The Boy is ready to eat; K doesn’t have his food ready yet. There’s only one thing to do.
The Girl and I keep him happy.
general
With Papa
Reading in the Front
Current Obsession
This is the song that the Girl, through her enthusiastic, dramatic singing, has drilled into my head, K's head, and likely little E's head.
"Honey, could you sing a different song?" is our little refrain to this particular number.
Change
I go to Mass tonight alone because K has already been in an effort to keep our sick son in the house as much as possible. The entrance processional is a rousing hymn complete with drum accompaniment. The tell-tale “tat-tat-tat” of the high-hat cymbal gives it away before the full beat begins, and I realize what has happened: I’ve inadvertently come to a youth Mass. Sure enough, when the lector approaches, he’s wearing jeans and a tee-shirt. The rat-tat-tat of drums continues at times when it seems it really shouldn’t, like the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. During the consecration of the host, I begin to wonder if the altar boy will ring the altar bell: “Perhaps the percussionist will give three good crashes on the cymbal” I think. Mercifully, that doesn’t happen, but by then, it’s too late. Despite my best efforts to focus on why I’m at Mass, I’m irritated and feeling that I’m almost physically having to resist the urge to march over to the drummer, rip the drumsticks out of her hands, and walk back to my seat. I feel I’m at some Benny Hinn camp meeting rather than Catholic Mass, and that eats at me.
Back at home, K and I talk about that. “If that’s what it takes to get the kids interested,” she suggests, “if it helps, then I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t like it, but I understand.”
But what does it help? Attendance? Perhaps. But do we really want kids coming to Mass because it’s fun, because it’s entertaining because it has just enough of a whiff of popular culture that they feel “at home”?
Shouldn’t Mass feel decidedly different? Shouldn’t we have the feeling that all of the every-day concerns and reality have drifted away for a short time? Isn’t that, at some level, the purpose of Mass? Should we be teaching our kids that, at some level, there’s not a heck of a lot of difference between Mass and a Justin Bieber show?
It makes me long for one more All Saints Day in Poland.
Halloween 2012
With the Boy just getting over some congestion, there was only one option: a quiet, stay-at-home Halloween. Which would have been horrible for the Girl, except for the fact that a neighbor offered to take her trick-or-treating with her daughter and another friend.
Apparently “trick-or-treat” was less accurate a description than “pillage and plunder.”
There was one thing missing, though: a visit to knock on Nana’s and Papa’s door. Still, they weren’t willing to break that tradition, so they came to us this year.
And naturally, Papa monopolized the Boy.
Head Down, Finger Up
Dear JT,
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve come lately simply to ignore when you’ve put your head down in my class. There are enough behavior problems in that class to deal with that I don’t want to pick a fight, so to speak, with you. I know I’ll likely only get attitude, and even if you do comply, it’ll only be temporarily.
It bothers me because it’s disrespectful, but quite honestly, you don’t seem to care, and you’re only a kid, so like I said earlier, bigger fish to fry and such. Today, however, you were disrespectful to close to 10,000,000 people. Did you know it was even possible to disrespect so many people at the same time? I really didn’t either: I’d never really given it much thought. But when you put your head down and slept through our Holocaust-based writing exercise as we prepared to read Anne Frank’s diary, you basically put your middle finger up to all those who died in one of the evilest atrocities in history. For all intents and pursposes, you said,
I don’t care about you. I don’t care that you lost your family to a murderous regime. I don’t care that the last image you had of your child was of her being ripped out of your hands, screaming. I don’t care that you had the responsibility of burning the corpses of thousands upon thousands of gassing victims. I don’t care that you were “experimented” upon, shot, kicked, beaten, tortured, and treated like a roach. What I care about is that I’m a little sleepy now in first period, so screw you — I’m going to sleep.
I anticipate your response being something along the lines of, “I don’t care.” That’s fine. No one can make you care about anything. But if you find yourself one day alone, if you find yourself wondering if anyone in the world cares for you, and if you decide that the answer to that question is, “No, no one other than my mother,” perhaps you’ll know how those millions upon millions of Holocaust victims felt. And ironically, the fact that you put your head down during that class session would go a long way in explain why no one cared for you.
Then again, maybe that’s what you’re experiencing now. Maybe you already feel that way. It’s a bit presumptuous of me to suggest that I know you so well as to make such an accurate assessment. After all, I only see you for a small slice of your life. Still, it strikes me as a real possibility.
At the same time, there are plenty of others who have lived lives devoid of anyone really showing them any concern or compassion as children who have grown up to be perfectly empathetic individuals. (And there are plenty who have experienced the opposite.) I do know that you’ll have an easier time in life — a more fulfilling life — if you manage to purge “I don’t care” from your vocabulary.
Still caring for you, but with greater difficulty today,
Your Friend in Room 302
P.S. I said nothing to you when you put your head down the second time after I’d already asked you politely and privately to show some respect. I didn’t want to damage the atmosphere I had created in the classroom. I will, though, address it tomorrow.
Sitting
When you’re as heavy as the Boy (over twenty-one pounds at a little more than five months of age), it’s probably a little more difficult to sit up than for a more-average size baby.
Yet he’s begun sitting a bit — or rather, slouching.
Of course, it always helps to have something to grasp for support.
Babies
I understand radio and television stations had been counting down the days, but last Wednesday, the waiting ended. The Greenville Zoo tweeted, “It’s a boy! Greenville Zoo staff selected the name Kiko, meaning autumn’s child!”
To call him a “cute little boy” would be misleading: he’s cute, but he’s certainly not little, for he looks to be over six feet tall. Still, compared to Mama, he’s a shrimp.
The Girl and I set out this morning finally to get a look at him. With this tweet bouncing around Greenville, we weren’t the only ones: “It has been a zoo here today! Everyone wants to see Kiko! Tomorrow he will be out from 11am – 2pm”
The question of who had the best view changed from moment to moment as mother and son paced about the enclosure, with mother always keeping a close eye on Kiko, occasionally looking behind her to check on his progress, and frequently bending her long neck to give a reassuring nuzzle. Mothers do that, and I suspect they do it even when their babies are fully grown. At least we humans do it — looking at mother and son this morning, I couldn’t imagine it being any different among animals.
It’s tempting to say something like, “It’s fairly different for the giraffes and such because there’s no culture out there trying to pump their heads full of garbage” (yes, still stewing from yesterday’s post), but they face existential threats hourly in the wild: I suppose the stress level is about the same. Still, do baby giraffes do things that make their parents just cringe?
Probably. They probably even get dizzy just watching what their children do — that height probably doesn’t help much.
Still, as I watched the Girl after the zoo turning endless circles on this and that VIA( Vomit-Inducing Attraction), I started thinking that perhaps our lives are not so different, we and giraffes, or any other animal for that matter. We face our dangers, we teach our children to face them, and we hope that we’ve given them enough to survive, or thrive.
But I suppose giraffes don’t photograph their children as obsessively as we.
Dress Up
She’s growing up fast, but she’s still got some inches to grow.
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