Month: February 2014
I usually end up dressing the Boy after a bath. Not always, but usually. It's one of the times he's most chatty, and his developing bilinguality shows often, as does the linguistically-hybrid nature of our family.
"Who's my misiek?" I ask after he's pointed to a teddy bear on his sleeper and proclaimed it to be a "misiek." He smiles. I ask again: "Are you my misiek?"
"Tak!" he joyously replies.
Nothing about the house makes sense, but it’s obvious it was once the best house on the block. Or at least it wanted to be. In the days before McMansions, this must have been something of an intermediate step. But a strange one.
The addition at the back of the house is almost as big as the house itself, but there seems to be little living space in it: the top floor is one enormous room with a wall of glass that overlooks the swimming pool; the first floor is a series of garages.
But what’s more impressive than the garages is the brick wall and cement pads around the entire property. A double-course wall complete with lights, it must have cost well over several thousand dollars when it was made decades ago. And there is no backyard: it’s all been cemented — another several-thousand-dollar project.
It just doesn’t add up: You’d expect to peek over a wall like this and see some great mansion, something Chateau-like. Instead, it’s just a typical suburban brick home from the seventies, a home with a large addition but no central air as evidenced by the multiple window-unit air conditioners.
According to the realtor sign that has been in the front yard for years, it’s now under contract. K and I walked during the snow break last week, discussing much of the ideas above.
“It’s in such bad shape, though,” she sad, looking at the rotting wood and the remnants of previous owners.
Perhaps the house is worth it, despite its dire repair, just because of the brick work.
A second gold proves it was no fluke.
The morning begins with cartoons. There is always a rotating group of favorites, with Peep and the Big Wide World recently coming back into favor. I've liked that show from the first time I heard the theme song: any animated series that uses banjo in its theme song in a non-Beverly-Hillbillies, non-cliche fashion already has an advantage in my opinion
Of course, cartoons entertain only so long. One can only sit comfortably on a couch and watch cartoons for one half of an episode before the urge to build a fort arises. L has been building forts for some time, now, and while there was a blanket-and-chairs period, the living room couch has become the standard construction material.
The Boy has recently learned the joys of the living room fort, and L, being the sweet girl she can be is, devised a two-room fort. E loaded his room with cars, cars, cars -- such a typical boy.
The Girl loads her's with plush toys and books, taking a battery-powered camping lantern into the fort to provide adequate light for reading.
The real test comes with it's nap time for the Boy. The television might have been off for an hour or more, but the two of them continue playing in the fort. Coaxing the Boy out of the fort and getting the Girl to clean up the fort can be equally challenging.
No morning would be complete without it.
As surely and completely as the snow fell on our small town, a spell floated down with the snow, and suddenly, we were outside the rhythms, sounds, and textures of our every-day life, outside our habits, outside time. The South was no longer the South, and time skipped the entire mid-week. The storm took and it gave. It stripped some every-day items that we use without thinking and replaced them with gifts that sent K and me back in time, gifts for almost all the senses.
It was more than just the free time provided by several days home from work and school. That's merely vacation, and the fact that we stayed home makes it similar to a fairly typical winter break. No, it was the unexpected nature of it: we'd heard about the coming storm for a week, but it still wasn't in our plans, which this time of year include the simple repetitiveness of daily and weekly life: morning rush, afternoon weariness, evening ballet, jazz, religious education, shopping, choir practice, and the thousand other things that make a routine. Suddenly, it was all in the air with the flakes, and as the snow fell, it became obvious that we were given a bit of breathing space. Still, it wasn't just time off. There was more to the spell.
The white of the snow transformed our surroundings into a lovely monochromatic landscape that paradoxically highlighted all the shades I'd never noticed. Giving everything a uniform background highlights the red of our neighbor's house's brick, the off-white of our tired shutters, the dark brown of the Sweet Gum seed balls that always litter our front yard.
The freezing temperatures were such a change from the sweater-weather weekend, so similar to the temperatures of southern Poland. Before our afternoon sledding expeditions and our evening walks, we slipped layers on everyone, bundled the family in mittens, scarves, and hats. The frigid temperatures inspired me: I pulled out old wool socks I hadn't worn in years, socks I'd bought back in the 90s before heading to Poland, then shoved my newly-bulky feet into boots I'd bought with the socks, boots I'd paid a fortune for but which now cost approximately fourteen dollars for the almost twenty years I've owned them.
Ironically, even when Pax -- what an odd name for a storm -- took, it gave something back, often of vastly greater value. The most obvious thing it ripped away from us was our cars. They sat idle for days, piled with snow -- even the minivan in the carport -- and we reverted to walking. Not that there was anywhere to go, but there was everywhere to go. Just to walk about in the snow was a treat in itself: we went out for a walk each night, thrilled with the crunch of snow underfoot and the yelling and whooping of L and her closest neighborhood friend, W, who spent almost every afternoon and evening with us. They threw snowballs at us, and we went back and forth with "remember when" moments. Remember walking back from ballroom dance classes to the bus station in Nowy Targ the winter before we married? Remember walking to midnight Mass Christmas Eve, the sound of ice underfoot like fingernails down a chalkboard? Remember walking down to Adam's for drinks and conversation with Johnny and friends? When it comes to walking in a snowy night in Lipnica, I could reminisce for days: the small radius of my daily life and the absence of a car filled me with innumerable such memories.
So waking today, we knew the end was nearing. The Boy still looked from the window, captivated, but K and I knew the forecast high would turn almost all the snow to slush.
"Bubbles!" the Boy continued squealing as he'd been doing for days. He was eager to get outside, and watching L and W sledding in the backyard simultaneously frustrated and excited him. But once the nap concluded and he finished his lunch, we all went outside to play in the slush.
We took an afternoon walk once Babcia took the Boy back inside. A last jaunt.The streets were covered in muddy slushies, and cars were slowly reappearing on the road, sending frigid spray from their tires as they passed.
There were still children playing outside, but conditions weren't optimal for much of anything: too wet for snowballs, too soggy for sledding. About the only thing to do was jump in slush and watch the spray fly as I'd done just before heading out.
Returning from the walk, the decay was evident everywhere. L's snowman had morphed into something almost unrecognizable, the fallen carrot the only sign of its past glory.
I stayed out, shoveling the slush off the drive so K could get out tomorrow for work -- the coming drop in temperature ensured by the cloudless sky threatened to turn the driveway into an ice block -- and that's when it really hit me.
The spell, the magic and all it contained, was over. K would return to work tomorrow, and L and I would venture out to do the week's shopping.
The white sheen was disappearing, the plain mud and grass underneath it reminding us that the only thing that makes such spells so magical is their temporary nature.
An icy hill, some molded plastic, and some kids -- it's all you need. And some oompah music. Can't forget the oompah music.
It’s supposed to be a historic storm, despite the fact that forecasters on the television have been calling a historical storm. That’s inevitable once we stop living through it and start looking back at it. When we woke this morning, the application of the adjective “historic” was still unwarranted.
In fact, it remained that way until the afternoon. The snow fell all day, but it was a fine snow that accumulated slowly.
We went out in it, sledded in it, walked in it (day and night), rolled in it, threw it. And I recorded two or three videos. Which are still on the camera hard drive.
The falling snow, now turning to ice, pelts my face and creates a chaotic rhythm on my jacket.
As I head down the driveway, I hear the familiar crunch of ice underfoot, and immediately I am again taken back to the streets of Nowy Targ, the alleyways of Krakow, the walkway to my school in Lipnica.
I head to the back door so I can leave all my wet clothes in the basement, kicking the snow off my boots just before entering.
Sounds I haven't heard in ages. Music that takes me back in time.
It was supposed to be a three-punch storm. The first swing was Monday afternoon: nothing spectacular. Some rain with ice in it, nothing much to be thrilled with. When we went to bed last night, I wasn’t expecting much. Officials had called off school, but they do that at the whisper of icy weather, so that meant little to me.
In the morning, the second part rolled through. It began accumulating quickly, in the front yard, on the back porch, and I thought, “Perhaps something will come of this.”
But as the snow continued falling, the accumulation actually decreased in the backyard. The snow on the deck slowly disappeared and the yard itself turned into a mud bank.
Of course that was not enough to keep us from diving into the white front yard, L eager to build a snowman (“Babciu, dasz mi marchewka?”) and the Boy running about screaming “Bubbles! Bubbles!” The Girl teamed with young W from up the street, and the two of them made a little snowdrawf. Or snowman-ish-blob, which intrigued the Boy. Seeing the small sticks for arms, he pulled one out and began yelling, “Tick! Tick!” It means both “stick” and “outside,” for he goes to the door, often enough with coat in hand, and proclaims “Tick! Tick!” whenever he wants to go outside.
L was initially upset with the Boy’s obsession: he pulled out the carrot nose, ripped out the snowman-ish-blob’s right arm, and knocked one or two Sweet-Gum-seed-ball teeth out.
“Tick! Tick!”
Soon, however, attention turned to snowballs, and the snowman-ish-blob suddenly was not nearly as intriguing.
Yet nothing can hold their attention forever, and the last attraction was the sled a neighbor kindly made for L. Anyone with any sledding experience would have been able to tell L that three inches — max — of slushy snow is just not enough for sledding. But it’s one of the many things one has to learn for oneself from experience. They tried a few different variations before realizing the futility of it.
“Maybe tomorrow, when there’s more snow.”
It is supposedly more than a possibility; it is a certainty. “A historical storm,” local weather forecasters have said. “Historic,” I’ve said under my breath, thinking, “It’s not historical until it’s history.”
“We’re going to be talking about this storm for years to come,” they say. Provided it’s the six to twelve inches, it will be great; if the ice comes along with it, well, let’s just hope it doesn’t happen.