Day 45: Checkers and Rain
general
Day 44: Chess and the Mess
“Daddy, let’s play chess!” Normally, I wouldn’t say no to this. I enjoy sharing chess with the kids, so when the Girl suggested we play this afternoon, I was more than willing. She went out on the deck, where Papa was taking his afternoon fresh air, and began setting up the board. And then I had the idea.
“Why don’t you ask Papa if he‘d like to play?” I suggested.
Papa used to be obsessed with chess. He taught me how to move the pieces and then nothing more. This was because, by the time I came along, he’d given up chess. It was taking over his life, he said. He was lying in bed thinking of lost games. I know that feeling. So I wasn’t sure if he would play a game with her. But of course, I knew he would — he’s not going to turn down his granddaughter.
It was an up and down game. I sat by them, reading Paul Auster’s The Locked Room, looking over every now and then to see how things were going. Papa was up; L was up; Papa was up; L was up. It was a very uneven game until the end, when L just fell apart.
During all this, E was Facetiming his best friend from school. They were talking about Pokemon, baseball cards, favorite cartoons — second-grader stuff. He’d suggested it to his friend while the whole class was having a Google Meet in the morning.
“E, do you have a question?”
“Yes! I want to ask N when he can Facetime because it’s been ridiculously long since the last time.” And so we set it up for this afternoon.
Once he came outside and saw the chess game, though, he wanted to play Papa.
Things didn’t go much better for him — Papa went undefeated today. Which was good for Papa.
In the evening, L decided she wanted to bake cookies and try a formula for homemade Playdough. One might think this is something that would thrill parents, but K and I have learned: the Girl is not the best cleaner. She talks fast, walks fast, and cleans fast, which means she cleans poorly. It’s a thirteen-year-old thing, I’m certain. Tonight was no different. So I called her back down to the kitchen and pointed out the little things she’d missed.
She fussed; she argued; she pouted. But in the end, she did it.
Day 43: Cooperation
School in the morning.
Pierogi in the afternoon.
Games in the evening.
Day 42: The Sermon and the Wall
The Sermon
I went out for a walk this morning. It was sunny and warm, and everyone else was busy doing something, so I couldn't resist. Listening to The Brothers Karamazov as I walked, I heard an amplified voice over the reader's voice. Sometimes, when the conditions are just right, we hear the announcer at the local high school's football games. Of course, there are no such games now, and there wouldn't be any on a Sunday anyway. I paused the recording, stopped walking, and listened carefully. It took a moment, but I realized that it was a preacher delivering a Sunday morning message to the faithful as they sat in their cars. Drive-in church service.
As I walked a little further, I heard a little later furious honking coming from that direction, as if twenty or thirty cars were all randomly honking their horns. I took the earbuds out again and listened for some time.
Through the trees, I heard, "But we don't have to fear death! Christ Jesus has conquered death!" Fairly typical evangelical formulation. "Isn't that wonderful?" And then the horns began again, and I realized what was going on.
"They're honking their amens," I muttered to myself.
The Wall
The kids have taken the back corner of the house as their practice area: the Boy kicks his soccer ball against the wall; the Girl uses it for volleyball. They decided to use chalk to make some targets to practice accuracy.
The Girl had it all planned out. Colors, target shapes, everything. And then the Boy "messed it all up," using colors at random for no other reason than wanting to use that particular color. And so they cleaned it and began again.
Day 41: Cleaning
Day 40: In the Creek
Day 39: Rain
It rained today. Almost the entire day. Being stuck at home is not that bad when we can go outside, but being stuck in the house makes for a long day. In the grand scheme of things, that’s a petty issue, I realize. But such was our reality today.
What’s more, E swears he’s tired of all the games. Sorry? “No!” Monopoly? “No!” Uno? “No!” He was up for chess, but one can hardly play three-person chess.
Well, it exists, but I’ve never played it, and we don’t have a board.
Day 38: Hybrid Walk
This evening's walk was a hybrid: the kids wanted to go exploring; we wanted just a normal walk. So we began in the woods, then emerged in the adjacent neighborhood and headed back to the house the long way.
The Boy snapped pictures most of the way. And, somewhat predictably, the Girl, seeing E having all the fun, wanted to take a few pictures herself. Well, that sounds a little too cynical: she has expressed a slight interest in photography, but there is always that thirteen-year-old aspect to her that, well, I don't know. She's thirteen. That's really all we need to say.
On the way back, so much silliness. I can't remember the last time L, E, and K were so silly with each other, laughing at nonsense, making more nonsense just to make everyone laugh all the harder.
And Clover and I the only ones keeping things serious. Sort of.
We got back with time to spare before I had to start getting the Boy ready for bed. For our reading, we continued with what we've been slogging through for some time now: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's not that it's a bad book: E insists that Verne is a master of cliffhangers. But he does seem to get a little carried away with himself. For example, one chapter begins thusly:
The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, "the great sea" of the Hebrews, "the sea" of the Greeks, the "mare nostrum" of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto still dispute the empire of the world!
It's not a passage for a seven-year-old. "What's 'par excellence mean?" "Who were the Hebrews?" "What are Greeks?" "'Mare nostrum' -- what's that?" "What does 'embalmed' mean?"
The next chapter -- the very next chapter -- begins thusly:
The Atlantic! a vast sheet of water whose superficial area covers twenty-five millions of square miles, the length of which is nine thousand miles, with a mean breadth of two thousand seven hundred—an ocean whose parallel winding shores embrace an immense circumference, watered by the largest rivers of the world, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Plata, the Orinoco, the Niger, the Senegal, the Elbe, the Loire, and the Rhine, which carry water from the most civilised, as well as from the most savage, countries! Magnificent field of water, incessantly ploughed by vessels of every nation, sheltered by the flags of every nation, and which terminates in those two terrible points so dreaded by mariners, Cape Horn and the Cape of Tempests.
"Jules, you're killing me!" I wanted to yell. But it did give us some laughs.
In truth, though, I've been skipping -- sometimes rather liberally. Take this passage from tonight's chapter, for example:
Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass. The massive rocks were rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving. My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road, or some frightful claw closing with a noise in the shadow of some cavity. Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of the darkness. They were the eyes of giant crustacea crouched in their holes; giant lobsters setting themselves up like halberdiers, and moving their claws with the clicking sound of pincers; titanic crabs, pointed like a gun on its carriage; and frightful-looking poulps, interweaving their tentacles like a living nest of serpents.
That got cut to this:
Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass.
I've determined that I'm not a fan of such novels, which seem to be nothing but a litany of adventures leading to -- to what? Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil want to escape, but thus far, there's been precious little talk of it and a lot of chatter about all the marvels Nemo is showing them.
Fortunately, the Boy agrees in part: we can do without all the descriptive flourishes -- let's get to the action. And through it so we can read something else. Perhaps Tom Sawyer?
Day 37: Tuesday
The Boy was at it again today -- 177 photos spread through the day, from morning to evening.
Today, he got some really good shots. Part of that came from experimentation: I let him use a telephoto zoom, which helped him fill the frame more that he's done the last two days. He liked it, but in the end, he preferred the little prime lens he'd been using. "It's so much less bulky!" he exclaimed.
He also learned a little lesson: not everyone whats to be photographed all the time. The Girl, for example, appears less frequently in here because she's increasingly resistant to photographs. (What 13-year-old wants dad writing blog posts about her?) During dinner, then, he asked everyone who's willing to let him photograph them. Only L opted out.
But he still snuck a few shots, much to her frustration.
"If you're a spy, it's okay to take pictures without permission. Otherwise, it's not a good idea," I said.
Excitedly, he heard what he wanted: "If I were a spy I could..."
"But you're not." I could envision him redefining that word to suit his own purposes.
I'm afraid, though, that I might have encouraged it the other day.
"What do you like taking pictures of, Daddy? What's your favorite thing?"
"I like taking pictures that show people just being, just doing what they do every day without thinking about it." If I had more guts, I might be able to parley that into a gig as a street photographer, which in its own way is a certain kind of spy.
There was a little photo session after dinner, with the Boy getting a few poses out of K. He walked over to her and manipulated her arms into the position he wanted -- something like a dab -- and then took his position. "Perfect."
Day 36: The Photographer!
The Boy is hooked -- for now. But still, hooked. I gave him our old Nikon D70s (older than L) and a 35mm lens, which on a crop sensor like the D70 is like a 50mm lens on a film camera (in other words, what all of us who learned to shoot with film started with), and told him to look for two things: interesting light and interesting lines.
He didn't always take that advice -- he did what everyone fascinated with photograph does in the beginning. He took pictures like crazy. 266 pictures, to be exact. I chose eight from them, chose a preset for each one in Lightroom and did no other editing.
This is probably the only post I've had here without a single one of my own pictures...