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parenting

Helping

Tuesday 18 June 2019

Babcia informs us that L has been absolutely wonderful — “We have a great relationship!” she proclaimed. She’s put the Girl to work, ironing, cleaning, changing bed clothes in the guest rooms.

This is honestly such a relief. The Girl can be, well, a typical twelve-year-old when it comes to helping around the house. I think I expect too much of her sometimes; I think I expect too little of her other times. Even though I’m a teacher and preach this to my students constantly, I forget it with my own kids: perfection is the goal but only insofar as continually striving for it ensures we never settle. Mistakes are part of that process; half-assed jobs are part of that process; even fussing at not wanting to do it is a part of that process.

I don’t want to tinker about with the dishwasher tomorrow. I don’t want to move the left-over bricks into the crawlspace tomorrow. I don’t want to re-mount Papa’s TV tomorrow. I say these types of things to the kids every time they complain about not wanting to complete this or that responsibility, but it’s often more sarcastic than it needs to be.

Working on dinner
Working on dinner

The Boy likes helping, but he too is starting to complain about things. We all complain. I guess that’s part of it.

What They Deserve

Sunday 12 May 2019

Six years ago today, it was Mother’s Day, and we went to Conestee Park, probably our favorite park in the area. L was six, the same age as E now. As E and I do so often now, L and I were riding out bikes during this particular visit.

L is now twelve and snarky. Part of that is the age and part of it is environment: she comes by her sarcasm honestly. I teach her through example, when I’m sarcastic with her, when I’m sarcastic with K, when I’m sarcastic with drivers who can’t even hear me and wouldn’t care what I have to say even if they could. It’s one of those areas in parenting that I think I could have done a lot better.

The Boy is six and not snarky, but he tries on a bit of bravado every now and then because he learns it from his sister, who learns it from me.

Through it all, K has remained the steadfast example of patient and sarcasm-less parenting. Of the two of us, she’s the one I’d rather my children emulate. Of the two of us, she’s the one doing less to screw them up; in fact, she’s doing all she can to balance out what I’ve messed up. She is the wife I most often feel I don’t deserve and the mother I feel my kids most deserve.

Beginning Lord of the Flies

Wednesday 1 May 2019

My kids are reading Lord of the Flies as their final selection in English I Honors. It’s been years since I last taught it; it’s been even longer since I actually read it.

As I reread it, passages that never stood out as significant take on new importance. For example, Ralph laments the fact that there are no adults who “could get a message to us,” expressing a fear that many of the boys have: “If only they could send us something grown-up.. . . a sign or something.” The next paragraph reads:

A thin wail out of the darkness chilled them and set them grabbing for each other. Then the wail rose, remote and unearthly, and turned to an inarticulate gibbering. Percival Wemys Madison, of the Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, lying in the long grass, was living through circumstances in which the incantation of his address was powerless to help him.

Young Percival is doing exactly what his parents taught him: he’s lost, and he’s simply reciting his address.

“If you’re ever lost,” we can imagine his parents calmly telling him, “find a police officer and tell him your address.”

“The Vicar- vicar,” Percival, who is six, struggles.

“Vicarage,” his father, obviously an Anglican priest, prompts.

“The Vicarage, Hardcourt…”

“No, son. No ‘d.’ Just ‘Harcourt.”

“Harcourt…”

They practice it a while. It becomes a morning chant with breakfast, an afternoon game, an evening blessing.

When he has it, he’s got it for good. He recites it at blistering speed a few days later through smiling lips.

“That’s wonderful!” his mother applauds.

And now, trying to come to grips with the terrors that plague him endlessly, he falls back on his incantation — what a wonderful choice of words — and tries to will himself out of the place. He can’t be convinced that there is no beast lurking on the island, but he has no idea what he should really fear.

The older boys do, though. Jack and Ralph have begun their irrevocable split, with Jack resorting to his first violent act: punching Piggy in the stomach and then knocking his glasses off, simultaneously blinding Piggy and cutting all the boys off from civilization, as it was Piggy’s glasses they used to light the signal fire.

“I know there isn’t no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn’t no fear, either.”

Piggy paused.

“Unless—”

Ralph moved restlessly.

“Unless what?”

“Unless we get frightened of people.”

I imagine my own six-year-old in this situation, watching the closest things to adults around him — the boys of thirteen and fourteen — descend into fighting and arguing, with chaos unimaginable just days away, and I shudder.

When we reach this part of the book, I’m going to break with tradition and help the kids see all the foreshadowing. “If you’re not terrified imagining yourself in this situation, you’re not really reading this book.”

Standing Still

Sunday 27 January 2019

Coming home this evening, L was playing a life simulator game on her iPod and mentioned that she was now forty-seven.

“You’re older than I am,” I laughed.

“No,” she explained, “you can change your age at the click of a button.”

“It’s a good thing you can’t do that in real life,” I replied.

What I had in mind was what I thought at her age: I can’t wait until I’m X years old. That always looking forward, always longing to be a little older, which struck around age six or so. “When will I be big?!”

“No, it’s a good thing,” she agreed. “I’d never press the button then.”

She was taking the opposite option, to which I replied, “Well, at some point, I’d just click the button for you.”

“Why!?” came the incredulous response.

“Because you’re not going to mooch off me for the rest of your life.” We both laughed a bit, but I got to thinking about what it might be like if we could have that option, if we could just stay one age for as long as we wanted to.

On the one hand, the nostalgic in me would love that, but what moment? While looking at the “Time Machine” posts at the bottom of the site, I discovered this shot from 2013:

The Girl was just a little younger than the Boy is now, and I hadn’t thought about how much different she was then than she is now. A six-year-old and a twelve-year-old are completely different people in many ways. Looking back, I can see traces of personality traits she now exhibits all the way back then, but the reverse wasn’t true: I had no idea how much she would change in six years (and, of course, how much she would stay the same).

Yet, within that little clump of nostalgia is a nightmare: if I chose that moment, then what about all the wonders that have happened since? Being stuck in one moment, after all, is what Bill Murray’s brilliant Groundhog Day is all about. But it’s more complex, because that film is really about being stuck in that moment without enjoying that moment, being stuck in a moment when all one does for one’s whole life is look toward other, more exciting moments.

I think I’ve lost the thread of where I was going with this, and that’s kind of the point perhaps. The key to life, rediscovered once again, is getting stuck in the moment by enjoying the moment so much that one doesn’t want to move forward but accepts the simple fact that that forward motion is, in fact, the moment itself. Axiomatic. The present doesn’t exist — it’s a sliver between the past and the future. That old chestnut. Living the moment means accepting that it’s just that — the moment.

So what to do in the moments of this afternoon? Go exploring, of course. Play in the backyard, of course. Enjoy the short bit of time we had between visits to Nana and visits to Papa and trips to church and more trips to church and cooking and lesson planning and everything that makes Sunday Sunday.

Last Game and Pinewood Derby

Saturday 26 January 2019

The Boy played his last game of his first basketball season today. He didn’t make a basket, though he took a shot. He had a couple of turnovers. At one point, he was defending his assigned player even though his team was on offense. All signs of a new player still finding his way in a game that he really doesn’t fully understand. But he played with such heart. He did everything his coach told him (coaches at this level are allowed on the court, as soccer coaches at that age group are allowed on the field), and oblivious to the above facts, he enjoyed it, which is what counts most.

“I know what I’m saving up for,” he declared earlier this week. “A basketball goal for our house.” The only problem: we don’t really have a place to put a goal. But our neighbor has a small court set up on his driveway — we’ll have to find the time to go there more often, K and I decided.

In the early evening, we went for the Boy’s second pinewood derby. We’d been working on the car this week, and the Boy went into it with a lot of confidence. At the very least, he was sure, we would have the best-looking car. He’d decided on a humvee, which made for easy painting and it looked pretty good when it was all said and done: I did the cutting and some of the sanding; he did the painting and some of the sanding.

When the racing started, his car finished consistently in fourth place out of the six cars racing. That meant he wasn’t the fastest but wasn’t the slowest either. A more competitive spirit would equate those terms with “best” and “worst,” but I try not to look at it that way because I’m only somewhat competitive.

Sometimes I wonder, or rather fear, that his lack of competitiveness comes from a lack of confidence, that he feels he has no chance of winning anyway and so why not cut one’s losses and not appear to be terribly worried about the results of inherently competitive events. That’s how I was, I think, when I was a child and teen. It wasn’t that I worried about losing; I just didn’t want to get embarrassed, to get beaten into the ground, so to speak. In gym class during high school, when we had basketball, I was reticent to participate because I was never all that good. I even refused to dress out some days, making the excuse that because I was on the swim team and got plenty of exercise that way, I really didn’t even need the activity. Swimming was different, though, because I had success in the pool and felt more confident there.

Is that compensation or something more concerning? I don’t really know, and I’m honestly not terribly worried about it. I think in the end, all of us with a little competitive spirit in us do that.

Wednesday Night Inferring

Wednesday 16 January 2019

A busy day for everyone culminates in us arriving separately at home after seven, two hours after we normally eat dinner. After school, a long meeting, and a visit with Nana (out of the hospital and back in rehab — hurrah!), I’d stopped for something for us to eat; after work, shuttling the Girl to choir practice while taking the Boy shopping, running the Boy to basketball practice after dropping the Girl off at volleyball practice, then picking everyone up, K arrived shortly after.

As we ate, the kids and I decided that K’s plan for the rest of the evening was flawed.

“I’ll put away all the groceries and then go to bed if you’ll put the Boy to bed.”

“Nope. I’ll put away the groceries while you take a hot bath, and then I’ll put the Boy to bed while you go to bed yourself.” L and E agreed — Mama needed to call it a day. As I was bustling about the kitchen, I remembered it was garbage night.

“L, take the garbage and recycling out,” I said, expecting a little fussing.

“Okay.” Nothing more.

She came back in, a little whiny, and said, “E always takes out one of them. Can he take out the recycling? I’ll go with him.”

“No, sweetie, it’s late. Just do a little more than you have to.”

“Oh, okay.” Nothing more.

From this, a simple inference: our daughter really is growing up. She’s not just sprouting vertically (she’s almost 5’4″ now); she’s not just developing into a young woman; she’s maturing. With my nose pressed to the ever-present every day, I forget that sometimes. It escapes me.

While all this was going on, the Boy had started his homework.

“What are you working on tonight?” I asked him.

“Inferring. We learned it today.”

As an English teacher, I’ve been working on the Boy’s (and the Girl’s) inferring skills for years. I taught him the word; he must have forgotten. The teacher did a better job today. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Making a good guess.”

Not a bad definition. I usually tell my students it’s “making a reasonable guess based on evidence.”

And there you might notice something: I teach eighth grade; my son is in first grade. Am I really teaching inferring again? Well, I’m not teaching inferring — they know what it is. But we’re still practicing it. Like mad. Especially (really, that should read “solely”) with my lower-achieving students. I give them a text like this:

Every day after work Paul took his muddy boots off on the steps of the front porch. Alice would have a fit if the boots made it so far as the welcome mat. He then took off his dusty overalls and threw them into a plastic garbage bag; Alice left a new garbage bag tied to the porch railing for him every morning. On his way in the house, he dropped the garbage bag off at the washing machine and went straight up the stairs to the shower as he was instructed. He would eat dinner with her after he was “presentable,” as Alice had often said.

I then ask a question: What type of job does Paul do? How do you know this? I have the students back up their answers with three specific pieces of evidence from the text, then explain how that evidence is evidence. A good student response (an actual student response) looks like this:

Paul is a farmer.I know this because he is wearing muddy boots. Wearing muddy boots is evidence that he is a farmer because if he were to work in an office or inside he wouldn’t have muddy boots. Also, he is wearing overalls in which he would not have been wearing if he was working inside. Finally, Paul’s overalls are dusty and most farmers work a lot outside so he must have gotten dirty from working outside.

So I applied the same thing to the Boy’s work. The same thing — a text followed by a question:

Everyone was singing for Mark. He blew out his candles. He had many presents. It was his special day. What special day was it?

E read the text and said, “It’s his birthday!”

“How do you know this?” I prodded.

“Because he got presents.”

“But we get presents at Christmas as well. How do you know it’s not Christmas?” He looked stumped for a moment, so I told him what I tell my own students: “Go back to the text. Find something in the text that shows it’s not Christmas.”

He read a while, thought a while, then said with a smile, “Because it says it’s his special day, not everyone’s special day. Christmas is everyone’s special day.”

I thought he’d pick up on the candles. That’s the more obvious piece of evidence. He went the more subtle route.

“That’s great. A very good observation. Now, can you find a third piece of evidence?”

Again, he looked, read, thought. “The candles. You don’t blow out candles on Christmas.”

After a tiring day, what a perfect ending.

New Legos

Tuesday 15 January 2019

The Boy collected a bit of money for Christmas, and it’s been gnawing at him ever since. He wants to spend it. Badly. But he has a way of spending his money on items that just don’t last. K and I let him make those decisions once we’ve advised him, like buying a radio controlled car that was clearly of poor quality and obviously wouldn’t last long, then we try to help him reflect on the wisdom of that decision. He deemed the radio controlled car a poor decision.

With that in mind, we tried to steer him toward something that would last a bit longer. Given his love of Legos, it wasn’t that difficult. The difficulty came in choosing which enormous set he’d actually buy.

He went with a Jurassic World set, even though he’s never seen any of the movies.

“Can I watch one of the movies?”

“No, it will only frighten you.”

That’s as far as it’s gotten, but one doesn’t have to have seen the film to enjoy the Lego set. And he knows enough about the movie to make proclamations like, “I’m going to go against the rules: the dinosaurs are going to be friends with the people, not enemies.”

46

Sunday 13 January 2019

As of today, I’m on the back half of my forties, the downhill slide to fifty. Truth be told, it’s all been a slide, year to year.

Considering his options in a family game of Super Farmer

It doesn’t seem like I’ve changed that much since the time I worried about the things the Boy worries about: how do I compare to the other boys? Am I as fast? Am I as coordinated? Am I as brave?

How do you console such worries? How do you reassure your son in this hyper-masculine culture about his fears of not measuring up to the other boys? The truth is, I not only worried about such things when I was young but continued stacking myself up against others and finding myself coming short well into my twenties thirties forties. I think most people who tell you they don’t do that are lying, probably to themselves first of all.

Clover wanted to play, too.

Life is not kind to most little boys like E, boys who are actually sensitive to others’ feelings, who can spontaneously show compassion and empathy. Who take a little while to settle into new sports. Who are so scrupulous about following rules that they ask daddy when on the road, “Daddy, how fast are you going? Are you speeding?”

My winning hand
L, organizing my winning hand
My winning hand after organization

I don’t have answers. I don’t even know if I understand the questions.

K and I talk about it. We encourage him. We support him. But we’re not there on the playground when he’s struggling to keep up with the other boys as they run about. We’re not there when kids are mindlessly cruel, and he struggles to understand why people could be so mean.

Finishing up the latest Lego project

Good souls win in the end, don’t they? I look around the world and struggle to find an answer to that question other than, “Afraid not.”

Volleyball

Thursday 18 October 2018

As a parent watching my daughter play volleyball, I always have some mixed emotions. During the last season, her team struggled mightily: they didn’t win a single match, if memory serves, and they only won a handful of sets. It was rough. Lots of frustration in the car after games.

“We won’t ever win.”

In several matches, they were swept, three sets to nothing. There was nothing immediately redeemable about that. I said what any parent would say: “You’re getting stronger.” “This is building character.” “This shows how tough you are, that you keep at it despite the challenges.”

This year has been different. They’ve won many more than they’ve lost, and they’ve handed out a couple of 3-0 sweeps themselves. It’s great to see the Girl so happy, so excited about what’s going on.

But I sometimes secretly cheer for the other team.

Tonight, they faced a team that they had already demolished once this year. I’m sure the coach has the best intentions, but from what I saw of the girls’ play, he doesn’t have the most experience with volleyball: his girls made basic mistakes in fundamental skills, mistakes that could easily be corrected. Mistakes that our coach has corrected. So these girls are losing through no fault of their own: they just don’t have someone to teach them how to pass and to serve properly.

The first game this evening began unevenly, and it became clear that our girls would win fairly easily, which they did, 25-15. Their opponents came out on the court excited, and they never  lost hope, but as I watched them, I really didn’t think they had a chance that game because our girls were out-scoring them 2-1 through most of the game. It was impressive, those girls’ enthusiasm. I found myself thinking, “They might not have won a match all year, might have won only a few sets, but they keep playing and smiling and encouraging each other.”

The second game began like the first and coincidentally ended with the same score.

The third game started, and I wished only one thing: for those sweet, energetic girls to win one. And they came so close. They clawed back from a 14-8 deficit to tie it at 14. That’s six consecutive game points. They were so excited. They were so ready to win.

The score went back and forth, back and forth, but in the end, our best server came up and nailed the final point: 18-16.

Our girls were thrilled. I was happy for L and everyone on her team. But for that third game, I was a total, secret fan of that other team.

Wednesday Evening Vignettes

Wednesday 10 October 2018

In a flash, the cherry tomatoes were rolling across the concrete floor like greased bearings — E had been unloading the shopping cart when, in a moment of slightly careless abandon, the container of tomatoes crashed into the side of the buggy as he was lifting them out, then crashed to the floor.

“It was an accident!” he said, looking up at me.

“Well, clean up the accident, then.”

He began picking up the tomatoes and hustling them to a garbage can. Behind us, a mother and her daughter, probably around four, stood watching. When E returned for another load, the little girl walked over and began picking up tomatoes with him.

When we returned home, K and L were in the midst of figuring out a new board game. Well, not quite a board game — there’s no board to speak of. Still, a game. An exceedingly complicated game. With multiple decks of cards. And two different sets of tokens. And so many rules to remember that it seemed impossible that a human could keep that many exceptions in her mind at once.

Of course, I started making silly comments.

L, very much wanting to play, naturally got a little irritated with my silliness.

E, content to entertain himself, worked with Legos as all this went on.

And K, determined to make it through all the instructions — a multi-page book, mind you, not just a few short paragraphs on the underside of the box — kept explaining the game to us.

“We have fifteen minutes before it’s E’s bedtime,” K said. “We have a little time to play.” Between all the complicated rules and steps, everyone got a single turn in those fifteen minutes.

Monday

Monday 7 May 2018

A few Two random thoughts from the day:

The Girl is trying out for volleyball. She started working on her skills Saturday after having bought a ball that morning.

“How did it go?” I asked when I got home.

“I was the worst one there,” came the simple reply.

It turned out that it was a two-day tryout session, and so I immediately wondered if she’d be discouraged from her first experience and say, “I don’t have a chance of making the team. I don’t want to go to the second day.” And I was wondering how I might handle that. Is it something I should make her do in the interest of building character — following through on what you set out to do and all that? Or should we just let it go?

Turns out, the dilemma never presented itself: after gymnastics, she asked if we could go practice volleyball for a few minutes.

Second thought: While the Girl was in volleyball, I did some shopping, and I went through the self-checkout lane when I was done. If they’d had these things in Poland twenty years ago, I might not have stayed. It was tough, those first weeks; it was especially tough making friends when I didn’t speak the language. The store saved me. No self-service there: no, just a counter and a packed shelf behind it, with a sales clerk between you and your merchandise. So I had to ask for every single item. Which led to funny mistakes and misunderstandings. Which led to laughter. Which led to friendships.

 

End of Spring Break 2018

Friday 6 April 2018

The guests have all returned home and we’re all getting ready to return to our normal schedules next week. That meant a bit of cleaning today — getting things back in some semblance of order after four days of fun in sixes as opposed to fun in fours. Fifty percent more people results in decidedly more than fifty percent more mess, but who’s complaining? It gave the kids a bit of a chance to build some character.

In the morning, the Boy and I finished off a little project we’d started the day before. The area in front of our new fence’s gate will never — never — see grass again due to the simple fact that the gate funnels foot traffic in a way that an open space never did. We dug down about four inches, added some landscaping timbers and two dozen bags of river rock and solved the problem.

We created a new one in the meantime. The Boy, as always, was keen to help. He wanted to help drive the spikes into the timbers.

“Be careful,” I said. “You can easily get hurt.” A little Boy slinging a two-pound hammer about could be a formula for a mini-disaster, and that’s exactly what happened. He was driving in the spike I’d started for him, holding the hammer with two hands as I’d instructed when he unexpectedly reached down and grabbed the spike with one hand just as he was dropping the hammer. The crying was as close to screaming as it could be: he struck a glancing blow that gouged out a little hunk of flesh.

He sat in my lap afterward for a long time as the cry died to a whimper and then finally stopped. It was another one of those little reminders about how being a parent is such a gift. There was only one person on the planet whom he might have would have picked over me to comfort him: K. It’s medicine for the soul to feel that needed.

In the afternoon, the family went to a local plant nursery to pick up the shrubs and trees we’re going to use to fill in the corner of the fence.

“I don’t want the first thing people see when they pull into our driveway to be that fence,” K said on more than one occasion. That fence — K has a love/hate relationship with it. She loves the sense of security it provides given the simple fact that one of our neighbors has a pit bull that has gotten out of its small fenced area a few times, but she hates the look.

We hope to finish the planting tomorrow — the above is a before shot as a point of reference prior to our initial planting today. The forecast doesn’t look cooperative, though. We’ll find something to do, though, no doubt.

Hard and Soft

Friday 5 January 2018

We were at Nana’s and Papa’s this afternoon, and I asked the Boy who he wanted to ride back with.

Learning dominoes

“Mama!”

“That’s right — no one loves Tata!” I laughed.

Helping the Boy set up

Later in the evening, as the Boy was nestling into his covers for the night and I lay beside him, he stroked my cheek and said, “Daddy, you’re the best daddy. And I always love you no matter who I ride home with.”

Final game of Memory before bed — just after the snack

He paused for a moment, then added, “It’s just that Mommy is soft, and you’re a hard chunk.”

The Choice

Sunday 24 September 2017

She didn’t want to go to the park to take the dog for a walk. At one point, she adamantly refused. Not at one point. Immediately. Had she not done so, I might — might — have considered letting her stay behind, considering what she wanted to do instead, but that immediate refusal made that impossible. K and I pointed out a few simple facts: she hadn’t gotten much exercise today; she was dying for a dog and now not willing to help; there was time for that other activity when we got back; and so on. So she went on the walk with the Boy and me, with Clover leading the way. (Next training task: get her to stop pulling on the lead.) And it’s safe to say she enjoyed it. We laughed a bit, chatted a bit, and she danced down the trail a bit — all typical. And in the car on the way, she did what she wanted to stay behind to do: she read one of the mountain of books she checked out of the library yesterday.

She wanted to stay behind to read.

I can’t get some of my students to read a paragraph without griping, but she wanted to read. She’s chewed through an unbelievable 2,700 pages so far this school year, and she’s gotten hooked on a new series, which I’m ashamed to say I can’t even identify. Given her year-long obsession with mythology, it’s not hard to guess about the subject matter. But that number, which she shared during breakfast today — 2,700. That’s just impressive. I’ve read 39 books in 2017 so far. That’s probably a touch over 3,000 pages, but that’s over the course of almost nine months. She’s read almost a third of that in a ninth of the time.

So the choice was this: force her to get some exercise and share in the companionship of a walk or let her read. Had she not forced my hand with her fussing obstinacy, I’m not sure what was the right choice.

Today’s Picture

I was too lazy to import and work on the handful of pictures I took of the morning light in our backyard, so here’s one of a fruit and vegetable vendor in Warsaw over the summer getting ticketed for not having the proper paperwork.

Note

Where’d I get that 3,000 pages? I was tired. Somehow I did the math in my head so incredibly incorrectly that it’s laughable, but now that I realize that, I’m too tired to go back and rewrite it. L’s better at math than I am, too.

Oravsky Hrad — Redux

Friday 7 July 2017

A fourth (or is it fifth? or third?) visit to Oravsky Hrad. This time, a few changes. A simplified camera set up to accompany a simplified tour due to the ages of our tourist. And a few random thoughts that unwound along the way.

Thought One

In the crypt of the chapel at Orava Castle there are three coffins, two small ones and a large one. The tour being in Slovak and only partially comprehensible to me, I’m not sure if I understood it all, but I believe the two coffins are those of one owner’s children, an eight month old and a four year old. I had one of those moments: I remember what family life used to be, even for the riches and most fortunate. Infant mortality was unbelievably high (compared to now), and even living past five or six was not assumed. Having children might mean burying them before they were a year old, and it might mean burying multiple children. They could have died for any number of diseases that have now been virtually eradicated through improved hygiene, a better understanding of disease and its transmission, and effective vaccines. Yet for them, each child’s death was something of a mystery. Sure, they recognized and categorized diseases based on symptoms, but the actual cause was a mystery, as was any possible prevention.

And so I am grateful that I live in a time when protecting my children against measles, for example — a potentially fatal disease that, according to the WHO, would have resulted in “an estimated 20.3 million deaths” between 2000-2015. I’m grateful that I live in a time when I can take my child to the doctor and get a diagnosis and medication to help the child. I’m grateful that I’ve never once wondered whether my children will die of measles or small pox before they turn five. As I looked at the smallest casket, I felt fairly sure that her parents would have given almost anything to have that kind of security.

Thought Two

Orava Castle was the set for Nosferatu, a 1922 film adaptation of Dracula. I remember hearing that the idea of a blood sucking tyrant came from Vlad the Impaler. Here was a man who could do just about anything to just about anyone and became famous for a particularly brutal way of killing. He seems to be the exact opposite of what we have in most countries in the Western world today, where the rule of law treats everyone — theoretically — the same. Anyone from a homeless person to the President of the United States can be subject to the same law.

Yet what is most surprising about Vlad is that he was a real law-and-order guy. While there were plenty of people who were killed for arbitrary things, a great number were killed due to transgressions of Vlad’s severe moral code.

Further, Vlad was involved in fighting the Turks and preventing the spread of Islam in Europe. Despite his brutality, he was considered an orthodox Christian, and the Pope had little to nothing to say about his viciousness. He was, after all, fighting the Turks — the rest is insignificant, right?

When the Turks’ invasion began overwhelming Vlad’s forces, he began a scorched-Earth policy, destroying villages on both sides of the Danube to slow the Turks’ progress. This meant destroying his own people in vast numbers.

And so I began thinking about how we take this for granted today. We don’t raise our children wondering whether or not our own leader is going to slaughter them trying to save his own power. We don’t have to fear our rulers’ whims because they are subject to the same laws we are.

Previous Visits

Tour Guide

Oravský Hrad

Mother’s Day Early

Saturday 13 May 2017

Saturday is always busy. This time of year, the lawn always needs a trim, and hedges often need their season’s taming. Tomato plants are starting to blossom, literally and figuratively, so it’s time to stake them. All fairly common late-spring Saturday work. Today, though, was a little different because of timing: tomorrow we will be going to a friend’s First Communion, so the Mother’s Day celebration had to be rescheduled.

Since I’ve neglected K’s vehicle the last few weeks, the Boy and I decided it was time to clean Mama’s car — well, that’s not exactly how it happened, but it sounds better that way. So the first thing we tackled today was the interior of the car. Every surface was exposed to an area of low pressure — e.g., vacuumed — and then wiped down. The Boy to the windshield rag and wiped down the parts of the exterior that, concealed by closed doors, never really get clean from normal washing. And of course, with the two of us involved, there was a bit of playing as well.

Afterward, the lawn got its weekly trim and the Girl prepared her Mother’s Day present for Nana.

Our Mother’s Day celebration isn’t the only thing tomorrow’s First Communion throws off, though. Tomorrow is the Boy’s birthday. “I’ll be a five-year-old tomorrow,” was a common refrain today.

So after dinner came presents. It’s a sign of his growing maturity that only a couple of the presents was a toy: a small jeep and trailer set that he took to bed with him and a Lego set that he will put together with Papa on Monday. The rest of the gifts were practical, useful even. A backpack — an appropriate, camouflaged design — will get its first test in a month when we head off to Poland. “And I’ll use it in K5 for all those big books!” he explained excitedly. A new cycling helmet to match his new bike. A flashlight so he doesn’t have to keep borrowing mine. “Daddy, I just need to…” So perhaps more than a couple of toys.

I sit writing this and glance down at the clock: five years ago, we would be leaving for the hospital in about an hour. It was Sunday night, and I was just about to drift off to sleep, some time around eleven, when K woke me and said we had to get to the hospital. A couple of hours later, we were holding the Boy in our arms. And now, in a few hours, he’ll be the same age — year-wise — as L was when he was born.

In another five years? The Girl will be almost old enough to begin learning to drive. She’ll be in her second year of high school. Entirely new worries, concerns that are now non-existent, will likely consume me. Boys will no longer be icky. A moment of inattention could result in more than just a broken glass. Her grades in school will no longer be of little consequence.

Five years used to seem like such a long time…

Saturday of Work

Saturday 6 May 2017

In a lot of ways, today seemed like a typical May Saturday. Coffee, eggs, a chat with Babcia. The morning sun made the backyard glow. It all appeared typical.

But the weather — it’s Polish summer here. Today I don’t know that we ever broke into the sixties, and if we did, it was just barely. Add to it the chance of afternoon rain, and given one of my major chores of the day, the day scheduled itself. Morning work had to be the mowing.

DSCF3988.jpg

As I was cutting the edges before transitioning to the long, almost hypnotic straight lines, a bit of motion in the deep grass caught my eye: a fledgling was hunkered down in a patch of tall grass. I cycled back and forth, nearing the bird, and I noticed that mother was near, flying in when I was away, taking off again as I approached. I knew I’d have to move the bird, and I worried a bit about how that might impact the situation. Since I always wear gloves when mowing, thanks to eczema, I didn’t fear the old thought of transferring my scent to the bird and somehow making its mother reject it. I’m not even sure if that happens. I was just wondering whether the mother would find it if I moved it too far.

First I it near one of the round planters in the yard, but I knew I’d have to move it again when I neared the end of mowing. The second time, I moved it over to the corner of the house, to a patch of grass that I never manage to cut because I don’t have a working weed wacker. Each time, mother bird had no problem finding the baby.

Yet I knew it was doomed. The second time I relocated the baby, it fluttered out of my glove and plopped straight down: no chance of it flying back to its nest. And with two cats in the yard, I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them made a natural discovery. “Wouldn’t it just be better to put it out of it’s future misery?” I wondered. Yet how could I do it? I could think of no quick and painless, and besides, who was I to say that it didn’t stand a chance of survival.

Thankfully, the Girl was away at an amusement park with her school chorus. Had she been there, I would have had to fend her off and deal with her eventual frustrated sadness when I would have tried to convince her that, no, we couldn’t take it into the house and try to raise it ourselves. That would be a sure death sentence.

When I walked back to empty the grass catcher, though, I saw that the chick had disappeared. Where it had gone remained a mystery for the rest of the day. Mother bird still fluttered around here and there, but I couldn’t figure out where the bird was.

And as I type this, I find myself wondering if mother bird has nestled up to the chick for the night to protect it and comfort it. And I’m glad I’m not a bird parent facing that impossible situation.

Resisting

Wednesday 1 February 2017

Part of parenting is resisting. Resisting the urge to give in to tantrums because, let’s face it, it would be easier in the short run. Resisting the urge to say something sarcastic when it’s really not going to do anything but make the situation worse. Resisting the urge to change your kid’s personality because some little quirk here or there is mildly annoying. Resisting the urge to compare your kids to others’ children. Resisting the urge to use one sibling as a model for the other: “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” Resisting the urge to let television be the babysitter when you’re tired. Resisting the urge to say “No” when “Yes” won’t hurt anything other than your schedule. Resisting the urge to say “Yes” when it’s so much easier. Resisting the urge disengage when tired. Resisting the urge to stop resisting the urges…

Practicing with the small suitcase we’ll be using this weekend, which he will use as his carry-on going to Poland this summer.

And part of parenting is embracing urges.

Late-January Monday

Monday 23 January 2017

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fairly typical Monday. Last Monday, we had no school, so K and I went out and bought a new car. The Monday before that, we were out of school because of snow. Or was that the previous Monday? Going back further there was winter break and so on. So today was a normal Monday. Up early, kids ready, off we go.

The afternoon was fairly typical as well. After chess club, I arrived home late. Everyone was in the backyard. I made my afternoon coffee, poured it in a travel mug, and headed out — only to see everyone coming in.

“I’m coming in to get dinner ready,” K said. The temptation was to be lazy, but laziness is what we got all weekend, with the rain, rain, and more rain.

“I’ll go down with them,” I suggested, and both the kids squealed and excitedly ran back down to the trampoline/swing/hammock/bridge/hiding spot area we’ve been developing over the last few years.

New tricks
Staring mysteriously
Meditation
“The swing is broken!”
Hiding spot

Afterward we had dinner. Relatively uneventful — which is really saying something. The kids lately have been bickering like mad over the slightest thing, and it turns dinner into something less than perfectly enjoyable. We decided to conduct an experiment — the “we” being K and I, for the kids would never agree to it. Not knowing what influence was primarily responsible for their behavior (for it’s not been just the bickering), we’ve eliminated all possible influences for a week: no television, no computer, no friends. Just a week to refocus and recharge. The kids this weekend had to find other ways to entertain themselves when we weren’t playing with them. L read, played with her Legos, drew. The Boy drew, played with his Legos, looked at books. The results are beginning to show: tonight, a much calmer dinner, with no hysterics about anything. In the evening, a calmness that hasn’t been in our house for a while.

Chasing the Unseen

Saturday 14 January 2017

I know we’re entering a new phase in the Girl’s life: chasing. It’s not just that now, with her birthday last month, she’s in the double digits. There’s more to it than that. She’s not a tween, is she? Isn’t that eleven? Twelve? Yet there she was this afternoon, down on the hammock, talking to her male friend as he sat on the other hammock.

It’s not that I’m suggesting that they were discussing anything more mature than a ten- and eleven-year-old should discuss. She still says that boys are icky. (Hopefully that will last for another couple of years, when they can comfortably become iffy at best. Maybe a blossoming interest when she starts high school?) No, it’s not what topic they were chasing down; it’s that they were talking. They weren’t playing; they weren’t running; they weren’t being silly. They were sitting and talking.

The Boy doesn’t talk with his friends. They play. They play with an intensity that makes me envious, with an energy that makes me wonder if I ever had even a small portion of it. They’re talking consists only of what they’re playing.

“Pretend I’m a policeman…”

“Let’s go to the trampoline!”

If I had to bet what L and W were discussing, I’d say it’s probably Pokemon-related. That’s what they talk about most of the time. That’s their common interest. But still — talking, not playing.

We’ve started chasing her. She’s still a little girl, but that’s ending in the next couple of years. Given my shock when I look past entries from the “Time Machine” widget here on this silly site and think, “Dang, that was three years ago?!” I know that those two years will pass so quickly that I won’t even notice if I’m not careful. And then we will be chasing her. Chasing her growth. Chasing the unseen.

Later in the day, the Boy gives chase in a different way. Playing on the driveway, he crashes to the concrete as he’s chasing a ball. His palms hit with an audible slap, and I could feel the burn in my own palms.

But not a peep, only a little cry of panic as he saw the ball heading to the edge of the driveway, threatening to roll down the hill and into the creek that serves as the boundary between our backyard and that of our neighbors’ yards. He popped back up, scurried to the end of the drive only half a blink too late. Down the hill rolled the ball.

There was a time when he wouldn’t head down that far into the yard without an adult, just as L was at that early age. But today, he didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even look to see if an adult was anywhere around. He just slowed a bit to make it down the tricky part, chasing the ball with the certainty that he could catch it that only a four-year-old could hold.