Matching Tracksuits

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Saturday’s Adventures

Saturday 6 January 2024

On the way to the basketball game, the Boy makes a comment about how many churches are around, and then turns the discussion to religion, remarking that Jesus has been dead 2000 years and has still not returned.

“Two thousand years is a long time,” he suggests.

I simply agree.

He continues: “How do we even know that all that stuff happened?”

“What do you think?” again trying to remain non-committal.

“Well, they say they were there,” he suggests.

“How do we know that?”

“Because that’s what they wrote.” He stops to think about it for a moment and then asks, “But how do we know those documents are authentic?”

The short answer is, we don’t. The Gospels, despite the purported authorship the Bible affixes to them, are anonymous. Those names — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — appear only in documents from the third or fourth century if memory serves. But I say none of this. Instead, I simply respond, “That’s a very good question. What do you think?”

“Well, all the Christian scientists trying to prove that are biased. They want to prove it.”

For a moment, I think, “Wait, how did we get onto the topic of Christian Science, but I realize quickly what he means: he’s referring to apologists and Christian New Testament scholars who consistently make the arguments that support Christianity, explaining away the problems like the one of the gospels’ anonymous authorship. But his point is very salient: apologists are indeed biased. They are not seeking truth as much as seeking ways to buttress Christian belief, and many skeptics suggest that apologists are almost exclusively preaching to the choir, so to speak, giving believers answers to questions they might have rather than providing skeptics with evidence to overcome their skepticism.

These are all very good questions that will lead to some answers that might lead the Boy away from church teaching, but I am trying my best not to provide any answers.

We get to the game and immediately see what we’re up against: a bunch of guys eighth graders who are enormous and merciless. They tower over most of our boys.

Their brutality comes from the coach down: They begin applying full-court pressure in the second half when they already have a significant, and they would only begin doing that (I think) because their coach has instructed them to do so. Every time the opposition scores, the coach whoops and hollers like it’s the greatest comeback in history. The final score is 13-22, and I hear the say to his team, “That was okay, but you missed a lot of easy baskets.” Translation: “You beat them badly, but you should have beaten the —- out of them.” At least that’s how I interpreted it as an objective observer…

1.5

Friday 5 January 2024

Rebranding

Thursday 4 January 2024

There’s a local mega-church that rebranded a few years ago to “Relentless Church.” I thought that was an odd name. I always assumed it was suggesting that the Christian god is relentless in trying to reach the so-called unchurched, but there was something needlessly aggressive about that name. To be relentless seems antithetical to one of Christianity’s claimed attributes (claimed only, I would argue): that it’s built on mercy. To relent is, to some degree, to show mercy. Still, I thought they could have chosen a sillier name.

The pastor, a large man named John Gray, caused some controversy a few years ago when he bought his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini SUV. It made the Today Show:

His defense was that he used money from the couple’s reality show and his book sales to purchase the vehicle. It still seems pretty tone deaf to be a supposed servant of God and spend that kind of money on a vehicle.

But apparently tone deafness is one of Gray’s predominant qualities, for he’s decided to rebrand his church once again. This time: Love Story Church.

Considering the stream of sexual abuse scandals in countless denominations over the last few years, I couldn’t possibly imagine a worse name for the church

End of the Break

Wednesday 3 January 2024

The break is over: the kids go back tomorrow, with E starting his second semester in middle school and L beginning her last semester as a junior. Two facts that are hard to comprehend: the Boy is 11; the Girl just turned 17. One more hard-to-believe fact: the school year is half over now.

I went back to school today for a teacher’s workday. Walking down the halls this morning I had the realization that we only have a matter of months before the end-of-year testing kicks in, and few of my on-level kids are ready for it. Granted, they’ve made progress this first semester, but there’s still so much more to do. One of the frustrations I have with all this testing is that it’s heartlessly uniform in its expectations: growth doesn’t matter; improvement doesn’t register — everyone has to reach the same place at the same time. The kids who go from struggling to write a paragraph with more than three sentences to writing fully-formed Schaffer paragraphs that make a claim, provide evidence, and explain that evidence will still get a “Not Met” score at the end of the year even though they’ve grown more than the English Honors kids who will score “Exceeds Expectations.” The kids who had so many emotional issues that sitting in a class and focusing for more than a few moments who grow to the point that they can remain focused for ten minutes at a time and work collaboratively with their peers without getting off-topic for a full five minutes — they’ll still “fail” despite all the evidence I could provide to the contrary.

Site Work

Tuesday 2 January 2024

Trying to fix this slow-loading site — I ended up loading an old theme from ten years ago. Basic, but a little faster loading.

Reusing the Twenty Twelve Theme

That’s about all I feel like doing on this site today, so this will have to do to keep the streak going.

Hilton Head Day 2

Sunday 31 December 2023

We’ve had that model plane for — I don’t even know how long. Over a year. Maybe more.

“At some point, we’ll put it together,” I assured E, and myself.

And so as we were packing for this end-of-the-year trip, we had the idea that we could take the model and put it together here, in Hilton Head. Most of it, though, the Boy did himself. I wanted to be involved, but I also wanted him to have the experience of assembling it alone. I helped when he requested it.

This morning, he finished it.

In the afternoon, a stop at Piggly Wiggly — they still exist!

And in the evening, a walk on the beach,

some time in the hot tub,

and games in the condo.

Hilton Head Day 1

Saturday 30 December 2023

We started the day with a long sleep — not a single alarm clock set in the entire condominium. None. Not a FitBit set to gently jingle one awake; not a phone set to start chirping, screaming, or whatever alarms various family members use to drag themselves out of bed. Nothing.

First up, a walk on the beach just beside our complex. It’s technically not on the ocean but rather on the sound that separates Hilton Head from St. Helena Island and Parris Island just to the northeast of us.

The plan was to have an afternoon walk on Hilton Head’s main beach in the afternoon after exploring the downtown area, but K so fell in love with the marshy beach that she wanted to return after a short walk on the main tourist beach.

But we’ll get to that later.

One of the things Hilton Head is famous for is its wealth, and there’s no lack of that around us. The house just to the south of our complex is a 10,000 square foot beast that is valued, according to Zillow, at $4.5 million. Probably someone’s second home at that.

This kind of conspicuous wealth — I just don’t understand it. It screams lack of confidence in one’s own being. The only way I can feel great about myself is by showing off how much wealth I have. That’s how I’ve already seen it.

But that was neither here nor there as the Boy explored the shoreline (with the Girl still asleep in the condo), discovering at least a dozen horseshoe crab shells.

The place we’re renting is in a somewhat-dated but still lovely complex that, according to one resident we spoke with, is 50% owned and 50% rented. There are tennis courts (used, as far as we can tell, primarily for pickleball), an outdoor pool, an indoor pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna — a regular spa.

There’s even an odd, enclosed but unheated porch area. Not sure how comfortable that might be in the heat of the summer, but in the winter, all one needs is a blanket or jacket and it’s fine out there.

After our post-walk coffee and cake, we went downtown to do a little shopping. Not what I love doing, but I made it through the whole afternoon without even a peep of protest at the suggestion, “Let’s go into this store!”

The Girl was shopping for a birthday present for one of her friends; K was shopping for a dress for the Girl.

In the end, they both walked away happy, and I even got something: a bottle of Ghost Pepper and garlic hot sauce, locally made.

“Is it hot?” the Boy asked after I sampled a bit in the store.

“It’s definitely warm.”

After shopping, it was time for lunch: Babcia’s first time having sushi. The meal came with miso soup — another first — which Babcia liked but suggested: “it could use some potatoes.”

After lunch, we headed to the main beach. At first, K was in love with it: “The changing rooms, the showers — so charming!” But the beach itself — nothing much, she proclaimed.

So in the end, we just headed back to our little beach to see the sunset colors.

Cracker Stop

Friday 29 December 2023

On the way to Hilton Head this evening, we stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel. It’s not a place we ever go to on our own, but when someone from Poland is here—well, they have to try good old fashioned greens.

Ride

Thursday 28 December 2023

Christmas 2023

Monday 25 December 2023

Previous Years

Wigilia 2023

Sunday 24 December 2023

First times almost never go unnoticed. When we’re experiencing something novel, we’re rarely not aware that it’s new. Our first kiss — we all remember that. The first time we saw our first child — no one could fail to realize the significance of the moment.

Sometimes, those firsts surprise us: my first Christmas was something I never thought I would experience, and while I doubt many people can remember their first Christmas, I clearly remember mine.

Family in Poland

But lasts? We often don’t even realize we’re in the midst of some last, and we don’t realize it was a last until so much later. Our last Wigilia with Nana and Papa together in 2018 — we didn’t realize it was the last. Our final Wigilia with Dziadek in 2007 — we had no idea it would be our last. Our last Wigilia with Papa in 2020 — no idea. 

W. S. Merwin hints at this in “For the Anniversary of My Death”

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day  
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

We move through these lasts without even thinking about them, without even realizing their presence. 

But some lasts approach. They haunt or taunt us from far off: our last day of duty for the year hangs tauntingly in front of us teachers every year. Our last time in a classroom in a given school — we know it’s coming, and it haunts us. At least it did me both times I left Poland.

We’re approaching a last in our family: L is now seventeen, a junior in high school. Next year will be the last time she’s here for Wigilia for certain. Sure, she’ll be here for most of them in the years in college, maybe even all of them. But there will come a time when she decides to spend Wigilia with the family of someone she’s fallen for.

Then there will be the same situation for E five years later. He’ll move out, probably come to Wigilia with us more regularly than L (but who knows?), and we’ll never be certain like we are now that we’ll be spending the next Wigilia together.

And at some point, K and I will have our final Wigilia together, and we most likely won’t even know it.

So this all raises the obvious question: is it good to know that last has arrived or not? I think it depends on the event itself. In the end, though, it’s a moot point: we often don’t know our lasts when we happen across them.

But what if we tried to live each moment as if it were our last time doing whatever mundane task was at hand? What if we washed dishes as if we’d never get to do it again? Such a simple mundane task that has marked our lives with such regularity that we don’t even think about it. Putting it in the context of a potential last seems to imbue it with some sparkle it lacked before. And I guess that sparkle really comes from us — and we can dispense them wherever we choose. We can make a conscious choice to live our lives as if ever single event were the last time we do that, or even the last thing we do on earth. It seems like it could be the ultimate life lived in the now.

Waiting

Thursday 21 December 2023

“This is fucking bullshit!” It’s not often one hears such language in a doctor’s waiting room, but the man sitting by the reception desk had clearly had enough from his perspective. When the nurse who was calling in patients came to the door, he pointed out that his appointment was for 8:45 and not 9:00.

”Okay,” she smiled. “We’re a little behind right now.”

”Well, when it gets to 9:00, I’m leaving,” he growled.

”Okay,” she repeated. “If you need to reschedule your appointment, you can certainly do that.”

He’d been mumbling to his wife since L and I had arrived, but by that point, she’d had enough. She got up and walked calmly out of the waiting room, clearly embarrassed with her husband’s outbursts.

When 9:00 arrived, I watched to see if he would go through with his threat, although I struggled to see much of a threat in it. He sat with his foot in a boot cast and had crutches by him: clearly, if someone was in need, it was he and not anyone working at the doctor’s office. At 9:05 he grabbed his crutches, banged them on the ground a few times in front of him, muttered, “This place! This place,” and crossed his legs over his crutches.

Five minutes later, a young man with a prosthetic leg to the knee entered and checked in with the receptionist. Our guy watched him, staring at his prosthetic, then banged his crutches together again.

When the nurse came back to call the next patient, he accosted her: “I’ve been here for an hour. I’m about ready to walk out of here.” To this, the nurse smiled again and said, “Okay.”

As the door closed, he said to no one in particular and therefore to everyone in the waiting room, “My appointment was for 8:45, not 9:15,” and after a few more moments, he muttered, “Okay,” and tried his best to storm out. It as kind of tough to rush out angrily on crutches, but he made a valiant effort.

I was certain that just after he left, the nurse would come call him, but instead, after five minutes, he hobbled back in and sat down in a different chair.

After a few more moments, the nurse called us back. “He’s going to be angry,” I laughed as we walked back, and on hearing that, our nurse mentioned to the others his behavior: “He’s making a scene in the lobby,” explained the smiling nurse to another before adding for my benefit, “He’s always like that.”

If he’d been my child, I’d have explained to him that no one was doing that to him intentionally, but realizing that the nurses put up with his behavior somewhat regularly, I realized it might very well have been intentionally, or at the least with some degree of satisfaction.

As we sat waiting for a technician to prepare the machine for L’s x-ray, the kind nurse brought our petulant hero back, indicating where he could wait for the x-ray technician.

”Great, now I can wait here three hours,” he grumbled.

Unrelated Photo