matching tracksuits

Last Things

Wednesday 31 December 2014

For weeks, he'd been saying it: "Mikołaj is going to bring me a police car!" And since Mikołaj knew of the Boy's fondness for Cars, he brought not just any police car, but the sheriff from the film.

Then, the day after Christmas, he lost it. The Boy is not one to lose things: he has a fantastic memory of where he left this or that, so K and I figured the obvious: it fell out of his pocket at some point when he was in the backyard helping me with the leaves. So the search began. We looked through leaf piles, walked about in the backyard, checked in the house just in case -- no luck.

Today, while out, L and K looked again. And much to everyone's delight, L found the sheriff, then reenacted the discovery for the camera.

I'm not sure who was more excited: E, because his dear sheriff was back, or L, because she found it.

Playing

Tuesday 30 December 2014

Cleaning

Monday 29 December 2014

It's been entirely too long. Our kitchen floor is a complete mess, and I'm itching to rip it out and replace it with anything at all. But I'm also itching to rip out the cabinets and basically everything else in the whole room and redo it all, so for now, I wait.

And we scrub it in a serious way every now and then.

Cuddle

Sunday 28 December 2014

Sleep

Saturday 27 December 2014

Long gone are the days when she was the first to wake up, probably because the days she was the first to go to bed are equally long gone. Nine, nine-thirty has been her wake-up time the last few days.

Christmas 2014

Thursday 25 December 2014

“We’ll take Easter,” K explained, “because we have the big yard for the Easter egg hunt. K and B will switch off with A and P for Christmas.” This year, it was K’s and B’s turn, and since A and P went back to Poland with their family for Christmas, it was a small affair.

K and B have a new attraction, especially for the Boy: Little K has grown up a lot. She’s toddling around, making messes, taking things from others’ hands, being a young toddler.

E tries to talk to her, but to no avail. “She’s not talking,” he exclaims sadly.Â “She can’t talk. She’s too little.”

For L, it’s a different story. A’s and P’s absence also means F and K are not there. Which means that L is the big fish. Which means she needs something to do.

So she ends her day as she began it: playing with a new Christmas toy.

Dual-Play

Thursday 25 December 2014

It’s fantastic when a single toy entertains both.

Wigilia 2014

Wednesday 24 December 2014

Our last Christmas in Poland was ten years ago. I could probably dig through some pictures and find shots from that day. There would be a lot that’s the same. K of course would be there, as would the compote, fish dish and some sort of soup — likely the same soup we served this evening.

There would have been similar pictures of preparation: of ironing, of setting the table, of getting kids ready.

There would possibly have been pictures of someone — K’s father? her mother? — reading the gospel passage about the nativity before dinner.

There would have been pictures of a grandchild (K’s nephew W) cuddling with babcia.

The changes, of course, would be in the people involved. Some present this evening would be absent from pictures of our last wigilia in Poland; some present then are absent from pictures of this evening. Some of the pictures could be recreated with older versions of the photo’s subjects while others can’t occur again in this world.

Certainly that is the draw of traditions: while the world is changing around us, while we ourselves are changing, there are a few things that remain constant, a few things we can count on.

There’s probably some psychological term for this need we have to organize our lives around traditions. Perhaps more than one because it seems that’s what obsessive-compulsive disorder is: taking “traditions” to the extreme. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say we’re all a little OCD in our own special ways.

Wigilia could certainly provide plenty of material for someone excessively obsessed with order as he sees it to get bent out of shape about. K and I used to be a little like that. Perhaps K more, since she did almost all the work and always had this image in her head of what it was all supposed to be like, sort of a Platonic form of the perfect wigilia dinner.

There was a time when, perhaps, our lack of authentic opłatki (how did that happen?!) might have been more emotionally problematic for one of us, or both. Perhaps, or maybe not. It’s hard to tell looking back. But yesterday, looking in the cookie and cracker section of the local grocery story, I found it amusing that I was looking for a substitute for something I could have easily found ten years ago at any number of stores.

Tonight, though, it wasn’t about the food, or the opłatki, or the compote, or the perfectly ironed table cloth, or the piles of baked goods, or even the gifts.

Tonight, it was about the little flashes of joy that the children experienced. L was thrilled, as always, with barszcz. (Not entirely — she prefers the Ukranian variety, made without the fermented beets that give wigilia barszcz its slight kick) The Boy was overjoyed that Santa had brought, as E had expressed countless times, a police car for him.

And everyone was happy about the deserts — that’s a tradition worth being OCD about.

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

Wigilia 2008

Wigilia 2009

https://matchingtracksuits.com/2010/12/25/wigilia-2010/

Wigilia 2011

Wigilia 2012

Wigilia 2013

Carols 2014

“Sound of Music”

And Repeat

Tuesday 23 December 2014

It’s the same every year. We’re Catholic — the sense of the importance of tradition is even present in our theology, so a Wigilia menu? Why, it’s really no trouble at all to repeat the same basic menu year after year. Sure, we change the deserts up every now and then, but even they are on a rotation, a three-year cycle like the daily Mass readings.

I end up with the same duty: mushroom and cabbage patrol. Occasionally, I get to cut up prunes for this or prepare the veggies for that, but by and large, my job doesn’t kick in until Wigilia itself, with the fish course.

But every now and then, I manage to change things up a bit.

Baking and Decorating

Monday 22 December 2014

The Actual Party

Sunday 21 December 2014

The Girl turned eight last week. Of course we had a party for her, but Nana and Papa, the Boy, Mama, and Tata -- well, it's an alright party, but most of the responsibility for screaming and hyperactivity falls on the head of the birthday girl herself. It's a big responsibility, and L made a valiant effort, with some help from the Boy, to roust everyone out of their chairs, but mainly it was the Girl's work.

What she needed was, say, three other girls, roughly her age, a load of sugar, some presents, and a sleepover party.

It is only then that the full silliness can blossom, for adults don't really appreciate a little girl's efforts to blow out her candles with a fully-open mouth like kids would.

05-DSC_1638 — Arranging the new earrings

Afterward, it was time to organize the gifts. Since the Girl got her ears pierced, all the presents had a common theme, and one cannot just toss dozens of earrings together into a chaotic pile.

Once the sun went down, though, we had only one option: the best lights in town, according to some. Over 350,000 lights, three months to set up, three more to take down -- an impressive show.

The adults wandered about, wondering about the motive behind the lights, which surely cost thousands of dollars a year; the kids wandered about, wondering about the free hot chocolate.

Modeling

Thursday 18 December 2014

In education, it's critical to model. Show, don't tell.

I teach a creative writing course, which is really "Digital Storytelling," but that's not one of the district-provided options for course titles, so I call it "Creative Writing" and do a bit of everything. Right now, students are working on NPR-style audio stories about school events. I thought I'd model it for them. It was kind of fun -- perhaps I have a future in radio...