Matching Tracksuits

Month: October 2012

Halloween 2012

Wednesday 31 October 2012

With the Boy just getting over some congestion, there was only one option: a quiet, stay-at-home Halloween. Which would have been horrible for the Girl, except for the fact that a neighbor offered to take her trick-or-treating with her daughter and another friend.

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Apparently “trick-or-treat” was less accurate a description than “pillage and plunder.”

There was one thing missing, though: a visit to knock on Nana’s and Papa’s door. Still, they weren’t willing to break that tradition, so they came to us this year.

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And naturally, Papa monopolized the Boy.

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Head Down, Finger Up

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Dear JT,

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve come lately simply to ignore when you’ve put your head down in my class. There are enough behavior problems in that class to deal with that I don’t want to pick a fight, so to speak, with you. I know I’ll likely only get attitude, and even if you do comply, it’ll only be temporarily.

It bothers me because it’s disrespectful, but quite honestly, you don’t seem to care, and you’re only a kid, so like I said earlier, bigger fish to fry and such. Today, however, you were disrespectful to close to 10,000,000 people. Did you know it was even possible to disrespect so many people at the same time? I really didn’t either: I’d never really given it much thought. But when you put your head down and slept through our Holocaust-based writing exercise as we prepared to read Anne Frank’s diary, you basically put your middle finger up to all those who died in one of the evilest atrocities in history. For all intents and pursposes, you said,

I don’t care about you. I don’t care that you lost your family to a murderous regime. I don’t care that the last image you had of your child was of her being ripped out of your hands, screaming. I don’t care that you had the responsibility of burning the corpses of thousands upon thousands of gassing victims. I don’t care that you were “experimented” upon, shot, kicked, beaten, tortured, and treated like a roach. What I care about is that I’m a little sleepy now in first period, so screw you — I’m going to sleep.

I anticipate your response being something along the lines of, “I don’t care.” That’s fine. No one can make you care about anything. But if you find yourself one day alone, if you find yourself wondering if anyone in the world cares for you, and if you decide that the answer to that question is, “No, no one other than my mother,” perhaps you’ll know how those millions upon millions of Holocaust victims felt. And ironically, the fact that you put your head down during that class session would go a long way in explain why no one cared for you.

Then again, maybe that’s what you’re experiencing now. Maybe you already feel that way. It’s a bit presumptuous of me to suggest that I know you so well as to make such an accurate assessment. After all, I only see you for a small slice of your life. Still, it strikes me as a real possibility.

At the same time, there are plenty of others who have lived lives devoid of anyone really showing them any concern or compassion as children who have grown up to be perfectly empathetic individuals. (And there are plenty who have experienced the opposite.) I do know that you’ll have an easier time in life — a more fulfilling life — if you manage to purge “I don’t care” from your vocabulary.

Still caring for you, but with greater difficulty today,
Your Friend in Room 302

P.S. I said nothing to you when you put your head down the second time after I’d already asked you politely and privately to show some respect. I didn’t want to damage the atmosphere I had created in the classroom. I will, though, address it tomorrow.

Sitting

Monday 29 October 2012

When you’re as heavy as the Boy (over twenty-one pounds at a little more than five months of age), it’s probably a little more difficult to sit up than for a more-average size baby.

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Yet he’s begun sitting a bit — or rather, slouching.

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Of course, it always helps to have something to grasp for support.

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Babies

Sunday 28 October 2012

I understand radio and television stations had been counting down the days, but last Wednesday, the waiting ended. The Greenville Zoo tweeted, “It’s a boy! Greenville Zoo staff selected the name Kiko, meaning autumn’s child!”

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To call him a “cute little boy” would be misleading: he’s cute, but he’s certainly not little, for he looks to be over six feet tall. Still, compared to Mama, he’s a shrimp.

The Girl and I set out this morning finally to get a look at him. With this tweet bouncing around Greenville, we weren’t the only ones: “It has been a zoo here today! Everyone wants to see Kiko! Tomorrow he will be out from 11am – 2pm”

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The question of who had the best view changed from moment to moment as mother and son paced about the enclosure, with mother always keeping a close eye on Kiko, occasionally looking behind her to check on his progress, and frequently bending her long neck to give a reassuring nuzzle. Mothers do that, and I suspect they do it even when their babies are fully grown. At least we humans do it — looking at mother and son this morning, I couldn’t imagine it being any different among animals.

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It’s tempting to say something like, “It’s fairly different for the giraffes and such because there’s no culture out there trying to pump their heads full of garbage” (yes, still stewing from yesterday’s post), but they face existential threats hourly in the wild: I suppose the stress level is about the same. Still, do baby giraffes do things that make their parents just cringe?

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Probably. They probably even get dizzy just watching what their children do — that height probably doesn’t help much.

Still, as I watched the Girl after the zoo turning endless circles on this and that VIA( Vomit-Inducing Attraction), I started thinking that perhaps our lives are not so different, we and giraffes, or any other animal for that matter. We face our dangers, we teach our children to face them, and we hope that we’ve given them enough to survive, or thrive.

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But I suppose giraffes don’t photograph their children as obsessively as we.

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Dress Up

Saturday 27 October 2012

She’s growing up fast, but she’s still got some inches to grow.

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Open Letter

Friday 26 October 2012

Dear Typical Parents:

I think it’s about time that we all sit down and have a little chat. While we don’t have a great deal in common, we should have in common one important thing, and that is the interest in the well-being of our children.

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In the old days, parents’ job consisted mainly of protecting physically their children. They made sure their children were warm and fed. They protected them from the dangers of invading armies as best they could. They protected their children in a thousand and one ways, great and small, but almost always physical.

Those days are long gone, but our responsibility to protect our children remains. Only now, the dangers from which we are shielding our children are much more insidious because they are not readily, physically apparent. These dangers are all the more deadly because they threaten not the physical, but the spiritual. They threaten not the destruction of the body but the destruction of the soul. I’m speaking, of course, of our children’s mindset, their worldview, the lens through which they see the world and the matrix by which they interpret reality.

The pervasive worldview of our culture is carnal. It’s physical. It’s driven by a pathological inability to forego a momentary pleasure in the interests of a longer-lasting good. It ridicules self-denial and worships at the altar of immediate and total gratification, usually physical.

My wife and I are trying to raise our children in such a way that they understand that the “now” is often not as important as what’s to come, that the physical is never as important as the spiritual, that the mental always outweighs any pleasures that come through our senses. This is difficult because it runs counter to everything our culture — through advertising, through music, through casual conversation — everything our culture promotes. In other words, my wife and I are trying to raise freaks. Not freaks of nature, but freaks of society, freaks of culture. We’re trying to raise kids that understand that sex is not everything, and that it comes with some pretty important responsibilities, that it’s pleasure is secondary and subordinate to its ultimate purpose, which is procreation.

I wish I could say that our concerns with society deal with a number of other issues, that it isn’t only the sex, but unfortunately our society has made it so that it is only about the sex. One only need look at the recent Lena Dunham advertisement for the Obama campaign, which draws direct correlations between voting and sex — let’s be frank: when you watch the ad, she’s simply talking about the first of many sexual experiences a woman is expected to have in the guise of “serial monogamy — to see how deeply embedded in our culture this obsession with sex really is. One only has to read Kristin Iversen’s mocking commentary on the critics of the ad to see how obsessed our culture is with pushing sexuality on younger and younger children:

Does Dunham say how important it is that the first time be special? Yes. Does Dunham comment that her first time voting was what made her a woman? Sure. Is all of this amusing and charming and only blush-inducing if you are a 10-year-old girl, in which case, why are you watching this, you can’t vote anyway? Also, yes. (Source)

Our whole culture seems obsessed with it, willing to do anything for it, and increasingly expecting others to pay for the responsibility of it. It seems willing to trade of any good in a Faustian bargain for short-term ecstasy.

That is not the priority I want my daughter and son to have. And I hope it’s not the priority you want your children to have.

Unfortunately, the things my daughter comes home from kindergarten saying, drawing, and doing make me think that, if that is your priority, if you are consciously trying to raise children who put the spiritual (and you’re almost free to interpret that as liberally as you wish at this point) over the physical, then sadly, my friends, you are doing a very poor job of it.

How do I know?

When my daughter comes home with a picture she drew in school that she later explains is the plan by which Friend A wants to conspire to break up the “relationship” of Friend B with her boyfriend (these are all three kindergarteners, mind you) so that Friend A can have the young man for herself (again, these are kindergarteners); when my daughter comes home explaining this in great, illustrated detail, explaining all the steps necessary, using the terminology “break up”, “boyfriend”, “fall in love with”, and “twist”; when my daughter comes home with these images and ideas and norms, I am afraid you and I are at the very least with how conscientiously we are trying to raise our children. And at the very worse, that you are consciously raising your children to have goals and plans diametrically opposed to mine and my wife’s.

I am having to explain things that, quite frankly, I don’t want to have to explain. At five years old, she’s too young to know what a boyfriend is in any real, experiential sense, whether her experience or vicariously through the experiences of those she calls her friends.

You might not be doing this consciously, and indeed, I hope and even doubt that you are. However, the fact remains that you are teaching my daughter that I really do not want my daughter to learn. You are teaching my daughter through the example of your children, who throw up their hands and say, “I don’t care” with such derision that it even disturbs my daughter, though she has begun doing it herself. You are teaching my daughter by allowing your children to listen to the sex-infused popular music of today without even explaining, it seems, that “sexy” is not a word that needs to come out of a five-year-old’s mouth. Through your children, you are teaching my daughter so many things at five years of age that I thought she would not encounter for at least, in the very worst case scenario, another year or two.

Still, I should be grateful. You have made me more thankful than ever that, through some odd, unlikely grace, I found myself married to a Catholic woman and eventually baptized into the Catholic church myself. You have made me exponentially more vigilant about the crap — sorry, but there’s no other word for it — that today’s culture is trying to shovel on her. You have taught me that it’s never too early to be on guard. You have reminded me that my promise to my daughter and son, of which I remind my daughter almost daily when she’s frightened by this or that by simply asking “What’s my responsibility” and knowing that the response is always “To protect me”, is my primary responsibility on Earth today and that every other Earthly responsibility is secondary or tertiary at best. I don’t mean to sound bellicose, but you’ve reminded me that I am in a war for my own soul and, until they can defend themselves, my children’s souls.

All the same, it would be so much easier if I knew we were all on the same side. Sadly, I’m not sure we are. Still, it’s good to know where we stand. You and your children will be in my prayers, but my own children’s spiritual well-being will be in my prayers and my conscientious, purposeful deeds.

Regards,
The Girl’s Dad

Trying

Thursday 25 October 2012

Dear Paul,

I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. I like you a lot, and I enjoy having you in my class, but sometimes, buddy, you just try too hard. Way too hard. I see you trying to carry on with some of the other kids as if you’re like this with them (visualize me crossing my middle finger over my forefinger), and it pains me. You’re a sweet kid: all this “gangsta” air you’re trying to affect just doesn’t suit you. And the other kids see it, too. And that’s probably why you don’t fit in, because you’re trying to squeeze yourself into a shape that just isn’t you. You can’t fit into the self you’re trying to create, so how can you then take that shape at fit it into anything?

Please know that you don’t have to be “tough” to be loved. You don’t have to have “swag” and bravado to be popular. You don’t have to strut (and let me tell you, as a friend, your strut looks a little more like a limp) to get attention. You’re a kind, sweet kid. Let that be your calling card and I guarantee you’ll have more friends than you know what to do with.

Sincerely,
Your Friend in Room 302

Broken Spell

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Occasionally, there’s an absolute spell in the classroom. Somehow, all the stars and temperaments align, the moon is waxing, everyone has a full belly and sufficient motivation, and things just work. The kids just work. Even kids who previously had done little or nothing work. They ask intelligent questions. They work together as adults. And I sit — for a brief moment, because in such situations, rare as they are, I’m always helping this or that kid — in the midst of it in awe.

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And then the earthquake drill (in South Carolina?!?!) comes and breaks the spell into a million little shards of idle conversation.

Bubbles

Tuesday 23 October 2012

They’re a little like childhood, bubbles. They’re fun, fragile, short-lived. And in a sort of tautology, kids love them. Creating well-formed bubbles, like children, requires patience and a gentle hand.

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And they’re a joy to watch.

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Promising Start

Monday 22 October 2012

Some mornings seem filled with promise.

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And then by the time the evening comes, that promise has dissipated into a whispering bed.

Pumpkin Patch

Sunday 21 October 2012

We first went in 2007: a Girl, a camera, wonderful afternoon light, and lots of time.

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October 21, 2007

The next year, we took a photo that was a personal favorite picture for a very long time — still is, in fact. Our first year in the pumpkin patch and the Girl was exceedingly playful. Giggles all afternoon.

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October 26, 2008

The next year, it was the same. It was a photo shoot that almost shot itself: all I had to was point and shoot, literally. The Girl took care of all the rest. She was so easily excited, and almost everything thrilled her instantly and completely.

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October 4, 2009

By 2010, she was a little lady. Photos were fine, but they had to be in some meaningful context. Gone were the days of, “Put her by that pumpkin” and clicking away. She wanted to help. She wanted to lift. She wanted to compose.

“I’ll just move this one over and then sit down…”

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October 15, 2010

Today, though, she had competition. And while the Boy was an easy target — he can’t move, so there’s little choice; he can’t talk, so there are few protests — the Girl had other ideas.

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The Boy was far too fascinated with the straw and hay to make much of a fuss about anything. The only trick was trying to get him to sit up long enough. Then we hit on the idea of holding him in such a way that the support was not immediately visible. Then we just gave up and shot.

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We managed to talk the Girl into a few photos,

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but she was far more interested in picking a pumpkin, and even more interested in hauling said pumpkin to the wheelbarrow.

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And so I guess we’ll be recreating all the autumnal photo shoots with the Boy that we had with the Girl over the last few years. I can’t imagine more exciting prospects.

Final Game

Saturday 20 October 2012

The Girl and her team completed the 2012 fall soccer season with a tie — perhaps the best way for everyone, on both teams, to finish.

Defense

The Girl ends the season playing goalie, making two saves and allowing the tying goal because she was unaware that, while she couldn’t touch the ball with her hand outside “the box,” she could certainly kick it.

Birthday Wishes

Thursday 18 October 2012

Today is Dziadek’s birthday. Technology allows us to tumble into the computer room at an obscenely early hour to wish him “100 years,” though he always says, “Eighty will do.”

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It also allows Babcia to show us some of the mushrooms that have been popping up in the forest.

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Choices

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Dear Terrence,

I spoke to your English teacher today. She told me about a problem you had with another student, that this boy did something that so angered you that you were willing to fight him. That you turned over a desk and started marching toward the kid with every evil intent that anyone could imagine glowing your eyes.

Remember, we had a conversation in the hallway about this the other day. You’re letting people push your buttons. You’re essentially giving them a remote control and saying, “Hey, you want me to hop on one leg, press this button. You want me to laugh, press that one. If you want me to hit you, the red button’s the one.”

What saddened me most about what your teacher said, though, was your response later, how you asked in a low voice, “Ms. Jones, did you write me up for that?”

“What choice did you give me, Terrence?” she said.

I know that you feel you don’t have a lot of choices right now, Terrence. I know you feel that no matter what decision you make, things always turn out the same way. I know that a lack of choices feels like a prison, but not a conventional one — this one has invisible bars that seem to change location but hold you fast just the same. I know you feel you have few choices, but I’m wondering if your teachers don’t feel the same way.

“What choice did you give me, Terrence?” asked Ms. Jones, and in that, I can almost hear as much frustration as I hear when you tell me some of your stories. What choice does any teacher have when facing a child like you, a child who really needs some positive attention and someone who can sit down with him and explain and practice, as many times as it takes, some of the rules of the game that you seem somehow to have missed out on?

Before you can learn math, science, history, or English, you need, quite frankly, to learn how to learn. To learn how to be comfortable with your own stillness. To learn how to look at someone who’s giving you instruction the same way you look at me when we’re standing in my doorway, chatting. To learn how to listen with a slight smile of anticipation like you do when I call your name out as you walk down the hall and motion you over to me.

But unfortunately, we’re not in a situation where we can take a lot of time to teach you how to learn. We teachers have got deadlines and testing hovering over us, and it feels like the tests are pressing our buttons. We have choices — I’m convinced of that — but I’m not sure we’re all aware of these choices, of the various options that might lead to more success for you and kids like you in the classroom. I’m certain there are choices, but I’m not as sure that they’ve even all been discovered yet. So in a way, we teachers are just groping around, feeling out these invisible bars just like you.

I do know that for most of us, being in the classroom is a conscious choice. We’re an idealistic group at heart: it’s what led most of us to the profession and it’s what keeps us there. Maybe if you can keep that in your conscious thoughts — that everyone who stands in front of you day in and day out is there because they choose to be there, because they want to help, because they feel called to do what they do — then you’ll start to see some new choices, too.

Sincerely,
Your Friend in Room 302

Tilt

Tuesday 16 October 2012

I’ve heard it all my life: the mainstream media has a liberal bias. When I considered myself a liberal, I didn’t really believe it — how can one see one’s on bias? Now that I’m moving more politically to the right, it seems more obvious. Of course one could argue that I see what I want to see, that just as I didn’t see liberal bias as a liberal because I didn’t want to, now I see liberal bias as a moderate because I want to. But as I watched the debate this evening, I couldn’t keep myself from snapping a few screen shots to see if I was right.

I was.

First, there’s the question of selecting which social media comments (Tweets and Facebook updates) to run across the screen. During the few minutes I watched, I saw a few anti-Obama comments:

I saw a few anti-Romney comments:

This is by no means a scientific sampling: I’m sure I missed a lot, and I certainly missed some anti-Obama ones among them. But the vast majority were highly critical of Romney. Now, someone had to choose which Tweets and FB status reports to post, and something had to inform that choice. Perhaps they wrote some scripts to pull random samples. It would be nice to believe that, but it would be naive given the independent polling that shows the two candidates just about even.

The next type of bias came in the form of info-blurbs flashed on the screen while a candidate was speaking. While Obama spoke, all sorts of facts about the administration’s achievements were flashed on the screen. It almost seemed choreographed:

All these factoids do what? They present an image of a man who is faithfully conveying facts, devoid of rhetorical twists or omissions. It’s Cliff Notes, in essence: it makes sure that viewers fully understand all of Obama’s accomplishments.

During the same period of time, I saw two such factoids flashed for Romney:

I didn’t watch the whole debate, so perhaps I was missing something at the beginning. But the somewhat random sample I got, within about a twenty-minute period of time toward the end of the debate, seems to be blatantly pro-Obama.

This of course doesn’t even take into account the moderator’s defense of Obama regarding the declaration that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and not some spill-over from a protest. K looked at me and asked, as if she were missing some nuance of the language, “Is she defending him?” I nodded. “That’s embarrassing,” she concluded.

Well, it should be.

Trusty

Monday 15 October 2012

“Will you need your trusty gloves?” the Girl asks. We’re getting ready to go another backyard adventure — our own little version of the Backyardigans — and she is packing her bag. Among other things, she has retrieved her and my work gloves (in as much as hers are work gloves), but she can’t decide if we need them.

“Go ahead and pack them,” I tell her, and we’re off — first for a series of pictures.

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“When I say ‘snap,’ you take the picture,” she instructs. She says it three times; I take three pictures. Simple.

As we march through the backyard, I learn that everything is “trusty” today: I have with my my trusty camera; she has packed her trusty binoculars; she’s worried about her gloves in her trusty bag.

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Everything is so trusty, and I ask her what it means to be “trusty.”

“That means it knows you can trust it,” she explains.

And it gives me pause. In that case, am I trusty? As a parent, I almost assume I’m trusty. Perhaps it’s parents’ eternal worry that they are never as trusty as their children assume and need them to be. Maybe it’s easier said than done. There are certainly times when doubt seems to be the only appropriate response — a moment of reflection that makes us think, “I guess I could always do better.”

In the end, I know I always want my children to think of me as their “trusty Tata,” and I always worry a bit that I’m not living up to that.

Throw Away

Sunday 14 October 2012

I think we’re almost all pack rats by nature. Sure, there are the few that throw away everything and anything the moment it’s clear that the object no longer has an immediate use. Then there are those whose homes are garbage heaps with little paths through the clutter, people who ironically enough stand a reasonable chance of ending up on this or that reality show.

L has always been a bit of the latter. She’ll try to keep broken objects for sentimental reasons, even if she has a replacement. A prime example of this is her princess umbrella collection. Various department stores sell them, and L has bought three or four over the last few years. They’re flimsy, though, and break easily.

Trashy Miracle

Convincing her that she needed to throw the broken umbrella away, though, has always been tricky. It took her a bit of time to warm up to the idea. Today, we pointed out that the umbrella is broken — again. “We’ll need to throw it away,” K began, probably sure that the conversation wouldn’t result in much more than a bit of begging and fussing.

“Okay,” came the reply.

Some days, she’s a bigger girl than I realize.

Autumn Saturday

Saturday 13 October 2012

Saturday morning has a new routine since the Girl began playing soccer. Up at eight; on the field by nine — it’s a busy morning.

Goalie

Evenings, things return to normal.

Bath and Relax

And that normal includes a boy who loves to smile.

Saturday Night Smile II

And does it well.

Saturday Night Smile

Mark Up

Friday 12 October 2012

One class I teach — though I’m fortunate to teach two sections of this course — has begun one of my favorite pieces of literature, the Odyssey. Highly figurative language with a tendency toward oddly inverted sentences, it’s a struggle for them at first, though. We take the time during the first reading to pick apart the opening lines to see how Homer works.

The first famous lines include it all (in this particular translation). There’s inverted sentences like this: “But not by will nor valor could he save them.” We work through the sentence, determining the subject, the verb, and the object, writing it out in normal order: “He could not save them by will or valor.” Numbering the words, students realize just how inverted the sentence is.

Notes from the board

“Lord Helios […] took from their eyes the dawn of their return” the stanza ends, and while many of us might find that easily enough understood, the average eighth grader doesn’t have a lot of experience with figurative language.

As we work, there’s a bit moaning, a bit of boredom, especially among the boys. Who wants to put this much effort into reading, and a poem at that? That’s alright. I know that when the blood starts flowing — Cyclops starts crunching bones and Scylla begins picking off men — they’ll all come around.