The Boy finished his Jurassic Park Lego play set yesterday. Today, it fell apart, in part because of a poor design. K helped him put things back together; I added some stability to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
In the afternoon, we finally took down the Christmas tree while watching ski jumping from Zakopane.
The holidays’ end always brings a tinge of sadness. All the anticipation, all the preparation, all the excitement — all behind us now, gone in a flash. Sure, there’s one last hurrah with New Year’s Eve coming up, but that’s just one evening. For us, it’s never really had any tradition behind it like Christmas.
Tomorrow, K goes back to work, M and T return to Ashville, leaving C for a couple of more days. Life slowly transformed into the holiday season, and now — boom! — it’s back to normal. But that’s probably a good thing. Living this kind of life all the time would make it the new normal. We’d struggle to get through endless parties and celebrations just as we sometimes struggle to get through seemingly-endless weeks at work and school.
During a proper party, a proper family gathering, time seems to disappear into an eternally present “now” that blends effortlessly out of the last moment, imperceptibly into the next, a continuum of laughter. A proper Christmas day, then, should be like a proper party. And what better way to start the smiles than a pile of hot waffles.
And what better activity after breakfast than to help with the Lego set the Boy got yesterday? Truth be told, it was a challenge for me to understand those instructions at times, so it’s no surprise that high on his priority list was getting some help.
We build this knowing that as soon as the snow plow is completed, it will be a focus of attention for a few days and then disappear into its constituent parts into the growing box of Legos that now must contain well over a thousand blocks, what with all the sets he’s gotten and the Lego windfall he got from his sister a year or so ago when she decided she was too old for Legos. Of course, you’re never too old for Legos, but there is a period called adolescence when you might think you are.
In the early afternoon, we all went to spend Christmas lunch with Nana. We ate some split pea soup and chatted while the children took turns rolling about in the wheelchair in Nana’s room.
Back home for the afternoon, we passed the afternoon at the table with talking with Papa while the kids played in the backyard, E still in his nice Christmas clothes that required some work when he returned because there was no way he was going out to play and not wind up at the creek that forms our rear property line. If you’re a six-year-old who has a creek in your yard, you use it.
Finally, around four-thirty, we headed to our closest friends’ house, the godfather of E (and he’s proud to remind us of that regularly) taking with us E’s godmother — K’s sister in everything but name and DNA and so for many reasons, the closest thing we have to Polish family here.
And so the evening just began slipping away, punctuated by grand food, silly kids, discussions of camping and finding cheap flights to the Old Country, hot toddies and black coffee, jokes, singing, and just enjoying the fact that we have such good friends.
(Click on images for larger view.)
But the Boy didn’t make it. He put up a fight, tried to stay awake the entire party, but there was just no way.
Some things never change on Christmas Eve. Some things simply can’t. There must always be barszcz z uszkami. Always. Other things can come and go — trout as the main course; scallops as a side; mushroom soup (though it pains me to say it) can fail to appear — but barszcz z uszkami. It would be sacrilegious not to have it. Some type of kompot as well. Must be on the menu. The rest? Well, in the end, all of those things are just food — nothing more. Yes, food is more than food. There’s a communal element to it, but any food that’s prepared with care will produce the same effect.
The most significant element that can never change is family. The Christmas season without family is unimaginable, yet it’s a reality for thousands upon thousands every year. Many people in the service spend Christmas with their brothers in arms rather than their brothers in blood. Some spend Christmas alone from choice due to family tension or a highly dysfunctional family that is a family in name only.
Such was our change this year: with Nana in rehab after an extended hospital stay, we tried to carry on as usual in as much as was possible, but it wasn’t the same. You can see it in the pictures — something’s just not quite right there.
Everything was a little off from the start. We all went to Mass before dinner rather than after. No one was sure they wanted to go to midnight Mass, and since L was singing with the girls’ choir for the 4pm Mass, we all took care of our Christmas duty before dinner was even on the table.
Before Mass, the girls gave a little concert. I dutifully recorded the audio on my phone, but when it was time for the Girl to sing her solo — a Polish-language introduction to a Polish carol, which was translated for the rest of the choir into English — I fumbled about trying to switch to video and got neither. What remains? A bit of my all-time favorite carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”
They sang another favorite — “Angels’ Carol” by John Rutter — and a couple of others.
They also during the Mass — another Gabriel Fauré piece.
Everything else was the same and yet different: the well-wishing had a bittersweetness to it this year that’s usually lacking.
The gift sharing was lovely as usual, watching the excitement of the kids. But not seeing Nana and Papa “fight” over our family yearbook meant things were, once again, just a bit off.
But even in such moments tinged with temporary loss, there was a bit of brightness — we’ll appreciate it all the more next near when Nana is back with us.
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
Wigilia 2014
Wigilia 2015
Wigilia 2016
Wigilia 2017
While waiting for breakfast — a delicious quiche that a lovely student gave me as a Christmas gift — the Boy asked a simple question: “Daddy, does Santa even exist?” The question took me unawares.
“Well, if he doesn’t, how do you think you get those presents?” I asked in response after a pause.
“You guys do it!” he shouted with a grin.
I’ve always been a little reluctant about the whole Santa thing. On the one hand, it’s harmless fun. On the other, it does necessitate misleading your child. I decided that this was the opportunity for which I’d been waiting to encourage critical thinking.
“Well, how could we figure it out? What kind of an experiment could we run to see?” I remembered Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining the experiment his daughter ran with her friend to test the existence of the Tooth Fairy: they decided they simply would keep secret any lost teeth and see if the TF showed up. She didn’t. Simple.
E couldn’t think of anything, but we went through the logic behind the Santa story — or rather, the lack thereof. Using a Socratic-type questioning method, reached the following conclusions:
When L joined us at the table, the Boy relayed the whole conversation to her, and she began apologetics for Santa.
I’m still not sure where the Girl stands on Santa. Surely she doesn’t believe anymore, but we’ve never had a conversation about it. And it’s just like the Girl to play devil’s advocate in such a situation.
In the end, the Boy stood more skeptical on the issue, and we decided that, even if Santa doesn’t exist, it’s fun to pretend he does. Perhaps that’s the best stance.
As a teacher, I often don’t always say the things I want to say. Most would interpret that negatively: “He doesn’t call kids jerks when he thinks they are.” That’s certainly the case, but for not so obvious reasons. Most obvious is the lack of professionalism such a pronouncement would exhibit, not to mention cruelty. More to the point, though, I don’t really experience that because I rarely — not never, but very, very rarely — hold such an opinion of a kid. They are, after all, kids. They’re still learning, still growing, and their impulse control and social skills are often simply not up to par because of a lack of maturity or a lack of consistent examples. I could count on one hand all the kids, over twenty years of teaching, that I just didn’t like as people. I haven’t met such a kid in several years now.
What I had in mind is the flip side of that — as a teacher, I don’t always tell a kid when I’m absolutely in love with some part of his journey, some portion of her personality, some facet of his persistence, some element of her youthful excitement.
I certainly tell a lot of kids a lot of positive things. But those moments seem relatively few and far between.
Why don’t I say those things? Probably because of a sense of vulnerability that seems to include for myself. Possibly because of a worry of how it might be taken. Perhaps because of a lack of time.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of occasion, some sort of event, that seemed actually to encourage such things?” I thought. And thinking back to my seven years of teaching in Poland, I realized such an occasion exists, just not in American culture.
In Poland, though, a tradition that invites such honesty has existed for centuries: sharing the opłatek.
I’ve done it for several years now, explaining it to the kids with a slide show and a bit of explanation about Christmas in Poland and substituting pizzelle from Aldi for the actual wafer.
This year, instead of just taking pictures, I participated. I always had a pizzelle in hand, but I waited for students to come to me; this year, I went to them. And told the shy kids who were coming out of their shell how exciting it was to watch them, to hear them assert themselves, to see the faces of other students as they share their often-striking ideas. I told the troubled students how much growth I’d already seen, how much I was rooting for them, how much it irritated me when I had to ask them to leave the classroom because their disruptive decisions were robbing others of opportunities. I told the kids who had started doing their work after a quarter, perhaps a quarter and a half of apathy, how proud I was of them.
And in return today, I got the loveliest Christmas card I have ever received from a student, thanking me for my words, thanking me for my encouragement and motivation, and assuring me that she was my favorite student.
Perhaps, but she’s tied with 120 others this year.
We’ve heard about it all week, which is typical here in South Carolina. Yet it’s so unpredictable that forecasters no longer call it “a winter storm” or “a snow storm” but rather “a winter weather event.”
At the beginning of the week, the story had it that it was supposed to start Saturday morning. There would be tons of snow or tons of ice or both. And what fell would stick around for a while, because the temperature was supposed to stay low for some time.
A bit frustrating — using up a snow day just a couple of weeks before winter break. The make-up day switches to a regular school day, and we lose that little respite in March or April when we actually need it.
But in the end, there’s little purpose in fretting about it. The weather is out of our control, and the decision to cancel school is out of our control.
What was in our control today was how to spend the rainy, cold evening. We’re probably the last on our block to put up our Christmas tree, but we have an excuse: K’s Polish roots require — demand — a compromise on the “Up Just After Thanksgiving” (or, these days, before Thanksgiving) “Down On Boxing Day” American tree tradition and the “Up a Couple of Days Before Christmas Down at the End of January” Polish tradition.
We go mid-December to mid-January. Today I guess we were a little ahead of schedule.
And the snow? As I write, there’s a light dusting on everything and more coming.
