Saturday
Saturday
The Boy and I began the day early for a Saturday. My alarm went off at 6:15 but I snoozed it until 6:30 -- that was really the plan when I went to bed last night, I must admit -- and we both go up and had breakfast and cartoons (Tom and Jerry) before heading off to Clemson University for the annual Clemson Day for South Carolina Scouts.
It's supposed to be in the main stadium, which makes it a great draw for everyone, but this year, with the weather questionable, it took place in the football team's indoor practice area. (You know a football program is bringing in a lot of money for the university when they have a couple of outdoor practice facilities and an indoor one to boot.) Clemson football, soccer, volleyball, and track athletes ran the kids through drills and games for three hours, with each rotation ending with an autograph session.
"Parents, please remember that the autograph time is only for the kids," the announcer reminded everyone several times.
As I suspected, the Boy was not keen on participating at the beginning. He'd been excited about going when I first mentioned it many weeks ago, but the excitement had waned as the day itself approached, and he suggested that he might just stay with me on the sideline and watch.
I tied gently encouraging him, but he wouldn't budge. Finally, I went nuclear: "Buddy, I didn't get up at 6:15 on a Saturday to sit with you on the sidelines." Once he got out there, he was fine.
In the afternoon, a little exploring.
Wednesday Afternoon Exploring
We had a few minutes of sunlight left after dinner, so what did we do? The only thing there was to do -- head out to the wilderness that forms the border between our neighborhood and the one next to it and explore.
On the way down, the Boy taught me some ninja tricks, like how to sneak around. Quite a light step that boy has.
Every time we get back here, the Boy suggests that the next time we come, we need to bring some snippers and take care of all the thorns we have to navigate. I'm of two minds about this: on the one hand, it would ease our journey, and it would make some portions accessible. Still, the challenge is half the fun. And it gives us a chance to toughen up.
"Oh, I have a thorn!" the Boy will cry out.
"Tough it out. Push through it," I reply.
Plus, it's not our property, I explain...
Saturday Morning
Early February Sunday
It should have been a positive experience -- you don't expect to come home from a Cub Scout meeting with an upset little boy, but that's what happened. After the meeting, all the den leaders and assistants gathered for a quick meeting and the boys went off to play for a while. The Boy walked over last, and when he did, everyone decided to play Sharks and Minnows and declared that the Boy was the shark.
I instantly had a bad feeling about it.
"Minnows in!" E shouted enthusiastically, and everyone ran into the play area, dodged the Boy's attempts at tagging them, and made it to the other side.
"Minnows in!" E shouted, still smiling, still enthusiastically.
The same thing happened.
Then the taunting started. It wasn't mean-spirited taunting. "Nana nana boo boo you can't catch me" -- that type of thing. But the truth was, the Boy couldn't catch them. Several of them were just too fast because they were naturally faster or because they were older, and the Boy still has not developed a good Sharks and Minnows strategy. (Then again, who has?)
And so they continued. Two times. Three times. Four times. Each time, the Boy shouted "Minnows in!" with the same enthusiasm and smile, but I could tell it was starting to be strained.
Finally, after the fifth time, with the taunting increasing, I called the Boy over and said, "Time to go."
"Okay," he said. No begging to stay. No asking for five more minutes. Just a quick response and a jog over to my side.
As we left, one of the boys said, "I could walk to the other side, and you couldn't get me."
"How'd you feel about that?" I asked as we walked to the car.
"Bad."
We talked about it more on the way home, and the Boy declared simply, "Scouts are not supposed to act like that."
There was no real maliciousness in the boys' actions. They were just first- and second-grade boys being silly boys. But our boy -- the Boy, forever capitalized -- is especially sensitive to such things.
"I've learned I can't trust a lot of people," he confided on the way home.
It was a sad parenting decision, but I suggested that might be a good idea. Sometimes it's best to be a little skeptical about people, I explained, in simpler terms. "Trust is something we earn. Don't just give it away."
We got back to the house, snuggled a little, and everything seemed okay, but tonight, while brushing his teeth, he confided to K, "I just can't stop thinking about it."
Neither can I.
Competition
A random memory...
They were standing on the street toward the beginning of the flea market area, Jehovah's Witnesses in a decidedly devout swatch of a very Catholic country. Of all the Christian sects that have sprouted in America -- Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and hundreds or thousands of smaller ones -- it is only the Jehovah's Witnesses that have had any real success in Poland. According to the group's website, their numbers are as follow:
- 116,299—Ministers who teach the Bible
- 1,288—Congregations
- 1 to 330—Ratio of Jehovah’s Witnesses to population
It's a religion that can only cater to a certain population in southern Poland: according to the JW website, the nearest congregation is in Krakow, and its meetings are conducted in English, with some meetings in Mandarin. That narrows potential converts significantly.
My friend R and I encountered the JWs as we were finishing our wanderings with our children through the market. I've known R for twenty years. He lived in Warsaw, and we shared a love of chess. I'd often spend the weekend at his apartment playing chess most of the day and hanging out in bars during the evening.
He married shortly after K and I left Poland in 2005, and his wife, fluent in French, got an administrative job in Brussels working for the EU. They've lived there ever since. A few years ago, R underwent a religious conversion and became what could only be called a Polish Evangelical living in decidedly-secular Brussels.
We met up again when we were last in Poland, and he stayed with his two children at Babcia's bed and breakfast for a few days. We played a little chess, talked about parenthood, took our children to various sites, and discussed religion. A lot.
He had a few words to say about the JWs we encountered, and when I suggested we go talk to them, he balked. Indeed, he was right: what would an Evanglical and a highly-skeptical nearly-lapsed Catholic have to say to them? There's no point getting into a discussion that would likely devolve into an argument for no real reason at all.
I couldn't help but be curious, though. How did the local population receive them? Did they face hecklers? Did anyone act aggressively toward them? Catholicism and nationalism go hand in hand in the mountains of southern Poland, so I wouldn't have been surprised to find that they were also accused of being traitors as well as heretics.
If they're hanging around this summer while we're in Poland, I'll make the effort to talk to them.
Homework
Sometimes, everyone gets a little frustrated with homework.
Wednesday Virus
The Boy wanted to go to school today. He really wanted to go. Mainly because they weren't going to be in school -- it was field trip day to the local science center where they have a Tesla coil, explode hydrogen balloons, and generally thrill kids of all ages. But the rash he'd gone to bed with, the little splotches on his cheeks, had spread all over his body.
"E, we have to go to the doctor," K explained.
"But it's nothing. Look -- it will go away in no time."
She tried to explain to him the risks of passing something on to other children.
"They won't get it! I know they won't!"
In the end, he lost. The doctor said it was a virus going around. "He's through the worst of it, but you should keep him home today."
For today's pictures -- fifteen years ago in Budapest and Poland with Nana and Papa, when they came for our wedding. I was going through pictures this evening, revisited these, and did some editing.
Monday
When I got home from work, I asked the Boy if he wanted to go play outside -- to go exploring or something similar. With the coming cold spell, we have to make the most of the relative warmth while we have it. He was eager to go, and he was eager for L to join us.
He's always talking about doing things as a family. "When can we go on a family bike ride?" "When can we watch a family movie?" "Can we go on a family walk?"
L, now twelve, is starting to show typical teenager behavior, like a reluctance to hang out as a family all the time. She enjoys it, but she also loves "alone time" as she calls it.
Today, though, we were able to talk L into going exploring with us. The Boy, utterly thrilled, took the lead and instructed L how to cross the creek, how to scale the bank (of course she found her own way), how to navigate the thorny places.
Standing Still
Coming home this evening, L was playing a life simulator game on her iPod and mentioned that she was now forty-seven.
“You’re older than I am,” I laughed.
“No,” she explained, “you can change your age at the click of a button.”
“It’s a good thing you can’t do that in real life,” I replied.
What I had in mind was what I thought at her age: I can’t wait until I’m X years old. That always looking forward, always longing to be a little older, which struck around age six or so. “When will I be big?!”
“No, it’s a good thing,” she agreed. “I’d never press the button then.”
She was taking the opposite option, to which I replied, “Well, at some point, I’d just click the button for you.”
“Why!?” came the incredulous response.
“Because you’re not going to mooch off me for the rest of your life.” We both laughed a bit, but I got to thinking about what it might be like if we could have that option, if we could just stay one age for as long as we wanted to.
On the one hand, the nostalgic in me would love that, but what moment? While looking at the “Time Machine” posts at the bottom of the site, I discovered this shot from 2013:
The Girl was just a little younger than the Boy is now, and I hadn’t thought about how much different she was then than she is now. A six-year-old and a twelve-year-old are completely different people in many ways. Looking back, I can see traces of personality traits she now exhibits all the way back then, but the reverse wasn’t true: I had no idea how much she would change in six years (and, of course, how much she would stay the same).
Yet, within that little clump of nostalgia is a nightmare: if I chose that moment, then what about all the wonders that have happened since? Being stuck in one moment, after all, is what Bill Murray’s brilliant Groundhog Day is all about. But it’s more complex, because that film is really about being stuck in that moment without enjoying that moment, being stuck in a moment when all one does for one’s whole life is look toward other, more exciting moments.
I think I’ve lost the thread of where I was going with this, and that’s kind of the point perhaps. The key to life, rediscovered once again, is getting stuck in the moment by enjoying the moment so much that one doesn’t want to move forward but accepts the simple fact that that forward motion is, in fact, the moment itself. Axiomatic. The present doesn’t exist — it’s a sliver between the past and the future. That old chestnut. Living the moment means accepting that it’s just that — the moment.
So what to do in the moments of this afternoon? Go exploring, of course. Play in the backyard, of course. Enjoy the short bit of time we had between visits to Nana and visits to Papa and trips to church and more trips to church and cooking and lesson planning and everything that makes Sunday Sunday.