Sunday Lazy Sunday
Sick Saturday with Old Friends
"Door" in Polish is a strange word. Like "pants" in English, it's always plural -- drzwi. It's likely because it's etymologically connected to "tree" and "wood," and since old doors were made of planks, it makes sense to call them something like "planks" (though that's not what drzwi translates to literally).
This morning, the Boy went to tell K as she was getting ready for a shower that he'd heard a scratching at the door, that it was Bida, our cat, who was trying to get his attention so that he would let her in, that he heard it and wondered what it was, that he'd figured it out, and that he let her in. K stood patiently, towel wrapped around her, listening to this whole story patiently, then asked, in Polish, for privacy: "Could you please shut the door so that I could shower?"
He replied, in English: "I'll close them and lock them so no one will come in." He applied Polish grammar to English, pluralizing a word that would be plural in Polish but is singular in English.
The Nap
Some days, no matter how good you feel when you wake up, no matter how bright the sun, how promising the day, the thought of going back to bed just seems to linger throughout the entire day.
It’s not the haze of lack of sleep I speak of, that fog that seems to be almost physically discernible in the mind, as if a heavy set of drapes were spread across your brain. That is something that you shake off with your first cup of coffee, or on cold winter mornings, with that first bracing encounter with the early air.
This is somehow different.
Somehow, but not much.
Muffins
Tomorrow is the Boy’s snack day at pre-school. He’s making triple-chocolate muffins.
Leki
Our family seems to be a blended family in one sense: immunity to illness. It seems I never really get sick. K said the other day that she thought she could probably count all the times I've been really sick -- not just feeling a little bad and going to bed early one night -- during our marriage. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true: it seems that K makes up for my relative lack of illness.
So we were both a little curious regarding who would most influence our children's genetics in this regard. Obviously, the best case scenario would have been to take my immune system in its entirety and leave K's behind. Equally obviously, the worse case scenario would be the opposite.
The obvious happened: the kids got a bit of both, probably making them fairly normal.
Cheese and Water
- The Boy
- Is there cheese in that mac and cheese?
- Tata
- Yes. It wouldn’t be mac and cheese if it didn’t have the cheese, would it? It just just be mac.
- The Boy
- And watermelon, without water, would just be melon, right?
- Tata
- Right.
Photo by jspatchwork 
The Boys on the Trampoline
I sat in the Girl’s bedroom, helping her prepare for an English test tomorrow. Cobbler’s kids and all. We were going over how to remember the difference between interrogative sentences and imperative sentences when the Boy came in. We chatted for a while, and I encouraged him to leave us a lone so we could finish up the Girl’s test preparation.
“Okay,” he chirped and headed out, stopping at the door to ask me if we could spend a little time together after dinner.
Dinner complete, the Boy and I headed down to the trampoline as L and K went through the day’s Polish lessons. As we jumped, we found ourselves eventually lying on our backs staring up at the trees above us. For several weeks this summer, he was afraid that, as the wind blew, the trees could very easily come toppling down on us. Today, we just lay there watching the sun slowly disappear and the glow of the leaves slowly dissipate.
The Pianist and the Trampoline
The sun came up and light our backyard like it always does, but we often don't have a chance to notice and to appreciate it. Today, we still didn't get a chance to enjoy, to savor the light -- we were in our normal Sunday morning rush to get to Mass.
When we got home after Mass and religious education (for the Boy) and choir practice (for the Girl), snacks for everyone and a newly improvised hiding place. Then lunch, with the pianist from last evening and our near-family from further up north.
Everyone wanted him to play, and he obliged. But he, seeing our trampoline, suggested we should all go down and jump.
And so we obliged.
Concert
Artur, a young, up-and coming Polish pianist, gave a concert, arranged by the Polish community of Greenville.
Being Polish, he played a fair amount of Chopin. Only, he did it with a little twist.
Locker
It's really not always been a pleasant task, morning duty. I stand by my doorway, keeping an eye on the kids in the morning as they head out to their lockers in shifts (girls, boys, then late-comers) and keep an eye on my room as well. In some years, it's been horrific: because of the fact that the lockers for my class are, logically, more or less by my door, I'm surrounded by my homeroom class, and when it's a class that's challenging, it's exhausting. There's misbehavior in the hallway; there's misbehavior in the classroom -- watching one means neglecting the other.
This year, though, I have a class of high achievers for my homeroom, which always means few if any behavior issues. And just outside my door, one of the sweetest students I've ever had the pleasure of teaching has her locker. She always, always is in a good mood, and it's evident in everything she does.
Today I mentioned to her that I'd noticed that and really appreciated it.
"Are you always in a good mood?" I asked.
"Pretty much."
"Why?"
"I see other people happy, and it makes me happy."
Other people's joy makes her joyful. Such a radical notion, it seems, when you're jaded with the behavior of some of they challenging students, students who have such warped worldviews that it's difficult to believe it took only thirteen years to reach that level fatalism.
"Other people's happiness makes you happy," I said as I headed back into my classroom to get a paper for an student. "That's beautiful."