fun in threes, sometimes fours
“G, oh G, why did you do this?”
I was in the kitchen, having just returned from taking out the compost and checking on our garden — removing suckers from the tomatoes, looking in wonder at just how prodigious our cucumber plants will be, winding our bean stalks around the twine they’re supposed to be wrapping themselves around — and so I was confused. “What did I do?”
“You mixed the dirty clothes in with the clean.”
“No, I didn’t. I was in the garden.”
All eyes fell on E, our little helper.
The chocolate treats we sent L’s teachers were such a hit we decided to do the same for E’s teachers. And when I say “we” in that sentence, I mean K.
We were heading out to check the mail this afternoon, L riding her scooter and E in my arms, when a old, loud pickup truck roared up the street. The Boy waved furious and shouted, "Hi Truck! We going to eat meatballs!"
In short, the Boy gets excited about the prospect of Swedish meatballs.
L spent much of these last few weeks in school working on a book during class writing time. All students were required to write their first book, and K and I were pleased and proud that L’s topic had only very little to do with Frozen.
We were in the backyard, blowing bubbles, chasing bubbles, popping bubbles -- just a bit of outside time between our return from Mass and the Boy's nap time.
Suddenly, Mama appeared.
"I've got surprises for you two!" she said, in Polish of course. "Today is Dzień Dziecka."
It sounds so much more natural to me in Polish: Children's Day. Nah. Dzień Dziecka. In the States, we only have Father's Day and Mother's Day; Poland adds Children's Day, Grandparents' Day, Siblings' Day, Uncles' Day, Aunts' Day, Cousins' Day, Second Cousins' Day, Cousins' Twice Removed Day. Well, perhaps not to that degree, but they don't stop at just two family days.
One could argue that every day is Children's Day, especially in big families. Still, it's nice to have an excuse to give kids a little something to make them smile, like new books or a new train for a growing Thomas collection.
They come in as strangers, and by now, their reactions and behavior are almost predictable. I have only a few more days with these students who've undergone so many transformation in less than a year, and then soon, they'll be strangers again. One or two will send an occasional email, that's certain; I'll see one or two here or there every how and then. Some have younger siblings, so I'll see them at awards nights in the future or in the car line if their sibling is the first dropped off. The rest, though, disappear for all intents and purposes, as I repeat the process next year, learning new names, new faces, new habits.
How do I know if it's been a successful year, though? What metric allows me to make this determination? Is a letter from a student enough? Are test scores enough? (Our principal informed us that our End of Course exams for high school credit courses were the best "in a long time." Is that a good metric?)
This year, our garden is much bigger than previous years: more than double the size, in fact, which only means we've added two more raised beds. We had slowed down significantly the last couple of years because of the additional joys and responsibilities the Boy brought, but now that he's growing, so is our garden.
Gardening is one of those things that reminds me how much I've changed as I entered adulthood, married, and become a father. As a teen, or even in my early twenties, I couldn't imagine spending the amount of time I do setting up lines for beans to crawl up, hunting suckers on young tomato plants, looking at several sprawling cucumber plants and wondering if they can be enticed to climb (they can), examining leaves of radishes to determine what's eating them -- and doing all this willingly and even enjoying it.
