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Two Households

Monday 06 January 2020 | 0 Comments

We began Romeo and Juliet today, our first day back from winter break. All morning, as I saw the Honors English kids, I smiled enthusiastically and said, “Today’s the day. The day!” Their response was generally the same: “Hurray!”

Except for the faux enthusiasm, my thoughts are just that: Hurray! I love getting to introduce kids to the unadulterated bard. No simplifications; no abridged versions — just a couple thousand lines of blank verse.

“Why are we even doing this?” one student asked. “Why Shakespeare? Why is he important?”

The thing I love about teaching these kids is that they ask questions like that no to try to get out of it or to let me know they think it’s not important and can’t be convinced otherwise; they want to know.

“Only one thing has had a greater impact on the English language in terms of introducing new idioms and even new words, and that’s the King James Bible.” Just look at some of the things we say on a regular basis that came from Billy:

all that glitters isn’t gold.
barefaced.
be all and end all.
break the ice.
breathe one’s last.
brevity is the soul of wit.
catch a cold.
clothes make the man.
it’s Greek to me
lackluster
leapfrog
live long day
wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve

And that’s far from an exhaustive list.

I explained this, and then simply summarized: “Because most scholars, writers, and general readers consider him to be the most influential and perhaps best writer of the English language.”

They weren’t convinced, but it did soften their resolve a bit — perhaps it won’t be the worst thing in the world.

Rock Hill Tournament, Day 2

Sunday 05 January 2020 | 0 Comments

The girls had been putzing around. Sure, they'd won a couple of matches, and they'd lost one to a team that seemed to them, I'm sure, unbeatable. Still, even on the games they'd won, they'd made a bunch of silly mistakes. It just so happened that the other team made more. They played like beginners.

Not today.

This morning, they played their first game of the day, and it was business as usual. A few balls fell in the middle of two or three players because of a lack of communication and initiative. They flubbed a number of serves. They knocked some received serves off at angles that would have left Euclid scratching his head. They played like beginners. Still.

Then came time for their second match, and from the moment the other team began warming up, I began worrying. They were hitting very well, and digging those hits effectively. Their serves were sharp.

"Starting match 2," I texted K. "Gonna be a tough one."

They came out and transformed into a group of girls who knew what they were doing, who could dig hits like never before, hit like never before, block like never before -- in short, play like never before.

"They have never played this well," I texted.

They took the first game 25-21; they lost the second game 21-25. The third game (to 15 only) they were up 11-8 and then slipped up and let the other team tie it. The coach called a time out. Immediately afterward, the opponents scored two more. They only had two more points to score; our girls had to score double that. Coach called another timeout.

L went up to serve. One down. Two down. Three. Four -- they'd won!

I can't remember I've seen nine girls (one girl, unfortunately, went home sick earlier in the day) so very happy.

That win put them in the semifinals, where they faced a team of roughly the same strength as the one they'd just defeated. I thought, "We can do this -- we can make it to the finals." But unfortunately, the girls had just run out of gas by that time. They started making some of their old silly mistakes again. They were just worn out, and L, who's been battling a cold all week, confided in me on the way home, "I felt like I was going to throw up that whole last game."

"And yet you stuck it out, for the team."

"Yeah, I guess." A typical L reply.

So what did they learn this weekend? I think the coach put it best: "You girls learned how to win." That's easier said than done: it takes a lot of confidence to face a team you think will beat you and stare them down, then beat them down. And when things are falling apart, it takes a lot to keep pushing, even when the loss starts to look inevitable.

L, for her weekend of effort, got to sleep the whole way home, got freshly made rosół for dinner, and a 7:15 self-imposed bedtime.

In two weeks, we do it again...

Rock Hill Tournament

Saturday 04 January 2020 | 0 Comments

The Girl had her first tournament today in Rock Hill. They struggled in the certification tournament (which wasn't really a tournament but a chance for the girls to practice their officiating skills as they are line judges, scorekeepers, libero trackers, and down refs for other teams' games), but they showed they'd learned something in the meantime. They finished second in their age bracket and will pick up tomorrow from there.

The tournament's location was just across from the cemetery where Papa's parents and brothers are buried. The last time we went there, a little over seven years ago, I walked over to the fence and took some photos of the abandoned textile mills across the street. Most of that was torn down for the facility that hosted today's tournament, but a little remained.

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Destruction

Friday 03 January 2020 | 0 Comments

On May 30 of last year, there was an enormous fire just about a mile from where we live. The home was completely destroyed, and only a few weeks later, its remains were razed.

Here are a couple of articles about the incident:

Just yesterday, there was another fire in the same area. In fact, the locations are less than a quarter of a mile away from each other.

As with the other fire, I was unaware of it until after it occurred. I would have thought we'd hear the sirens and realize how close they were coming, but perhaps not.

Crews: Mauldin home fire tears through attic

All of this, of course, got me thinking, got me remembering. When I was in high school, a home two doors down from us caught on fire when lightning struck an air conditioner and started a fire in the second story. Dad and I were home; Mom was somewhere. She panicked when she was stopped from entering the development and heard that the fire was on our street. The officers holding back traffic told her the address of the fire and she breathed an audible sigh of relief, I'm sure. Perhaps shed a tear of relief as well as tears of sorrow for our neighbors.

The Van

Thursday 02 January 2020 | 0 Comments

This is the backseat of our van. The backseat that held our children during trips here and there: to school, Nana’s and Papa’s, to Florida, to the beach, to the mountains, to soccer, to dance, to gymnastics, to basketball, to parties, to funerals, to church, to friends’ homes, to parks, to my school, to K’s office, to the airport, and always back home.

I’ll bet there was a time I would have been sentimental about the thought of selling this thing, but not now. Let it haul someone else’s kids somewhere else.

First Day 2020

Wednesday 01 January 2020 | 0 Comments

The house is, relatively speaking, a mess; everyone's tired; we went to Mass on a Tuesday evening -- it must be the end of the holidays.

2019

Tuesday 31 December 2019 | 0 Comments

"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 | 0 Comments

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 | 0 Comments

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.