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Month: December 2019

2019

Tuesday 31 December 2019

“I for one will be glad to see 2019 behind us.” That seems like a common sentiment, and it’s one a number of people hold every year: I’m sure millions said a year ago, “I for one will be glad to see 2018 behind us.”

I don’t see the logic in that thinking. It’s not as if a given year has some kind of sentience and will, bestowing wonderful gifts on those it loves and extracting horrific costs from those it doesn’t. A year is a year — a completely arbitrary thing.

Still, 2019 was a tough year for our family in a lot of ways.

It began with the passing of our loved Bida — the old, ornery rescue cat that chose to stay with us for over a decade. She put up with two kids whose love, when they were little, was more like an assault than affection. She stood up to our silly dog and made Clover realize that among the pets, she was the boss. In the end, it was I, the one who said he hated her, to stayed with her to the end. It was late, and everyone else went to bed.

A couple of days later, a dear friend died from cancer. We were fortunate enough to be able to visit with him just about two or three days before he passed. “You’ve always been such a fighter,” K assured him. “Well, this fight’s over,” he said, and I could tell that his wife took that hard, though she knew it well enough herself and had probably heard it multiple times. He seemed to realize that his time was very near: he’d been calling old friends for what turned out to be one last conversation, and we were very touched that he specifically wanted us to come by for a visit.

But these two events, tragic though they were, both occurred within the context of an even more personally brutal loss: the year began with Nana in rehab and ends with her out of our daily lives altogether. If someone asked me at the start of the year what I foresaw in 2019, I would have talked about the long process of rehabilitation that awaited Nana, about the stress all that would put on the family, about how it would undoubtedly bring us closer, about my hope for a return to some semblance of normalcy with perhaps Nana in a wheelchair or still largely confined to bed but still with us. I wouldn’t have thought we would leave the decade without her.

Yet there were bright moments throughout the year. The renovation of our carport completed, Nana and Papa moved in, and Papa remains here still. It’s good to know he’s in a safe place, that he’s near, that we can take care of him. Nana was here with us only a week: perhaps that assurance that Papa was safe was the last thing holding her back.

The Girl blossomed as a volleyball player. She was a starter on her school team, which went undefeated for the season and won the final championship tournament as well. It’s a passion that’s lasted several years now, longer than dance or gymnastics ever did.

A mixed year overall.

Slow Day

Monday 30 December 2019

The Boy had to go to the dentist to get some kind of protective covering over his molars. I don’t remember ever doing that for the Girl, and I certainly didn’t have it done to me. Then again, how would I know? That would have been almost 40 years ago.

K got some zurek going. Such a strangely wonderful soup — only Eastern Europeans could think of something like that. Let rye flour ferment and then use that as a basis for soup. Genius.

The Boy did a little work on IXL. It’s one of my favorite tools as a teacher — one of the few things the district provides that I think is genuinely useful.

And then K and I made another baklava for tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve party. I think she and I have pretty much mastered it. The trick is not to follow the recipe: the syrup is only supposed to simmer as long as the pastry part bakes, but I found quite by accident that letting it cook twice as long makes it wonderfully gooey on the bottom. Then again, one has to thin it a bit before pouring it on the pastry. I used a little brandy this time. Again — like life, don’t follow that recipe too closely.

Carols

Sunday 29 December 2019

I haven’t been to many purely American Christmas parties where friends and family gather, but I don’t recall people continually singing carols during the evening.

That’s a Polish thing. Perhaps other cultures do it as well, but it’s a Polish thing for sure. Especially among expats.

I sit and smile during such sessions: I don’t know the words in their entirety (snatches here and there, perhaps a chorus), but I know the melody and am content just observing.

Showing Papa his newest creation

The Dog and the Game

Friday 27 December 2019

The kids played with the dog a bit this afternoon — a good thing, because the pup, when neglected, pouts. And a pouting pup does things like dig massive holes in the backyard, run uncontrollably once inside, bark incessantly inside or out.

Afterward, another evening over the board. This time, possibly the most luck I’ve ever experienced in the silly game. Everything with buildings on it — I owned. I made my own son cry when he landed on New York Avenue with a hotel and had to pay $1,000. He literally fell into the floor and began sobbing.

“Buddy, calm down. It’s just a game. I’m lucky this time.” No help. Then I had an idea: “If you can pull yourself together, I’ll give you a surprise.” I was planning on giving everything I had to him and letting him finish L off, but her turn was right after mine and she landed on Tennessee Avenue (See that? It also had a hotel.) and had to pay $950 one turn after she’d paid me something like $600. She had nothing left: she gave me her little bit of cash and all her remaining property with a pout and said, “You win.”

Boxing Day 2019

Thursday 26 December 2019

I’ve never really been a fan of Monopoly. After about the age of ten or eleven, I determine that there was too much chance involved, and I just found it frustrating. I never played it after that.

As an adult, though, I’ve come to recognize that there is a fair amount of chance in life that just sucks money from one’s bank account. Medical emergencies, car repairs, accidents, home issues, and the like — all unplanned, all expenses.

When the Girl got Monopoly for Christmas this year, I knew I’d end up playing it with the kids. I didn’t realize how much fun it could be as an adult who can simply look at it as a game that is a fairly accurate reflection of the frustrations of adulthood and, more importantly, as a game that can provide lessons to kids and time together as a family.

We played twice today. The first time, it was just the kids and I. It only took a moment for me to realize the value for a seven-year-old. He had to read, to count money, and occasionally make change.

L dominated us, and the Boy was hemorrhaging cash to a degree that he declared he was going to quit. We talked him down, but then K returned home and we set about to preparing and eating dinner.

Afterward, the kids wanted to play again, so we sat down as a family and began. I had a little strategy in mind that I wanted to test: quality, not quantity. I bought a bunch of properties quickly, then traded at exorbitant cost to myself three or four properties for the final street to make the orange set:

  • New York Avenue
  • Tennessee Avenue
  • St. James Place

I then set about to building them up to two houses each as quickly as possible. The result: I was getting a couple of hundred bucks every few cycles of the board.

The Boy took a similar route: he ended up with all the railroads and soon was rolling in money.

Poor K was getting hit left and right: bad luck with Community Chest/Chance cards, bad luck with the dice (she must have landed on the luxury tax four or five times), and soon she was down to little cash and few unmortgaged properties.

Then I bought one more house for each of my properties and drawing $550-$600 from every poor player who landed on one of them. K finally landed on one, and it just about wiped her out.

Her reaction: she laughed. Our reaction: we laughed with her.

On our walk this evening, then, we were able to help E see that the most important thing in a game like that is just to have fun. “It’s just a game!”

Christmas 2019

Wednesday 25 December 2019

A few shots from our Christmas walk with friends.

Few pictures from the party with the same friends because we were to busy having a Christmas party: eating, drinking, singing, talking, laughing, repeating.

Wigilia 2019

Tuesday 24 December 2019

Christmas in contemporary culture is all about the gifts. “What did you get for Christmas?” “Look what I got for Christmas!” “Did you hear what Sally bought Harry for Christmas?” It seems easy to get caught up in the commercialism of the day when it surrounds you as it does in our culture.

Yet throughout the evening, I kept thinking of the gifts of a different sort that we were getting on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis if only we look around. There’s much to be thankful for even in the simplest events of a day.

There are the obvious things: we have a lot of food in the house now, more than seems decent. And we have a woman in our lives who spent an inordinate amount of time preparing it for us. Sure we all helped a little, but keeping things in perspective, it was a very little indeed.

We have a warm and cozy home — a place to prepare that food and eat it later, and a place to sleep when the day is done. We have warm clothes. All these things are necessary, but we could do with a lot less of all these things.

Where we really find cause for gratitude is in the family itself. That’s where the real gifts are.

“[E]ven in such moments tinged with temporary loss, there was a bit of brightness — we’ll appreciate it all the more next near when Nana is back with us.” Thus I ended last year’s thoughts on Wigilia, and here it is, a year later, and Nana is not back with us. It’s hard not to get depressed about things like that. Yet Papa expresses his gratitude for the simple fact that Nana suffers no more, and that he was the one that was left behind. “That was her single greatest fear,” he’s explained to friends and family.

Having Papa around all the time, though the cause of it all is in many ways tragic (but not all ways: see above), is a gift to the kids, especially the Boy. E spends a great deal of time in Papa’s room, watching drawing videos on the computer, eating a snack, sketching something out, playing with cars, just hanging out. “It’s my favorite room in the house,” the Boy has insisted multiple times.

And then there’s Ciocia M and her daughters: they are more like family than just about anyone we know in the States. T, C, L, and E are not family only by a technicality of blood, and I sometimes feel that Ciocia M and K must have been sisters in a previous life if such lives exist.

But why think about previous lives when we’re so fortunate to have the present life we have?

Carols During Mass

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

Wigilia 2008

Wigilia 2008

Wigilia 2009

https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/

Wigilia 2011

Wigilia 2012

Wigilia 2013

Wigilia 2014

Wigilia 2015

Wigilia 2016

Wigilia 2017

Wigilia 2018

Wigilia Preparation 2019

Monday 23 December 2019

It was a rainy day — good thing everything we had to do was indoors. K did a lot of cooking; I did a little helping and some shopping; the kids did some cleaning, some cooking, and some playing.

This year has been a little different than almost all years previous.  Usually, we’ve been working on this for several days by this point. Last year, it was different due to Nana’s condition; this year, it was a family reunion and church obligations. The result: we’ve planned a very scaled back Wigilia. No mushroom soup — that will come Christmas day. A simpler meal altogether. Mass at four in the afternoon (the Girl is singing). Wigilia promises to be different tomorrow. Quieter. Simpler.

I can’t help but think that’s a good thing.

Opłatek 2019

Thursday 19 December 2019

It’s the fourth year I’ve shared the oplatek with students here in America, which means it’s the eleventh time I’ve shared it with students in my life. The first year we did it, I found it to be so magical that I was sure that it couldn’t ever be so perfect. The kids enjoyed it more than I remember seeing thirteen-year-olds enjoy something proposed by an adult: I expecting at least some reluctance, some groans, some pushback.

Every year since then, it’s been the same, though. I show them images of Wigilia in Poland, explain the sharing of the Christmas wafer, and suggest that it might be enjoyable to do it here. Some heads shake doubtfully. Most just look at me suspiciously, perhaps a little expectantly.

This year, though, I tried something new: I suggested to my journalism students, whom I teach in the final period and most of whom I’ve had earlier in the day for English I Honors, if they wanted to do it again. “After all,” I said, “there are several in the room here who didn’t do it earlier.” The enthusiasm was as clear as it had been earlier in the day.

A good day to be a teacher.

Previous Years

Op?atek

Oplatek

Wigilia 2015

13

Monday 16 December 2019

Today we became parents of a teenager.

I sit and look at that word in wonder. “She’s thirteen,” I said to myself multiple times today. “Thirteen!”

She’s no longer interested in getting toys of any kind for her birthday. She’s no longer interested in watching cartoons. She’s no longer interested in so many things that once meant the world to her.

Now she watches Grey’s Anatomy and advises K on make-up brands. She picks apart K’s and my words, looking for semantic loopholes — “But you said…” — and no longer turns up her nose at movie recommendations coming from me.

She’s as tall as K now, as stubborn as anyone we know, as sweet as a thirteen-year-old can be (and that age can be incredibly sweet — I wouldn’t have worked with thirteen-year-olds for as long as I have if it weren’t for that). She’ll stay up as late as we allow (probably later), sleep as long as we let her, and fuss at the silliest things — just like a teenager, I guess.

She’s more beautiful than we could have expected, more aggravating than we would have wished, funnier than we deserve, and often sweeter than honey.

Except when she’s not

Which means she’s officially a teenager.

Jaselka 2019

Sunday 15 December 2019

The Polish community in the area has a mass on the last Sunday of every month, but just before Christmas, there’s a special mass. We’ve done it every year for ten years now.

So much has changed.

Families have moved into the area and out. New families have moved from Poland; old families (at least one — perhaps more that I don’t know of, but the plural sounds better) have returned to Poland. The kids to put on the Christmas pageant in those early years are now in college; many of the kids performing now weren’t even born then. We parents are all a little older, slower, wiser (?); some more cynical, some more devout; some rounder, some not. The world is a different place; our city is a different place.

Yet the pre-Christmas jasełka-centered Sunday has held steady through it all.

I count myself among those in the “more cynical” list, at least about the whole Catholic/theistic enterprise. I find myself moving more and more back to my old skeptical position, the animosity I felt toward religion returning.

Yet at its best, this is what religion provides: markers by which we can measure our lives, strengthen our communities, and share with friends.

And who could deny the beauty of the opłatek tradition?

Previous Years

Jase?ka 2017

Jase?ka 2016

Jase?ka 2015

Six and Jaselka

Jase?ka 2013

Jase?ka

Performance

Jase?ka

First Club Tournament

Saturday 14 December 2019

The girls had a tough day: lost everything but one set.

A learning experience, especially for L, who might have gotten a little too used to winning after an undefeated season.

Confidence

Thursday 12 December 2019

It’s a perfect set: high, gently arching. L approaches, plants her feet, throws her body into the air, and comes down just below the ball, swinging ineffectually at empty air. She jumped too early.

Timing for beginning hitters is everything. Absolutely everything. And when they get that timing perfectly, the rest of the hit becomes just that much more effective, just that much faster, just that much more forceful and intimidating. When it’s off, the hit is anything but a hit: a swat, a push, a shove, an empty swing.

The coach sees L miss so completely and shakes his head ever so slightly. He’s as frustrated as she is.

It’s moments like this that experience and confidence takes over. The truly good hitters are not put off by a miss. Something goes wrong – they shake it off and keep going. They swing as hard the next swing as they did the last swing. If the last ball goes into the net, if the last ball sails a mile out, if the last ball fell pathetically to the ground, she swings the next time as if nothing happened, as if the last hit were a blistering kill, a spike so powerful and fast that it was a mere blur of white.

The setter gives the next ball to L again. She approaches, plants her feet, throws her body into the air, and gives it a nice gentle swing. It’s deliberate yet sure to go over the net. No heat, no sting – just get it over the net. And this is where her lack of experience shows.

A few more sets come her way. The club coach has, after all, made her an outside hitter, so she’ll be getting the majority of the sets, but tonight, at this moment, it feels like targeting – the best kind of targeting. The kind that will build her confidence as she swings and swings and swings. Finally, everything aligns and the Girl takes a big swing. The ball shoots across the court and pops the floor with a bang just inside the line.

She smiles. Is that a bit more confidence I see in her smile?

Concert

Wednesday 11 December 2019

Ms. R was the children’s choir director for our parish for a long time. Most of L’s time in the choir was under her direction, and like all the other (mostly) girls, she loved Ms. R. When she had her third child, she decided it was time to call it quits.

Shortly after that, L decided to call it quits with the choir.

Now Ms. R is back to help the girls prepare some Christmas music. This evening, they were hired to give a concert in a swanky downtown hotel…

The Card and the Project

Tuesday 10 December 2019

The Boy loves Pokemon cards. We play sometimes, but I’m not sure he understands quite how to play because the way he taught me seems a little overly simplistic. But we still have fun.

For some time now he’s been participating at the card trading table the teachers have set up for kids in after school. Every day he tells me about who wanted to trade what with whom, and sometimes he’s frustrated because someone didn’t want to make a given trade with him and other times he’s upset because he didn’t want to make a trade with someone — rarely are all parties happy, I fear.

During all this trading, he’s had a single-minded goal: to get some super-mega-ultra card with some ungodly number of damage points and virtual immortality. At least that what it sounds like in all his almost-hyperventilating hyperbolic descriptions.

Today, he finally managed to make that trade.

In Papa’s room with his new treasure

In the evening he had to work on a project that we somehow didn’t realize was a project and got swallowed up in the chaos that is our family life. He got another copy of the project and began working on it tonight.

As a teacher, I always view these things a little differently than K. I find myself sometimes judging work, thinking, “How useful is this really?” And other times I find myself thinking, “That’s a great idea. I’d use that if I were an elementary school teacher.” (God forbid!)

I also find myself a little less worried about our children’s grades. “This might drop your grade significantly!” K fussed at the Boy this weekend when we realized what had happened. My response: “Yes, and?” Grades in elementary school are not something I worry too much about. More importantly: did we make sure the Boy learned some kind of lesson about communication and organization with this adventure? Did we learn anything?

Toilet

Monday 9 December 2019

There are few things as satisfying as fixing something. The toilet in Papa’s guest bathroom had a leak around one of the bolts that holds the tank to the toilet itself. In the process of determining that, I also figured that the valve itself needed replacing. So a trip or two to Home Depot and everything was set.

There are few things more frustrating than thinking you’ve fixed something only to find that something else in the meantime — like a slightly too-small tank gasket — has caused an even bigger problem. A test flush resulted in virtually all the water in the tank out the sides, onto the wall to the floor.