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Here [They] Come

Wednesday 31 July 2013

walkin’ down the street…

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Such a difference in how L plays here in the States versus Babcia’s place in Polska. With all the houses tightly packed in Babcia’s neighborhood, I could easily hear L just about anywhere she was. She’d developed a few little haunts, but they were all within earshot of the house. Here, I watch her as she walks up the street to her friend’s house, and his parents do the same when they return. It’s a busier street to begin with, but there’s also the eternal fear that sparks the almost cliche instructions, “Don’t talk to strangers.” In Polska, there were times that I didn’t really know where L was, but I wasn’t really worried about it. It’s not that there aren’t evil people in Polska, they just seem fewer and farther between. You don’t read news accounts of abductions and murders like you do here.

And so L and S would often strike out on their own, yelling to one of us on their way out where they were headed.

Mistakes

Tuesday 30 July 2013

“Tata, will you fix this for me?” She has in her hand two walkie-talkies that she got for Christmas or a birthday. “I think the battery is dead.”

“Will you fix this?” Words that at the time warm and terrify. It’s my job, in a way, this “fixing.” Most fixing is nothing more than re-stringing a toy guitar or gluing a broken bit of plastic. But it’s fixing, and that makes me a bit of a hero to L. Yet I can’t fix everything for her all the time. She will have to learn to fix things for herself.

“No, but I’ll help you.” She hands me the walkie-talkie. “You’ll have to open this. Do you know what you’ll use?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Śrubokręt.”

“And what’s that in English?”

“I don’t know.”

We head to the basement, and I show her the screwdrivers, teaching her the word in English.

“Which one do you think you’ll use?” She looks at the screw and points to a Phillips screwdriver.

“What’s this called?” I tell her. “And this one?” she continues, indicating a small straight slot screwdriver. I tell her.

Through a short bit of trial-and-error experimentation, we find the appropriate screwdriver and open the battery compartment to find a nine-volt battery. I show her how to pop off the connectors, then replace them so she can do it.

“I’ll go check to see if we have this type of battery,” she informs me, returning with two AA batteries.

“We don’t have this type of battery, but maybe these will work.”

Of course they won’t. Only throught some very serious scheming could we get this to work. There’s simply no easy way, perhaps — I don’t know much about batteries and electronics — no way at all.

Still, it’s better for her to figure it out on her own.

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She squeezes, pushes, grunts — it’s no use.

“Maybe when we go to the store today, we can get one of these batteries,” she finally concludes, as does the lesson.

Sorting

Sunday 28 July 2013

There are a ton of pictures to go through — close to 500. How? K and I both get carried away sometimes.

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And so after the kids are in bed, the first load of laundry done, and a bit of cleaning and sorting completed, K goes to bed and I start going through the weekend’s pictures, many of which I should have posted Friday evening.

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Dozens upon dozens of pictures from the beach. The Boy walking toward the water; the Boy walking away.

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The Girl playing in the sand; the Girl playing in the water.

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But once again, it’s late, and my cognitive abilities/willingness are setting like Friday’s sun, though not as gloriously.

The upshot — plenty of material for the next few days.

Two Days in Charleston

Saturday 27 July 2013

Two days to cover due to various issues yesterday — how can I do it? Over 300 pictures in those two days. Most should be deleted, but there’s not even an once of willingness to go through them all on the netbook computer I’ve brought with me. So I pick a few representative ones and save the others for later — and the same goes for the stories behind them.

But how could I fail to mention the walk along the Battery, with multi-million dollar homes on one side and a beautiful bay that completely fascinated the Boy on the other?

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And how could I leave out the excitement of the Boy when he first saw the ocean? L’s first reaction was panic and fear; the Boy’s first reaction was squealing excitement

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And the archeture of the Charleston area, from the classic Charleston look (neither colonial nor European but a strange mix of the two with hundreds of other influences) to the modern engineering wonders.

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How could I leave out the story of a biologist’s visit to Angel Oak, our walk on the Folley Beach pier, the visit to Middleton Place? I shouldn’t, but I shall. A cramped keyboard, sleeping children, and a tired soul tell me that it’s okay to tell only a portion of a story. If it’s a good story, the rest will wait.

Treading Water

Friday 26 July 2013

I’m attempting to go a full year with daily updates on this little endeavor. Sometimes, I cheat: I might have nothing really I feel like writing about, so I just post some nonsense — a quote, a short, meaningless observation. Occasionally I’m not in the mood, but I do something silly — maybe a picture from the past. Every now and then, I just don’t have the time/energy/ability, so I do some silliness — a picture from the past, a quote, some nonsense. Rarely it’s a combination of one or more — mood, ability, not having anything to write about. Even more rarely, I have something to write about but not the ability or willingness to write about it. Today, for example, we have hundreds of pictures on the camera and lots of wonderful experiences here in Charleston, but I just don’t have it in me tonight to do anything about it: mood and ability conspire. And so I cheat, and go to bed.

Birthday

Thursday 25 July 2013

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Our generosity knows no bounds: for K’s birthday, L and I brought back a piece of wood from Babcia’s kindling pile. You’d think it was a little bit of a trick to get through customs, what with all the questions they ask you about bringing back animal products and farm soil. Surely a chunk of wood would be verboten.

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Even if it was intended as support and protection of a painting.

Perhaps Babcia had the right idea: give metal.

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Home

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Dojechalismy, przezylismy.

Stacks

Tuesday 23 July 2013

Driving through the Orawa region of Poland, you notice two things fairly quickly: first, the fields are long and narrow. That’s really nothing special about the region: such is the case throughout Poland. There have been efforts to help people consolidate their various fields through land reform laws (in essence, trading land with neighbors to have one large field instead of half a dozen scattered through the village), but the efforts have met with little effect in the south. The second that that you notice is that many of these fields are filled not with crops but with large stacks of thick, rough-sawn boards. Because of the nature of land ownership, there are often six or seven stacks about three meters wide, five or more meters tall, and probably eight to ten meters long.

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“Nie martw się,” Babcia replies. “Deska nigdy nie marnuje się.”

“Don’t worry. Planks never go to waste.”