Matching Tracksuits

growing

Dalton Day 1

Saturday 18 January 2020

A somewhat frustrating day for the girls: they lost their first match in straight sets to a team from Chattanooga wearing red. The reds hit well, made few mistakes, and powered through our girls in back-to-back sets. They won the first set 25-14 and then came back from something like 13-7 to win the second set 25-23.

The girls played two other teams, beating them both. Our second game was against the DiamondT Spikerz. We beat them fairly convincingly in straight sets, 25-19 and 25-22.

The final team our girls beat was the Volley One team. They won one set against the Chattanooga Reds, who’d beaten us the first match. Our girls demolished them — and they’d won one set against the team that demolished us.

After playing three games, the girls scored the final game. It was against the Diamond Ts and the Chattanooga Reds.  The DiamondTs, whom we’d beaten in straight sets, crushed the Reds 25-19 in the first set and demolished them 25-14 in the second.

The team that we beat in straight sets beat the only team that beat us in straight sets in straight sets.

“We were so annoyed,” L said of it.

In the end, the Reds did the same thing against the DiamondTs that we’d done against the Reds: they beat themselves.

Watching these girls play shows me again and again how important that mental game is, how it’s often more important than the physical game.

Rainy, Sick, and Slow Saturday: Three Pictures

Saturday 11 January 2020

Picture One: The Medicine

The Girl has been fighting a sinus and ear infection for some time now; K has now come down with something as well. As such, they’ve amassed quite a little medicine collection: antibiotics, probiotics, decongestants, cough suppressants from the pharmacological side of things; oils, teas, syrups, and nose irrigators from the holistic side of things.

It’s all covered, literally and figuratively.

Picture Two: The Game

The Boy has grown crazy about Pokemon lately. He decided he wanted to buy a deck for himself and another for L using his final Christmas gift money.

“She’s going to teach me how to battle for real!” he declared. The way he’s been playing has been, shall we say, improvisational. The Girl knows how to play; she promised to teach him.

At $20 a deck, it’s quite the investment. I was hesitant to let him go through with it, but two things stopped me: first, it is, after all, his money. He needs to learn how to spend it wisely, so I gave advice, made suggestions, but in the end left it up to him. Second, I thought that if this gave them something to do together, just the two of them, it would be worth more than that $40 for the two decks. So we bought them while we were out today.

At first, he was terribly upset because we couldn’t find the decks. When we found them, there was only one. “But we checked on the computer and they said they had them!” he wailed, about to have a little panic attack there in the toy section. “They lied!” I tried to explain to him that just because they found them on the Walmart site doesn’t mean they have them in that particular store. I pulled up the site on my phone and showed him. In the end, though, he took the disappointment rather well.

As we were checking out, though, he decided to look in the checkout aisles. “They have them there, sometimes.” Sure enough, after we’d checked out, he found some, so we grabbed them and went to the nearest checkout, which was a self-checkout. Which I don’t like. Why should the store get free labor from me? Still, if the other checkouts all have long lines, I’ll go ahead to the self-checkout.

The gentleman in front of us was a prime illustration of the slow South. He picked up each item, turned it about in his hand to confirm where the bar code was, scanned it, placed it in a bag, took the individual bag with one item to his buggy, placed it carefully in the buggy, moving other bags as necessary to get everything just so, then repeated it. He looked to be in his mid-fifties so I couldn’t salve my impatience thinking, “Well, here’s this sweet old man, still clinging to his independence…” Of course, I really don’t know the guy’s story — there are any number of reasons why he moved so very slowly and deliberately. But it’s symptomatic of what I see as a slow Southern mentality. Don’t rush. For anything.

When the light turns green at an intersection, for example, most drivers don’t respond immediately. They wait, even to take their foot off the brake. Sometimes two or three seconds. Sometimes five. Sometimes ten. They creep into the intersection and take what seems like an eternity to get up to the speed limit, and there’s no guarantee they’ll even get to the speed limit: they often drive five, even ten miles an hour below it.

Anyway…

After dinner, the instruction began. And the first game didn’t go so well.

“Go easy on him!” I mouthed to L when she wasn’t looking.

“I did!” she mouthed in reply.

Picture Three: Rain

I spent about four hours working on end-of-the-quarter grades today. When lunch rolled around, I didn’t even have 1,000 steps. By the time shopping and dinner was over, I had just over 5,000.

“After I put the Boy to bed,” I said to Clover, “we’re going on a long walk.”

And then the rain started again.

Looking Down

Friday 10 January 2020

The call came in at 3:30, when I had fifteen minutes left of my day. Kids were milling about, waiting for their parents to pick them up or to head off to after-school. I looked at my phone to see that it was from Nowy Sacz. I thought perhaps it could be Babcia, perhaps Wojek D. It was, however, neither of them. Instead, it was Pani M, my former landlady in Lipnica and the closest I’d had to a Polish mother until I actually got one (-in-law).

She’d called to thank us for the Christmas card we’d sent, which the family had received only this week. We got to talking for a while, and she asked about the family.

“L looks like she’s getting very tall,” she said.

“She’s taller than her mother now,” I said. We’d learned that when she went to the doctor this week. Five feet eight inches — one inch taller than K.

“How tall?” she asked. Knowing imperial measurements would be meaningless to Pani M, I Googled it quickly. 

“172,” I replied.

“Oh, that is tall.”

In the evening, I was standing across from L as K helped her prepare her nightly medicine regimen, and I realized I was looking straight ahead as I looked right into her eyes. Straight ahead. We were only about five feet apart. And it hit me: we’re almost there physically. That little bundle of pink that we could hold in a single arm thirteen years ago is now almost fully physically grown.

Today’s Photo, Completely Unrelated

I reworked a few photos from our Grand Canyon trip. This is one of my favorites.

Rock Hill Tournament, Day 2

Sunday 5 January 2020

The girls had been putzing around. Sure, they’d won a couple of matches, and they’d lost one to a team that seemed to them, I’m sure, unbeatable. Still, even on the games they’d won, they’d made a bunch of silly mistakes. It just so happened that the other team made more. They played like beginners.

Not today.

This morning, they played their first game of the day, and it was business as usual. A few balls fell in the middle of two or three players because of a lack of communication and initiative. They flubbed a number of serves. They knocked some received serves off at angles that would have left Euclid scratching his head. They played like beginners. Still.

Then came time for their second match, and from the moment the other team began warming up, I began worrying. They were hitting very well, and digging those hits effectively. Their serves were sharp.

“Starting match 2,” I texted K. “Gonna be a tough one.”

They came out and transformed into a group of girls who knew what they were doing, who could dig hits like never before, hit like never before, block like never before — in short, play like never before.

“They have never played this well,” I texted.

They took the first game 25-21; they lost the second game 21-25. The third game (to 15 only) they were up 11-8 and then slipped up and let the other team tie it. The coach called a time out. Immediately afterward, the opponents scored two more. They only had two more points to score; our girls had to score double that. Coach called another timeout.

L went up to serve. One down. Two down. Three. Four — they’d won!

I can’t remember I’ve seen nine girls (one girl, unfortunately, went home sick earlier in the day) so very happy.

That win put them in the semifinals, where they faced a team of roughly the same strength as the one they’d just defeated. I thought, “We can do this — we can make it to the finals.” But unfortunately, the girls had just run out of gas by that time. They started making some of their old silly mistakes again. They were just worn out, and L, who’s been battling a cold all week, confided in me on the way home, “I felt like I was going to throw up that whole last game.”

“And yet you stuck it out, for the team.”

“Yeah, I guess.” A typical L reply.

So what did they learn this weekend? I think the coach put it best: “You girls learned how to win.” That’s easier said than done: it takes a lot of confidence to face a team you think will beat you and stare them down, then beat them down. And when things are falling apart, it takes a lot to keep pushing, even when the loss starts to look inevitable.

L, for her weekend of effort, got to sleep the whole way home, got freshly made rosół for dinner, and a 7:15 self-imposed bedtime.

In two weeks, we do it again…

The Dog and the Game

Friday 27 December 2019

The kids played with the dog a bit this afternoon — a good thing, because the pup, when neglected, pouts. And a pouting pup does things like dig massive holes in the backyard, run uncontrollably once inside, bark incessantly inside or out.

Afterward, another evening over the board. This time, possibly the most luck I’ve ever experienced in the silly game. Everything with buildings on it — I owned. I made my own son cry when he landed on New York Avenue with a hotel and had to pay $1,000. He literally fell into the floor and began sobbing.

“Buddy, calm down. It’s just a game. I’m lucky this time.” No help. Then I had an idea: “If you can pull yourself together, I’ll give you a surprise.” I was planning on giving everything I had to him and letting him finish L off, but her turn was right after mine and she landed on Tennessee Avenue (See that? It also had a hotel.) and had to pay $950 one turn after she’d paid me something like $600. She had nothing left: she gave me her little bit of cash and all her remaining property with a pout and said, “You win.”

Boxing Day 2019

Thursday 26 December 2019

I’ve never really been a fan of Monopoly. After about the age of ten or eleven, I determine that there was too much chance involved, and I just found it frustrating. I never played it after that.

As an adult, though, I’ve come to recognize that there is a fair amount of chance in life that just sucks money from one’s bank account. Medical emergencies, car repairs, accidents, home issues, and the like — all unplanned, all expenses.

When the Girl got Monopoly for Christmas this year, I knew I’d end up playing it with the kids. I didn’t realize how much fun it could be as an adult who can simply look at it as a game that is a fairly accurate reflection of the frustrations of adulthood and, more importantly, as a game that can provide lessons to kids and time together as a family.

We played twice today. The first time, it was just the kids and I. It only took a moment for me to realize the value for a seven-year-old. He had to read, to count money, and occasionally make change.

L dominated us, and the Boy was hemorrhaging cash to a degree that he declared he was going to quit. We talked him down, but then K returned home and we set about to preparing and eating dinner.

Afterward, the kids wanted to play again, so we sat down as a family and began. I had a little strategy in mind that I wanted to test: quality, not quantity. I bought a bunch of properties quickly, then traded at exorbitant cost to myself three or four properties for the final street to make the orange set:

  • New York Avenue
  • Tennessee Avenue
  • St. James Place

I then set about to building them up to two houses each as quickly as possible. The result: I was getting a couple of hundred bucks every few cycles of the board.

The Boy took a similar route: he ended up with all the railroads and soon was rolling in money.

Poor K was getting hit left and right: bad luck with Community Chest/Chance cards, bad luck with the dice (she must have landed on the luxury tax four or five times), and soon she was down to little cash and few unmortgaged properties.

Then I bought one more house for each of my properties and drawing $550-$600 from every poor player who landed on one of them. K finally landed on one, and it just about wiped her out.

Her reaction: she laughed. Our reaction: we laughed with her.

On our walk this evening, then, we were able to help E see that the most important thing in a game like that is just to have fun. “It’s just a game!”

Tuesday

Tuesday 22 October 2019

Today’s the last day of the first quarter. It’s been the same as every year: I feel like the first quarter is dragging and suddenly, we have a couple of weeks left. Once that feeling of the year speeding by settles in, I feel like the year goes by in a blink. We’re in that period of work-break-work-break that always makes the first semester seem shorter than the second. In a few days, we have two days for fall break. Then we have three weeks before Thanksgiving. That’s followed by another three weeks before Christmas. And then a few more breaks in January and February before everything dries up and we’re all dying for any kind of break at all. March and April seem endless. And it’s just October and I’m already thinking about the end of the year…

That means the Girl’s birthday is approaching — officially a teenager, with all the joys and challenges (i.e., challenges to authority) that entails. And all the changes in relationships that entails — the pulling away that I know is coming, is already manifesting itself, that I worry is something I’m doing wrong while simultaneously reassuring myself that it’s normal behavior for this age, that I acted like that at this age, that my parents and I survived it as will the Girl, K, and I (and E — don’t forget about the effect it has on him) will live through it.

Still, I find myself thinking, “How can it be ten years ago that she looked like this? It just feels like a couple…”

Braces

Monday 14 October 2019

The Girl got braces today. She wasn’t happy. Neither was our bank account. But such is life for us all…

Loss

Saturday 12 October 2019

The Boy was the goalie when it happened — the break, through the pack that always orbits the ball, past the last defenders who have spent most of the year looking on, that left the Boy basically one-on-one with the attacker.

From the moment the break started, I fear for the worst. And a few short seconds later, there it was. The first goal of the game. The only goal of the game. The team’s first loss. With E manning the goal.

I knew he would be distraught about it. “I’m no good at defense,” he declared.

The question is, will this affect his love for the game? Can we help him move past it? How long will this bother him? These were the thoughts I rehearsed on the way back to the house.

By the time we got home, there was no real mention of it. No mention of it for the rest of the day. But what about Tuesday, when it’s time to go to soccer practice?

So Mean

Wednesday 9 October 2019

Conversation One

“He knocked me down, and I stayed calm. I didn’t even say, ‘Why do you have to be so mean?'”

The Boy and I were on our way back home, and he was explaining some adventure or other that he’d had during recess. He’s taken to playing soccer then, and he’s often telling me about what happened during the game.

“Why would you have said, ‘Why do you have to be so mean?'” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t say it.”

“But why would you have said it? Why are you specifically pointing out to me why you didn’t say it?” I suspected it was because someone had said that to him at some point.

“Well, I was playing soccer the other day with X” (I can’t remember the name) “and I tried to sweep the ball away from him. I didn’t mean to, but I knocked him down. He just jumped up and screamed, ‘Why do you have to be so mean!?'”

It’s usually the Boy on the receiving end of such things, and I’m always trying to help him see the other point of view: perhaps it was an accident. “Oh, no, Daddy, it wasn’t an accident,” he usually insists. So I asked him, “Did you tell him you didn’t mean to?”

“I tried to,” he explained with a frustrated edge in his voice. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to knock you down,’ but he just walked away from me and ignored me.”

Sometimes, I feel like the Boy can’t win: even when he’s the (accidental) aggressor, it somehow ends with him feeling like a victim.

Conversation Two

On the way to soccer practice the evening, the Boy brought up Frida Kahlo. One of his multi-age class groups (they’re called “houses”) is named after her. “Do you know who she was?” he asked.

“Was she the Mexican painter?” I asked, thinking of the uni-brow painter who did so many self-portraits.

“Mexican? I thought she was German,” he replied quizzically.

I’m not up on painters, so I just suggested that perhaps I was thinking of someone else. “Was she friends with Trotsky?” I asked, knowing the response.

“Who was Trotsky?”

Who indeed.

“A generally bad man,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because he was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people.”

He thought about it for a moment then asked, “Were they innocent or did they deserve to be shot?” He paused, thought some more, then corrected himself. “Well, I don’t mean deserved to be shot. They were just bad. Were they bad?”

From there, the conversation devolved: “Oh like Hitler?” “Who killed more?” “Who’s Stalin?” “Did anyone kill more than him?” “Mao what?”

Then I got to wondering: on the playground were these men the aggressors or the aggrieved? And how in the hell did that conversation end up there?

With Papa

Friday 4 October 2019

“We don’t say that to anyone, though, because we don’t want them to laugh at us.” The Boy was describing to me, as we drove home from his school, a new game he and some of his friends had invented. Apparently, they have a graphic design company (of course, he didn’t use that particular term) because they all love drawing, and this weekend, they all have “a lot of work” to get done for the firm. However, they’ve kept it a secret from their non-drawing peers to avoid mockery.

How much of this potential mockery would become actual mocker, I do not know. E is sensitive, and simple, one-time, childish comment from a peer might feel like persistent, tormenting mockery to him. Still, I found his words both encouraging and discouraging. On the one hand, they suggest a certain awareness of what’s out there, an understanding that the world can be a nasty place that doesn’t smile on things that appear out of place. That’s much better than a simplistic naivety. On the other hand, he deals with that by hiding that part of himself from others to avoid it all. Of course, he’s just a second-grade boy: I don’t expect the kind of emotional fortitude that would lead someone to say, “Look, we enjoy it, and that’s all that matters,” to potential tormentors.

When he got home, he talked to Papa about it and a few other things. He always has a captive discussion partner when talking to Papa: it’s the number one duty of grandparents, I suppose. Parents can say, “Not now, sweetie — I have to X” but not grandparents.

Afterward, they built a few paper airplanes together.

Drawings

Thursday 26 September 2019

The Boy has taken to drawing again. And being the generous soul that he is, the kind soul that he is — so much a more generous, a kinder soul than I — he regularly draws things for his friends at school.

Today he explained he was drawing a soccer ball for a friend at school who loves soccer.

“Is he a good friend?” I asked because I had certain concerns.

“Well, we don’t really talk. Just when we’re playing soccer. You know, stuff like ‘Let’s get the ball!’ and things like that,” he explained. That didn’t sound like the closest friend in the world. More like a soccer-field acquaintance.

And so I imagined a nightmare scenario of E, so thrilled with his drawing and happy to give something to someone that he imagines will bring only joy, giving this boy this drawing and the boy being completely nonchalant about it. Or worse, asking something like “Why’d you do this?” Or worse still, throwing it away in front of the Boy.

And then I imagined the conversation later, the confusion and pain the Boy might feel. “I would never do anything like that to someone,” he would protest. “Why would anyone do that?”

Why, indeed?

I don’t know that this will happen; I don’t know that, if it does, the Boy will even bring it up. But I do know that I can’t always be there to step in and block a painful situation, that I can’t always steer him away from people that seem callous or hateful, that I can’t always stop the pain before it starts, so I let it go at that. We’ll see tomorrow how his friend took the gift.

Tooth Fairy

Wednesday 18 September 2019

“What should I do with my tooth?” the Girl asked. She’s had to have three baby teeth pulled because they just weren’t coming out correctly. This last one was the final to come out before she gets her braces on, something she’s not really looking forward to.

“Why not put it under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy,” I suggested.

She looked at me, furrowed her brow, screwed up her lips, marched over and said, “Right.”

“Well, why not? Get a little money. She gets another tooth. It’s win-win.”

Again, “Right.”

“What do you mean, ‘Right’?” I tried to keep from smiling, but I could feel the edges of my lips creeping upward.

“I know it was you guys,” she proclaimed.

“Oh, really?”

I’ve been waiting for this conversation for years now, wondering when she would admit that she knew K and I were the Tooth Fairy and Santa.

“Yes, I saw you!”

“And how do you know it wasn’t the Tooth Fairy. She could be a shapeshifter.” I was wondering if she would come back with, “Those don’t exist, either!” but instead, she just insisted again that she’d seen me.

Then the bombshell: “E doesn’t even believe in Santa!”

Last Swim

Sunday 15 September 2019

Our kids have grown up swimming in the pool at Nana’s and Papa’s condo complex. More often than not, we were the only ones there, and the kids really came to think of it as a private pool for us. “Oh, someone’s here,” was the common moan when we pulled up to find that someone from the complex was already there. In all the years we’ve been going there, I can think of exactly one time when it seemed crowded: at most, there were half a dozen other swimmers there every other time.

From 2013

Most often, Nana and Papa would meet us at the pool, and we would try to entertain them by entertaining ourselves. Lately, though, say in the last two years, Nana and Papa made it less and less frequently. With the problems she had with polymyalgia rheumatica, Nana had greater and greater difficulty walking, and they came less and less frequently. And then Nana passed away, and all the changes that came with that…

Now we’re getting ready to sell the condo, and so this season will be our last season swimming there. Which meant today was our last day swimming there.

It’s not the loss of the pool that has drawn me into a thoughtful mood but what it means — the end of an era of our lives. Nana’s passing was, of course, the most significant, the most painful, but since then, the door to that era has remained slightly open. The apartment was still there, still filled with furniture, dishes, clothes, and all the memories attached. After the estate sale, most of the furniture was gone. A few trips to a local charity and almost everything else is gone. The apartment is empty except for a large dresser that Nana and Papa bought in 1979 from a family in the apartment complex where we lived. They were going through a split up and everything had to go.

In 1979, I was six, so this dresser was a constant presence in my life, the one piece of furniture connected to the time when I was E’s age. We’ve been trying to sell it for ages. We’ve dropped the price again and again until it’s now almost free, and still no one is interested.

That seems somehow sadly appropriate. Who wants someone else’s 40-year-old memories?

Through all this, though, we kept going to that pool this summer. Somehow I was unconsciously thinking, perhaps, that continuing ritual kept everything from changing for good.

From 2012

I guess what it is, is simple: that pool represents my kids as kids. It will bookend a period when they were both kids, for L at nearly 13 is no longer a little kid. She’s nearly as tall as K, and her interests are maturing to match: she’s started watching Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix because so many of her friends have been watching it, and she wants to keep up with them. When we go to the store, she’s asking to buy makeup instead of toys. The thought of going to Starbucks for some iced coffee drink nonsense thrills her. Our Daddy-L time is no longer playing with this or that but practicing volleyball. She’s getting braces soon and will likely not find boys disgusting for very much longer.

It’s all inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less bittersweet.

Winning, Losing, and Soccer Practice

Tuesday 3 September 2019

The Boy headed over to his young soccer team with a nonchalant gait that suggested ambivalence.

“Run, E,” I said. “Show some enthusiasm.”

He broke into his power stride: he slams his feet down in short strides and rocks his whole upper body back and forth. It’s not a particularly efficient gait, and I’ve tried several times to help him improve it.

“Slamming your feet down quickly doesn’t help you run faster,” I once explained. “In fact, it really has the opposite effect.” We practied a better step together, but anytime he wants really to run, he reverts back to his jerky, stomping gait.

I suppose his thinking is logical in a way: to run full speed, you have to put all your energy into your run. What more obvious way is there of accomplishing this than expending massive amounts of energy in slamming your feet down?

So he was running across the field toward the circle of players while I retrieved my folding chair from the trunk. I closed it, looked up, and saw E sprawled on the ground, his arms out at his side, his feet still traveling upward as he rocked ever so slightly onto his upper body from the momentum of the running and falling.

I sighed.

The Boy has such a time with his self-confidence. He’s keenly aware that he’s slower than a lot of his peers; he’s quite cognizant of the fact that he’s far from the most aggressive player on the soccer field; he knows he doesn’t play any number of sports as well as his friends. The only thing he feels truly comfortable and confident doing is riding his bike with me.

I couldn’t tell what happened in the end. He just got up and continued over to the group, but I don’t know if anyone said anything, but I don’t think that’s even necessary: we’re perfectly capable of feeling we’ve made a fool of ourselves without anyone saying a word.

The question was, should I say something?

There was a part of me that wanted to talk to him, wanted to reassure him, wanted to make sure he was okay, that his ego hadn’t taken too big of a hit. Yet there was another part that felt I should just let it go. Bringing it up later might not do anything positive, I thought.

In the end, I just let it go. He never said anything about it, and it seemed like the coach was giving him a little extra dose of praise later — perhaps thinking the same thing I was and trying to give that confidence a little boost? I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him about it either.

It’s that fine line — when to step in and when to back off — that I suppose every parent tries to find in every situation.

When we got back home, the Girl was asleep: she’d just finished a volleyball game and had been fighting a sniffle for most of the day. “Just let her sleep a while,” K said, and so we did.

“How was the game?” I asked.

It turned out that L’s team didn’t just beat the other team; they completely demolished them. “I’m not sure the other team had a total of 25 points in both sets combined,” K said sympathetically.

The coach of the other team had come out and told the audience that they were a young and inexperienced team. “Please give them all the support you can,” she said.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. In a way, that’s like saying, “We know we’re about to get our asses handed to us, but cheer for them anyway.” It’s a tacit admission of what’s about to happen. And yet what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that really just knowing one’s own limitations?

In my own brief coaching career, I got reprimanded by a parent when, after a player on our team, watching the other team warm-up, declared, “We’re going to lose! There’s no doubt,” I replied with, “Yes, you certainly are.” Dramatic pause. “If that’s how you see it, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” I continued by pointing out that they’d given up before they even started, and nothing good ever comes of that.

“Well, I think you could have been more encouraging,” the mother said.

Perhaps. By that time, the girls had lost not only every single match but every single set. We won one set the entire year and lost every single match. I’d been trying to encourage them, but I suppose it wasn’t enough — not for the girls, not for this particular mother, not for any of them.

It was my one and only season of volleyball coaching. Fortunately, I have a lot more seasons of parenting to get it right.

At the Lake

Monday 2 September 2019

Sometimes, we just don’t think things through and come to regret the results. Some mini-disasters would be so easily avoidable if we simply stopped for a moment, looked at what we were about to do, and asked, “Is this really a great idea? What’s the worst that could happen if I do this? What’s the best?”

Twelve-year-olds who are sure they’re about to turn twenty are particularly suspectible to this. I know I was at that age. At that age, we have an excuse: our brains simply haven’t finished forming despite all outward appearances to the contrary. After all, our bodies are soon reaching their fullest potential, and our learning curve has not been anywhere near as steep as it was when we were first wandering about the world. Surely the brains are done at that age. But they’re not, and this is especially true of the area of the brain that controls impulses. So we do things at that age without thinking about it because the portion of our brain that does that thinking isn’t fully developed yet.

This weekend at the lake with friends, L did something that could have foreseeably mini-disastrous (super-duper-mini-disastrous, micro-disastrous, even, but disaster was still the little nugget at the center of it all) consequences and resulted in the unintended destruction of someone else’s property.

The Girl, though, was calmly willing to go to the owner and discuss with him what happened. It helped that he was on his back porch and that she didn’t have to knock on the door. Still — a proud little moment for us.

First Game

Tuesday 27 August 2019

Tonight, the Girl had her first game as a member of her middle school volleyball team. She tried out last year, but she didn’t make the cut. That was not going to cut it. She worked and practiced for the last year and this year, her first year, she’s actually a starter.

How did she do? She showed an awareness of the game that was impressive; she was a good sport and supportive team member; she cheered her team enthusiastically when she was on the bench; she smiled a lot.

I sat with K and the Boy and cheered. And felt a fair amount of frustration about the fact that I’d forgotten to take a camera with me to school…

Hatchet

Friday 5 July 2019

It’s all the Boy has been talking about for the last few weeks.

“Daddy, can we get a hatchet?”

He was thinking about buying it with his own money; he was thinking about splitting the cost with us; he was thinking about it, talking about it, probably dreaming about it.

Today, we finally got it. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to pay any of his money for it because he’s got his eye on another Lego set, but when, after buying nails, concrete screws, pegboard hooks, and other things on the list, we finally headed over to the gardening section, his excitement brought a smile to both K and me.

The highlight of the afternoon, then, was teaching him how to use it.

Ice Cream, 1973

Wednesday 26 June 2019

More discoveries from the past. Haven’t seen myself in baby pictures in years.

Reading with the Boy

Wednesday 12 June 2019

We try to get the Boy to read a little every night. Tonight we worked on L’s old book about spiders. I found the place we’d left off, but the Boy insisted that he’d finished with K last night.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to read it again,” I said. It might have sounded like I was just being lazy, but being able to read a tricky passage fluently will build his confidence. We learn by repetition, especially recognition of new words.

“The back part of a spider’s body is called the abdomen,” he began.

“Wow — you read that tough word like a pro,” I added.

“What word?”

“Abdomen.”

He sighed. “Daddy, I recognized the word.”

“I know. And that’s a long word to know. How many letters?”

He counted: “Seven.”

“You recognized a seven letter word!”

“No, wait,” he said, counting hopefully again. “No, just seven.”

He continued, stumbling a bit: “It has the spider’s hear — hear?”

“Heart,” I helped.

“Heart and the spinnerets, which make silk,” he continued.

“Spinnerets?!” I gasped. “Are you kidding? You read that like a pro as well!”

“But daddy, I stumbled over a” and he paused to count. “A five-letter word.” He often stumbles over words, words that sometimes surprise me.  And he recognizes and reads fluently words that sometimes surprise me. It’s part of learning to read.

“That’s okay,” I reassured. “You stumbled over that word, but you nailed ‘spinnerets.'”‘

Many of my students over the years have face similar struggles, and struggling readers are not confident readers. I’ve sat with kids who were reading, asked them to read aloud, and heard difficult passages come out like this: “It has the spider’s hea hear — whatever — and the spin spin — I don’t know — which make the silk.” If that’s what’s going on in their head as they read silently, and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be, it’s no wonder they don’t feel confident with reading: the struggle produces nothing but a confusing text. And they’re likely to anticipate all this: before they begin reading, they’ve convinced themselves that they won’t understand it. And all of this builds and calcifies into not a mere reluctance to reading but a positive aversion to it.

Confidence eliminates those “whatevers” and “I-don’t-knows.” And so I have the Boy read books a second, third, and fourth time.

“But I already know this book,” he complains.

“I know — that’s the point,” I think.