The Day After
g
Thanksgiving 2018
The day began with the relatively new Thanksgiving tradition: K and L went to Mass at the church we used to attend (which we still attend once a month for Polish mass, said now for a couple of years in English by a Columbian priest) for the parish’s special Thanksgiving Mass. The choir sings portions of the Mass in English, portions in Spanish, portions in Polish, and portions in Tagalog. As they do for any special Mass, the girls dressed in traditional Polish Highlander clothes.
While the girls were gone, the Boy continued with his help.
We prepared the turkey, made the requisite casserole, made the dressing, cooked the giblet gravy, and then baked it all. Except for the gravy.
We packed everything up and headed over to Nana’s and Papa’s for a quiet late lunch/early dinner. Everyone said it was delicious, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with what I delivered.
- The dressing was a disaster: too much liquid. I forgot to figure the fact that I’d added orange wedges and cranberries, which released a ridiculous amount of liquid.
- The cranberry sauce was a bit too sour for my taste. I’d cut the recipe’s sugar requirement by about 30%, thinking, “American recipes are always too sweet.” Perhaps not. It wasn’t as much of a failure as the dressing, but I’ve made better.
- The turkey probably could have cooked a bit longer. It was done, but it clung to the bone just a bit too much. A half an hour more would have made it better, I think, without overdoing it.
- The syrup for the baklava was just a touch too thick. It didn’t entirely absorb into the fillo dough — at least not like I like it. It wasn’t bad, perse, but it could have been just a little better.
Still, we’re always a little too hard on ourselves. K pointed out that we could simply bake the dressing a little longer tomorrow. The cranberry sauce was perfect for her. The kids devoured the turkey. And even I can’t really complain about the baklava. I just wanted a fourth bullet point for that list for some reason.
Thanksgiving Eve Vingette
“Can you do this?” E asked as he hung upside down from the net ladder at the jungle gym.
“That’s easy,” said the young stranger who’d joined us. His mother had pulled up right at the jungle gym and sat in the car, likely swiping endlessly on her phone.
Thus began the game of “Can you do this?” that lasted for the duration of the time the two boys played together. To everything that E asked, the other boy replied, “Oh, that’s easy.” To most of the things the other boy asked, E replied, “No, not yet.” In a final effort to have something that the other boy couldn’t do, E asked if he could leap from this part of the jungle gym to that. He shook his head.
“My sister can,” the Boy said proudly.
Monday Afternoon and Evening
When I got home, E was ready for some basketball practice. We don’t have a basketball goal, and there’s really no place we could put one, so that limits our play to some degree. Fortunately, he’s happy just to practice the basics: chest passes, bounce passes, and a bit of dribbling.
Sometimes K and I worry about his self-confidence, but at times, it seems he has a bit too much. “I’m already very good at dribbling!” he proclaimed as he slapped at the basketball. Certainly, in comparison to what he was doing a couple of weeks ago, he’s much better. But has he, as he insists, almost mastered it? So I have this fine balance to walk with him: keep him realistic but not crush his spirit.
“You’re much better than you were,” I said, “but there’s always room for improvement.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, “of course there’s always room for improvement.”
We took a little break to look at a few unusual clouds. One, in particular, looked as if Bob Ross had taken one of his wide, fan brushes and made a few strokes of Titanium White on Phthalo Blue.
After dinner, we played with his Legos. He took the Millennium Falcon set that he’d completed Sunday, tore it apart, and built something new from it. It’s a common thing he does: follow the directions, build everything in the set, then never build it again. That’s what Legos are for, I suppose.
When it came time for E to work with K on a little homework, I went up to see what the Girl was doing.
“Watching YouTube.” That’s how she spends most of her screen time these days. She watches DIY’ers and slime makers, but more and more, she watches more mature things. Like how to do makeup. She’s growing up.
“Want to play a game?” I asked. “Your choice.” But it really wasn’t. There were a couple of games that I nixed immediately. One, because I don’t even understand how to play it. A board game that has ten plus pages of instructions is not something I have the patience to learn. The other, well, I don’t really understand it either. We settled on Kerplunk, a game that takes longer to set up than to play.
I noticed how different we are regarding our sense of organization. The Girl wanted to segregate all the straws by color and then put them in the cylinder layered by colors, and she wanted the marbles segregated to the same ends. As she pulled out straws, she placed them in color-sorted piles. I, on the other hand, wanted the straws placed as chaotically as possible, and my pulled straws — just tossed in a pile.
After she beat me twice, I said, “Well, that’s fine. But you still won’t get me in chess.”
“Yes, I can beat you!” she cried and headed downstairs to get the chess set. I beat her, but she has improved so much that it’s difficult to believe. Her development followed tried-and-true principles (which is not to say “theoretical principles”–we haven’t talked about openings themselves, only the idea of getting out your minor pieces, castling, and connecting your rooks as basic opening development), and she saw clearly several threats a couple of moves away. As the game concluded, I showed her what backline mate threats are, how to anticipate them, and how to avoid them.
A perfect evening, in other words.
Autumnal Saturday
The Dog digs. And digs and digs and digs. She digs everywhere. We’ve discovered that staw keeps her from digging up an area again.
Soon, our whole yard will be covered with straw, I fear…
Fun and Responsibilities
First Basketball Game
The Boy wanted waffles for breakfast; K, being the amazing woman she is, agreed to make waffles as she talked to her mother. After breakfast, he wanted to do an experiment. What exactly he wanted to do was not clear. The idea at first was to mix various things together and see what happened. Instead, we steered him to a chemistry experiment, or rather he steered himself. Can’t remember exactly how it moved from “I want to mix x, y, and z” to “Let’s put an egg in vinegar,” but it seemed a less messy procedure.
At first, he wanted just to drop a raw egg into vinegar, but after I explained the resulting mess, he agreed to the more traditional hard-boiled egg version of the procedure. It always surprises me how reasonable he can be for a six-year-old: sometimes, it’s just a matter of explaining why x is not the best idea or why y would work better and he’s more than willing to try the other way.
After lunch, we headed to the YMCA for the Boy’s first basketball game. He was very nervous on the way there, which was more than understandable: he’d had one practice and never actually played in a game. Since we don’t really watch sports, he’d never even seen a game to my knowledge.
It turned out there was nothing to worry about: YMCA basketball for this age group is just like YMCA soccer: the coach was on the court at all times, encouraging them, guiding them, directing them. Rules like walking and double-dribbling disappeared: one boy went charging down the court holding the ball, and the referee, who was phenomenally helpful and encouraging herself (a couple of times, she actually picked kids up and moved them to more advantageous spots, much to the delight of parents and onlookers), would simply run beside him and say, “You have to dribble! Try to dribble!”
The team had ten players, and groups of five swapped out every four minutes. (The quarters were eight minutes.) During the swap, the teams stood opposite each other and the coaches had each player point to the opposing player who was “their man.” Gender and age didn’t matter: everyone picked “their man.” When play began, the coaches reminded their players, “No, no, you need to be with Red Shoes, over there. Go guard Red Shoes.”
The Boy did well on defense, but offense was another story. He played like he used to play soccer: just running around, not really sure where he was supposed to go, what he was supposed to be doing. One little boy on our team had a lot of experience, and everyone, seeing his confidence, tried to get the ball to him. But then, on a missed shot, the Boy took the rebound and put it back up.
It bounced around the rim for a while and then finally fell through.
With a start like that, it’s official: the Boy now loves basketball.
Monday without School
Party
Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem
Halloween 2018
Monday Evening Walk
Our schedule has calmed down significantly: no longer do we have something each and every evening. Soccer — done. Volleyball — done. We’ve decided, as a result of having so much free time (relatively speaking), to make Monday evenings (and possibly Tuesday nights, but not this week — that frantic pace has ripples that spill over to this week) family walk evenings. So today, after dinner, we took the dog and headed to Conestee Park, our favorite local park.
E and I rode our bikes there yesterday, almost achieving our goal of riding on every bit of trail and/or road (a total of 10.2 km), and we discovered a couple of new trails that we thought we’d introduce the girls to.
The kids took turns with the dog, each handling her for a quarter of a mile (thanks, Fitbit).
And we got a chance to get a family portrait, albeit divided into two stages: the Boy wanted the camera and decided we didn’t have enough pictures of me, so he made me pose.
Finally, he wanted one of K and me. “You need to stand there and kiss.”
Autumnal Sunday
Catholic Camporee
Last Games of the Season
The Boy had his final soccer game of the season. It was bitter-sweet: his team finished undefeated, but it was the last season they will train under Coach Kevin, who accepted a position coaching a high school girls’ team.
The Girl’s team got what it dished out the other everning — a 3-0 defeat. She was upset about it, but only until we got home.
Halloween Bash
Volleyball
As a parent watching my daughter play volleyball, I always have some mixed emotions. During the last season, her team struggled mightily: they didn’t win a single match, if memory serves, and they only won a handful of sets. It was rough. Lots of frustration in the car after games.
“We won’t ever win.”
In several matches, they were swept, three sets to nothing. There was nothing immediately redeemable about that. I said what any parent would say: “You’re getting stronger.” “This is building character.” “This shows how tough you are, that you keep at it despite the challenges.”
This year has been different. They’ve won many more than they’ve lost, and they’ve handed out a couple of 3-0 sweeps themselves. It’s great to see the Girl so happy, so excited about what’s going on.
But I sometimes secretly cheer for the other team.
Tonight, they faced a team that they had already demolished once this year. I’m sure the coach has the best intentions, but from what I saw of the girls’ play, he doesn’t have the most experience with volleyball: his girls made basic mistakes in fundamental skills, mistakes that could easily be corrected. Mistakes that our coach has corrected. So these girls are losing through no fault of their own: they just don’t have someone to teach them how to pass and to serve properly.
The first game this evening began unevenly, and it became clear that our girls would win fairly easily, which they did, 25-15. Their opponents came out on the court excited, and they never lost hope, but as I watched them, I really didn’t think they had a chance that game because our girls were out-scoring them 2-1 through most of the game. It was impressive, those girls’ enthusiasm. I found myself thinking, “They might not have won a match all year, might have won only a few sets, but they keep playing and smiling and encouraging each other.”
The second game began like the first and coincidentally ended with the same score.
The third game started, and I wished only one thing: for those sweet, energetic girls to win one. And they came so close. They clawed back from a 14-8 deficit to tie it at 14. That’s six consecutive game points. They were so excited. They were so ready to win.
The score went back and forth, back and forth, but in the end, our best server came up and nailed the final point: 18-16.
Our girls were thrilled. I was happy for L and everyone on her team. But for that third game, I was a total, secret fan of that other team.
Autumn
Last night at Bethel Bash, I wore a long-sleeve tee-shirt for the first time, and by the time the sun had set completely, I was a little chilly.
Which means that autumn, finally, is on its way.
Bethel Bash 2018
Michael Arrives
K and I woke at three in the morning to the sound of the most torrential rainfall we’ve ever heard here. It was as if an enormous tap had been situated above our house and turned on fully. Assuming it was the first rains of Hurricane Michael. “I guess this will be what we go through for the next several hours,” I thought.
I began imagining what that might mean. “Our sump pump will get its first real test,” I thought.
At six, I woke. The Boy had woken and shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen. K guided him to our bed. “Go back to see, E,” she instructed, “you don’t have school today.”
The wind, the rain — the school board (or whoever makes the decision) decided it was too much of a risk. K told us when she got back from work that it was indeed a wise choice: “There were just sheets of rain, with no visibility.”
As for the rain of three in the morning — it never really re-materialized. It rained, quite heavily at times, but only until about eleven. Once it calmed a bit, the Boy and I headed out for inspection. And a bit of play.
In the afternoon, muffins.
As part of a literacy project from school, the Boy had to read and follow a recipe with a little help from me.
