Baking and Decorating
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The Actual Party
The Girl turned eight last week. Of course we had a party for her, but Nana and Papa, the Boy, Mama, and Tata -- well, it's an alright party, but most of the responsibility for screaming and hyperactivity falls on the head of the birthday girl herself. It's a big responsibility, and L made a valiant effort, with some help from the Boy, to roust everyone out of their chairs, but mainly it was the Girl's work.
What she needed was, say, three other girls, roughly her age, a load of sugar, some presents, and a sleepover party.
It is only then that the full silliness can blossom, for adults don't really appreciate a little girl's efforts to blow out her candles with a fully-open mouth like kids would.
Afterward, it was time to organize the gifts. Since the Girl got her ears pierced, all the presents had a common theme, and one cannot just toss dozens of earrings together into a chaotic pile.
Once the sun went down, though, we had only one option: the best lights in town, according to some. Over 350,000 lights, three months to set up, three more to take down -- an impressive show.
The adults wandered about, wondering about the motive behind the lights, which surely cost thousands of dollars a year; the kids wandered about, wondering about the free hot chocolate.
Modeling
In education, it's critical to model. Show, don't tell.
I teach a creative writing course, which is really "Digital Storytelling," but that's not one of the district-provided options for course titles, so I call it "Creative Writing" and do a bit of everything. Right now, students are working on NPR-style audio stories about school events. I thought I'd model it for them. It was kind of fun -- perhaps I have a future in radio...
8
It started with cupcakes at school.
A quick Mama/L day followed, with some bouncing
and ear piercing.
A chocolate ice cream birthday cake
and a couple of long-sought gifts rounded out the Girl’s eighth birthday.
Well, almost.
Christmas Concert 2014
Out of the Silence
After more or less two years or so of daily-posting (nearly daily -- fell off these last few months, but the 20+ before that make up for the slack), it was time for a beak. A week without is not the same as a week without writing: I've returned to my journal, finding the privacy freeing. I can harp about kids in my class by name; I can write put details about our home adventures that would never make it here. But of course that doesn't mean that the pictures haven't accumulated, that the list of things to include in our online scrapbook hasn't been filling up mental list after mental list.
Without the daily writing after examining the pictures snapped through the afternoon, though the evening, the lists add up to nothing: I can't remember the thoughts this situation prompted, the connections with this or that.
Writing daily for something available to more eyes than my own turns every instant into a potential paragraph, and I think I'd just had enough of that for a while.
And so last Sunday when we went to Nana's and Papa's to help decorate their tree, it was relaxing just to be, not to think about what I might write about this or that.
I was still a shutterfly, though. When I asked L if she'd like to have our older DSLR when she geets a little bigger, she replied tellingly: "No, Daddy, I'm not going to be a shutter bug like you."
On the one hand, I see that as highly likely. She's too hyper, too busy, too up to take the time to take photo after photo.
But on the other hand, she is terribly creative, always excited about what's she's doing in art class or looking to create something new at home. Perhaps the idea of making photo collages might -- well, we'll see.
The rest of the week went by in a fairly typical fashion: hectic mornings, long days at school that drag because we're all --Â all -- looking to the coming Christmas break with such longing that it's difficult for anyone to focus, evenings that slip by before we know it.
But with K home now, the overall pace of life seems to have slowed just enough for everyone to catch their breaths before the chaos of the holiday season turns it all upside down again.
December is just a rush, no matter who's where. With a birthday, Christmas concerts, a major holiday, the near-end of a semester, parties, and surprise drop-ins from Santa, it's just a never-ending sprint from the first to the twenty-fifth.
But as in most families, it's become something like a yardstick to measure the growth of the year. The Boy, for example, has begun looking beneath the surface of things, to question what he sees. When Mr. F and Mrs. P come over as they do every year dressed as the Clauses, there's no fooling the Boy. He recognizes the voice, the face, and declares, "That's Mr. F!"
But it's not all surprises and new adventures. Every weekday night still winds down similarly, with someone up in the Boy's room as he plays with this or that, playing with him, doing one's own thing, shifting between the two.
One's on thing: read, "Take pictures."
Soon the Boy will start complaining about the shutterflies in the house, but for now, he's able mostly to ignore it if it has nothing to do with what he's playing at the moment.
Yet with it Advent, there are a few differences during the week. Ladders come out, lights go up,
carols play on repeat.
Forwarding Address
We're a 3/4 Polish family, and so we have to be a little difficult and do things differently. Like celebrate Saint Nicholas's day, which is on the sixth of December. Which means our kids get two Christmases. Which means the Girl, with her mid-month birthday, get three gift days. Which makes the other kids at school jealous. Hence the difficulty.
L has become more of a critical thinker regarding the whole process, though. She no longer blindly accepts the seeming omnipotence and omniscience of Santa. Clearly, there are things he might not know. Like the fact that she has changed rooms since last year. Or that her bed is different now, more narrow, with less room for presents. (Mikołaj doesn't have a Christmas tree yet to put presents under, so I guess he improvises.)
"I'm sure he can figure it out," K explained last night, calming L's worries. But later in the night, I suggested that we that perhaps we ought to put L's gift in the Boy's room, just to see if she figured out what happened. It was when K and I were downstairs, K wrapping newly-arrived presents and I cleaning up what will certainly be the only artifact of humanity a hundred thousand years from now -- dried Play-doh. And doing something likely less useful. Like thinking of further Christmas jokes to play on our children.
Build and Destroy
She built patiently, planning each move, checking, pulling apart, rebuilding. She had a vision — at least an evolving one — and she worked to fulfill it. In her typical fashion, she took a break from building to organize all available components, presumably because she was tired of the try-and-search method. She made the structure as symmetrical as the available components would allow.
And it was another example of what amazes me about our daughter: she can be so incredibly hyper that you’d think she couldn’t focus on anything for more than two seconds. Yet she brings home perfect grades from school, can sit and read for hours, loves to lose herself in painting, and has developed a recent fascination with building (more Legos are high on her Christmas wish list).
The Boy, on the other hand, had only one thing in mind: knocking it all down. In fact, he joyfully did just that to the Girl’s first attempt, causing much consternation on her part (read: a minor breakdown) and much laughter on his part, until, the sensitive soul that he is, he realized that he’d hurt L.
Yet he did it again. It’s what being two is all about. But it cost him: his newest car went into time out, causing him much consternation (read: complete breakdown).
Finally, he got the car back, L had the structure rebuilt, and after a quick photo session — that the Girl herself requested — it was time.
Before E came alone, we warned L that, although she would certainly love him to death, there would be times that little brother would be positively infuriating. “You’ll make something,” we explained as an example, “and he’ll come along and destroy it.” Occasionally, though, it’s just what they both want.
Value Voters
A friend posted on social media his frustration with a recent Obama press conference, to which I joked, “Ah, you’re feeling the pain I’ve felt for the last several years…” I knew this was not the case: said friend is solidly liberal and has been for as long as I’ve known him. I added that Obama’s presidency has done more to move me to the right than just about anything else. My friend replied that to change political parties, he would need to “have an entire personality transplant & abandon many of [his] values.”
I thought about that comment most of the day as I worked in the yard, prepared our son’s new room, and the thousand and one other things that fill a Saturday without the kids. The implication is troubling but fairly common these days: people who hold different political positions do so because of different values. The corollary from that is simple and permeates modern political exchange: those who hold political positions different from mine do so because they have different values, which are inferior to my values.
This goes beyond merely calling the other side ignorant. Ignorance can be corrected. It even goes beyond calling the other side stupid. Any thinking individual realizes that such a claim is vacuous at best as most of us fall fairly solidly in the mean for intelligence. This suggesting that the different political sides have different values means that their core being and thinking is somehow different. It can lead in no way to productive political conversation. And it permeates the left and the right.
- Both sides portray those who are on the other side of the political spectrum not just as wrong but as morally deficient: Anyone who has a Tea Party bumper sticker is inherently an evil person; anyone who has an ACLU bumper sticker is inherently an evil person.
- Both sides accuse the other of ulterior motives: Republicans are heartless selfish souls who care only about the rich; Democrats are self-serving hypocrites who only support welfare because it means votes.
- Both sides accuse the other of wanting to destroy the country: The Republicans want to turn it into some kind of corporate oligarchy; the Democrats want to turn it into a socialist non-paradise.
What is the alternative? I would suggest that the alternative is the traditional mode of political discourse, where liberal and conservative positions are seen not as alternate values but alternate methods. What if there were an underlying assumption between both sides that the other wants the best for the country and the disagreements have to do with methods, not goals? In such a political climate, the other side is just that: not an enemy, not an idiot, but just someone who sees a different road to the same goal.
Discussion
