Matching Tracksuits

Month: November 2009

Fall Sunday

Sunday 8 November 2009

Living this far south has its advantages: we’re still getting tomatoes from our backyard vines. More importantly, it makes getting out as a family easier, and the usual field trips continue.

Today, it is a trip to the zoo. L has been so many times that she has the sequence of animals memorized. The elephants get everything started — appropriate, because “they’re my favorite,” L declares.

The monkeys are next, followed by the reptiles. Usually L breezes through, barely glancing at the cold-blooded, slow-moving creatures. Today, though, they were unusually active, especially the rattlesnakes.

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Once we get to the giraffes (who are right after the reptiles), though, L decides she’s had enough. “I want to go to the big playground,” she says, and we rush to the playground, stopping only long enough to get a picture with Bear.

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The playground also has its routine. Swings are always first. Afterward, perhaps the slides, or maybe the huge jungle gym complete with music stations.

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With the bright sun and warmth, we’re hardly the only ones out today. Everyone seems to realize that this could be the last truly warm weekend.

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Then again, who would any of us be kidding?

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Christmas could be almost this warm.

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The problem is that the warmth is unpredictable. Planning birthday parties at the park — we’d love to have L’s at the park — becomes impractical because it might just turn cold that weekend. For this birthday group, though, the weather was on their side.

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As we’re leaving, L surprises us by wanting to try a few new stations. This park has some truly innovated toys, though the first one L wants is a new twist on an old torture.

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Nearby, though, is a track-based activity that is almost always broken: it seems to attract everyone, even teenagers who are much too heavy for it. Luckily, L’s interest coincides with a period of functionality. Next week it will almost certainly be broken again.

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We return home and finish the day with a game of Candy Land. L quickly grasps the idea behind the game, but the multiple colors combined with the element of chance are too much for her. The fact that she might not get her favorite color — blue — is overwhelming, and so we make a new rule: L gets a blue card to begin with. Period.

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With blue in hand, L happily goes along with just about anything.

Around the World

Saturday 7 November 2009

Some daycare centers seem to attract a certain international clientele. Every year, the school sponsors an International Day when families can show off their heritage and learn a little about the world at the same time. The kids receive passports; each country receives a stamp. The kids arrive and it’s an endless cycle of visitors and visits.

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This year, at Mexico’s booth, seasoned grasshoppers were available. I’m not certain they were a hit with the kids, but I took a handful to try. Salty, crunchy, proteiny, Israelitish. “We use as snacks, for tacos — that kind of thing,” says the host. “Not quite what you find in the typical Mexican restaurant,” K comments later.

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While I was munching salty grasshopper, L was visiting her friend. Actually, since I tend to refer to L as “the Girl,” I suppose I could call this young lady, J, the Friend. “We hear L’s name all the time at home all the time,” J’s father tells me.

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Not surprisingly, we hear J’s name at home all the time. For a while, L declared that her baby doll — generally referred to as “Baby” — was “J”, but that lasted only a few days. Perhaps it was odd to have a best friend and a baby with the same name.

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L sees an elephant — her favorite — at the India and hustles over for a quick visit. This particular elephant is not supporting the world on its back; indeed, it seems to be supported by a soccer ball. I’m sure there could be some kind of symbolic significance, but before I have a chance to think further, L is off, returning to K. As usual, I tag along behind.

Babcia’s Coming

Friday 6 November 2009

In a little over a month, Babcia will arrive for a several-week visit. It will be the first time in a year and a half that we’ve seen her; L has gone from being virtually an infant to being something more than a toddler.

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L is excited about the arrival. She mentions it every now and then, and every time an airplane flies over our house, L points and asks, “Is that Babcia?”

It will be a time of linguistic development for L. She understands Polish perfectly, and she even mixes a few Polish words into her English vocabulary. She doesn’t speak more than these occasionally mixed up words. When Babcia arrives, though, it will be time to start speaking Polish.

Only recently it occurred to me that this might be almost as difficult as learning to speak English. Her initial instinct will be to speak English, and knowing L’s stubbornness, she is likely initially to refuse even to try. Babcia has a secret weapon, though: fluent Russian. She might turn the tables on L.

Measured Words

Thursday 5 November 2009

Lesson Planning

Robert Frost reportedly said, “Writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.” The same could be said of meter-free poetry.

We’ve been working on poetic meter in English I Honors, and yesterday I sent them packing with deceptively simple homework: write a sonnet.

“What’s a sonnet?” they thought. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter — da-Dum times five.

One by one they filed in today, and one by one they declared, “That homework was a nightmare!”

We took some individual lines and examined them, adding words and massaging the lines until they were roughly iambic pentameter. The homework for tonight: rework the first four lines so that they are all the proper meter. Just before the bell, I reminded them of the next hurdle in sonnets: “Remember, we’re working on English sonnets, so ultimately we’ll be having an a-b-a-b rhyme scheme for this first quatrain.”

The moans were overwhelming, but at the very least, they have a newly found respect for Shakespeare: “He wrote 154 sonnets.”

“Did he not have any friends?” one young man asked.

Manic Depressive

Wednesday 4 November 2009

The problem with teaching is that it leads to manic-depressive thinking. When things are up, they’re really up. Confidence soars; it’s easy to get out of bed; grading and planning are a snap. When things are down, it can make one lose confidence in the entire national competency and grind one down into a pessimism that is almost palpable.

Riches

Tuesday 3 November 2009

With L’s newly found sweet wealth, a daily activity is the counting of the candy. We pour it all out at the kitchen table; we dump it on the coffee table; we spread it around the floor — we count it again and again. And again.

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It’s a blessing and a curse, really: she is counting, but I’m not sure what she’s counting is actually worth counting.

We were hoping that L’s initial reaction to candy — a wrinkled up nose and immediate retreat — would last, but she’s developed a love for sweets that we absolutely have to monitor.

“That much candy will last you for two months,” I guessed the first time she dumped it out; with our one-a-day rule, I just about got it right.

Trust but Verify

Monday 2 November 2009

When Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Reagan used one of his most loved slogans:

The President: […] We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim. And I’m sure you’re familiar with it, Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty. The maxim is: Dovorey no provorey — trust, but verify.

The General Secretary: You repeat that at every meeting. [Laughter]

The President: I like it. [Laughter] (Source)

It was in that spirit that I approached an administrator to verify a student’s explanation of her absence.

“No she did not come talk to me” came the reply, and my own words to the students, from the beginning of the year, echoed: “You have my trust now. Once it’s gone, it will take a long time to rebuild it.” This young lady, sadly, has lost my trust.

I’m not sure she’ll care. I can see her brushing it off as if it’s no big deal, and it might very well not be a big deal. Someone who hasn’t spent much time in an environment that fosters trust might not know what it’s worth, and in that case, it’s difficult not to try to care for her.

Normal

Sunday 1 November 2009

A couple of weeks after our wedding, K and I went for a walk in the fields of Lipnica Wielka, the village in southern Poland that was my home for seven years, our home for one. We’d returned home from our honeymoon at Balaton, moved her stuff to our small apartment, and begun the process of settling down.

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Lipnica Wielka, Poland (August 29, 2004)

The day after I took this picture, I wrote in my journal,

Finally everything seems to have settled down a bit. [K] and I have moved into the apartment; we’ve done some decorating; we’ve had dinner here; we’ve gone to [K’s] folks’ house for Sunday lunch already. And here it is, just before seven, and I’m writing in my journal. Everything’s back to “normal” in other words, but that “normal” isn’t quite like it ever was before.

It’s odd how one’s sense of “normal” changes so easily. For several years, we had a “normal” newlywed life: traveling, having parties, meeting friends for dinner, staying up.

Burping
January 7, 2007

Then L came along, and for a while, getting no real sleep and always having an infant in our arms was “normal.” Getting up multiple times in one night became an expected routine, and it often had its own pleasantness: there is an unparalleled intimacy involved in helping an infant — getting a bottle, changing a diaper, calming a nightmare — when the rest of the city is asleep.

Now “normal” is “No!” and “No, no, no!” It’s “I want it!” and tantrums. It’s dealing with independence in a still-dependent little girl. It can be more frustrating than getting up for the fourth time with an infant.

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Soon enough, I know “normal” will be something entirely different, and it occurs to me, as it has to many through the millenia, that perhaps a static normal is not normal.