Month: December 2016
Goofing
Meat
When we woke up, it was twenty-seven degrees outside. For South Carolina, that’s cold, especially in December. The really low temperatures like that don’t usually hit until January and February. It creates a challenge for the day’s activity: smoking of the holiday meat.
With twenty-some pounds of pork loin, a rack of ribs (for soups), and several pounds of chicken to smoke, I’m going to have a long, cold day in such weather.
Fortunately the Boy comes out to help.
At least for a while.
Teaching Tasting
The Boy really wants to learn how to cook, so we’ve begun, somewhat unplanned, to recognize spices.
When I gave him cinnamon, he wrinkled his nose a bit, took another sniff, then asked, “Did we put that in the sauce for Thanksgiving?” I nodded my head. “Oh, it’s crunched up cinnamon sticks!”
Character and Characters
It’s not just that I’m a parent — that’s not the only reason I’m always thinking about it, though it is the primary and most obvious reason. It’s also because I deal with kids all day every day — I see the results of others’ efforts.
Taiashia is a girl whose attitude on most days goes from bad to worse. She arrives at school mad, and she is often furious before the beginning of the first class. She is obstinate and often belligerent. She can be incredibly incorrigible with some teachers all the time and with me some of the time. She often refuses any redirection from a teacher and responds to explanations of the coming consequences with, “I don’t care.” She is generally regarded by most teachers not to be the most trustworthy pupil. She is, in short, difficult to deal with. But she is smart. Incredibly smart. Despite all her behaviors and issues, she maintains A’s and B’s in most classes.
Earlier in the year, when I first realized how bright she was, how much faster she was on the uptake than a lot of the students in her class, I offered her a temporary spot in one of my advanced classes. “It’s the level class I’d like to place you in next year, and I think it might be a good experience for you this year.”
“I don’t want to,” was her reply.
“Think about it first. Then give me an answer.”
“I don’t want to,” she said the next day.
I had to call her guardian recently about her behavior, and I knew what I’d hear. Anyone could guess what I’d hear. Tough life. Not the best home influences. So on. A common story with such kids.
Cut to this evening. I’m scrounging the bookshelves for a book I haven’t already read and am willing to read because I am not willing to pay the overdue fine I still owe at the library. (The Girl had a bunch of books checked out on my account and, well, time got away from us…) I found a book about child rearing that had the word “character” in the title. Probably not a surprise in a Catholic home. It proposed eight elements of personality that show a person has character — things like integrity, self-discipline, joy. All elements that Taiashia lacks. Completely, it seems some days. At the same time, all things K and I are trying to instill in our own children.
And the opportunities to do so abound. The Girl will face one tomorrow. Her class has earned Electronics Day, which means students can bring electronics for twenty minutes of free time at some point in the day. L’s tablet is busted; our tablet is busted; the tablet I use for school is at school; laptops are not allowed. And so our daughter was worried about what would happen if she came to Electronics Day without any electronics.
“They’ll laugh at me!” she sniffled.
How do you explain to an almost-ten-year-old that what others think doesn’t matter? How do you provide the kind of perspective that makes that possible? You can’t. It only comes with time, with experiencing it for yourself and noticing that you survived it, noticing that not everyone joined in the laughter, realizing that those people are your true friends. A tough thing for not even ten years’ experience.
K and I did the expected thing; we said what any parent would say. And when she brought it up again as I was tucking her in, I thought of Taiashia.
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Maybe pray for them?”
“Why?” she asked.
“If they’re in a place in their life where it makes them feel good to make someone else feel bad, they must have a pretty bad life.” Now, I don’t think that’s entirely what’s going on with fourth graders, but by the time they become eighth graders like Taiashia, it is what’s going on. “And then remember it: remember what it feels like and be the one that stands up for others when they’re getting laughed it.”
She thought about it for a moment.
“Yeah, I guess.”
She didn’t sound so convinced, but perhaps there’s just enough seed, water, and care for something to grow there. And if not, K and I will plant again.
Immaculate
Tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church, which means you’ve got to go to mass. Our new parish, though, is only have a morning mass, so we went to the vigil mass tonight. At six. Which meant the Boy was ready to go to sleep before mass even began.
The notion of the Immaculate Conception has always confused me, no less now that I’m Catholic. The idea is that, to avoid the “stain of Original Sin” passing on to Jesus, God removed from Mary at her conception original sin. The mechanics of this, as I understand it, involve retroactively applying the salvific nature of her son’s sacrifice to her — which brings about an obvious question: why not just do that to everyone? In the spirit of “fake it until you make it,” I go along with it. But the whole thing leaves me a little off kilter. So, truth be told, does the whole Christian story, and I guess that’s supposed to be the point of it in some sense.
There are so few things we encounter these days that we could call “immaculate.” A newborn child. And I sit here, thinking about what I could add as a second item on that list, and even with the thought of adding a qualifying “perhaps,” I’m stuck. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps that’s what Original Sin is all about. Perhaps it’s human nature. Perhaps Original Sin is human nature. Perhaps it’s not important at 10:50 on a Wednesday.
Part of growing up, I think, is that realization that “immaculate” really doesn’t exist in our world. The natural world is filled with such cruelty, with wasps that plant their eggs in still-living organisms that the larva will literally eat alive — and likely very painfully. Then there are all the natural disasters just waiting to happen, or just happening. Thinking about “immaculate” leads us to think about its opposite, whatever that might be, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps that’s the point.
Mikołaj 2016
There are times when it seems the Girl’s frustration with the Boy is simply going to overwhelm her, take over her mind, body, and soul. “E!” she cries out, stretching his name into a several-second yelp. When she’s talking to her cousin in Poland, she can be positively cruel, trying to shove him out of her room so she can have “peace and quiet.” When he gets into her Legos, it’s as if he’s managed to snag a Ming dynasty vase and is attempting to juggle it.
Of course he can give it as well as he gets it, and sometimes the Girl comes and complains that E is being mean. “Well, he’s only following your example: you taught him how to do that,” K and I remind her.
Some days, it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole: one gets calmed down just as the other decides it’s about time for a little provocation. Reverse and repeat. Reverse and repeat. Reverse and repeat.
When they’re in such a mood, it brings out the worst in them in another respect, too: they become the worst tattle-tales. I guess this is just another form of provocation, though.
Watching them in these moments, it might be hard to see the love they have for each other, especially when L’s all worked up. But it’s there, strong and bright and clear. Most clearly, it comes from E, who’s not afraid to show his love and admiration for his older sister. She is everything to him, and he imitates her as much as he imitates K and me.
The Girl shows it in little surprising ways. This morning, “Polish Christmas” as they call it, she was up first. That in itself is a rarity. Still, there she was the first one up, with a little prodding. She had the first meeting of Battle of the Books this morning, and she had to be at school a little early — with chorus, that means early starts Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for the foreseeable future. It’s always hard to get her out of bed, but I thought I had the silver bullet today: “Mikołaj came — I think he left you something.” I expect her to bolt upright and start asking, “Where? Where? Where?” with a crazed expression. It would be a typical L action in many ways. Instead, she simply answered that she wanted to open her present with E.
“He’s still asleep,” I explained, thinking that would put an end to it all.
“Okay, I’ll wait.”
It was worth it.
L led E to his presents and celebrated with what Mikołaj brought him. (The prized present: a light and siren set to turn his bike into a “police vehicle” as he explained it.) Then she demanded that he lead her, with her eyes closed, back to her room to check out her presents. (The prized present: a new pair of pajamas emblazoned with L’s morning mantra: “Five more minutes!”)
In the evening, it was time for more holiday preparation: Saturday’s a big smoking day for me, and we put around twenty-five pounds of pork loin in a brine to get it ready. The Boy, who’s always wanting to cook, helped out. I taught him how to test the brine (“It should taste as salty as the ocean,” I explained) and then spit it out.
Of course the spitting into a pot was the highlight. He was not at all disappointed that we didn’t have the salt level correct the first time and had to keep adding and testing, adding and testing.
Afterward, a little work on the couch together.
What did Mikołaj bring K and me? This beautiful day.
The Real L
Monday evenings, we get that rare chance to see the Girl in her element, to see her without her being aware that we see her, that we’re watching. I say “we” but it’s really only one or the other of us: one stays with the Boy, the other takes L to gymnastics, then does a bit of shopping while she bounces about.
I arrived back to pick her up tonight about ten minutes early, so I sneaked to a spot I could watch without her being aware. They were doing something on a bar roughly the width of one of the uneven bars but only about two feet off the ground, placing their hands on the bars and jumping on the bar before extending both arms upward. The Girl completed the exercise, got a high five from her teacher, then went to an aerobic ball and began bouncing up and down on it. The other girls were sitting still, waiting their turn and watching the other girls go, and L was bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, looking here and there, in her own world. They got up to do something else, and when done, L returned to the ball. Bounce bounce bounce. Up down up down up down up down bounce bounce bounce up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up bounce bounce bounce bounce down up down up down up down up down with such abandon and joy that I realized that she could probably just do that during the entire hour and be satisfied with time spent. I thought what a perfect metaphor this simple action, that in some ways I found annoying because I sensed that the other girls around L found it annoying, could cause her so much happiness. It was another of those “just let her be — don’t worry about what other kids think about her” moments. So they might have been annoyed — so what? So they might in some way reject her because they might think that’s childish in some sense — so what?
“You seemed to have a lot of fun bouncing on that ball tonight,” I suggested in the car on the way home.
“Yeah!” she said with her typical excitement.
“Don’t the other girls want to do that?”
“We take turns every week,” she said, looking out the window.
“And tonight was your turn?”
“Yeah — not everyone wants to do it. Some of the girls think the mats are more comfortable.”
I wondered at that. Perhaps some of the other girls just don’t care enough to put up a fight, because I can see L running for the ball to claim the first turn. That’s how she is with us, and with people she feels comfortable with. But these girls? Virtual strangers? I worry at times that she might not have the best social radar, that she might think she’s closer to some people than they themselves think they are to her. I’ve noticed little gestures from others at times, things I wonder if I should point out to L or just let her learn. Reading body language. It’s a skill that sometimes has to be taught, doesn’t it? And then there are those autistic souls who can’t pick up on those things to save their lives.
So no big epiphanies tonight. No big revelations. Just more wondering.
But not about the Boy: he was in perfect E-form when K started cleaning the oven tonight.
Rainy Sunday
“It’s cold and rainy!” I said as I came back inside from taking pictures of the Boy, who was more thrilled than I was that it was cold and rainy. After a blistering dry summer, to have finally some cold, wet weather is a blessing.
It made the rosół we had for lunch all the tastier, the cuddling with Papa and Nana all the more comfortable, and family movie in the early evening all the more enjoyable.
The automatically created URL for this post indicates that this is the fourth time I’ve used “Rainy Sunday” as a post title:
All within the last three years.
Lighting the House
Once again, a job to do: lighting the house. Once again, a Boy to help.
“Daddy, I need to be up there with you. I need to work on the roof.” How can I possibly resist? It makes the job more difficult, but it also makes it more enjoyable.
And occasionally, his help is actually help. “Bring me more lights,” I ask, and he chirps “Okay” and almost runs over to where the bag of lights lie on the ground.
This lasts for a few minutes — twenty at most — before he sees the neighborhood boys out and decides he has done enough to help. Without a word, without explanation, he runs off, and I am left both in peace (how fast can I get the rest of this done now? careful not to fall!) and a little lonely, sad even.
It’s a foreshadowing of things to come, I know. It’s already starting with the Girl — notice she’s not even in this post because she was doing her own thing. She did her cleaning chores and was left with an afteroon that she filled with chatting with her cousin in Poland on Skype, pestering E, and whatever else she might have been doing. She spent the night at a friend’s house, too.
It’s still so far away and yet so very close.
Tree Lighting
The Girl sings in her school chorus, and this year they were invited to sing at the city’s Christmas tree lighting.
Waiting
It’s now Advent, a time of waiting. In many ways, I guess we’re waiting all our lives. There’s always something in the near future that we’ve trained our attention on, even if we’re the type to live in the present. E, for example, is waiting to be able to cook, really cook.
He plays at it a lot, but that’s often just messy play, he thinks. “I’ll never learn to cook,” he lamented tonight, but explaining to him that playing as he does — and indeed, helping as he often does, with stirring and such — really is learning to cook. “And you’ll be learning your whole life,” K explained. Still, it didn’t do much to help him. He’s waiting to cook for real.
The Girl has been waiting for the Advent calendar to make its appearance. This year, E and L both have their own, but E had completely forgotten about it. Truth be told, L probably had too until K mentioned it today.
We got the calendars out, but E had to wait a while: he still hadn’t finished his dinner, so we walked around with a chipmunk-cheek of pierogi as L opened her calendar and jotted her name on it. When he was done eating, he got to do what he’s always waiting to do during dinner: crawl into K’s lap.
After dinner, it’s my long-anticipated event: chess with my son. L started learning chess, but she never really grew to love it. Too much to think about, and sitting still and concentrating — not something she’s fond of doing after a long day at school. The Boy enjoys the game, though, and he’s patient. He can wait. For a little bit. So we work on pawns only.
“When can we play with the other pieces?” he asked tonight.
“As soon as you can play well with the pawns,” I explained. By that, I meant simply that he could make legal moves and could see opportunities to capture an opponent’s pieces consistently.
“You have to wait for a little while,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, and captured a piece incorrectly.