The lights are all up — at least as much as it’s going to happen this year. The addition of some a few new strings of lights and a couple of illuminated nets on a should-be-removed bush are the extent of this year’s lighting innovations
The tree stays much the same as last year’s: the same minimalist Ikea white ornaments,
the same angel,
and a few additions: a memorial ornament from the Polish performance of last Christmas.
A Christmas tree is an important decision: we’ll pay close to fifty bucks for something that will last only a few weeks, so we have to make sure it’s perfect in every way. Somehow, we manage to find the perfect tree each and every year.
The decoration process changes from year to year, though. As the Girl grows, she becomes more involved in the Christmas preparations, and she’s developing some very definitive ideas about how to decorate a tree.
I’m also developing some very strong ideas about Christmas decorations. Inching along, moving the ladder innumerable times, and constantly fighting for a level ladder makes me wonder if I couldn’t leave the lights up all year. Tracking down one single bad bulb that’s affecting all its neighbors is just about enough to make me try a seeming gimmick.
Finally, though, the darkening sky puts an end to my light hanging — with only one side of the house left — and drives me inside to clean up for a family picture
and a photo session with the Girl and Baby.
All in all, a good start to the 2011 Christmas season.
Five years of joy and frustration, smiles and cries, small victories and smaller defeats all culminate today. Technically, the birthday is next Friday, but try explaining that to L today.
All week it’s been the same refrain: “How many days until my birthday party?” And who could blame her when the birthday party involved drawing (almost) anything her imagination can inspire?
Two years ago, we went for an art birthday party and K kept it in the back of her mind as an original yet fun party for the Girl. Today is that day, a day of blue backgrounds and gray elephants, trunks up, tails down, trunks down, tails up — whatever each child wishes.
The instructor is just as you would imagine her to be: questioning (“Is this the inside or the outside of the elephant’s ear? The outside, right? What part is pink, the outside or inside?”) yet ultimately accepting of the young artists’ decisions (“You can make it any color you like; it’s your elephant. But what part of most elephants’ ears are pink?”).
The kids work, the adults talk, and the afternoon slides by in a smear of every color imaginable, all accompanied by continual laughter and chatter. The artists check each other’s work, make comments, ask questions, offer suggestions.
Yet there comes a time in every artist’s creative endeavors when a decision must be made. Paul Valéry once said, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned,” and I’d imagine that most visual artists feel the same. Yet cake, ice cream, and presents waited, so the creative process was sped up with the assistance of technology.
And after some cleaning,
and a ceremonial hanging of the art,
it’s time for the cake. It’s the first year K didn’t bake the cake for L’s birthday, and certainly every atom in K’s Polish body screamed, “It’s not right! You can not be a good mother and not bake your daughter’s cake!”
But somehow we all survive.
The presents make up for everything.
And the greatest present of all: so many people took so much time out of their Saturday to come share the Girl’s day.
What does she want to be when she grows up? An artist? A princess? A surveyor? A teacher? An engineer? A stay-at-home mom? A police officer? Bob the Builder’s assistant? L the Builder?
It seems so distant. And so close.
I try to show the kids the simple fact that much of what we write can feel iambic even when we’re speaking normally.
In the hush of the classroom we read all the lines of the ages, and marvel that “anapest” is a dactyl and that “trochee” is one while “iambic” isn’t. We scan the lines, apply the labels, and admire the Bard for all he did for the iamb.
Being married to a woman who is Polish through-and-through means that food is important in life. It’s not something to be squeezed in, willy-nilly, whenever, and it’s not something that can be simply plopped out of a can or popped in the microwave. It’s something that requires preparation, time, and patience.
For example, if a certain little girl would like to have chicken nuggets for dinner, that’s fine. But a Polish woman will not be pulling a package of milled and breaded chicken odds-and-ends out of the freezer. From time to time, something like that is fine, perhaps a couple as a snack. For dinner, however, only real chicken will suffice.
And this requires time, and an apron.
Truth be told, the apron is something in the Polish genetic make-up, I believe. Babcia, in Poland, slips on an apron every morning as habitually as I slip on socks or a shirt. It’s simply another article of clothing, and it stays on all day, whether cooking, cleaning, or taking a break. (It comes off when heading out into public, of course.)
But the results of aproned cooking — who could possibly complain?
