The Boy spent the afternoon/evening at a birthday party held at Big Air, a local trampoline park. This particular attraction fascinated him, but he was a little nervous about taking it on. Until one of his friends invited him to join him.
Month: June 2019
Three from Saturday
Friday
In the morning, I took the repairman’s advice from yesterday and started repairing (again) our dishwasher. How many honest repair guys will tell you, “You could fix this yourself and get the part cheaper on Ebay,” after giving you a quote of $354 for the repair? Not many. To be sure, he got his $80 trip/diagnostic fee, but honested himself out of another hundred bucks or so. Or perhaps he honested himself into more, for I’ll certainly never call anyone else .
The discharge pump was faulty, he said, and it came out this morning just as easily as he said it would. “There might be one or two screws down there — I can’t remember,” he said, “but then just rotate it and pull it out.” No screws — just a simple rotation and out it came.
In the afternoon, the neighborhood boys came over, and the Boy’s new Lego set came in, so there was only one thing to do.
The Ride Back
The Boy and I took the Honda up to the north of the county where a Polish friend has an auto shop. It’s a bit of a drive, but we trust him completely, and he’s taken care of our cars for probably close to a decade now.
Today, the Boy and I decided we would ride our bikes back — not quite home, for that would involve riding on roads I wouldn’t at all feel comfortable taking the Boy. Not quite home, but relatively close. In total, 11.48km in 57:02. Not bad for a seven year old. Not the longest he’s ever done, but still, not bad at all that speed.
Ice Cream, 1973
More discoveries from the past. Haven’t seen myself in baby pictures in years.
Young Man
My father, when he was about 15 years younger than I am now.
A few years after this photo, taken in 1973, he was mowing with this mower and it rolled over on top of him. Today, it might kill him; then, he got up, probably cussed a bit, and rolled it back over and continued.
The Discovery
I have been going through my mother’s things, and it never occurred to me that she would have done the same thing with her own mother almost twenty years ago when my grandmother passed. She would have discovered pictures, looked at them, puzzled over them, organized them. They, too, would have been snapshots and portraits, but from a different time, from a different reality.
Today, I found those images.
Images that look as if they came from a Ken Burns documentary. Images of my family that are completely foreign to me. I can’t look at these and think, “Isn’t that Aunt L in the sixties?” I don’t recognize the places, the faces, the adults, the children — I don’t recognize anything.
Were they not in my mother’s belongings, tucked away in a Rubber Maid storage bin, could I not recognize one single last name and think, “I believe that was my grandmother’s mother’s family,” had I not known that they were my family, I would never know it.
And now I am so full of questions, so curious, so wanting to know everything about these people — and so frustrated that I didn’t find these years ago, when I could ask Mom about them, when I could take notes, when I could maybe even hear stories.
I have one cousin I can ask, and will do so shortly…
Sunday
Polish lessons with the Boy in the morning.
Finishing up a project in the afternoon.
The Moment the Shutter Clicks
The moment the photographer presses down the shutter release and takes a picture is, at that instant, a beautiful moment worthy of remembering forever. That’s a lofty way of looking at it, to be sure, but there is some truth to that statement even regarding the most rudimentary, spur-of-the-moment snapshot. This was even more the case before the days of digital photography and vitrually-infinite storage. Each image actually cost money and eventually had to be stored. So I think we might have been a little more circumspect about taking photos, taken a little more care then.
Tonight, I began going through old photographs that Nana had saved. There are thousands of them, and I have looked at each one of them and put them in one of two pile: save or discard. The discard pile is at least twice as big as the save pile. From a practical standpoint, it has to be: I’m planning on scanning all the saved pictures. But even more so, the vast majority of the pictures are, despite the seeming worthiness to the photographer’s eye, utter crap. They fall into one of two categories: time has had its way with the photographs and they’re washed out, turned pink, darkened, or completely washed out. In short, there’s no picture there anymore. The other category has to do with subject matter and composition: it’s meaningless, or it’s something like the backs of two people standing talking at a car.
Friday
Thursday
Yesterday, we bought a new piece of furniture for Papa. He doesn’t have a closet, so we bought him something like a wardrobe. And the door opened violently as we were taking it out of the house (owners moving — everything must go!) and the door broke right at one of the joints. So first thing this morning: round up some clamps from a neighbor and get to gluing.
I added “fix cabinet door” to my summer to-do list just so I could check it off.
Next, the kitchen counters need resealing and repolishing. The Boy was eager to help. He chattered away the whole time about how important it was to take care of our granite (“Daddy, what’s granite?”) and how we were such good homeowners to be so conscientious about everything and how it’s important to spray all the sealers and polishes evenly (shortly after I told him that — he likes to do that as it makes him feel adult) and a thousand and one other things.
Late afternoon: K comes back and sets about making another cobbler from the blueberries that are now ripening like mad every day.
And the Boy had to get in on that as well.
Today’s Ride
16.79km at 1:55:57 — average speed 8.7km/h
Wednesday
Pulled it apart, checked for clogs, cleaned out a bit of gunk, put it back together, and reinstalled it.
Still not working.
Helping
Babcia informs us that L has been absolutely wonderful — “We have a great relationship!” she proclaimed. She’s put the Girl to work, ironing, cleaning, changing bed clothes in the guest rooms.
This is honestly such a relief. The Girl can be, well, a typical twelve-year-old when it comes to helping around the house. I think I expect too much of her sometimes; I think I expect too little of her other times. Even though I’m a teacher and preach this to my students constantly, I forget it with my own kids: perfection is the goal but only insofar as continually striving for it ensures we never settle. Mistakes are part of that process; half-assed jobs are part of that process; even fussing at not wanting to do it is a part of that process.
I don’t want to tinker about with the dishwasher tomorrow. I don’t want to move the left-over bricks into the crawlspace tomorrow. I don’t want to re-mount Papa’s TV tomorrow. I say these types of things to the kids every time they complain about not wanting to complete this or that responsibility, but it’s often more sarcastic than it needs to be.
The Boy likes helping, but he too is starting to complain about things. We all complain. I guess that’s part of it.
Dishwasher Fun
The dishwasher stopped draining. This was what our kitchen looked like at about ten this morning as a result. My hope was that it was the discharge hose — I envisioned hopefully a hose blocked with some something that comes out of the hose when I blast water through it from the backyard garden hose. To get that hose removed required, obviously, removing the dishwasher. And then nothing came out of the hose. Which meant that the blockage was somewhere in the pump itself.
“It’s still under warranty,” I thought. “I’m not going to mess with it further and potentially void the warranty. I’ll just call and have Lowe’s make good on the three-year extended warranty we bought in 2016.” Only, it wasn’t an extended warranty: that would indicate an extension of the manufacturer’s one-year warranty. It gets extended. Lengthened. Stretched. Increased.
Lowe’s verbiage, which I didn’t understand until today, is “Protection Plan.” The protection plan kicks in from the date of purchase, which means for the first year, you’re doubly covered. Which means it’s not an extension but a layering. And the protection plan expired — you’ll probably guess — on May 31. We had 1,095 days of coverage, and 17 days later, we need it.
The upshot of this — if there is one — is that I can now feel free to tinker all I want without fear of voiding the warranty. Because there is none anymore.
The Boy, though, loved the whole process. “You need me to get behind the dishwasher?” was a common refrain.
Sunday
Morning
The Boy started the day with K on the back deck, working on something the Boy didn’t really enjoy and also making a Father’s Day card for me. I went out with a cup of coffee, and they resorted to whispers.
Afternoon
A 12.67km bike ride with the Boy. He tackled some climbs that he’s never conquered before, and a couple of climbs that always kick his butt kicked his butt again. The one surprise: a climb he’s never made it up kicked him. He stopped halfway up. It’s a tricky climb: off-road, with a sharp left that also ramps up in steepness. He took a drink of water as he rested while I showed him how to take such a challenging turn.
“Hit it from the outside, then turn in sharply,” I said. “Want to try it again?”
“Yes.”
And he got it.
Evening
The buzz going around the Polish community lately: Aldi is selling kabanos, and all the Poles’ opinion was unanimous — surprisingly good. Today, I noticed them in Aldi. I showed a package to Kinga. Her eyes got big. “How many should we get?” I asked. “All of them,” she said.
And of course, there was a bonfire.
Burning the Past
We sit around the small fire, burning Nana’s and Papa’s old documents. Nana hated — hated — clutter of every kind, but she was something of a hoarder in one sense: she kept all receipts and bills, neatly organized, filed away discretely. Had the IRS ever audited one of their returns, the auditor would have faced a mountain of evidence through which to sort. So as Papa downsizes, we have to get rid of stuff. And truth be told, there is no reason to keep tax returns and receipts from, say, 2006.
The Boy is eager to start the fire. He’s as fascinated with fire as anyone, I suppose, and the act of setting something ablaze, of doing something so otherwise forbidden, makes him almost literally shake with excitement. Once the fire gets going, we pile on some bigger pieces of wood. Tonight, we’re burning the remains of our broken swing as we talk about getting a new swing to replace it, all the time wadding paper and tossing it onto the fire.
Occasionally, a bit of glowing paper lifts out of the fire pit and wanders around indecisively in the hot up-drafts from the flames. The Boy stands on guard, ready to hunt down and stomp out any glowing bits of almost-flaming paper. Truth be told, it rained so much last week and the week before, and it’s been so relatively cool that I doubt there’s much of a hazard at all, but the Boy enjoys the responsibility.
After the last of the fire dies down, Papa and I watch a movie as K gets the Boy in bed. Conspiracy is one of those movies that sounds like it shouldn’t be as moving as it is: it’s literally set for 95% of the film in a single room, with about sixteen men sitting around a table talking. But it’s what they’re discussing that makes the film so moving and horrific: it’s the Wannsee conference during which Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann disclose and explain to those present the plan for the use of gas chambers to eradicate the Jews from Europe and eventually the planet. Kenneth Branagh plays Heydrich, and as always, he’s absolutely brilliant. He manages simultaneously to smile and seeth at the same moment.
Friday Afternoon
The Boy spent the week at scout day camp. Every morning it was the same: “I don’t want to go!” Every afternoon, it was the same, too: “Today was so much fun!”
I arrived this afternoon for the normal pickup time only to discover a parking lot. “Oh, there must have been some communication about a final ceremony that I missed,” I thought as I hustled to the interior of the church where the camp was held.
Sure enough, everyone was in the main meeting room — the sanctuary is what it would normally be called, but I think this particular church used “worship center” as its preferred nomenclature — and all the scouts and their parents were there. And of course, someone was handing out awards.
I seized up a little: the Boy doesn’t get awards in situations like this often. At least that’s been my perception. I couldn’t care less, but I think it could.
So when his name was called for second place in his den for the bb gun range, I felt a little bit of relief. Everyone needs the encouragement of public recognition from time to time. Even I like it occasionally, though I find it embarrasses me a bit, as well.
When we got home, the Boy was eager to show K and Papa his certificate and, more importantly, his three days’ targets. Each day showed significant improvement.
“See, the first day I didn’t even hit the target…”
And after dinner, he was eager to take his own bb gun into the backyard for some target practice. We don’t have much in the way of targets: we tend to shoot at leaves on a magnolia tree that has a large oak behind it: that way, if we miss, we just hit the oak. And if we miss the oak, there are only more trees behind that.
Afterward, since we hadn’t gone exploring in a while, we headed out for some exploring.
And lastly, because they’d had a campfire-building contest (“We could only use flint and steel to start the fire, and we could only burn things we’d found around the fire pit,” he’d explained), we made a fire. Partly because the Boy wanted to, partly because, in going through Nana’s and Papa’s papers, we got inspired to do the same, and the upshot of all that is simple: we have a lot of paper to shred or burn, and burning is faster. And more fun, E would insist.
A Mess
I’ve been working to clean out our basement this week. Because of some shoddy renovation work — well, shoddy cleanup — we had a fair amount of concrete dust coating many things as well as the usual chaos that comes with leaving your basement to grow its on labyrinth of apathetic misplacement of tools and storage bins for four years.
Monday and Tuesday I worked on the metal and wood storage shelves that hold our plastic storage bins filled with camping items, old photographs, clothes the Boy has not yet grown into, and mysterious “why do we still have that?” items. Wednesday was the work bench as well as a few more shelves. (Everything takes so long because each item — every single one — needs to be wiped down, and the shelves took a long time because I moved them to one location temporarily to clean them and then had to move them back.)
Today, I began working on the other half of the room and final touches to the work bench. The after picture, as a result of not having time to put everything back in its place, looks worse than the before picture above.
In order to clean a mess, we often have to make one first. It’s truism for most things in life, I think, but I often forget it. I want things to move ahead without ever moving back; I want lesson plans to come out perfect the first time; I want first drafts to be good enough to be final drafts; I want our kids to perfect things instantly. It’s in the mess that we figure things out, though, and making a masterpiece always involves a mess beforehand.
I forget that when I come into the kitchen as K is cooking, though. I tend to clean things as I go along; K, not so much. The kitchen is a complete wreck when she’s done cooking. Yet out of that mess comes little slices and ladles-full of perfection.
Reading with the Boy
We try to get the Boy to read a little every night. Tonight we worked on L’s old book about spiders. I found the place we’d left off, but the Boy insisted that he’d finished with K last night.
“Well, it doesn’t hurt to read it again,” I said. It might have sounded like I was just being lazy, but being able to read a tricky passage fluently will build his confidence. We learn by repetition, especially recognition of new words.
“The back part of a spider’s body is called the abdomen,” he began.
“Wow — you read that tough word like a pro,” I added.
“What word?”
“Abdomen.”
He sighed. “Daddy, I recognized the word.”
“I know. And that’s a long word to know. How many letters?”
He counted: “Seven.”
“You recognized a seven letter word!”
“No, wait,” he said, counting hopefully again. “No, just seven.”
He continued, stumbling a bit: “It has the spider’s hear — hear?”
“Heart,” I helped.
“Heart and the spinnerets, which make silk,” he continued.
“Spinnerets?!” I gasped. “Are you kidding? You read that like a pro as well!”
“But daddy, I stumbled over a” and he paused to count. “A five-letter word.” He often stumbles over words, words that sometimes surprise me. And he recognizes and reads fluently words that sometimes surprise me. It’s part of learning to read.
“That’s okay,” I reassured. “You stumbled over that word, but you nailed ‘spinnerets.'”‘
Many of my students over the years have face similar struggles, and struggling readers are not confident readers. I’ve sat with kids who were reading, asked them to read aloud, and heard difficult passages come out like this: “It has the spider’s hea hear — whatever — and the spin spin — I don’t know — which make the silk.” If that’s what’s going on in their head as they read silently, and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be, it’s no wonder they don’t feel confident with reading: the struggle produces nothing but a confusing text. And they’re likely to anticipate all this: before they begin reading, they’ve convinced themselves that they won’t understand it. And all of this builds and calcifies into not a mere reluctance to reading but a positive aversion to it.
Confidence eliminates those “whatevers” and “I-don’t-knows.” And so I have the Boy read books a second, third, and fourth time.
“But I already know this book,” he complains.
“I know — that’s the point,” I think.