matching tracksuits

A bright blue sky this morning, with the small, new leaves providing contrast, made it a morning full of bleary-eyed promise. That makes it sound like I really didn’t know what we would be doing during the day, that it was just promising. I knew exactly what I would be doing; K knew precisely what she’d be doing. I had a pile of mulch, a never-ending gift, that I was determined to spread through the entire universe (so it seemed I’d have to do to get rid of ten yards of mulch — ten yards! What was I thinking?)

We got an early start: with the Boy waking at seven in the morning, we were eating breakfast by half-past, and I was out taking care of a couple of small projects before tackling the mulch.

Still, with the morning sun giving the kitchen a golden glow, it was hard not to get excited about the morning. Right — whom am I kidding? We could have all used more sleep, all but the Boy.

Still, that blue sky, that warmth. I am lucky: all of my work in K’s and my division of labor is outside work. K stays inside, cleaning, cooking, helping L with her Polish lessons. So I really couldn’t complain this morning: blue sky, good coffee, work outside. Besides, my exhaustion was all my fault, staying up too late yet again on Friday night.

In the afternoon, Nana and Papa came over to help out. Papa sat with the Boy on the couch for who knows now long, playing cars, sometimes struggling to decipher the words that K, L, and I so easily understand.

We’ll make a video of it at some point, then find ourselves surprised in a couple of years when, watching old videos, we can’t understand him ourselves.

Being a parent means learning to let your kids learn. It's an age-old adage, but some days illustrate it more clearly than others. Or perhaps some days I'm just more aware of it happening around me.

Eight o'clock. The Girl decided she wanted finally to have her yard sale. She'd made the sign long ago, and every weekend, she'd been asking when she could have the sale. This morning, she decided she could wait no longer.

No advertisements on light poles on nearby streets. No cash to make change. Just a girl out in her front yard with some random items for sale: some toys she no longer played with, some books she no longer read, E's old stroller, the bike she's decided is too heavy and we've decided is too difficult for her to ride.

In the end, she sold one thing for one dollar. K and I of course foresaw all of this, but there was no convincing her, and we realized there was really no need even to try: this was a lesson best learned through experience.

More lessons: all one needs to have a rollicking good time for most of the afternoon is an empty cardboard box large enough to fit a seven-year-old and some paints for decoration. One of the neighborhood kids seems more in tune to screens than his own imagination. I found myself wondering what he would have done if he were visiting when W and L pulled out the box and began working. Perhaps he would have found it boring. Perhaps he would have jumped in and tried. The advantage of spending all your time in front of a computer game is that you can do it alone; the advantages of playing in a cardboard box -- more significant. Some of my own students' lack of imagination is simply stunning, so I was pleased to see so much joy coming from something so simple. Pleased, but not too surprised.

Yet another lesson: building a draining system for the newly installed blueberries was surprisingly quick and surprisingly easy. For once a project took me less time than I was expecting.

The Boy learned a thing or two as well. His obsession with trains has been waning, replaced by an obsession with Bob the Builder. Every single time he sees a dump truck or any other piece of heavy equipment, he begins his mantra, based on the Bob the Builder theme song. "Bob the Builder -- can we fix it? Bob the Builder -- yes we can!" For the Boy, though, it's somewhat truncated. "Bob the Builder" becomes "Bob-beaw" while "Yes we can" has mutated to "S-N!"

So as I finished up a little mini-project -- so small it was barely worthy of being called a project except for the fact that I had to head to the lumber store this morning -- I thought I might make him a little training ground. With some effort, managed to squeeze the trigger, so to speak; with a bit more effort, he managed to hold the drill; managing both at the same time was a bit much for a twenty-three-month-old.

And after lost interest in the screws but before he lost interest in the drill, he relearned another lesson. A fall was probably inevitable, and his tears were more from the frustration of falling than anything else. I knelt down to talk to him -- the typical dad "shake it off, big man" type thing -- and I realized I was still holding the camera. Click. (Well, not so much a click with a digital camera, and with shutterless digital cameras now emerging it will soon be silent, but I can't think of a proper onomatopoeic word to describe the sound of the D300's shutter sliding open and snapping shut.)

"Why would I take a picture of my son in tears?" I thought. And tonight, going through the pictures, I learned the next lesson of the day: it's a fragment of our daily reality, the tears of a toddler. Something I'll forget as it morphs into the tantrums that will continue from now until age thirty. Or forty-one in my case.

The final lesson of the day: K and I can get so much more done when Nana and Papa spend the afternoon with us, helping out with the kids, helping out with this or that aspect of planting Asiatic jasmine or sealing a poor construction. The list of accomplishments today is impressive, but more significant, the learning.