Three girls in the Girl’s room. It’s Memorial Day, so they have the day off. As such, they do the logical: they play school.
friends
Sunday Afternoon
First
F must have heard it a dozen times today. “You won’t remember your baptism,” all the “aunts” and “uncles” would have begun, “but you’ll always remember your first communion.”
The rainy weather will also stick in your memories — the huddling under umbrellas as you make your way from the parish center to the church, some more others less worried about getting soaked. With so much white on parade, there must have been worries about soiling the all-white outfits so many wore.
But everyone made it inside relatively safely, with F standing toward the rear of his line stiff as a soldier.
“You won’t remember your baptism,” he would soon hear, but those are words from people baptized in Poland in infancy, like the vast majority of Poles. “You won’t remember your baptism” is much like saying “you won’t remember your birth,” but it’s not always quite the case.
Some of us have such a memory. The same priest who baptized me two years ago gave the homily today, the same kind of warm, welcoming homily he always gives. Our dear Father Theo from Columbia, a man from whom his love of God almost glows.
“Welcome, my brothers and sisters, to this holy place,” he begins every Mass, and though he says it consistently, it always sounds fresh and inviting.
But today wasn’t about the homily, or the hymns, or the responsorial psalm. Today, it was about a group of kids taking their first communion — as big an event in most Catholic families as a wedding, I’d wager.
Indeed, in a Polish family, the similarities are striking. Both are highly social events, always including a large party afterward with food and drink, conversation into the evening.
#28 — Chance and Good
Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good.
The element of chance in our lives would probably overwhelm us if we knew its extent. A decision not to go with a newly-founded school’s students on a field trip to the Baltic might lead to a chance invitation to a bar where one meets a new friend. A chance meeting of one’s student with the friend’s neighbor might get you both invited to an eventual wedding, where one suddenly discovers that the friend is really someone more wonderful than one imagined.
And from that string of chance — or is it more? — comes good. And so beauty.
A chance walk on an uncommonly warm February day might lead to a meeting that leads to a dear friend.
Contrasts
One day, a day of brilliant sun and warmth. A day of walking and running on boardwalks and paved paths throughout Conestee Park.
A day of friends giggling laughing freely.
A day of a little boy standing a little taller.
A day of friends.
Another day, a day of rainy departures.
I think we all agree: the first day was better.
Flying and Dancing
They’re not sisters, but they often act like they are, and occasionally they look like it, as well.
Of the three of them, L and T are certainly the most similar. Full of energy, always on the move, ever chattering, constantly seeking some kind of little bit of excitement.
L is a little weary to try something new until she sees someone else do it — like leaping from someone’s shoulders as they explode (as much as my tired legs can make them explode) from the water. She leaps prematurely at first.
Then, after watching T do it a few more times, she gets the hang of it. Timing the jump is critical, and she flies into the air so high that I suddenly worry that perhaps it’s too high. Sure enough, it’s a touch too high once, and she lands on her belly — her first belly flop, and she comes up howling.
Soon enough, though, it’s all giggles and laughs again.
And as suddenly as it started, it stops, as a heavy, sudden shower chases from the pool. But why? There’s no thunder, no threat. The youngest girls, realizing this, understand the implication.
“We can play in the rain!”
Why not? They’ll learn to see the rain as inconvenient soon enough.
Drop In
Old friends dropped by on their way home from the beach.
A trio of giggles and silliness ensued.
And as the two girls ended up spending the night,
story for all four girls in the house.
I wonder when they’ll actually get to sleep…
Sources of Joy
Having someone play with you and your dolls is a great source of joy. “Pretend she’s…” begins most every sentence — and this time, the playmate will actually play along with the request.
Being surrounded by dogs thrilled to be with you and eager to show you is an endless source of joy. It lasts as long as the dogs’ energy, hence it is truly seems infinite.
Having a good stretch after filling your belly is joy that at its very center is complete contentment.
For good friends, it’s something a simple as sharing food — a freshly-picked cherry tomato or a plate of pierogi.
Untameable tomato plants that tower above you are a promise of present and future joy.
And the greatest source of joy is seeing all those you love happy.
Perfect Days
Some days are simply perfect.
Some days are filled with just enough of the adventure of the new and the comfort of the known to keep your eyes open but your spirit relaxed.
Such days are filled with napping and affection.
Such days have just enough hint of gray
that we appreciate the smiles that follow.
Some days are filled with friends and family, smiles and conversation, and the comfort of knowing that you belong just where you are.
These days have a hint of belle epoque and impressionism.
And they smell like dogs.
Apples 2011
It’s a yearly tradition now, the herald of autumn, and if we lived in a colder climate, it would serve as a bookend to the summer.
The selection is diminished at this time of year: the McIntoshes are long gone, if that’s your apple. Honeycrisp tress are long bare, and Pink Ladies are still not ripe. Of course, there’s always Red and Golden Delicious, as well as Granny Smiths, but those are at the very bottom of our list of favorites.
There are a few Cortlands on the tress, though, and if you look hard enough, you’ll find a McIntosh or two still hanging around.
And of course there are loads of Fuji apples.
We can easily fill the baskets with Fuji, and the Girl adores that particular cultivar.
The apples, of course, are only a means to an end, which is spending time with close friends.
The Things We Leave Behind
Immigrants bring all sorts of things with them when they move to a new country. They bring items of their culture: language, songs, recipes.
They bring a love of native-language literature (even if it’s actually translated from another tongue) that excites them beyond words when they find someone else who seems to love a given book as much as they do.
But one thing they must leave behind is the confectionery that brings a smile to their faces and warmth to their hearts.
Return to Table Rock
The plan was simple: get up at a reasonable hour, drive two hours to a spot in northern Georgia, and be awed at the fantastic views of a canyon known as the “Grand Canyon of the South.” But such plans begin taking shape the evening before, and when the evening drifts into the morning and all the adults are still awake, the likelihood of the plans coming to fruition diminishes greatly.
The backup plan — the realistic plan — was a return to Table Rock State Park. At only forty-five minutes away, it seemed a more logical choice for a late start. Being in the mountains, it also seemed a more comfortable choice.
We hiked the trail we always tale: Carrick Creek trail, appropriate both for its length (four-year-olds can walk only so far) and for its scenery, which is both beautiful and, more importantly for the kids, amusing. (Who doesn’t love playing in waterfalls or slipping and sliding on moss-covered rocks?)
The hike was more engaging with a game, so the kids had a contest: who could find the most trail markings on trees? It’s a common game we play with L to keep her interested in the walk. We played it in Slovakia a year ago, and every time we’re on a trail by ourselves, we encourage the Girl to look for the signs.
Despite the fact that both contestants marched right by trail makers without noticing them as they tried desperately to be first (apparently it was a dual contest), the game ended in a tie, which was frustrating for both the kids but a relief to the adults: one less wound to soothe. No one likes to eat a picnic when one of the diners is tinged with tragedy, feeling the sting of an unfair loss.
Any heated tempers would have been quickly cooled, though: the lake’s swimming area was closed, leaving only one option for cooling off after an arduous mile hike.
Out
When you live where the temperature in late July usually makes one feel as if one or more vents from the superheated underworld has been left open, an evening on the back deck is an almost shocking rarity.
Best Friends
At what point does “best friend” cease to mean “someone you argue with best”?
Probably never.
Sześć Bab
I’ve always been fascinated by children of mixed culture, children who speak language X at home (Spanish, Hindi, German, you name it) and English everywhere else. Attempting to raise just such a child has shown me how difficult it can be.
The Girl understands Polish perfectly; she doesn’t speak it unless highly motivated. Part of that is due to living in a mixed household: I don’t always speak Polish around the house. (“Always?!” K would ask incredulously. “How about rarely?”) Additionally, the Girl spends her days in daycare with other English speakers. Polish is that language of babcia, dziadek, and her cousins.
“What you need to do is send her to Poland for the summer,” an acquaintance at the swimming pool advised. “She’s not too young!” the lady assured us over K’s protests that it was a bit much to force on a four-and-a-half-year-old.
Days like today, though, help: Polish friends from Asheville came for a day visit. That made three little girls in the same situation: perfect understanding of spoken Polish who exhibit great reticence to speak it themselves.
The hope was that, the two friends, just back from Poland and spending every day with babcia for the last couple of weeks, would speak Polish with the Girl. But if siblings of immigrants speak English to each other (which they usually do), it was perhaps only wishful thinking to hope that the three would break into unrestrained Polish.
In the living room, however, it was a different matter altogether.
In and out ran the girls; English to Polish to English ran their conversation.
Perhaps there was improvement; perhaps not. Perhaps that’s not the most important concern.
T’s First Communion
St. Stephen’s Day
Just before noon everyone begins heading home. Snow on the ground, wet roads, freezing conditions — perfect weather for sandals and a drive to the mountains. As some of our guests head off to the mountains of western North Carolina, L has other priorities: a snowman.
We’re lucky: the snow is wet and heavy, easily rolled into balls. Indeed, we could roll up all the snow like a gigantic carpet: it picks up snow, leaves, grass, and all.
When I was growing up in southwest Virginia, I rare saw snow, and even more rarely saw wet snow. It was most often dry, powdery snow good for skiing perhaps, but of little use to neighborhood kids wanting to create snow forts and have snow ball battles.
This snow is as easily rolled as insulation or blankets. In fact, it’s almost too easy.
As K directs everyone to the front yard, we realize that carrying the growing snow balls is almost impossible.
“Roll them,” K instructs simply.
Which means the snowman will be bigger than originally planned.
By this time, L has lost interest and is more concerned about whether or not she’ll get to make a snow angel.
“We might be able to just before going in,” I tell her. “But it makes you very wet, so we’ll have to go in right after you’re finished.”
A tricky situation: L is sick (as seems to be the new Christmas break tradition — three years in a row), but snow is so rare, it seems a shame to herd her back inside so quickly.
We finish up the snow man, snap a quick picture, then return to the warmth of tea and dry clothes.
The theme of warmth and tea continues through the evening: a last dinner with friends to bring the 2010 Christmas season to a close.
The familiar gender segregation returns, with the ladies in the living room, the gentlemen still at the dining table,
and the kids watching Toy Story — probably for the tenth time for L.
Things wind down: time for children to go to bed and K and others to prepare mentally for a return to work tomorrow.
A bittersweet moment in the end: it could be the last Christmas we spend with one family, as they’re contemplating a return to Poland. Maybe we’ll get together next year; maybe we’ll only be able to share Christmas wishes over the phone. But for now, we depart, looking forward to Friday’s Polish New Year’s Eve party.
Christmas 2010
“There’s a forecast of snow,” was the rumor running through the house. “It’ll be the first snow during Christmas since the early 1960’s.”
By the time the guests arrived in the late afternoon, there were flurries. The temperature stayed above freezing, but the snow and festive mood led to the only logical conclusion: toddies for everyone.
The evening continued, as did the snow and conversation.
The usual gender self-segregation gradually developed: the ladies in L’s room,
the guys in the basement, and the children moving back and forth between.
Visiting friends’ dogs and the pool table seemed to have an inordinate draw for the kids. I remember as a child the fascination I too held for the concept of billiards. It seems like the perfect kid’s game, which I guess it is: flat surface, lots of balls, purposeful collisions. Sort of like a demolition derby.
I excused myself for a few moments to take some photos of the house in snow. I tromped through the first Christmas snow in almost fifty years, thinking about the privilege inside and out, that having close friends is as rare and dear as Christmas snow in the south.
Visitors
Moving provides the great disadvantage of distanced friendships. Folks we used to see on a regular basis become rare visitors, and vice versa. (The road to Asheville is, after all, two-way.) Still, the advantage of that is the pleasure of spending time with “old” friends.
Time passes so quickly that it’s difficult to know when someone goes from “friend” to “old friend.” How long do we have to know each other? How quickly can time disappear? Those questions seem somehow connected.
“How long has it been since we last spent time together?” we were trying to decide last night.
Long enough that are children are no longer the children of our memories. L now talks and runs and schemes: a far cry from the toddler our friends last saw. And their son: in my mind, he’s still L’s age, and then he walks in the door.
He’s a school boy now, with new interests and new abilities.
“He wants to learn the guitar,” his mother says. We get L’s little guitar out and he strums a bit, fingering a note or two, though not quite sure where. At some point, hopefully, L will develop an interest in learning some instrument: hopefully not tuba or drums.
The interest in billiards already exists, but I suspect (from personal longing) that it exists in all children.
There’s something almost intoxicating about sixteen fast-moving balls in an enclosed space.
Visiting with children has its risks, though. We let them stay up beyond their bedtimes, knowing that once they go to bed, we’ll stay up for another hour or three. The hope is the vain hope of all parents: that by putting off bedtime by an hour and a half, we’re somehow magically putting of the wakeup time by the same amount. It never works, and yet we’re hopeful each and every time.
And it’s a trying situation, no matter which side of the guest/host relationship you’re on: if you’re the host, you don’t want your daughter yelling at a little past seven waking up your guests when everyone has only been in bed a few hours. If you’re the guest, you don’t want your daughter yelling at a little past seven waking up your hosts when everyone has only been in bed a few hours.
But if you’re L, you wake up when you wake up, and a ritual is sacred: there must be chocolate soy milk, warmed in the microwave for thirty seconds, and stirred with a specific spoon. Etiquette has no place in a thirsty girl’s thinking.
Signs
Some signs of autumn:
- The heating comes on intermittently. It’s a relief: we’re always worried about the heating in This Old House every fall: we’ve had enough worries about it.
- I wear jeans and flannel around the house. The mornings are chilly, as are the evenings: nothing is cozier than flannel.
- There’s always hot coffee or a cup of tea at my side.
- Saturday mornings are inside mornings.
Some more signs:
Birthday picnics continue into the darkness and include sweaters and oysters:.
I ask the Girl if she’d like to try one. The shells have her undivided attention; the goodies inside, less so.
“You want to try?” I ask.
She touches the freshly-steamed oyster, licks her finger, then says, “No! It’s gushy!”
More signs: Sunday night trick-or-treat.
