Funeral
Month: April 2013
Flown
A single, sudden movement while standing too close was all it took. In a flash, the nestlings became fledgelings, though perhaps a bit prematurely. One by one, they leaped from the nest, fluttering down to the ground in a storm of molting down, landing with a thump, tumbling forward onto their chests briefly before righting themselves with an awkward hop. They went down in such a tail spin that it was difficult to imagine how they could possibly fly back up.
Sweet Williams
Planting Plus
A busy day. A day filled with life in all its varied forms, from the little microbes and vermin that turn banana peels and rice to compost. Such hard workers, they deserve a new compost bin, I decided. And we need a place to leave curing compost while we spread that ready black gold (not oil, not by a long shot, except literally) in our postage-stamp-size garden.
Next steps: out with the old, in with the new. Roots, tired soil, and general chaos of six plus months of sitting unattended pile up in our little beds, so the Girl and I rake and hoe until we have a loose mat of roots sitting beside the beds and loose, dark soil ready for a turn of new compost. We plant beans, sugar peas, and peppers in the tired bed on the left in an effort to replenish some nitrogen and more tomatoes in the right bed.
Then we come to the part the Girl has been waiting for all day. Every activity has been punctuated with a simple question: "Daddy, is it time to bring the flowers yet?" She had a list of dream flowers, an amalgamation of flowers she heard about in class, read about in various books, and simply liked: Sweet Williams, zinnias, marigolds, snapdragons, and a few others.
We set up a temporary potting workbench with sawhorses and some plywood and get to work.
As I head to the front with a couple of pots, I notice our bird family that has made its home in the crook of our gutter now has teens in the nest.
"L," I call, "Come look at this!" We watch them for a bit, gently jostling the bottom of the nest to see if they will reflexively open their mouths for a feeding. Instead, the hunker down, pulling up half-down, half-feathered wings -- part of newly formed instincts.
We return to the backyard to finish our cleanup. "They'll be gone soon," I explain as we walk.
"Why?" she asks.
"They'll be grown and leave the nest to start their own lives."
I think of how quickly it all has developed: a nest one day, a few eggs in the blink of the eye, some bald chicks craning for food a whisper later. I think of how quickly it has all developed, and I am glad that humans develop so much more slowly.
Prints and Patterns
L recently bought an activity book called "Fabulous Me!" at the school book fair. I can't deny my decided lack of enthusiasm at the decided lack of humility in the title, but this is the twenty-first century: "I" must stand at the center of everything, and it's pretty inescapable.
One portion is entitled "Fabulous Fashion," and it includes a checklist of patterns for material with boxes marked "fab" and "drab" for little fashionistas to mark their opinion of each.
"Daddy, can you help me with this?" she asked just before bed the other night. "I don't know what these patterns are."
I promised to sit with her at the computer and help her look them up. "Now, Daddy?" became a mantra in the house. Tonight after dinner, we finally took the time to explore patterns.
Tartan was the first. I was curious what she would think -- after all, her last name does has a distinctly Scottish feel to it.
Her reaction was instant and unqualified: "Preeetty!"
"Floral print" was sure to be a hit. After all, she is always interested in flowers. She wants to pick them, to grow them, to draw them.
And based on her reaction -- "Wow!" -- probably to wear them now.
When we came to "check pattern," I thought she'd turn up her nose. Compared to a floral pattern, it's awfully rigid; compared to a tartan, it's virtually monochromatic. (Well, I guess most check patterns are in fact monochromatic.)
The reaction was a half-hearted, "It's nice." She checked off "fab," but not with much enthusiasm.
When she read the next pattern, "heart print," she was excited before I even began typing it into the search bar. She knew -- just knew -- it would be something special.
"Yes!" she shouted, checking off "fab" and adding another "Yes!" for good measure.
I thought "stripes" would get a pass. Not that she wouldn't like them -- she did, so-so. I just thought she wouldn't care so much what Google dished up. Turned out, that's exactly what she was curious about.
"I just want to see. You know, I want to see what they show for 'stripes.'"
Zig zag print
"Gingham," I thought, being essentially a check pattern, would elicit the same response. Wrong.
"No!" she said emphatically, checking off "drab" with decided purposefulness.
Finally, we reached "animal print." The best reaction of all.
"Goooorgeous!"
Indeed.
Pause Button
I've often joked with my wife that a pause button for our six-year-old daughter would be an absolute God-send. It wouldn't have to be much: just something that one could press, say, once a day for ninety seconds of peace. "Then you'd complain that you could only press it once," she laughed. And so she's probably right. But in reality, the Girl has a pause button. How else can I explain the fact that she went to bed last night discussing the "favs list" pages of her new activity book and woke up this morning and, rubbing her eyes, said, "There's a list for favorite patterns. Daddy, what's a pattern?"
Morning Light
Affirmation
At the end of the last school year, I had students write a letter to this year’s students. It was, in a sense, something of an evaluation. I add the “something of” because it was not anonymous; however, it did affirm some things I’ve been trying to accomplish.
I’ve tried to make the class to be rigorous: to be challenging but not impossible. Based on the comments, I think I succeeded.
- This class is going to be one of the hardest classes that you will have so far in your life. You will learn many things in this class.
- Let me tell you Mr. Scott is probably one of the hardest teachers you might ever have.
- This upcoming year for you will take a lot of work. Mr. Scott has made this year very challenging for me. Although the work is extremely hard, I have become smarter and a better writer overall. If you think his class is tough, keep in mind that he is preparing you for what will come in high school next year. Mr. Scott is such a good teacher and helps you when you don’t understand. He actually teaches you what you need to know.
- Although this year was very challenging for me I can honestly say that I have improved my writing skills tremendously. I hope that you will do the same. All it takes is hard work, attention and not giving up.
- Even though this is a difficult class, it can also be very fun. I was never a good writer or reader, but I found many of the activities we did to be very helpful and it allows you to visualize what you are reading.
- This class is not a normal class, nor the the teacher. [… Don’t] be a class clown. Just respect him, and he will respect you. […] Mr. Scott is by far the most reasonable teacher.
- The tests Mr. Scott gives you are a lot more difficult[ than the standardized, cumulative test given at the end of the course], and those are the ones you should really study for.
- Oh and the tests in this class are uber hard. I mean, its [sic] crazy.
- It’s important to always read the chapters in a novel when Mr. Scott assigns them to you. You may think, “Oh, it won’t matter”, but Mr. Scott often has pop quizes [sic] on reading you were supposed to do. Spark Notes can be helpful, but it’s better to just do the reading. Because you can expect the questions to be things not covered on Spark Notes.
- Coming into English 1 you might expect it to be relatively easy because of how easy the rest of your English classes have been, but it’s not. English 1 for Mr. Scott is very demanding, there are many tough projects, and a lot of hard books to read.
If only I could get this kind of response from all of my students…
Boston Balloon
In footage likely to become as iconic as the shots of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, we can see all we really need to understand, at some gut level, what happened in Boston today. Shortly after the first explosion, shortly after the smoke and dust begin to rise, we see them.
Three balloons suddenly drift up from smoke and dust, lost balloons that drift away from the carnage almost effortlessly. I didn’t notice it the first time, but, as on 9/11, the networks showed the same footage again and again and again. Finally, I noticed them. And shortly after that, I shuddered at the implication. In all likelihood, someone was holding those balloons, and the jolt and jerk of the explosion caused whoever was holding the balloon to let go.
And then I thought of who usually holds balloons.
We’re all like that hypothetical kid holding the balloon, the kid who might very well be this boy. Or the three-year-old who sustained significant, possibly life-threatening injuries. We hold on tightly to the little bits of comfort we’ve found in life until something like this jars us, makes us wonder whether it’s all about to float away like ether.
Spring
We don’t even get rent: they’re squatters.
Or perhaps we’re the squatters.
