Papa and his three sisters with friends and other family.
Family Reunion
Month: November 2019
Thanksgiving 2019
That Log
My neighbor came over today to help me wrestle that log out of our creek. The problem is simple: it’s sitting in the water, so there’s no way to cut it into manageable pieces. The real problem: the thing probably weighs well in excess of 1,000 pounds.
We got some of it cut, but the vast majority still lies in the creek. We’ll try again Saturday with some kind of improvised wench system.
Overheard
Student 1: “Scylla and Charybdis — aren’t those names of Sirens?”
Student 2: “No, no — that’s the six-headed monster and the garbage disposal.”
At my request, Student 2 later illustrated her summary of that portion of the Odyssey.
14 Years Ago
When I was a kid, we went to one of two places for Thanksgiving: South Carolina to visit my father’s family or Tennessee to visit my mother’s. As a little kid, I preferred Tennessee. Not because of personalities or anything so silly — no, I preferred Tennessee because Uncle N and Aunt L had a farm, with a lot of land and a large barn.
It was fifteen years ago today that we last visited that space. K and I had just moved to the States, and it was our first Thanksgiving in America.
We’d already visited family in South Carolina in the summer, so we went to Tennessee to spend Thanksgiving.
It was shortly after this — a year or two — that Uncle N passed away, and Aunt L, unable to take care of that much property herself and unwilling to figure out a way to do so, sold the farm and moved. So this was the first and last time we were all together like this for Thanksgiving at their house.
Fourteen years ago. Everyone looks so young, so not-tired.
The Girl was over a year away. We were talking about starting a family, waiting for jobs and such to settle down. The Boy — not even an idea.
Fourteen years later and they’re here while Nana and Uncle N are not. It’s inevitable and unstoppable, this passage of time, but every now and then, I bump into something that reminds me just how much has changed in how little time.
Sunny Sunday
After all the rain yesterday, it was really a relief to us all to see the sun this morning. It made the autumnal trees in the backyard shimmer and shine.
The Boy and I decided to wander down to the stream to see what it looked like after such a long, heavy rain. I thought the little island we’d built up earlier this year might well be gone with that volume of water rushing through.
What we saw instead was that the tree that had fallen into the creek had been washed downstream a significant distance — thirty or so feet.
And our island was completely gone — it couldn’t withstand the several-hundred-pound tree’s attack.
Rainy Saturday Chores
Boston Street, Night
Library Day
In Line
We reached the checkout line at Aldi roughly at the same time. I had a cart filled with items; he had a package of bacon.
“Go ahead — you have so little,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Seriously, you should go ahead of me.”
“No, no, you go,” he mumbled. He was an African American man in his sixties, it appeared, with a long, white, disheveled beard, and the faint reek of body odor, alcohol, and feces.
That particular Aldi is in an area of town that can only be described as “economically depressed.” There is one particular section where, when I ride my bike to school and back, I always smell marijuana, even at 7:15 in the morning. So seeing homeless people like that is nothing all that unexpected.
I stood there in line, wondering about the gentleman there in behind me when suddenly the manager of the store walked up to the man and politely asked if he was supposed to be in the store.
“I have a couple of cashiers telling me that you’re not supposed to be here. Are you supposed to be here?”
The man hung his head a bit and started walking out as he said, “No.” There was no defiance in his voice; no anger in his voice; no disappointment in his voice — no emotion at all. He just placed the bacon on a store display as he passed by and walked toward the door.
“If you come back in here again,” the manager continued, still calm, still very respectful, “that will be trespassing, and we will notify the authorities.” The man said nothing and simply shuffled out of the store.
What could he have possibly done to get barred from the store? Perhaps he stole something. Maybe he panhandled and that was deemed as harassing customers. Perhaps he simply harassed customers. I don’t know, but I couldn’t help but feel pity for the man. Mental illness seemed a certainty, but what about his youth? Had life always been like this for the man? Did he have a family? Did they know where he was? Did they care?
I have taught so many students over the year for whom, tragically, such a life seems an entirely realistic possibility. They, too, would leave someone who doesn’t know to wonder whether they have family, whether they have anyone to support, help, or even care about them.
I have to believe that we can do better as a society. I can’t believe someone could watch such an exchange and not feel moved. And the more pessimistic side of me — realistic? — realizes that there are countless who can look at this and not feel that there must be some dark hole in the center of our society that allows such things to happen.
Signing
The Girl joined her first club volleyball team this week. She’s with nine other girls on a team for girls aged 14 and under. There’s also a team for 13 and under. Why the 14s? I like to think it was because of some skills the coaches saw.
It’s quite a commitment for us, though. We’ll be traveling to tournaments throughout the southeast. This means the price of the season of club play (a four-figure number) gets additional augmentation with travel costs.
I bring this up not to complain but to compare it to other countries, where such clubs are subsidized through tax funding. The cost of travel might still be there, but there’s not that initial, up-front cost. “Well, you pay for it with taxes,” someone might counter. True, but I think the development of a country’s youth is a far better way to spend tax money than some of the ways we spend our tax money.
New Park
Sunday
We had to get out — just had to get out of the house. It was entirely too beautiful to miss out on.
We went to Conestee Park, a location I thought I knew perfectly. Entirely. Only to discover, I didn’t
Saturday in the Yard
I spent an hour this morning preparing for next week’s lessons, and though I’d already readied an article for next week’s Article of the Week, I ditched those plans when checking the news, I realized what today was: the thirtieth anniversary of the breach of the Berlin Wall. The fall? Well, I guess so — once it was breached, the Wall was no more a wall.
I watched those reports on CBS Evening News realizing the momentousness of the event though perhaps not its personal significance.
I say “perhaps” and not “certainly” because it’s a question: would I have met K had the Berlin Wall not come down? Communist control in Poland at that point were already teetering. Solidarność’s revolution, with Wałęsa at the visible helm, had already gained traction — almost a decade earlier — and gone underground again only to reemerge to take all available seats in the sejm just a few months prior to this significant day 30 years ago. Perhaps Germany could have remained divided while Poland transformed, but all those regimes were like so many dominoes or a Jenga pile: once one went, they all went. So I might have gone to Poland; I might have met K; but there are no guarantees, certainly.
From that spins out a series of eventualities that are far from certainties.
Had all that happened, it’s hard to see that I would live in Greenville now, that I, after having planned and prepared for a week of lessons at a local middle school, would spend a late Saturday morning trimming hedges, pulling the remains of flowers, and mowing.
Where I would be, what my life would look like — it’s impossible to say. But it strikes me as odd that events halfway around the world helped set a trajectory that ended with me pulling purple hearts from the flowerbed as K took the Boy to rehearsal for the Polish community’s annual Christmas pageant.
I prepared the Article of the Week assignment and decided that instead of the usual multiple-choice questions about bias and central idea — all designed to prepare students for the standardized testing that will consume the final weeks of school — I would ask them a simple self-reflection question: “What will be the Fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall event of your adolescence? What world event do you think could happen that would change the course of history permanently for the better?” And unlike all those silly questions that I have check, I’ll be eager to read their responses.
Studying
Table Rock
Saturday Work
