Matching Tracksuits

Month: June 2017

Arrival 2017

Tuesday 13 June 2017

When I first arrived in Poland, everything looked so very different. It wasn’t just that it was a different country. I was living in a very rural area for the first time as well, so everything in 1996 looked doubly new.

Subsequent arrivals had a feeling of comfortable familiarity, and that’s a pleasant enough feeling, but it can take a bit of the edge off the excitement of arriving. Just a bit.

Four years ago, I got a flash of that newness again when L and I spent the summer here. She was six, and everything was new to her. It was her third time in Poland, but the first time as a six-year-old, and there’s an enormous difference between a four-year-old and a six-year-old.

This time around, it’s the Boy’s turn: he’s been so excited about coming to Poland for the last few weeks that it’s been a common topic in our conversation.

“Daddy, are you looking forward to going to Poland?”

Monday he was terribly excited and then terribly confused when we told him, once again, that we’d be leaving today but arriving tomorrow.

When we finally made it to Babcia’s house, the excitement was somewhat tempered by the exhaustion, but a lunch of clear broth with homemade noodles followed by a cutlet with new potatoes and fresh cabbage generously garnished with fresh dill was refreshing enough that after dinner, we decided to head out to look for cows. The Boy expressed the thought in Polish and, as he always does, had significant trouble with the trilled “r” in “krowa,” so we went out in search of klowa.

There were none still out by the time we made it to the fields, but there were still farmers out working in the fields, turning and gathering hay.

He examined a bit of the freshly cut grass,

and somewhat drier grass — not quite hay but close.

And though he was cold throughout the whole walk, he said nothing. “I was having fun,” he explained, “and I didn’t want to go home.”

A good start to the trip.

 

Last Evening

Sunday 11 June 2017

So that means, as always, Taproot. Listening to this album before leaving on a long trip is a tradition of mine going back more than twenty years…

The Market

Saturday 10 June 2017

One of the things the Boy is most excited about our coming summer in Poland is going to the market on Wednesday.

The Girl, too.

Three Babies

Friday 9 June 2017

The three baby owls dropped by for a visit this evening, but it was too dark to get a decent shot.

Tomatoes

Wednesday 7 June 2017

The tomatoes are really starting to take off just before we do. Blossoms everywhere. Pin-size to golf-ball-size green tomatoes here and there. This year, I’m doing the opposite of last year when I simply let them be. This year, I’m pruning, pruning, pruning. The manager of a local university’s sustainable organic gardening program told me I could do two things to get bigger, juicer tomatoes: snip the suckers mercilessly (which I’ve not been as successful with as I would like), and snip the stems so that they only have the first to leaves remaining. The former I’d heard of; the latter was new to me. He explained it this way: “Either you can have your vine spending substantial energy and nutrition growing stems and leaves, or you can have the putting that into the fruit.” He assured me that each stem only needs two, maybe three leaves. And so our vines look a little different this year.

Especially when the late sun hits them just right. (And of course Lightroom hits them just right.)

Lucanus elaphus

Saturday 3 June 2017

I found it floating in a bucket out back that had a couple of inches of water from the last storm. It was still squirming, trying to escape, doomed to drown. I pulled it out and took it to the Boy to show him. He put on gloves and was eager to hold it.

Lucanus elaphus

Fear of such animals I supposed is learned, or more importantly taught. Tell a kid constantly that such creatures are out to get him, and he’ll likely believe it. Tell a girl that the only good snake is a dead snake, and she’s likely to hold that opinion for decades. But kids are naturally curious — it’s what gets the hurt. With the Boy and the Girl, we’ve tried to strike a happy medium: such insects might, like roaches, carry certain bacteria on their bodies that are not particularly helpful, but in and of themselves, they’re harmless. Certain snakes are deadly, so we should never approach a snake and try to make a plaything out of it, but an enormous black snake slithering through the grass (as happened here five years ago) does much more good than harm.

Atypical Saturday (Lent 2012: Day 32)

With people, there’s the whole additional possibility of deceptiveness. If only it were so simple with humans.

The End, 2017 Edition

Friday 2 June 2017

Last year, one of the teachers on our team was a novice. Like all new teachers, she began the year with a little trepidation and a lot of excitement. When the year ended and students were walking off the eighth-grade hallway for the last time, she got a little teary.

“You going to get all sentimental this year,” I asked a few days ago.

“No,” she replied quickly.

It’s a common enough reaction: that first year, watching the kids leave and knowing you won’t see them again, you feel a little sinking feeling. They’re your kids, your first kids. The ones that taught you more about teaching than any class in college ever did. You fall in love with them in a way: they’re special, even the ones who drive you crazy. And when they leave, you’re not quite sure you’ll ever have kids that you feel so warmly about, kids quite like this. After a year or two, though, you see that the next batch of kids comes in and replaces the old batch. You can’t even recall many names from the last year without stopping to concentrate on the task. And you feel just the same way about this group as you did last year’s.

It’s then that you stop being quite so sentimental about it all–and all teachers, no matter how cynical or burned out they are now, were sentimental about teaching at one point–and realize, yes, you will have kids just like this next year.

There will be another Susan, whose loud and constant talking drives you nuts but who seems to have a potential about her that she herself doesn’t even fully realize.

You will have another Albert, who sometimes can’t foresee the consequences of his actions or the implications of his body language and so comes across sometimes as being quite a disrespectful child.

Another Amelia will sit among your students, seeming always to be enveloped in a happiness that spreads to all around her.

There will be another Chester, who has poor physical and social coordination and tries to make it up by showing off intellectually.

Another Davonte will dance through our door and then proceed to do nothing. Ever.

Every student you have this year will come back next year–and the next, and the next, and the next–with a different name, a different face, but the same basic personality. Or with a similar face and different name and radically different personality. Or any and all combinations of those three, hardly exhaustive possibilities.

For a teacher, it’s not the end. It never is, until you quit teaching.

Awards Day

Thursday 1 June 2017

Four awards, including all A’s.