Mama Says

Advice to young couples: before you decide whether to have kids, hit the bowling alley. If you lose patience the first time your ball stops rolling half-way down the lane, you may want to consider holding off on the parenting thing until you have become more fun.

My husband, John, and I are still working on this, and we’re beginning to worry that our window of opportunity may already be starting to close. When our children, now five and seven, hit the critical pre-teen years, it’ll already be too late. They will Know. And they will scorn us for the pathetic sticks-in-the-mud that we are.

When they were first born, we thought we might be able to keep them from ever discovering that we were poor sports by being extra informative. Although I couldn’t bring myself to play peek-a-boo for more than a couple rounds, I would gladly name each garment, along with descriptive adjectives, as I removed it from the dryer. See, Audrey? Here is a shirt. Shirt. Neddy’s blue shirt. That’s azul in Spanish. And here’s another shirt that’s yellow. Amarillo. ¿Si? I could bring myself to build with blocks if they would let me make a gothic cathedral and name all the sections. See, Neddy? Transept here. And there’s the nave. Oooh, and if you could just keep your little hands off for a few more minutes, I’ll finish this cloister. Isn’t that fun?

No. Playing: no fun. So we all just stuck with reading for a couple years.

I began reading to them before we came home from the hospital. I read the paper. They seemed pretty interested, so I read some more. I read aloud to them while they were nursing, until they started biting me.

But when they started noticing other children more, they simultaneously began to notice something else which we had hoped would, somehow, just not come up.

The other children had parents who played games. Damn.

It was stressful for awhile after our oldest child got clued in. We made the mistake of enrolling him at one of those horrible preschools where the adults would always rather play with children than read the paper. So of course, he began to expect it. There were the most blood-curdling scenes when I came to pick him up. No, no, no! he wailed. I want to stay! I am not ready! I am not done playing! It didn’t do any good to promise him a big fun time awaiting him at home. He was already wise to that.

So, okay, we conceded, it takes a village. Maybe we can convince these other parents to have fun with our kids and in exchange we’ll — let’s see — we’ll teach their kids to balance their little checkbooks.

But there’s really no substitute for having one’s very own set of fun parents, so we have belatedly accepted that we’ve just got to do what must be done. If our kids are ever going to know how to throw a ball or roller skate or dive into the deep end, we’d better get cracking and make some changes.

I began by doing a Google search on “teach child ride bike.” Because the Internet is truly a marvelous tool, it did not take me long to find a very sensible, step-by-step guide on www.fathersfirst.org I printed it out, got the kid strapped into the helmet, and out we went to have some fun.

Five minutes later, after he fell the first time because I was holding the instruction sheet and his seat at the same time, I followed a tearful child back into the house for a nice cup of tea and a story. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking turns reading to each other and eating crackers as we recovered from our harrowing experience.

It does not happen overnight, this transformation. We are starting out small with arcade games, and we hope to work our way up to putt-putt golf. I figure by the time we make it to shuffleboard, they’ll be old enough to be embarrassed by us, and we’ll be off the hook.

Don’t Let This Happen to You: How to Find the Fun

In the July issue, Jill Levin will provide a comparative review of some of the best guides to family fun in northeast Ohio. But summer’s here and time’s a-wasting, so here are some quick hints about places convenient to the Near West Side where your family can have some fun:

Go Carts: Brookpark Fun & Games Emporium, 6770 Brookpark Rd. 216-351-1910

Roller Skating: Skateland, 13445 Brookpark Rd. 216-267-3966

Bowling: AMF Carousel Lanes, 3545 Ridge Rd. 216-281-3589 or Meszar’s Lanes, 4231 Fulton Rd., 216-741-7933.

There are nine Ohio ports on Lake Erie. Since the distance between Toledo and Conneaut is only about 180 miles, this means that we average a port every 20 miles. In 2000, about 73 million tons of stuff passed through Ohio’s Lake Erie ports, carried in ships coming from or on their way to all sorts of interesting places. Most of us know practically nothing about all those ships. Unless you’re a shipwatcher.

Like trainspotting, shipwatching is a hobby that keys into the same drive for encyclopedic knowledge on an esoteric topic that compels eight-year-olds to collect Yugi-Oh cards. Shipwatchers learn the countries of origin, trade routes, number of crew and most common cargo of the vessels serving their shipping region. Many of them even hook up together for conventions in places like Duluth, which even has a waterfront hotel designed to cater to their favorite pastime.

But while Yugi-Oh duelists hang out in game stores trading cards, shipwatchers can be found out in the fresh (well, maybe slightly deisel-tinged) air of the docks trading personal experience while they gain insight into real issues of geography and international trade.

If you can pry those ragged cards out of their sweaty little fingers long enough, you may enjoy an afternoon of shipwatching with your children at North Coast Harbor this summer. In order to impress them with your vast grown-up knowledge, you’ll need to cram a little first with Know Your Ships 2003, the annual “boat watchers bible.”

Cleveland Public Library has a copy of the current edition in business reference, where it does you absolutely no good. For a copy that you can take along to the lake, you can borrow mine or order your own for $15 at www.knowyourships.com It contains a color guide to the flags flying on Lake Erie vessels, lots of photos, and an index of vessels arranged by name and fleet number.

As handy as the little guide is, it does lack some key elements that would enrich your shipwatching experience. For instance, if you stuff a pocket atlas or world map into the backpack along with the sunscreen and binoculars, you can help the kids to connect the dots a little better.

Hands down, the best place for Cleveland shipwatching would be from the lake side concourse of Cleveland Browns Stadium. But since that location is impractical for the overwhelming majority of us who have never set foot in it, you might try Whiskey Island Marina or Voinovich Park.

What You Could Have Seen This Week if You’d Been Paying Attention

• The State of Michigan A training ship from the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, manned by cadets and stopping at the Cleveland Coast Guard Base for a day of public tours.

• Highlander Steve Forbes’ 150-foot “floating palace” — a massive yacht that includes a heliport and a wine cellar.

• A little on, a little off Several self-unloading freighters of 600 feet and more were in and out of the Cleveland Bulk Terminal to pick up cargo from the salt mines, or to “lighter” — transfer cargo to a flat-bottomed barge.

Several dozen young men are kidnapped or sold by relatives to settle debts, then transported in chains across an ocean, and sold into slavery. But shortly after they board a schooner to be transported a few hundred miles to a Cuban plantation, they mutiny. There follows a harrowing two-month journey, zigzagging up the coast of the United States aboard a vessel equipped only for a few days’ voyage. When they finally set foot on solid ground, they are promptly tossed into jail.

Most of the young men do not even know each other. They speak different languages. They are farmers and craftsmen, criminals and gentlemen’s sons. But they stick together, and they get a good lawyer — the aged former president, John Quincy Adams.

The outcome of this remarkable tale is known to anyone who has seen the movie Amistad. But even kids too young to understand the movie will appreciate the living history lesson they will get aboard the Freedom Schooner Amistad, which will come to Cleveland this month for two weeks of public tours.

The schooner is a wooden replica of the famous vessel that transported the captives in 1839. It arrives on Saturday, June 14, and departs on Sunday, June 29. While in port, visitors are welcome from 2-6 pm. Tickets: $5 adults, $3 children.

For background before you go, read:

Amistad Rising: A Story of Freedom, by Veronica Chambers. A read-aloud accessible to young kids. The language is a little on the florid side, but this partly-fictionalized account competently conveys the basic outline of the story and introduces the main characters.

Amistad: A Long Road to Freedom, by Walter Dean Myers. For middle readers, it admirably distills some of the complex legal issues involved in the Amistad captives’ saga.

Freedom’s Sons: The True Story of the Amistad Mutiny, by Suzanne Jurmain. For the kid who can’t get enough details, or wants to write a report.

Picture the longest canoe you ever saw, and then lay about three of those end-to-end. Add twenty people in each canoe paddling like wild, one steersperson, one drummer to keep everyone in the rhythm — multiply this times three lanes running for 500 meters along the Crooked River, and you have the 2003 Burning River & Dragon Boat Fest. Sponsored by Great Lakes Brewing Co., the Western Reserve Rowing Foundation and the Ohio Environmental Council, it will be held on the Cuyahoga River in the Flats on Saturday, June 28 from 8:30 am-10 pm and Sunday, June 29 from 8:30 am - 8 pm.

So far, the event is mostly being pitched to participants. But it’s bound to make for some interesting spectating, too. The boats will go into the water at Nautica Complex, so you should be able to view some of the racing from the boardwalk on either the east or west bank of the Cuyahoga. Beware trying to park in the Flats that weekend, though, since the Ohio Irish Festival will be held in Nautica Complex at the same time. Take the RTA’s Waterfront Line, instead.

Morning Group

Play group meets 10 am - noon on Friday mornings unless otherwise noted. For a directory of hosts’ addresses, contact Diane Lechner at 216-651-1990.

Along with warm weather comes Sprinkler Season!  If your child enjoys water activities, it might be handy to bring along a swimsuit and towel to play groups, just in case.

Friday 6/6   Amy Kelly

Friday 6/13  Barb Caskey at Lake Road playground (rain location: Tremont Library, 11 am-1 pm)

Friday 6/20  Martha Senerchia at Brooklyn Memorial playground (rain location:  Tremont Library, 11 am-1 pm).  Fountains may be working, so you might want to bring a swimsuit for the little one.

Friday 6/27  Joy Harlor

Afternoon Group

This play group meets from 4 - 6 pm at West Side YMCA at 3200 Franklin. On the playground in good weather; inside the Y on cool or rainy days. Bring your own snack. We accept voluntary donations to support the West Side Y every week.

There will be no coordinator at the June 13th play group. If regulars could take responsibility for sign-in, that would be helpful.