Month: December 2020
Four-times-milled poppy seeds for makowiec. A little boy who couldn't get enough of the cookie cutter. A daughter who made cookies with chocolate chips and crushed candy canes (they are as sublimely amazing as they sound). A Polish mother overseeing and guiding it all -- who are we kidding? Doing most of the magic.
It's getting close to Christmas.
It’s sad a tweet can be a tragic harbinger of things to come.
When one side portrays itself as being God’s side and sees the other side as being of the devil, no good can come of that. No unity is possible when things are framed in terms of a good-versus-evil, spiritual battle. One does not compromise with the devil; one does not work with the devil; one does not even talk to the devil. Instead, one fights the devil; one shuns the devil; one destroys the devil. Mixing politics and religion is especially dangerous for that very reason.
The Civil War created fissures in our society that exist today. How long will the damage Trump and the Evangelicals’ Faustian bargain with him last? For generations, I fear.
And this guy is from France for heaven’s sake!
There are sounds and smells that are only associated with the Christmas season. A mixer running through the morning and then again through the evening is one of those sounds. First, in the morning, we run the mushrooms and cabbage through the grinder attachment to create two different pastes that will fill uszka and pierogi.
“I love uszka!” exclaims the Boy time and time again. Every time we have barszcz through the year, E asks if it’s going to be barszcz z uszkami.
“No, honey, that’s just Christmas Eve,” K responds patiently.
“Why?”
“Too much work.”
Once a year, though, it’s not too much work. It’s just enough work. After a couple of weekends of cleaning and several dishes to prepare over the coming days, a day making pierogi and uszka seems relatively insignificant.
But it is a lot of work. First, we saute the onions and the mushrooms while the sauerkraut bubbles away. It all gets strained and then _____ed. Then comes the tedious work: dumpling after dumpling, filled, folded, and pinched closed. More dough cut from the ever-dwindling ball, rolled flat, cut into circles, then again -- filed, folded, and pinched. Filled, folded, pinched.
I head over and get a pinch of the mushroom/kraut miracle.
“G, you’re in my way,” K scolds.
The cleaning piles up during all that. A mountain of dishes that then gets leveled and remounded again and again.
Cycles within cycles. That’s what makes life comforting, its predictability at times. We spend so much of our time worrying about what’s coming that we long for those moments when what’s coming is what’s always come before.
Today’s task with the Boy — make some serious improvements in his room. Specifically, in its cleanliness. This meant, in part, going through toys and throwing out things that were broken, packing away to Goodwill things he no longer played with, and generally taking stock of the toys he has and what he needs.
We took out three garbage bags of stuff from his room, including probably 40 cars. We dumped all his cars out into a pile and ran the wheel test: if all four wheels roll, it’s a keeper; if not, toss it.
He was at times somewhat reluctant to give up this or that car. But we tried to be brutal. Heartless. “It’s broken, buddy,” I said I don’t know how many times. “You can’t play with it. You can’t do anything with it…”
“Yeah, but…”
Next, we cleaned out under his bed. Once we got everything taken care of, he decided he wanted to be the monster under the bed. That’s an improvement.
And toward the middle of the afternoon, L made her way into E’s room to clean the windows. K has hired her to do a lot of the Christmas cleaning because she’s saving up for a phone. That’s right. We’ve finally given in. The Girl, at age fourteen, is getting her first phone.
And, in truth, she does need one at times. She called me from volleyball practice once because they’d ended early. “Let’s go ahead and delete that number from the history…” I suggested, handing her the phone when we got in the car.
In the afternoon, after school and a little break, we had some trampoline time as well as some exhaust-the-dog-kicking-her-ball-for-her-to-chase time.
Later in the afternoon, the Boy and I headed out to do some adventuring. We haven't done that in quite some time. I think we overdid it a bit and both got a little burned out. Today, though, we did our full adventuring circle, complete with cameras. The Boy hasn't edited his pictures yet, so I won't include theme here
In the evening, a walk. A great way to usher in winter break 2020.
It’s always the highlight of the school year for me, introducing American students to the lovely tradition of sharing the opłatek wafer. The kids love it; the administrators and counselors I invite in love it; I love it.
And I thought that we wouldn’t be able to do it this year. But I’m not one to give up easily when I think it’s something valuable for my kids, so I came up with an alternate plan.
Instead of sharing food, I had kids bring in their own snacks.
“What are we doing, Mr. S?” they asked.
“You’ll see.”
It’s important that they have a bite to eat during the process because that’s what the tradition is all about: breaking bread together.
So the kids divided into two groups, with the inner group rotating in sync, always maintaining social distance, and never touching any other seat.
I showed them pictures from previous years.
“That looks really fun,” one girl said.
Well, it is more fun than what we did today, but perhaps they got a little glimpse of the perfection that is the sharing of the opłatek.
Today is L’s birthday. She’s fourteen, which means there’s enough adult in her now to imagine what she’s going to look like in her twenties. When she was born she looked like just about every other newborn: squinting and wrinkly, she looked like the most helpless and pure being in existence. Her skin was softer than anything I’ve ever touched, and she smelled like nothing else in the world, a creamy, buttery odor with musky notes of sourness and a base of sweet, freshly baked bread. I held her in my arms for the first time and realized at an elemental though conscious level that we would never be the same again. We were three, with our latest addition being the most helpless member of our new family.
I was so nervous holding her, worried that I might hold her the wrong way, might grip too hard for fear of dropping her, might not support this or that appendage properly and thus allow grave damage. I spent the first several weeks worried that I was doing something wrong. Those weeks of “is this right?” worry stretched to months, then grew into years, and while the end of that worry is in sight, I know that I will worry for the rest of my life about whether or not I did it wrong.
I see pictures of her infancy now, and I find myself thinking that I’d give significant money to have one more opportunity to hold her as an infant, to have her head nestled into my neck and her feet not even touching my belt. Perhaps that’s the magic of grandchildren: it’s a return to a time of helplessness when we can appreciate it and not simply worry about it.
I was reading an article in Newsweek about QAnon and McConnell’s congratulating Biden on his victory:
Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have unsurprisingly turned their backs on Mitch McConnell after he finally congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his election victory.
Followers of the radical movement who believe President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against satanic pedophiles, as well as pushing baseless claims that the election was rigged, were dismayed at the Senate Majority Leader and accusing him of being a traitor. (Source)
What if Trump were simply to say, “Look, I’m not doing any such thing, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. If you believe this, please do some more research and take into account that I am flatly denying it. Democrats are not a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles.” To begin with, they probably wouldn’t believe him. “It’s all just part of his brilliant plan to keep the pedophiles on their toes!” But at the very least Trump could say in good conscience, “I’m not encouraging this dangerous, reality-denying conspiracy theory.”
The problem is, Trump doesn’t do anything in good conscience. Trump does what’s best for Trump, pure and simple, and to push back on the QAon folks would be almost certain to lose some voters (except for the ones who’ll believe it despite his insistence to the contrary.
The Girl turns 14 tomorrow. She’s taller than her mother, faster than her father, and (some days thinks she’s) smarter than us both combined.
Some things have changed in 14 years; some things have not. She’s still very particular (some would say OCD) about arranging things, and so she places the candles on her cake herself.
She’s still very particular about mixing foods (she doesn’t) and sauces (she doesn’t) and vegetables (except for peppers and cucumbers, she doesn’t), but she’s increasingly open to new things. For her birthday dinner, though, there’s only one option: crab cakes. I think we’ve done them for her three years in a row now.
Some loves have come and gone (dance and gymnastic have run their course and are now only memories) while others have stuck around (we’re now into our third year of volleyball).
Tomorrow she officially turns 14, but I might need a little convincing.