Matching Tracksuits

Month: May 2014

Shoots and Roots

Saturday 31 May 2014

This year, our garden is much bigger than previous years: more than double the size, in fact, which only means we’ve added two more raised beds. We had slowed down significantly the last couple of years because of the additional joys and responsibilities the Boy brought, but now that he’s growing, so is our garden.

Gardening is one of those things that reminds me how much I’ve changed as I entered adulthood, married, and become a father. As a teen, or even in my early twenties, I couldn’t imagine spending the amount of time I do setting up lines for beans to crawl up, hunting suckers on young tomato plants, looking at several sprawling cucumber plants and wondering if they can be enticed to climb (they can), examining leaves of radishes to determine what’s eating them — and doing all this willingly and even enjoying it.

Letter

Friday 30 May 2014

Someone — the administration I would assume — has put the kids up to writing end-of-the-year notes to various teachers.

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The next day, I told her, “That’s about the sweetest thing any student has ever done.”

Boys’ Afternoon

Thursday 29 May 2014

What do you do when the Girl is off with Nana and Papa (or “Papa-Nana” as the boy calls them) and Mama is not scheduled to come back until a full hour after her usual time? What are two boys to do? Playing with cars is a definite must, including lining them up, rearranging that lineup, and directing the Older Boy to play with this one, not that one while the Older Boy tries desperately to provide the Boy with yet another opportunity to practice sharing.

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Dipping your bread into your soup when there’s no one else to give you dirty looks — well, K wouldn’t do that anyway, but that doesn’t sound as good — is another must.

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Yoko

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Not sure I need to add anything to this.

Monday

Monday 26 May 2014

They’re usually just awful, Mondays, though I have a theory that Tuesday is in fact the worst day of the week. Yet sometimes, Mondays are not all that bad at all.

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But getting to that moment was a long story, beginning with a morning of work: I spent the morning in the raised beds; L spent the morning cleaning her room, with K and E supervising and occasionally helping (and likely, knowing E, occasionally setting L back a few minutes or more).

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The morning drifted into afternoon. L brought out more and more stuff — literally, there is no better word sometimes — to toss in the garbage while I spread cardboard over the open areas of our covered beds and covered all that with leaves (a highly effective way, we’ve discovered, to keep down weeds and retain moisture), and soon it was time to get the grill going, for what is Memorial Day without meat cooked on an open flame. And while you’re at it, go ahead and throw the corn on the grill. And for good measure, the potatoes.

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Once the dishes were in the sink and the kids were left munching on their leftovers and newly delivered watermelon, the real photographic fun began.

We passed around the little camera — such a perfect camera for black and white shots — and once L got hold of it, I rushed in for the Beast Camera, tempted to raid our collection of antique and semi-antique cameras as props.

But who needs props when you’ve got kids?

Sick Saturday

Saturday 24 May 2014

The Boy always stays sick. Or is it a dairy allergy? At any rate, he’s always coming down with something, and so when we took him to the doctor ten days ago, this weekend’s plans wobbled just a little: “He might not be up to camping,” K said. I was optimistic, though: “He’ll get better.” But as he was getting better, K started feeling worse. “Perhaps you and L can go on the camping trip instead of all four of us,” she suggested. Then Wednesday, L returned home from school feeling positively awful and slept from four to seven, then went back to bed at nine and slept till seven the next morning. Three out of four, that meant only one thing: Tata has to step up his game.

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Cleaning, diaper changing, cut bandaging, medicine dosing — I usually miss these things on a spring Saturday morning. This or that gardening/hardware/tool store is calling, or the lawn beckons, or the Leyland cypresses stretch out to remind me they need a trimming. It’s always something. This morning, though, it was just an ever-running laundry, new adventures with a fussy son, a cat in the laundry basket, and cold coffee.

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Enough to make me appreciate again all the things that K accomplishes inside while I’m outside on a Saturday.

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By the early afternoon, the kids had both rebounded almost fully. The Boy and I went on a little field trip while L was up the street at a friend’s house. By the evening, K was once again exhausted — she insisted on cooking dinner — and the kids were tired from their newly-rediscovered outside freedom.

Invitation

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Ashley Madison sent me an email some time ago. I don’t really know Ashley, so I was surprised she was contacting me. “What could this be about?” I wondered as I opened the email. I quickly discovered that Ashley was offering me a chance to betray all I believe in, to betray my wife, to betray my children, to betray my community, and above all, to betray my conscience. More fundamentally, in doing all of that, I would, in an echo of one of the most the paradoxical Christian ideas, both initially and ultimately betray God.

Ashley’s letter began,

Join our Married People’s Dating community right now and we GUARANTEE that you will have a sexual affair with a married woman or man! We GUARANTEE this!

Press here if you want to have an affair with a married woman or man.

I wondered for a moment about all the stresses an affair would entail. There’s the guilt, of course, of betraying the person you’re supposed to be closest to, the guilt of betraying God, the guilt of betraying your children, your parents. Then there’s all the stress of discovery: this is something that must be kept secret, so the unfaithful partner needs to scrutinize every little act, every little word, every single facial expression to make sure not to betray oneself.

Ashley, though, pointed out another way being unfaithful can increase stress:

Having an affair can be stressful because you never know if the other person involved is going to get attached to you. You just want the “sexual activity” and nothing else.

“What a great point!” I thought. It’s bad enough that you’ve already got someone attached to you, someone who expects you to be faithful and honest with her. What could be more stressful than people expecting this of you?

Fortunately, Ashley had a solution:

The BEST thing about our DISCREET dating community is that you will only meet up with people just like you that DO NOT want a commitment, just a sexual relationship.

Still, I wasn’t convinced. I mean, that’s money we’re talking about. What if someone signs up for this web site and then can’t manage to have an affair? What a tragedy! All that money and time wasted. On the other hand, you might meet someone who’s only playing some kind of game — more money and time wasted. Fortunately, Ashley once again came to the rescue:

Here is why you should join today if you want to have an affair with a married person, or if you’re married and want to have an affair:

  • You can check it out, see if you like it, and then begin contacting married people for secret intimate encounters.
  • We GUARANTEE that you will have a sexual relationship with a married woman or man!
  • Our dating community is 100 percent DISCREET, and you will not have to worry about someone getting attached to you!

What a relief — my biggest concern in having an affair of course would be that the woman I’m having the affair with might actually think it’s something serious, that she might not realize that a man who can’t be faithful to his own wife certainly couldn’t be faithful to a mistress. I was so relieved that Ashley saw this concern immediately.

The letter ended with a simple question:

There are thousands of unhappy married women and men in every city, but they DO NOT want to leave their spouse. They want to stay married, but they want to have an affair without ever being caught. Our dating community is PERFECT for these people. Are you one of them?

All sarcasm aside, no, I am not one of them Ashley. If I were unhappily married, I would try something novel, like talking to my wife about it, like getting counseling, like being honest. I would ask myself a simple question: “Am I not happy because my wife is not happy?” In other words, I would consider whether I was the root cause of it all.

I guess Ashley wouldn’t, which is why I feel for her, but most of all, I feel sorry for whomever she claims to be committed.

Jazz 2014 and Puppies

Tuesday 20 May 2014

Tonight was L’s jazz concert. Greenville Ballet divides the two forms into separate lessons (unlike our former school, which had half an hour of ballet followed by half an hour of jazz), and this year they had two separate shows. If last night’s performance was any sort of standard, it was certainly magnificent.

Meanwhile, at the house, the Boy and I had our own adventure: a walk to the drug store, some swinging time, some up-the-stairs, down-the-stairs time — everything a boy and his father needed to make a perfect evening of it.

To CVS
The swing
Contemplation
“Up!”
Up and down and up and down
Heading home
Big man

Bedtime presented its own challenges. As I was dressing the Boy for a hopefully-long, hopefully-restful evening, I slipped his puppy pajama bottoms on without thinking about the fact that the matching shirt was nowhere to be found. He was fine with it, but started asking a little later about the top: I’d laid him on the bed to slide him into his sleeping sack when he began asking, “Sapappies?”

“We don’t have the top, E,” I reassured him. “I don’t know where it is.”

Despite this reasoned explanation, the protests grew more frantic: “Sapappies! Sapappies!”

I tried explaining again, but it was not no avail: he slid off the bed, marched to his chest of drawers, and began opening them one by one. Look in, he’d exclaim, “No!” before slamming the draw closed (I could just hear the screams if he caught his finger in one) and opening the next. The third attempted was successful. “Tu! Tu!” he shouted (“Here! Here!” in English). He pulled out a pair of socks and cried, “Sapappies!”

(Note to non-Slavophiles: “socks” in Polish is “skarpetki,” so in typical dual-language fashion, he applied a bilingual double-plural to it in addition to the ineffably charming pronunciation.)

Ballet Recital 2014

Monday 19 May 2014

We changed ballet schools at the beginning of this season: the last recital, rescheduled at the last minute to an old auditorium with no sound system and, worse, no air conditioning, all due to the costumes being ordered too late yet again — it was just a nightmare. Everyone sweaty; no one able to hear; everyone miserable. We’d been having our doubts, but it was the last straw, so to speak.

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So we began taking L to one of the two largest schools in the area. A school that stages a full Nutcracker every year. A school that divides the instruction up into ballet lessons (learning the basics, the positions, the movements) and performance lessons (learning a choreographed dance incorporating all the skills from ballet lessons). This is a school that has students from ages four to eighteen. It has a beginner pointe group, an intermediate pointe group, and advanced pointe instruction.

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The difference was striking this evening.

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The program was arranged so that we began with the pre-ballet kids (four- and five-year-olds) showing their basic moves to the cliche clunky piano music one always associates with basic lessons and ended with the advanced ballet group put on quite a show to a piece by Ravel.

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Intermediate performance class

After the show, all smiles as usual.

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The Delicacy of Sharing

Saturday 17 May 2014

Teaching our daughter to share has been a constant challenge, as I’m sure it has with most parents. L likes and even expects others to share with her, but getting her to return the favor — that’s always been a trick. A few events of the last few days, though, makes me think we’ve made real progress.

Friday, we were to meet a friend of hers from her first grade class at the end-of-the-year school party, a carnival with a few rides and some games scattered about the school ground.

“We’re supposed to meet at six at the silly string!” she told us, countless times.

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We arrived at the silly string area — a roped off portion of the field where kids ran about spraying aerosol string on each other — at the appointed time, but no friend. We got a ice treat, went on a few rides, and then suddenly discovered L’s friend, also Lilly.

With her mother’s blessing, Lilly went off with L and me, but before long, she’d run out of tickets.

“Daddy,” L said with a grave expression. “Give me the rest of the tickets. I want to slip them with Lilly.”

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The second episode: today, during L’s preparation time before ballet portraits, I sat with E at the table to do his albuterol breathing treatment, but he was having none of that.

“No! No! No!”

No amount of cajoling, explaining, or begging could help.

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L came to the rescue, offering the Boy use of our family Nexus so he could play his favorite game, a vehicle-based shape-matching game.

He sat patiently for the treatment, playing his game and clapping furiously whenever he finished a round.

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“Bravo!” he cried, as did I, though for both L and E.

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Finally, in the evening, mowing the yard after almost two weeks’ neglect, I came upon a patch of matted grass, so I headed in for the dethatching rake. As I returned, I noticed a curious patch of dry grass with bits of gray about it. I walked over, pulled the grass aside, and found a burrow of baby rabbits.

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L came over to get a peek, and Papa brought the Boy over.

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“What an odd place to burrow,” I said. Indeed, for it will be a disaster if our cat finds it, which is not as likely as it might seem given her age and general laziness.

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Still, I’m happy to share our yard — for once, it’s an animal that seems harmless.

Sick at Home, Tired at Rehearsal

Thursday 15 May 2014

The Boy, in one form or another, stays sick lately. Or so it seems. Today was my turn to watch him, to take him to the doctor, to help him with his newly-prescribed breathing treatment. We started the morning playing with cars on the sofa. It ended quickly.

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That was the morning. Afternoon and evening were spent in an auditorium as the Girl prepared for her two (count them: two) dance recitals coming up, jazz and ballet. I took my little laptop along with the intention of returning to a recent writing idea that seems promising but got off to a wrong-footed start that I only really realized how wrong-footed 25,000 words into it. While writing, though, two random thoughts:

Random Thought One

The girls running across the stage, somewhat stumbling occasionally, reveal the irony of grace: in learning to be graceful, we’re often anything but. We watch a professional company’s performance of the Nutcracker, and the dancers seem positively to float across the stage. The lifts look more like the man his keeping the ballerina from soaring of into space rather than supporting her. These little girls look more like kids in the playground playing cowboys and Indians, galloping about like mad, than like ballerinas–when judged against that standard of near-perfection that professionals seem to achieve. But grace and elegance comes in many forms and is in itself somewhat relative. After seeing how spastic L can be, in the completely natural, seven-year-old way, it’s an act of supreme grace just for her to tiptoe onto the stage, hands on her hips, and slide gently into first position.

Random Thought Two

I once made the analogy with a professor that for me, faith was like watching people dance from a sound-proof chamber. “I see the unity, the ritual, the sequence, but not hearing the music myself, I only suspect what is choreographing it all.” Dr. R said that was a very positive view, and perhaps he thought then what it took me almost twenty years to figure out for myself: my professed atheism might give way to something more musical.

During the last few months, I’ve experienced the opposite: while sitting in the Greenville Ballet and Jazz waiting room as L took her weekly lesson on Monday afternoons, I heard the same song over and over. A few moments here, then stop; a few more snippets of the song, then silence again. Muffed voices as the instructor presumably corrected this or that dancer, perhaps the group as a whole. I had no idea what the whole might look like. While waiting for L’s group’s performance, it finally all came together: an older group of girls, probably just a bit older than my students.

Back home, I check on the song, apparently a band called Capital Cities:

The Girl got a little snack while the Boy got a final breathing treatment.

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Busy, random, odd day.

Second Time Around

Wednesday 14 May 2014

The Boy got cards, got ice cream — birthday boy.

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Home

Tuesday 13 May 2014

The Boy was not himself today. Slight fever, runny nose, rough cough, so we took him to Nana’s and Papa’s for the day. When I stopped by in the afternoon to pick him up, he jumped out of Nana’s lap, squeaked, “Bye Nana!” as he waved, turned to me, and said with obvious relief in his voice, “Home.” That’s not to say he doesn’t love being at Papa’s and Nana’s — he certainly does. But Nana’s and Papa’s is Nana’s and Papa’s, and home is home.

He says the same thing when I pick him up from daycare every day. He’s won the teachers’ heart, with one writing in a thank you note (for cupcakes last week for the teachers — what a mama!), “He really makes my day with his sweet hugs and sometimes unexpected kisses.” Miss J seems to adore him, and he certainly is just a little crazy about her. Still, he sees me coming and says with obvious relief in his voice, “Home.”

What could “home” mean for a two-year-old? We like to attach all these grandiose meanings to such a simple concept. A quick snapshot is all the explanation anyone really needs to such a question.

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Monday Afternoon

Monday 12 May 2014

We take the Girl to jazz dance and return to play with the Boy’s new toys.