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Build and Destroy

Tuesday 02 February 2016 | 0 Comments

"Daddy, let's play!" chirps the Boy with such excitement, such genuine joy and anticipation, that it's difficult to say "No." Sadly, I do have to say just that occasionally.

"I'm working in the yard," I explain, and then he responds, "Oh, I'll come help you."

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Another time: "I have to grade papers." That's really a misnomer because most of my students' work is now online, which means I'm sitting at a computer when "grading papers." And so comes the obvious: "Oh, I'll just sit on your lap while you work."

Every now and then, though, I'm able to beat him to the idea. Such was the case tonight. "E, let's play."

"Let's play!" came the response.

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So we headed up to his room, discussing our options as we went. Whatever else might be involved, cars are a prerequisite. Want to build something with Legos? Fine, as long as it's a device to work on cars. Want to create something with wooden blocks? Great, as long as it's a miasto -- a city for his cars to drive around.

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Today, though, I thought we might try something new: an obstacle course.

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The ladies, in the meantime, were downstairs, struggling through Polish lessons. It can be a challenge. Part of it is the simple fact that it's more schooling after a day of school. But more challenging, I think, is the Girl's reluctance to make mistakes. She flies through work at school, catching on quickly and mastering skills without much effort, it seems. "Math is boring now," she says. But Polish? It's not so easy. It's not mistake-free. And even though she has a linguistic master in the house, she hesitates.

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Once she got the work done, though, she came up to join us.

And then disaster struck: "E, it's time for a bath. Let's clean up." The fact that we could rebuild did nothing to comfort him. The fact that I promised we could rebuild tomorrow did nothing to soothe him. Now is now; tomorrow is unimaginable. "But Daddy," he sobbed, "I have to get up, and go to school, and then we can build it." I can understand that frustration. I experience it. I see it in my students. And I see how some of them deal with it. So when the Boy and I finished with the clean up, and he was still sniffing, I took him in my arms and said, "That was a very difficult thing to do. No one likes to do something they don't really want to do." Perhaps in destroying, we were able to build some character.

"Okay," he said. And by bath time, five minutes later, it was completely forgotten.

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday 31 January 2016 | 0 Comments

Cooking

Tuesday 26 January 2016 | 0 Comments

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Snow Day 2016, Part 2

Monday 25 January 2016 | 0 Comments

Another day off school, another typical Greenville County Schools snow day -- not a bit of snow visible in our part of the county, but apparently enough snow in the north portions of the county to render things unsafe. And so we kept ourselves occupied today in a variety of ways -- details when you mouse-over.

Two Conversations

Sunday 24 January 2016 | 0 Comments

One

Mama, why does Daddy have bronchitis?

I don’t know.

Is he going to die?

No, honey.

Two

Daddy, hear that? (Slightly congested cough.)

Yes. Are you okay?

We were out for that spacer [walk] yesterday, and there was cold air, and I had it in my mouth, and I swallowed it.

Did you get some medicine?

Yes, Mama posmarować-ed [smeared] me with special olej [oil]. I’ll be okay in a few minutes.

Garbage-Bagging

Saturday 23 January 2016 | 0 Comments

"It's supposed to start around seven this evening," I explained. "That's what all the meteorological reports suggest." The slight bit of icy snow that frosted the ground yesterday was not enough to do much of anything, one would think, but when you're on the South, any amount of "snow" is significant for children. So the suggestion that we might have even more snow was the stuff of sweet dreams as the kids plodded off to bed. "Is it snow?" was the mantra of the evening, but they went to sleep with complete confidence with the weather reports, knowing that they were only off by the time.

From the moment they woke up, the kids were at the window, ready to go out, ready to play in the snow. "There's so much snow!" E chirped again and again. It's only the second or third time the Boy has seen snow, so any snow at all is significant. When Dziadek was sick a few years ago, K to the Boy with her for a visit in the middle of January, and so E saw real snow, deep snow, snow that covers everything and utterly transforms the whole landscape, but of course he doesn't remember it.

When we finally made it outside, we had a dilemma: the young man who was sledding with us yesterday had come in the morning and taken his sleds with us. What to do? "I guess we sled like I did when I was a kid," K said. And so we took an old sleeping bag -- though, properly speaking, it should have been straw -- and used it to stuff a garbage bag. K also thought we might try E's old inner-tube we used at the pool. "It's not like we use it anymore." As the finishing touch, our neighbors invited us to use their yard -- slightly smoother and with fewer trees.

When the kids came in, they were soaked. And that's as it should be.

Snow Day 2016

Friday 22 January 2016 | 0 Comments

We don't get much snow here in the South. Even an inch is enough to disrupt everything. We do get a lot more ice, I think. Even then, the slightest little bit makes the news. This morning, for example, a news caster commented on the fact that there were icicles on the trees, "And they don't fall off when I shake the branch." No joke.

Still, when we get a little snow, or even a little ice that is masquerading as snow, we make the most of it.

Relativity

Monday 18 January 2016 | 1 Comment

We recently decided to work with Compassion International and sponsor a child in need. We did our research; we determined the organization was reputable; we made the commitment. About the price of going out to dinner as a family once a month.

Our child is H, and he's an eight-year-old in Burkina Faso, a poor landlocked country in Africa. A few facts from Wikipedia:

According to the Global Hunger Index, a multidimensional tool used to measure and track a country's hunger levels, Burkina Faso ranked 65 out of 78 countries in 2013. It is estimated that there are currently over 1.5 million children who are at risk of food insecurity in Burkina Faso, with around 350,000 children who are in need of emergency medical assistance. However, only about a third of these children will actually receive adequate medical attention. Only 11.4 percent of children under the age of two receive the daily recommended number of meals. Stunted growth as a result of food insecurity is a severe problem in Burkina Faso, affecting at least a third of the population from 2008 to 2012. Additionally, stunted children, on average, tend to complete less school than children with normal growth development, further contributing to the low levels of education of the Burkina Faso population.

Nothing short of depressing. We feel fortunate to help, blessed to be able to help.

Tonight, we wrote as a family (more or less -- the kids were in and out) our first letter to young H. In writing it, I realized anew how ridiculous the Occupy Wall Street slogan "We The 99%" really is, how wealthy my family truly is.

We read in the material we received that there is a three-month rainy season in Burkina Faso, so we asked what that's like, explaining that it never rains here more than a few days in a row. I thought of our recent flooding in the basement, when the plugs for the termite treatment holes gave way and our basement flooded because of the hydro-static pressure. "The boy probably doesn't even know what a basement is, and he certainly doesn't have one," I thought.

While I was thinking about water, I thought of our problems in the crawl space, where a leak in the line from our sink to the refrigerator (a really old house) caused some substantial damage and necessitated mold remediation and the replacing of a large amount of insulation, something that's still on-going. These apparent "problems" for us are blessings. We have a refrigerator that keeps our food fresh. We have water from multiple sources in our house. One of his chores, in fact, is to bring water to the family. We use cleaner water in our toilets than H's family naturally has access to -- an absolutely absurd thought.

And so writing a letter to a boy growing up in complete poverty, a boy who would view us as absolutely unimaginably fantastically rick -- it was a challenge. "Ask him what toys he likes," L suggested. Later, helping E clean up his room, I realized that there, spread on the floor, were more toys than H has likely seen in his whole life in one spot. I thought about asking him what's his favorite subject in school, and then I remembered the fact sheet we received about him explained that he is currently not attending school.

These are of course almost cliche thoughts in the Western world. They are the stuff of dinner-table guilt trips: "You know, there are children in Africa..." We hear it all the damn time. But to have a name, a picture, a short personal history connected to the stories -- it makes a world of difference. Suddenly, terrorist attacks in remote countries have personal meaning. World Health Organization statistics have a face behind them. Stock images of houses made of scrap sheet metal become homes.

Last week, everyone in the States it seems was daydreaming and talking about what they'd do if they won the ridiculously huge Powerball jackpot. We could buy this and that; we could do this and that; we could pay for this and that. It's sometimes hard to remember in the midst of our conspicuous consumption that we are not the 99%. We are the 1%. We have already won the lottery in the eyes of most of the world. The question is, what are we doing with it?

Papa’s Hard Hat

Sunday 17 January 2016 | 0 Comments

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Śpij, kochanie

Friday 15 January 2016 | 0 Comments

“Daddy, I want to go to sleep.” And so I put up the book, turn off the light, and start the music.

The Boy rolls over on his back, and I rest my arm along his back, running my fingers through his hair gently. He stops moving, his breathing slows, and within moments, he’s asleep. Still I lie, continually stroking his head, rubbing his back. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and sinks deeper.

W górze tyle gwiazd,
W dole tyle miast,
Gwiazdy miastu dają znać,
Że dzieci muszą spać.

Just listening to the Polish lullaby gets me thinking of all the twists and turns it took to get me to this moment in which I’m listening to a song in a language I never dreamed of learning, thinking how appropriate the lyrics — “Above, so many stars / below, so many cities. The stars let the cities know / That it’s time for children to sleep” — are some nights when the Boy tosses and turns and turns and tosses as my Polish wife puts our daughter to bed in the next room. All those little twists and turns, those seemingly insignificant decisions that led to meeting, returning, dancing, flying — all the things that led to the present moment, the present family.

“It was fate,” some might say. “It was the hand of God,” others might rejoin. “It was a happy sequence of accidents,” still others might insist. Fate, accident, God — whatever the cause, I’m grateful for all the steps, trips, and slips that led to this moment. Remembering that on a regular basis, I think, is the key to happiness.