It is summer 2024, my son Lucas has finished college and is for now back in Playing Mantis. The mother and son duo tinkering and talking about the turning of time, remembering the early years of your little young self with soft curls sitting next to me behind the cash register. Books, notepads, stick crayons and pencils randomly spread in front of us. Conversations and questions floats and bounces lovingly with handmade toys surrounding us, eaves dropping and smiling. Remembering the feeling of Christmas every time we unpack a box of wooden toys from somewhere around the world. Somedays, grandpa and grandma would steal you away for a walk to the Farmer’s Market and buy your favorite pickled cucumber and apple cinnamon donut. 18 years after, those days feels like an infant now. The red building that frames Playing Mantis still standing tall in N. Moore street witnessing the evolving times outside. Now, you are a young man, helping me move heavy boxes, assisting customers and completing a sale. We have grown as a mother and son. The store , still steadfast to its philosophy:
“To make a difference to a few, not just to artists but to children who would marvel about natural toys a bit longer before picking up another plastic toy or video game. The store exists to inspire children, show them what our hands can do in collaboration with nature. How it can spin, carve, knit, whittle and color, making things beautiful and functional.”
It is so endearing to have grown with all of you, parents, teachers and grandparents, to see your grown up children loop back with their own little ones to a place where innocence is nurtured. I, proudly clutching my end to meet the beginning of this full circle.
Playing Mantis, a space we built together as a community, garnished and spiced with all things wonderful like the wooden train finished with bees wax, the woolen gnomes and animals rich in color from plants and vegetable dyes. Waldorf dolls of different skin tones hand stitched and stuffed with cotton or wool. We are all woven together in this little un-wavering place. The world of play has expanded and we have to choose carefully on how to make it work without depriving our minds, our hearts and hands the potential it deserves.
Let us allow the stages of a human body to develop naturally without the clutter of an adult world. Teething, grasping, crawling and looking you in the eye before we confine them to a screen. Let them write, draw, build blocks, solve some puzzles before the dead end of swiping and clicking. Patience is our responsibility , become part of the magic early childhood brings.. The trees are waiting tall for a climb, let them kick puddles from a rainfall and sail a paper boat in a stream. Catch a frog, hook a fish, find your stone and make it skip. It is grand to have the canopy of the sky to star gaze at night and wonder about the moon as it wanes….then morning wakes us all over again with the warmth and glow of a sunrise . The window of innocence shrinks with ageing. Let us with our children be witness to the nature in play before our very eyes.
“ I Believe Children Need an Innocent Foundation to Grow as Healthy Adults”
Imelda
https://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Image-18.jpg10221859Dror Navarohttps://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Untitled-3-300x82.pngDror Navaro2024-09-24 21:06:512024-09-24 21:18:4618 Years
https://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Playing-Mantis-WSJ-2023-Header.jpg7211789Dror Navarohttps://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Untitled-3-300x82.pngDror Navaro2023-05-12 19:48:572023-06-04 09:28:31Playing mantis made it to WSJ list of notable stops and shops
Oh it is that time…
The tail of September whipping away like a frantic sail cramming summer things undone. The sun is becoming golden, leaves have started to fall, the grounds moist and so deep in green. Unlike last year, I walk where the sun rays, where the angels wait to nudge us our way as we soak our senses back to waking.
I was told that nobody reads anymore? That we are choosing to be hypnotised by little clips from people unknown as we hide from all the grace between heaven and earth. That we shrink from the sun and snuggle with darkness? But then, I am writing and you, still reading beyond 7 words. I still have playing mantis with wooden toys, adorned with books bound the old fashion way with pages that curls in time. I still refreshes the window, reflecting and celebrating all the season from summer to winter. You will see the collected acorns….cracked with summer stains, a few have lost their crowns. They will hang high again from a found branch closer to the sky. Bees wax luminaries will flicker again. The wood of cedar, the plant dyed silk will tempt your fingers for a feel.
Kids and adults will stop and wonder again. Pick up a nature’s offering and
smile like the human-KIND we are.
I am unyielding to new things that makes life even shorter. I always stop to smell a lavander, pick up a feather, kick a puddle after a rainfall……dry a few petals from a once fresh blossom . Without waiting for a star to fall, hold my breath and make a wish .
Dance, sing and play!
Because,
OH YES, it is that time to live.
Imelda Mccain
September 29,2022
https://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IMG_0931-scaled.jpg25601920playing mantishttps://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Untitled-3-300x82.pngplaying mantis2022-10-01 17:24:092022-12-22 10:56:07Oh it is that time…
https://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Imelda-Dec-2020-2.jpg8001199playing mantishttps://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Untitled-3-300x82.pngplaying mantis2021-12-21 14:08:542021-12-24 12:44:31NOW is our home
How do you begin a message of optimistic innocence in times like this? Mid into 2021 and the shifting has not settled . We are behind the intelligence and emotions of human capacity. Lessons of perfect science constantly changing teaching us how imperfectly human we are.
Then LIFE fights back. Resilience slowly reminding us of HOPE. The courage of surviving in memory of those lives that slipped away.
Talking to young minds, listening to their future, their voices so different from what my parents have echoed. Science and Technology have made a leap with our children in tow. I have to trust their beauty and kindness.
Everytime a parent comes to the store, innocence walking behind them so eager to grow and explore. I too , from the other end is just as curious and sometimes more hesitant than my younger life . The lesson is : I don’t know better today … but will meet the new somewhere and sometime halfway.
This is Playing Mantis……a constant space for open minds. Where wisdom is learned from the freedom we have ignored. It is that space where we expand, explore and elevate to an unfamiliar kind of emotional intelligence.
I am in awe of our endearing endurance as humans.
https://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Newsweek-Ad-June-2019.jpg801851Imelda McCainhttps://friendlymantis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Untitled-3-300x82.pngImelda McCain2019-06-24 12:07:062019-06-24 12:20:47Newsweek Magazine: Playing Mantis is one of the 7 best shops in TriBeCa
Playing mantis made it to WSJ list of notable stops and shops
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Newsweek Magazine: Playing Mantis is one of the 7 best shops in TriBeCa