The Getty on a cloudy day
Settling into an in-between season before it's gone
Happy Friday!
Do you ever have the distinct feeling that you’re living in a time of transition? I’m speaking hyper-domestically, though I realize the fate of our nation and planet is also largely in flux. (What are you up to tomorrow?)
On a more manageable scale, our family’s spring break is still a week away but we’re already making plans for August, when Lua will start TK. (In my past life this acronym indicated a placeholder for a forthcoming detail in a story, but now it stands for “transitional kindergarten.”) Nelle, who will be two in July, will also likely start attending preschool a few mornings per week before long. This means that I too, will enter a different stage of work—both parenting and otherwise.
But for the moment, we’re still living with largely the same routine we’ve had for the past year, even as we begin to outgrow parts of it.
One of those parts is Wednesdays. For well over a year instead of sending Lua—who is now four—to preschool on Wednesdays I’ve taken her to swimming lessons, and generally spent the rest of the day with her. We have countless related rituals that have evolved over this period: the songs we listen to on the way there, the post-swim shower routine, the recovery snack. Especially when she became a big sister, it felt like an essential moment for us to reconnect, and for her to get a midweek break from preschool.
It was my favorite day of the week for a long time, but lately it’s gotten a little weird. Sometimes she doesn’t want to go, though that usually dissipates once she’s in the water. Other days, it feels like she’s just waiting for a weak moment to ask if she can watch TV. It’s this tired yet restless energy that, come to think of it, is quite familiar. But it’s nothing short of tragic to me that my one-two punch of swim-plus-bakery doesn’t work the consistent morning magic that it used to. Truly, what on this earth could be better than swimming and then eating a chocolate croissant?
Last week, I was slightly at loose ends after her lesson. It had rained, so all the playgrounds would be wet. We haven’t had a beach day for months because it’s likely still toxic from all the fire runoff. Bouncing in a booth at the bakery wouldn’t buy us much time, and no way we were going home where the Nelle was just beginning to nap. And while Lua could just start going to preschool Wednesdays, I know our regular weekdays of traipsing around together are numbered.
So we tried something new. We’d driven past the Getty the previous weekend and I told Lua we’d go there “someday.” Turns out, Wednesday was someday.
For the unfamiliar, the Getty is not just a museum. It’s a giant Richard Meier-designed complex in the Santa Monica Mountains that visitors arrive at by tram. It’s a sprawling series of plazas, galleries, fountains, gardens, terraces, and lookouts made almost entirely of travertine tiles that feels like the contemporary version of an ancient Mayan city or Roman temple or something.
In other words, it’s an amazing place for a snack.
I thought it would be empty on a cloudy day—the sweeping views are a big part of the attraction—but the parking garage was packed, so our adventure began with just finding a spot. Then we took an elevator and found tons of tourists, seniors, and school-kids on field trips in a line that snaked for the tram. This was exciting! We were people-watching, and embarking on something totally new.
Lua hadn’t been to a museum for a long time. They’re a good activity when kids are tiny enough to stay in strollers or carriers, and then a really bad one for a year or two, when they’re wild and want to touch and climb everything. (This is Nelle’s current state.)
A great thing about the Getty is that once you pay for parking, you gain access to a smorgasbord of exhibits. We dipped into an installation by Helen Pashgian that invited us to sit and stare at an orb of soft golden light as the room faded around it. It was relaxing, and we chilled there for a minute before we ambled back out onto the plaza and obtained a bag of Sun Chips. Those were a little bit salty and a little bit sweet, and we ate them at the edge of a fountain. Then, we entered another gallery and watched a five-minute film by the Cuban-born artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons with a performance that touched on themes of motherhood, racism, and violence. I found it moving and Lua seemed captivated, though I’m not sure how much she followed. (She got to watch TV after all.)
We also spent about 40 seconds in an exhibit that had undergrad interns write reflections inspired by pages from the museum’s manuscript archive. But I didn’t know that yet when I came upon this illustration with this text beneath it, and was both confused and delighted:
That’s literally all I got to see of that exhibit.
After that, we wandered along a little stream of waterfalls to a big garden where ducks paddled around a maze-like pond. Flowers were lush in bloom, and it occurred to me that a random cloudy Wednesday in March is the perfect time to visit the Getty.
And then we left! We took the tram back down to the parking garage before anyone required a second snack, and zoomed back to our house for lunch. It was a short and sweet visit with zero expectations, which is probably the correct way to visit any cultural institution with a four-year-old.
Which is all to say that I guess it’s like every other motherhood transition so far, in the sense that it’s easy to fall into a nostalgia trap of mourning for the three-year-old who wanted nothing more than a 20-minute swim and a chocolate croissant (sigh), and fail to appreciate the four-year-old who can now safely explore a museum, given managed expectations and novel snacks.
I hope you too can find some peace and joy in whatever you’ve currently got, even if it’s sleeting and you wish it were sandal season.
Have a good day!
xx
Jenni
PS
I started watching Party Girl, inspired by the general populous finally recognizing Parker Posey as the national treasure that she is. (It takes me three to five nights to watch a movie now.) It’s kind of amazing that it came out the same year as Clueless (1995) because it seems far more retro, maybe because Manhattan has changed so very much in the last three decades. In any case, it’s a balm—and so fucking stylish. Natasha!