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Month: April 2017

Split Sunday

Sunday 30 April 2017

Today is the last Sunday of the month, which means Polish Mass. It’s not much of a Polish Mass as much as it’s an English Mass with responses in Polish. Finding a replacement Polish priest is not all that easy, it seems. Yet L’s recent involvement in the children’s choir has energized and interested her: she doesn’t want to give it up. So we went to Mass in the morning, the three of us, and K went in the afternoon. Kind of like we used to do when one of us was sick: one stays home with the kid then goes to Mass later in the day.

It’s been a real benefit to the Girl, children’s choir. It keeps her focused in Mass for thing. It’s hard to fidget about when you have to pay attention and be ready to sing. It’s also helped her make new friends with girls who seem to have their heads looking forward and their priorities straight. It’s a constant worry we have: what kind of friends is she making at school? What kinds of behaviors are being modeled at school? We’ve met her best friends, of course, but she comes into contact with so many other children that it would be impossible to keep up. And so we’re happy to have some more positive influences in her life.

After lunch, it’s the same old Sunday tradition: exploring. The Boy and I headed to the other side of the creek to the neglected, overgrown portion of the lot of the all-but-abandoned house. The owner of the house died in his backyard a few years ago — we heard the cries of anguish in our yard when they discovered him — and I guess they moved his wife into assisted care or something. At any rate, someone comes and mows the yard a few times a summer, but the long triangular off-shoot of the lot has been completely neglected. There is now a stand of Sweetgum trees there that just makes me shudder.

But we were after something else, something sweeter.

Honeysuckle. When I was a kid, finding a fine of honeysuckle was a rare and wonderful treat. Our neighborhood didn’t have any wild areas, and I don’t think many people cultivate honeysuckle.

Later, in the early evening, E and I went back down to have another snack. The Girl joined us, bringing a small bowl to bring back some blossoms to enjoy during the movie.

I love the simplicity of that.

Working Saturday

Saturday 29 April 2017

So much to do on a Saturday. Backyard to mow, soil to "till" by hand with a shovel and rake,

grass to plant, floors to clean, lunch to prepare, flowers to plant,

wood to cut, shopping to complete, wings to season, cabbage to prepare,

fires to build, dinner to cook, children to clean, movie to watch, wine to drink,

photos to process, and post to write.

Last Friday in April

Friday 28 April 2017

Bribery…

Thursday 27 April 2017

Random Fidget

Tuesday 25 April 2017

The Girl apparently is anxious to get one -- they're all the rage at her school. Everyone's got one, and they're so fun.

It's the same at our school -- the now-ubiquitous fidget spinner. They're marketed as aids for kids with attention issues and hyperactivity issues. Supposedly they'll help these kids to focus by giving them a little outlet for their hyperactivity.

What ends up happening, though, is that the kids who have them become fixated on them. They're just another in a long line of distractions that keep them from staying focused for more than a few moments. The kid in the front row who can't keep his eyes on his work for more than two seconds now has to contend with this little gadget in his hand and, when he starts sharing it, who's got it and when he can get it back.

A similar trend (in our school anyway) is the fight with the eternally-in earbuds.

"Take the earbuds out," I tell a student.

"You tell me that every day," he says.

Not only that, but I've referred the matter to the administrator a couple of times and he's sat in ISS (probably with his earbuds in ) -- but every day, there they are again.

What do these to things have in common? Simple: they're symptoms of the current generation's need to be constantly stimulated with something.

L is starting to develop those symptoms as well. She loves to have something playing on her little CD player at all times. She wants to read with it on, do homework with it on, color with it own, play on her tablet with it on. However, what she's playing on it is somewhat different than what the kids walking down our hallways have blaring into their heads. (How much rap can you take before you go insane? How much misogynistic, materialistic machismo can you listen to before you realize how empty it is?) No, no music for the Girl: she's always listening to a recorded book.

Rain

Monday 24 April 2017

It's been raining since Saturday night. It's rained so much that our sump pump, installed well over a year ago and never actually in use, got a chance to kick in. Granted, that's because there was a bit of water in the basin, though not enough to raise the float and trip the switch, and so I manually pulled the float and it hummed on.

I'd thought about it on and off today, wondering how it might work after so long of just sitting there. While doing our kitchen remodel, I added an outlet for the sump pump on its own dedicated breaker for extra security. The last thing I wanted was for it to happen to throw the breaker and flood the crawl space again.

When I got home from work, I knew the Boy would want only one thing: time in the puddles. Much to my surprise, he wanted first to take a bunch of random pictures with my phone.

He's asked for a camera a couple of times, and this of course thrills K and me endlessly. I'd like to let him use one of our digital cameras, but unfortunately, they're a bit on the too-expensive-to-let-a-kid-touch-without-immediate-adult-supervision side.

But some things are free and unbreakable, like puddles.

We first headed to our backyard theoretically to check on the level of water in the creek, but in reality, to explore for puddles.

I still don't get what's some much fun about splashing about in gum boots in dirty rain water. I'm sure at some point in my life I loved it too, but I watch E and think only one thing: "I'd hate to have my pants partially wet like that."

We also headed over to the low point of the creek behind our neighbors' house to see how it was flowing. It's at this point that it first jumps the banks when it's a real flash-flood-inducing deluge like it did a year and a half ago and three years ago and four years ago. By then it was already subsiding, though, and with the rain supposed to stop before the evening's out, it looks like we won't have to worry about a serious flood.

That didn't keep us from checking the neighborhood to make sure, though. E armed himself with his plastic assault rifle and out we went, searching for puddles for him to walk through.

Toward the end of the adventure, he found a stick at the edge of a puddle and stomped on it to break it. Water went everywhere.

"We have to go in now," I explained.

"Why?"

"Because I told you not to stomp in the water, and you just did. You disobeyed, and what's more, you're wet now."

We began walking back up to the house, and he said, "That was a good idea."

"No," I corrected, "that was not a good idea."

"No, I mean the idea I just thought of."

"What was that?"

"I should have taken it out before I stomped it."

"That was a good idea."

Sunday Vignettes

Sunday 23 April 2017

One: Alone Together

The Boy wanted to get into the Girl's room; the Girl wanted some "alone time," which we all do from time to time. With the two of them, that conflict is a frequent occurrence. As parents, K and I must balance the two opposing factors:

The Girl needs to learn that she can't be by herself all the time. She needs to have a relationship with her brother.
The Boy needs to learn that he can't play with L all the time, that she needs some privacy.

I feel like we need to be keeping score of the whole thing: one time forcing L to let the Boy in her room; one time getting the Boy to understand that the Girl needs some privacy from time to time.

Two: Countering

The Boy was looking for his Bugatti (toy, of course).

"I last saw it on the counter downstairs," I tell him.

He thumps his way downstairs, wanders around a while. Then I hear him ask K, "Mommy, what's a counter?"

Three: Special Music

During the announcements at the close of Mass, Fr. Longenecker pointed out the fact that the text of the communion hymn dates from the twelfth century and the music from the sixteenth. At that moment, several thoughts that had been swirling randomly in Mass coalesced.

First, at one point, I was thinking about how different a Roman Catholic Mass is from the church services I attended in my youth. All the smells and the bells have no correlation with the staid services we had. And yet there was a certain similarity: each service was identical in its format just as each Mass is identical in its order of liturgy. I suppose that's true of all churches.

Still, our church being Protestant (though its members then would have begged to differ most vociferously), liked to suggest that if it wasn't in the Bible, we didn't do it. I found myself in Mass briefly wondering about the liturgy (for lack of a better term) the church followed: it's no where in the Bible. I believe the pastor would have suggested it's one of the traditions mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2.15: "Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or our epistle."

Thinking about it further, I remembered the little distinctives of our service. We had a short warm-up message called a sermonette. Google shows that other denominations use the sermonette format, but it's certainly not a common feature. After the sermonette were announcements, followed by something called special music, then the sermon.

The special music was always some kind of choir performance or solo piano performance. Choral numbers were always selections from sacred music (but we had to be careful about that text!), but instrumental music was often some kind of classical composition. I choked down a laugh in Mass thinking about that, wondering if it was "special" music if it appeared every week.

Four: Divine Mercy

The first Sunday after Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday. Since this particular celebration began in Poland, it's a pretty big thing for the Polish community. At our church, we have a newly-consecrated shrine to the Divine Mercy with relics of St. Faustina and St. Pope John Paul II.

Processing to the Shrine of Divine Mercy

Consecrating the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham

Not bad for a little Catholic church in Greenville, SC, home of Bob Jones University -- probably the most virulently anti-Catholic school in the States.

Back to School

Saturday 22 April 2017

I've had enough experience teaching now to realize that my worries about returning to school after spring break -- potential laziness, potential mutiny, potential problems of every sort -- are almost always unfounded. The first week back is almost always painless. But it's busy, getting used to the schedule again.

This week was the last week before testing. Our school has decided to do the state-mandated testing a little differently this year, and I applaud the decision. Instead of having a week of eighth-grade testing, where we test day after day after day (math, then English, then science, then social studies), followed by a week of seventh-grade testing and a third week of sixth-grade testing (divided by grade because we still don't have enough Chromebooks for the whole school to test at the same time), we're testing one day a week for four weeks. Next week we begin, and once those four weeks of testing are over, the school year is almost over. Perhaps that's what makes the transition from spring break always a bit easier: we all know we have that final push until the big break.

It's also the time of year that students who are at risk of failing a given class -- students who throughout the whole year have usually done very little other than disrupt class -- decide they might want to try to do something to save themselves. There's always one or two who don't, and they usually move on the ninth grade anyway through this or that administrative and summer school magic. I'm not putting down our school: it's a phenomenon that occurs throughout the country, I suspect. But I do have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, what will keeping these students back accomplish? It's not like they're going to behave any differently if they repeat. Because our district -- perhaps state? never cared enough to check into it -- has a policy that a child cannot fail two years, they're just going to get pushed on, and if they have already been held back, they know they can't be held back again, which probably prompts a lot of the apathetic behavior. (Students have told me, "I've already failed one grade: you can't hold me back again.")

On the other hand, isn't this just teaching them a wonderful lesson for the future? "I can do nothing and still succeed!" What happens to them when they get to high school and the rules change? I've told several students over the years, "When you get to high school and fail freshman English, they don't say, 'Well, he was close. Let's give it to him.' They say, 'Try again.' And if it looks like you're going to fail a second time, they don't say, 'Well, he's already failed once. Let's move him on.' They say, 'Nope. Try a third time.'" And by then, they're old enough to drop out, and they do. What happens to them when they try to keep a job with that kind of thinking? In short, they don't. They can't.

Proof that it's shaping up to be a good day

So this is the time of year all of this swirls through my head, and I find myself thinking about my own responsibilities. It's much easier for me, regarding paperwork and the like, just to move the kid on as well. It's much easier for me to make my class almost impossible to fail. I think to myself, "They're still kids: they'll grow out of it." But I look around at some millennial young adults and find myself thinking, "Well, maybe not."

It's also the time when thoughts and plans for summer are solidifying. This time last year I was getting a little nervous about the huge project that was looming on the horizon. I didn't know what all was behind the walls, what all awaited us. And now I know what's behind the walls because I put it there, and the only thing that awaits us in the kitchen is a bright, open space now.

But plans are just that, and now it's time to get planting, get mowing, get weeding -- all the joys of spring that just leave you exhausted but strangely satisfied.

And time to play guitar with your neighbor.

This Week

Friday 21 April 2017

Easter 2017

Sunday 16 April 2017

Easter is the highlight of the liturgical year, and so for Poles, it's the highlight of social year in many ways. As with Christmas, begin quietly at home, breaking the evening's fast (and the non-meat fast of the last several days) with treats from the baskets blessed yesterday.

Bread, ham, sausage, boiled eggs, a lamb-shaped cake, slivers of apple and orange, and a horseradish sauce. A simple meal, a somewhat humble meal.

It's not like the equivalent for the Christmas Eve dinner. That will all come later. But the Boy is simply not waiting for anything more elaborate.

"One more piece of ham," he chirps, sliding it to the side of his plate. "Save the best for last," which he doesn't -- he eats it in a few moments, then repeats.

He downs four or five slices of ham, a serving of veggie salad, a large proportion of the orange, a couple of sausage hunks, some bread -- he eats at least twice as much as L.

After breakfast, it's off to Mass with us. I take the Girl an hour earlier for choir practice and sit in the pews, watching the brightening sky slowly illuminate the church.

This is our first Easter in our new parish, and it's parish's first Easter in the new church.

All the colors seem to glow as a result. Or perhaps that's still the sheen of newness. Likely a bit of both.

Mass in this wonderful space feels like it should: an explosion for all the senses. The altar servers process in, the first swinging a thurible and filling the middle isle with incense that drifts upward, catching rays of light and glowing. The choir is sublime. We kneel, stand, sit, kneel, cross ourselves. The physical beauty of the place surrounds us. The sweet Communion wine lingers as we head back to our pew.

In front of me, a young lady has brought a friend -- boyfriend? -- and he's clearly not Catholic. I remember the first time I witnessed all of this. It was so different from everything I'd experienced growing up. "The smells and bells" forced out of me a begrudging respect as did the humble faith of the parishioners.

This young man keeps his hands in his pockets most of the time, rarely looks around, and seems bored. Perhaps he's not having the same experience I did twenty years ago when I first went to Mass. Perhaps he is and simply doesn't show it.

After Communion, the girl, still kneeling, eases back onto the pew, and her father, sitting to her left, places his hand on the small of her back and massages gently. The girl pulls herself back up into a full kneeling position. I smile at the universality of fathers: I've done that many a time with the Girl, but she's never with us in Mass these days. Instead, she's in the choir loft.

I think about the obvious: there will come a time when the Girl might want to bring a young man to Mass with us. She's already growing so fast that K and I can't keep up with her, but right now, she says boys are disgusting.

"They're always messing up things on the playground," she often complains. "They steal balls, bother us, chase us." How long will this last? Not long enough, I'm afraid.

I can still get into my wedding suit, but looking at the picture reveals the sad truth: a bit of a gut has formed that pushes the jacket into slight wrinkles. "I forgot to suck it in," I think to myself, remembering all the times my own father did something similar. Like father, like son.

In the afternoon, all the usual suspects come over. We eat; we drink; we eat; we laugh. After a while, a couple of us go out to hide Easter eggs for the kids. Some we hide in the open; some we actually hide.