My Children, the Fall Season, Part 1: Cracking My Nuts

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Oct. 5, 2009

Sandra Tsing Loh tries to find playmates for her kids.

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Life. Today's topic: My Children, the Fall Season. Part One: Cracking My Nuts

In the olden days, say the 1950s, which, frankly I don't remember, since I was born in 1962. But the '50s are this legendary time you hear about.

Apparently, back then, kids just played... with other kids... on their block. That's right! Every afternoon, and on most weekends, apparently the kids got together? And they played. What did they play? Who knows! Jacks? Does anyone play jacks anymore?

In 21st century Los Angeles, however – well, my two daughters go to a magnet school, in the Valley. Kids are driven in from 50 far-flung locations across the city.

On top of that, some of my kids' best friends are from recent immigrant families. Not only is the middle-class American "playdate" concept new to them, also new is the idea that if the family has four children, each child will be designated her own personal driver, to accomplish that particular child's age-appropriate weekend activities.

On the Westside, the calculation would come to four children, four drivers. Four mothers, essentially.

Which would work in Utah, which sometimes looks attractive to me. Just to have all the other wives around – to help drive.

Anyway! The point is recently I've been trying to cultivate – or should I say re-cultivate, after a lazy summer, when everyone went away? My pod of middle-class English-speaking families, to generate some kind of old-fashioned kid-on-kid play time for my girls.

But apparently the fall-scheduling train has already pulled away from the station, and the name of that train is Nutcracker! Starting now as early as September, girls age six and up disappear into Nutcracker rehearsals. Even if they're just a soldier, an angel, a mouse, or a small morsel of Christmas cheese. "I didn't know the Nutcracker featured a Christmas cheese!" "Apparently so, it's a huge honor at the Beverly Pashmina school of dance, in Chatsworth."

Anyway, even if your daughter's only job is to stand stage left wearing a Christmas cheese headpiece or to run about in circles during a poorly-lit tin solder battle with the other directionally-challenged mice yelling "Help! Help!" They will have three months of Nutcracker rehearsals, Mondays at 3, Thursdays at 4, Saturdays at 11, Sundays from 5:30 to 9. No matter how random the time, there will be Nutcracker stuffed into it.

It soon became clear to me that unless I bulldozed my children onto the stage and into the chorus, my daughters were going to become little matchgirls with no social life whatsoever. In short, I was going to have to up my game. How did I do it? Tune in next week.

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