

“Authentic” seems like an attribute that will be even more rare and cherished as AI crops up.

A professor friend shared a slide on social media that she uses in her university classes to prompt discussion about the ethical use of AI: How would you feel if your lover used ChatGPT to write their wedding vows? And what’s the difference between this and giving your lover a Hallmark card?

Reading the poem I wrote for him. Photo by Patchwork Media.

Speaking of lovers (since Valentine’s Day is around the corner), I wanted to share this piece by one of my favourite contemporary poets who is also the current poet laureate of the United States, Ada Límon.

“Lover” by Ada Límon

Easy light storms in through the window, soft
            edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s 

            nest rigged high in the maple. I’ve got a bone 
to pick with whomever is in charge. All year, 

I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then,
            Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh

            in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend
writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely

excited for the word lover to come back. Come back
            lover, come back to the five and dime. I could 

            squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover,
what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me,

a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.
            I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape

            of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after
us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt

and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.
            Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned 

            for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam,
the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.

She says this about the poem on poets.org:

Like many of us, I’ve missed a sense of abandon, of recklessness, of easy laughter that the world sometimes offered. During the last twenty months of the pandemic the joys have become quieter, smaller, sometimes nonexistent, a squirrel’s nest in a tree. But still, I have hope that the world will come back. Maybe a little differently, but maybe that tenuousness will make everything a bit shinier. That’s where this poem came from. That, and of course the word lover, which I adore.

ADa Límon

Indeed, what a word….lover. Like Taylor Swift talks about in this video on writing her hit song “Lover” (incidentally produced with Jack Antonoff), I also don’t use “lover” in everyday speech. I never refer to my husband this way. Except in a poem. I happened to be reading Límon’s poem when I was editing my poetry chapbook and her love for “lover” made me change the second last line of “Sunflowers in the Van Gogh Museum.” It used to say: “My love tells me stop / reading museum words.” I changed it to “My lover tells me stop / reading museum words.” Sounds better, doesn’t it?

It’s been almost nine years since I married my lover. I remember thinking it then and I still think it now, “I don’t really know what love is” or perhaps more accurately, “I’m not really sure I know how to love well.”

Granville Island crowdsourcing.

I do know that love is specific. It’s in the “godlike details” as I say in my video poem. Details are what makes a poem or story work. I think a relationship too. I joke (but am also serious) that one of the most romantic things my husband has ever done was strain all the decorative rocks out of this glass bowl, unprompted, when he was cleaning the bathroom where it used to live. 

Looks like this could use another clean! (hint hint: are you reading this, lover?)

I came into the kitchen where the rocks were drying on a tea towel on the kitchen table, evenly spread out like he was preparing cookies on a baking sheet, and I was amazed. Pretty sure I looked at him like this: 

Photo by Meghan Hemstra Photography.

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self this story on her wedding day, what would she have thought? From ice skating on Grouse Mountain and sipping hot chocolate to cleaning the dust off aquarium rocks…is this love’s evolution? As a poet, I assumed words would be enough (don’t get me wrong, I DO love giving and receiving them), but as I’ve grown older and the demands of being a mom to three young kids has increased, I’ve come to appreciate acts of love more than I ever anticipated. My lover cooks, cleans, picks up the groceries, changes poopy diapers, fills the van with gas, makes me a latte every morning, even takes the kids out for an hour so I can write this post and enjoy some rare quiet. 

We joke (or justify our poor decision making) that in this demanding stage of life, we are allowed to waste away our evenings on the internet because we are so exhausted by day’s end and we crave something mindless. “I can’t wait to waste my life away with you,” as bülow sings.

Sometimes even just sitting beside each other on the couch as we go down our separate rabbit trails (and share the nuggets) is enough.

Happy Valentine’s Day, readers!

Garbage Bag Shepherd

When my dad gets into a project, he really gets into it. Take the indestructible mailbox of 2015. He built a mailbox out of Corian (the durable and heavy-as-rock material he uses for countertops in people’s homes) so that teenage hooligans couldn’t smash it with a baseball bat like they did to the flimsy one that came before. It was a work of art, a tour de force that defined the street, that made strangers slow down and stare in awe. It was a work of blood, sweat, and tears.

It was installed for a few months before the Township of Langley’s snowplow uprooted it one winter day. Plucked as easily as Alouette’s feathers. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Fast forward to 2023 during Christmas holidays: I visit my parents’ house. You can’t miss it because my dad has created an almost life-sized nativity set on their hill, visible from a major road. Due to his work in various people’s homes, he is often given their leftovers—tables, bathtubs, grandfather clocks, garden figurines, and yes, nativity sets. Never one to pass up a “gift,” my dad finds spots in and around their rancher for these objects to live (often to my mom’s dismay).

Have you noticed the diminishing presence of nativity scenes in front lawns, replaced by endless inflatable Santas or Paw Patrol characters or skeletons in Santa Claus hats as pictured in the photo below that have little to do with Christmas? (I sound like Charlie Brown…) Well, look no further than 232 Street in Langley.

My dad saw a project with his name on it. He saw his eight grandkids. He saw that it would get the neighbours talking (and heaven forbid he’d decline the opportunity for a conversation starter!) So he came up with this:

He built the star out of wood and used goal posts and netting for the backdrop. The two animals in the foreground were actually reindeer. So my dad bent them in different ways to make them look more like sheep. It wasn’t obvious enough, so he added a shepherd.

In our family WhatsApp chat, he described how he made it: “bunched plastic bags bungeed to a dolly with a stainless bowl head covered with a dark plastic bag.”

I was about to roll my eyes but I was also seriously impressed.

“Sheep without a shepherd would be telling the wrong Christmas story,” he added.

There are times when I’ve wondered, “Why do I write so many poems about my dad?”

When I went to my parents’ today and wandered around their yard with my awestruck four-year-old who had helped set up the nativity when she stayed there one weekend, I mused aloud, “And I wonder why I write so many poems about my dad.” 

I haven’t had as much time as I would like to reflect on the Christmas story this year, but what struck me today was the resourcefulness and creativity embedded in the narrative. Someone or something ordinary was transformed into something extraordinary. A feeding trough for animals becomes a last-minute bed for a baby. A stinky, ragtag group of shepherds gets sung to by angels and given a first-row seat to a king’s birth. A virgin becomes a mother. A barren women gives birth in old age. Nothing is expected. Nothing is as it seems.

My dad is participating in this transformative story. Here’s his “garbage bag shepherd” in daylight:

Laughable, loud, and ingenuous, eh? By day I see weird lumps of plastic, but by night from the roadside, it really does look like a shepherd watching in wonder.

Growing up hearing the Christmas story each year can make me a bit blasé to its scandal, but reading it to my four-year-old and seeing it come to life in my parents’ yard helps me consider it anew. My daughter is not content for this story to stay in a book. She grabs a hammer and joins in the recreating, the re-enacting. She makes “once upon of a time” (how she starts stories) be this time, right now. At the park, we play “Bethlehem” and bring gifts of leaves and sticks to baby Jesus lying in the wood chips, crying for his mama.

“I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder,” Donald Miller writes in Blue Like Jazz.

Wonder is the stuff of kids, the stuff adults often need help returning to. I love my dad for many reasons, but a big one is that he gets wonder, like really gets it. He hasn’t forgotten how powerful it is or that it works best when it catches you off guard, makes you chuckle, or even just makes you curious enough to take a step closer and ask, “What IS that?”

Falling for Lampposts and Leaves

One of my favourite parts about exploring a new city is stumbling upon public artworks. I have a Coquitlam address but live within walking distance to more amenities in Port Moody, including a small neighbourhood park (and I mean small!)

When we moved from Vancouver to Coquitlam a year ago, I was rather dismayed that Corbeau Park was the nearest one to walk to, especially after enjoying the gargantuan (by comparison) Memorial South Park practically in our backyard.

And yet my almost-four-year-old is surprisingly content with what the playground offers. And me? I have grown to like its smallness and calmness in the midst of a busy intersection. The park is aesthetically framed by a creek, trees, and brick-accented townhouses that have a European flair to them. Mosaics along the sidewalk and lampposts add visual interest and contribute to making this small, easily overlooked and crowded corner of Dewdney Trunk Road and St Johns Street an oasis with character (and benches!)

Speaking of giving a place character, I am especially fond of this lamppost at Lafarge Lake (an example of functional public art). It reminds me of Lumière (the talking candelabra) in Beauty and the Beast. I wish there were more of these surprise lampposts scattered around the lake’s perimeter, but as far as I’m aware, this is the only one. Can’t you just picture yourself reading a book under its canopy, the post’s lanky steel body coming to life when you’re not looking and meandering down to the water’s edge? (I took this picture on a hot summer day, which is probably the only reason why my mind jumps to “sun shade” rather than “rain cover”).

I’ve been noticing lampposts lately. Now that summer is retreating and fall is arriving with aplomb, there is colour everywhere. Leaves wrap themselves around lampposts like scarves. This one greets you along the path from Castle Park in Port Coquitlam, over the Mary Hill Bypass, and down to the Fraser River.

And look at this wall of ivy framing our own path down to a basement suite which, when the light hits just right, makes even that downward descent (with carseats in tow) look magical.

‘ll leave/leaf you with other shots of flaming reds seen at Rocky Point Park in Port Moody.

What a glorious season, eh? And it never gets old.

All Dolled Up à la Barbie

When I saw the opening scene of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie where Margot Robbie is dressed as the titular doll who makes her debut in a striped black and white bathing suit, I thought she looked familiar. This original Barbie came out in 1959, way before I was born, but I remember seeing it when I visited Toronto last spring and explored the Bata Shoe Museum. Yes, a shoe museum.

A gem of a place, it has striking angular architecture and a glass wedge reminiscent of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) nearby. According to the Bata Shoe Museum’s website, the architect Raymond Moriyama designed the building to resemble a shoebox with the overhanging roof forming a lid:

“…the roof plane suggests a lid resting on an open box, protecting its contents within, a metaphor that’s most obvious when viewed from the street below. The ‘lid’s’ copper-clad soffit and fascia align with the green parapet of the building’s neighbour. As the copper oxidizes over time, the lid effect will become more pronounced and the visual link reinforced.”

Compared to the massive and overwhelming ROM, this shoe museum only takes 1 to 2 hours to tour through. Even if you’re not a shoe aficionado, it’s fascinating to learn about different types of shoes for both practical and non-practical purposes and what shoes tell about a culture and its values.

The top floor of this five-storey museum has rotating exhibits. When I was there, All Dolled Up was on display. After viewing Barbie, I returned to my photos to compare and contrast how the curator(s) talk about the legendary doll’s history versus how she is portrayed in the film.

Movie Barbie thinks she is an inspirational role model for young girls as she had many different professions and showed how a girl can do anything. Indeed, on barbiemedia.com, the banner image shows Barbies dressed in all sorts of work attire with the catchphrase, “Inspiring girls since 1959.” And on the website, it says: “Barbie represented women in new ways, becoming a symbol of independence and empowerment.”

Is this the message you gleaned from Barbie if you played with her? I grew up in the 90s and had a few Barbies, but I don’t ever remember being inspired by them in terms of career. Rather, they represented what the title didactic below talks about: “ideal young lady whose beauty was expressed through the consumption of an ever-growing line of glamorous clothes for all manner of activities.” Even Ruth Handler, the doll’s creator and co-founder of the toy company Mattel that made Barbie, said “her ‘figure’ typified what the feminine ideal was in the late 1950s” (quoted in this article in Business Insider written by Grace Dean). That feminine ideal hasn’t changed.

Interestingly, in that same article, the author writes that the focus on Barbie’s career came about in the 1980s: “A new advertising campaign marketed Barbie as a professional role model, using the tagline: ‘we girls can do anything.'”

Fortunately, I wasn’t head over heels about Barbie (pun intended). While my sister loved cutting their hairs (she’s probably responsible for a lot of “Weird Barbies”), I loved gathering mine up, putting them on the trampoline, and together with my brother, playing EARTHQUAKE! where we would bounce as high as we could until we flung them all off onto the grass. Not sure which of us started this game but it brought us many afternoons of joy.

Like Gloria in the movie, I didn’t have a Ken and neither did my sister. The movie corroborates the view in the didactic image above of Ken as Barbie’s companion, “making him a male doll intended for girls . . . Ken’s outfits suggest that his activities were more leisurely than adventurous [in comparison to G.I. Joe], appropriate for a date but not saving the world.”

That last phrase makes me chuckle: “appropriate for a date but not saving the world.” Indeed, Ryan Gosling’s Ken doesn’t save anyone. He doesn’t save drowning people at the beach, which he makes hilariously clear in one scene. He doesn’t lifeguard. He is not associated with any action or verb, not even “beaching.” All he does is “beach.” He gets a noun. The Kens in the movie are arm candy for the Barbies in an ironic, intentional reversal of how men and women are typically perceived in today’s patriarchal world. In Barbie Land, the Barbies write books, win Nobel prizes, serve as President, change the world. They get the action.

Stairwell view from Bata Shoe Museum

Instead of saving the world, Ken risks destroying the “utopian”, changeless one the Barbies have built. But who is this utopia perfect for? And if it’s only perfect for the Barbies, is it actually a utopia? Can such a place exist where men and women have mutually respectful relationships of collaboration and care? Where nobody takes each other for granted? Where character is more important than appearance, brand, and reputation? (and where you can like horses but not like patriarchy?)

As a friend and I were discussing recently, what does the movie say about where and how men exist in society if they reject patriarchy and the toxic masculinity that accompanies it? What does Ken’s journey of self-discovery look like without society’s gendered script?

The All Dolled Up exhibit also showed dolls from all over the world, of different colours and body types, homemade ones filling in for the gaps in the mainstream market as seen above. There is diversity in Barbie Land, yet the main Barbie and Ken are still tall, thin, and white. Likely this was to keep it historically accurate to “Stereotypical Barbie” that Margot Robbie’s character plays and what the early Barbies embodied, but it still got me thinking how the movie would have landed if a Barbie and Ken of colour or with a disability had the lead roles instead. At least the movie didn’t shy away from its uncomfortable origins. “I’m what you think of when you think of Barbie,” Robbie’s Barbie says at one point (or something to that effect).

And even though Mattel financed the movie, the movie heavily criticized them for only having two female CEOs since the company’s inception in 1945. They introduced a Black doll in 1966 named Christie, but she was the sidekick, the “friend of Barbie.” It wasn’t until 1980 that Mattel released the first black and Hispanic dolls who were named Barbie (which only now strikes me as a very white, western name).

The Barbie website emphasizes a commitment to diversity, though as the museum didactic outlines above, it took 23 years for Mattel to address the issues with “Share a Smile with Becky” who came out in 1996: “her wheelchair could not get into the Barbie Dream House.” This statement is full of symbolism, whether the curator(s) intended it or not. Who else is excluded from this dream house, this utopian society? It’s not enough for Mattel to make and champion a Barbie who is Black or brown or has a disability if the structures and systems surrounding her are also not interrupted, interrogated, and made inclusive.

This quote caught my eye in the Business Insider article:

“Right now when you say ‘Barbie’ to someone, a very clear image of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slim doll comes to mind,” Kim Culmone, global head of design at Barbie, told The Telegraph in 2016. “In a few years, this will no longer be the case.”

I’m suspicious of this since it’s been more than a few years since 2016 and I still have the stereotypical image in my head. But another part of me hopes I’m proved wrong still. My daughter is coming to the age where she is noticing dolls, princesses, and fashion. Will she play with Barbies as I once did? What will they look like? Her only exposure so far is one she saw in a thrift store. She picked it up and held it out to me excitedly. “Mom, look at this nice girl! Can I have her?”

Turns out there are a lot of shades of grey underneath this picture-perfect pink summer blockbuster, a lot of questions without easy answers.

What did you think of the film? And what’s your relationship (if any) to the iconic doll? Would love to hear your thoughts if you’re so inclined to comment!

Leisure at Lafarge Lake

This past week, I was getting bored walking my 3-month-old twins around our suburban neighbourhood. I needed something more interesting, more city life humming around me. And then I remembered that one of the reasons we chose the rental we have in Coquitlam is its proximity to the SkyTrain. Not so much out of bravery but desperation for a change of scenery, I put one babe in a carrier, buckled the other into a single stroller, and walked to Inlet Centre to catch the Millennium Line eastbound to the last stop: Lafarge Lake-Douglas. (For some reason, public transit felt less intimidating than buckling two babies into car seats, hauling them up our formidable basement steps, and driving somewhere).

Here we go!

I was an urban flâneuse again, reading people (à la David Zeiroth in his recent poetry book) and spaces in my new-to-me city, a city I might be exploring more during this maternity leave than if I was still working.

My favourite lamppost. Wish all the ones around the lake were as charming as this!

Mostly everyone knows Lafarge Lake for its spectacular Christmas light display. Located in Town Centre Park, the lake is one of many sights and amenities that also includes a track and field (where I competed at track meets as a kid), tennis courts, sand volleyball courts, a playground, spray park, amphitheatre, and Evergreen Cultural Centre, to name a few.

Lights at Lafarge in January 2023.

The man-made lake is great in summer too. I watched kids in canoes shriek in delight as they paddled under the fountain while I ate some delicious ice cream (cookie dough and chocolate) from Rocky Point Ice Cream.

Watching the canoes play under the fountain.

Pretty much a perfect day.

I looped around the lake and saw a young boy jump up and down with excitement when he caught a fish (the lake is stocked with rainbow trout from March to November). I chatted with a lovely stranger who asked about my boys and genuinely seemed to care about how I was doing. As I looked around, I was struck by how many people came here to play.

Since I work at an art gallery (when not taking care of babies), I always love visiting other ones. Unfortunately, the Art Gallery at Evergreen was closed for installation but I did get to wander around the stunning performing arts lobby.

Evergreen Cultural Centre interior.

I was surprised there wasn’t more public art in and around the building but I did enjoy stopping to reflect on Janet Wang‘s two-part window installation.

Evergreen Cultural Centre exterior.

To Exit is to Enter shows a large portrait of the artist turning away and moving up a stairwell. The didactic panel says:

Is she coming or going? Was she asked to leave or invited in? What lies beyond? With these questions in mind the doorway becomes a portal, a mysterious passageway into the unknown. This metaphor continues Wang’s exploration of identity from her perspective as a second-generation Chinese-Canadian settler, artist and mother. Like many people living in this country, the notion of longing is complicated by histories of exclusion.

If you have Instagram (unlike me), you can point your phone at the QR code and activate the filter. Curious what this would look like. Anyone seen it who could tell me? Does the figure move?

Janet Wang, To Exit is to Enter, 2023, inkjet print on vinyl, augmented reality animation.

The other part of the installation also features a door, showing a procession of figures moving in parallel lines, with one line heading towards a yellow door. The didactic panel talks about the Chinese Exclusion Act from 1923-1947, a federal policy that banned Chinese immigration to Canada. With this history in mind, the artwork brings up themes of belonging, identity, migration, and conformity, even in the present day. Are the figures walking willingly or involuntarily? Rather than a golden archway (or country) of opportunity, I interpret the door ominously. It reminded me of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time where all the residents of Camazotz move and speak the same way because they are controlled by IT, a gigantic disembodied brain. Doors are liminal, in-between spaces that typically represent change, hope, and new beginnings, but as this artwork shows, that is not necessarily the case.

Janet Wang, To Exit is to Enter, 2023, inkjet print on vinyl, augmented reality animation.

The artwork doesn’t really jive with the leisure and play surrounding the lake on a summer day, but perhaps it is all the more striking because of this incongruity. And like good public art, it got me thinking. It made me aware of the privilege I enjoy as a Canadian citizen whose government gives mothers a 12-or 18-month maternity leave and as a white settler who hasn’t faced policies of exclusion like the artist and people of minority groups. It also made me grateful for where I live (despite the soaring coast of living) and my capacity to walk out the door of my home with babies and do outings like this.

Lovely view on a lovely day.

I wonder how long this artwork will stay up and what other installation might be there the next time I visit. Any ideas for other destinations or experiences to try with the twins over the next year?