New Park
Sunday
We had to get out -- just had to get out of the house. It was entirely too beautiful to miss out on.
We went to Conestee Park, a location I thought I knew perfectly. Entirely. Only to discover, I didn't
Saturday in the Yard
I spent an hour this morning preparing for next week's lessons, and though I'd already readied an article for next week's Article of the Week, I ditched those plans when checking the news, I realized what today was: the thirtieth anniversary of the breach of the Berlin Wall. The fall? Well, I guess so -- once it was breached, the Wall was no more a wall.
I watched those reports on CBS Evening News realizing the momentousness of the event though perhaps not its personal significance.
I say "perhaps" and not "certainly" because it's a question: would I have met K had the Berlin Wall not come down? Communist control in Poland at that point were already teetering. Solidarność's revolution, with Wałęsa at the visible helm, had already gained traction -- almost a decade earlier -- and gone underground again only to reemerge to take all available seats in the sejm just a few months prior to this significant day 30 years ago. Perhaps Germany could have remained divided while Poland transformed, but all those regimes were like so many dominoes or a Jenga pile: once one went, they all went. So I might have gone to Poland; I might have met K; but there are no guarantees, certainly.
From that spins out a series of eventualities that are far from certainties.
Had all that happened, it's hard to see that I would live in Greenville now, that I, after having planned and prepared for a week of lessons at a local middle school, would spend a late Saturday morning trimming hedges, pulling the remains of flowers, and mowing.
Where I would be, what my life would look like -- it's impossible to say. But it strikes me as odd that events halfway around the world helped set a trajectory that ended with me pulling purple hearts from the flowerbed as K took the Boy to rehearsal for the Polish community's annual Christmas pageant.
I prepared the Article of the Week assignment and decided that instead of the usual multiple-choice questions about bias and central idea -- all designed to prepare students for the standardized testing that will consume the final weeks of school -- I would ask them a simple self-reflection question: "What will be the Fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall event of your adolescence? What world event do you think could happen that would change the course of history permanently for the better?" And unlike all those silly questions that I have check, I'll be eager to read their responses.
Studying
Table Rock
Saturday Work
Halloween 2019
Halloween Preparation
L baked cupcakes for the party we'll be going to tomorrow evening.
The Boy and I made the jack-o-lantern.
Then the kids played Go Fish, even during a bathroom break...
Free Monday
Today was a teacher workday, one of three that we are able to take off without worry. Exchange days, they're called. If we've gone to meetings and such after school, we use those hours toward the time we would have ordinarily spent in school. I didn't have those hours, so I took a personal day.
E and I spent the morning working on the large tree that had fallen in the drainage ditch -- which we call a creek -- that runs behind our house. I knew that if we didn't, the first big rain storm would cause flooding.
I didn't realize how much of the tree was under brush and vines that I'm assuming it took down with itself as it fell. We cleared all that away so we could get to the tree, and we cut and removed as much as we could with just two of us.
E is of an age that he actually is starting to be helpful. I can pull on a large tangle of vines and have him cut the critical vines that are keeping everything locked and immobile. He can bring tools to me, help pull things up out of creekbeds, offer helpful commentary on the whole process.
Once we got that done and ate some lunch, we spent the afternoon at Denver Downs -- fun with hay, ropes, and corn...
Sunday
The Boy had been waiting to work on his project.
We'd been waiting for the tree to fall.
Final Soccer Game
Looking for a Place
Everyone is looking for a place. I see it every day as a teacher of eighth-graders who try on different roles throughout the year and toy with various career goals as the months roll by. Today, we tried to help them a bit by providing a career day -- probably close to fifty professionals came in to talk to kids about what their jobs entail, what they require, how they're rewarding, how they're frustrating. A little bit of everything.
We guided our homeroom classes through three sessions, and my homeroom's second session was with a police detective. It quickly stopped being about potential jobs and transformed into a "... ever ... ?" session. Have you ever shot someone? (No, but I've pointed my gun at someone.) Do criminals ever leave notes like in movies? (No, but we've investigated some guy who was harassing females by leaving weird notes under their windshield wipers.) Have you ever been in a car chase? (Yes, but he was intoxicated and our top speed was 38 miles per hour.) Do you ever question people in those rooms with the windows that look like a mirror? (No, our interrogation room has cameras, and any officer in the building can watch the interrogation from his or her computer.) The vet and waterworks specialist didn't get a third of the questions.
The Girl is looking for her own place as well, specifically a place to improve her volleyball skills in the off-season. We as parents thought this would be fairly simple; we thought she'd get into any club she tried out for. After all, she played for her school, which went undefeated and won the final championship tournament. She'll have her pick. So why waste time trying out for more than one? We never thought about the obvious: clubs that have their regulars will choose their regulars over newcomers. And so this afternoon, I got an email:
Thank you for attending tryouts for X's 2019-20 club season. We had a record number of players trying out this year, so unfortunately we were not able to place everyone on a team. We are sorry to say that your daughter has not been selected for a X team.
I sent it to K. She texted back the obvious: "She'll be devastated." And she was. And we felt like terrible parents because we didn't do the research, didn't do the thinking. "And now all the other teams have finished tryouts -- what are we going to do?"
I was angry because I thought, "If she doesn't have the requisite skills, how is she going to get them if you don't let her on your freaking team?!"
It turned out, though, that two teams had make-up tryouts. One was at six this evening. We learned this at 5:05. So off we went.
The club owner said at the end that every girl will get some kind of offer: "If your daughter wants to play volleyball, wants to learn volleyball, we want to help." Already, I liked the team.
Evening Walk With the Kids
Rest
It took weeks, no months, longer than we expected, perhaps we could say longer than it should have taken. Miscommunication, delays, mistakes. More delays. More mistakes. It's odd: had it been any other business, I would have reacted differently, we all would have most likely, but for some reason, we found we had more patience with a mortuary. Why is that? I don't know.
I do know that Papa finally feels some closure, he said.
Tuesday
Today’s the last day of the first quarter. It’s been the same as every year: I feel like the first quarter is dragging and suddenly, we have a couple of weeks left. Once that feeling of the year speeding by settles in, I feel like the year goes by in a blink. We’re in that period of work-break-work-break that always makes the first semester seem shorter than the second. In a few days, we have two days for fall break. Then we have three weeks before Thanksgiving. That’s followed by another three weeks before Christmas. And then a few more breaks in January and February before everything dries up and we’re all dying for any kind of break at all. March and April seem endless. And it’s just October and I’m already thinking about the end of the year...
That means the Girl's birthday is approaching -- officially a teenager, with all the joys and challenges (i.e., challenges to authority) that entails. And all the changes in relationships that entails -- the pulling away that I know is coming, is already manifesting itself, that I worry is something I'm doing wrong while simultaneously reassuring myself that it's normal behavior for this age, that I acted like that at this age, that my parents and I survived it as will the Girl, K, and I (and E -- don't forget about the effect it has on him) will live through it.
Still, I find myself thinking, "How can it be ten years ago that she looked like this? It just feels like a couple..."