the boy | matching tracksuits

the boy

Ten

Friday 16 December 2016 | 0 Comments

K and I woke about the time we arrived at the hospital ten years ago.

We were eating breakfast at the time I was filling out paperwork and K was wearily filling in her midwife on the progress thus far.

By the time the kids were up, K was in the huge tub preparing for a water delivery.

When L was opening her present, she was still almost an hour away from delivery. By the time E was licking the maple syrup off his plate after a birthday breakfast of French toast, L was getting closer but still not there.

By the time my students were partaking in their improvised opłatek celebration, K was holding a clean and fragrant little girl who had already taken over our lives entirely.

By the time our neighbor Santa arrived, Nana and Papa had already arrived and been reveling for some time in their new status as Nana and Papa.

Ten years and everyone around us, except for L, wonders how the time disappeared so quickly. Hasn’t L always been this tall? Hasn’t E always been tagging along behind her?

The Boy’s Show

Wednesday 14 December 2016 | 2 Comments

Goofing

Sunday 11 December 2016 | 0 Comments

Meat

Saturday 10 December 2016 | 0 Comments

When we woke up, it was twenty-seven degrees outside. For South Carolina, that’s cold, especially in December. The really low temperatures like that don’t usually hit until January and February. It creates a challenge for the day’s activity: smoking of the holiday meat.

With twenty-some pounds of pork loin, a rack of ribs (for soups), and several pounds of chicken to smoke, I’m going to have a long, cold day in such weather.

Fortunately the Boy comes out to help.

At least for a while.

Teaching Tasting

Friday 09 December 2016 | 0 Comments

The Boy really wants to learn how to cook, so we’ve begun, somewhat unplanned, to recognize spices.

When I gave him cinnamon, he wrinkled his nose a bit, took another sniff, then asked, “Did we put that in the sauce for Thanksgiving?” I nodded my head. “Oh, it’s crunched up cinnamon sticks!”

Immaculate

Wednesday 07 December 2016 | 0 Comments

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church, which means you've got to go to mass. Our new parish, though, is only have a morning mass, so we went to the vigil mass tonight. At six. Which meant the Boy was ready to go to sleep before mass even began.

The notion of the Immaculate Conception has always confused me, no less now that I'm Catholic. The idea is that, to avoid the "stain of Original Sin" passing on to Jesus, God removed from Mary at her conception original sin. The mechanics of this, as I understand it, involve retroactively applying the salvific nature of her son's sacrifice to her -- which brings about an obvious question: why not just do that to everyone? In the spirit of "fake it until you make it," I go along with it. But the whole thing leaves me a little off kilter. So, truth be told, does the whole Christian story, and I guess that's supposed to be the point of it in some sense.

Mary's holy and immaculate conception, by Francisco Rizi, Museo del Prado, 17th-century, Oil on canvas. Via Wikipedia

There are so few things we encounter these days that we could call "immaculate." A newborn child. And I sit here, thinking about what I could add as a second item on that list, and even with the thought of adding a qualifying "perhaps," I'm stuck. Perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps that's what Original Sin is all about. Perhaps it's human nature. Perhaps Original Sin is human nature. Perhaps it's not important at 10:50 on a Wednesday.

Part of growing up, I think, is that realization that "immaculate" really doesn't exist in our world. The natural world is filled with such cruelty, with wasps that plant their eggs in still-living organisms that the larva will literally eat alive -- and likely very painfully. Then there are all the natural disasters just waiting to happen, or just happening. Thinking about "immaculate" leads us to think about its opposite, whatever that might be, and perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps that's the point.

Mikołaj 2016

Tuesday 06 December 2016 | 0 Comments

There are times when it seems the Girl's frustration with the Boy is simply going to overwhelm her, take over her mind, body, and soul. "E!" she cries out, stretching his name into a several-second yelp. When she's talking to her cousin in Poland, she can be positively cruel, trying to shove him out of her room so she can have "peace and quiet." When he gets into her Legos, it's as if he's managed to snag a Ming dynasty vase and is attempting to juggle it.

Of course he can give it as well as he gets it, and sometimes the Girl comes and complains that E is being mean. "Well, he's only following your example: you taught him how to do that," K and I remind her.

Some days, it's like playing Whack-a-Mole: one gets calmed down just as the other decides it's about time for a little provocation. Reverse and repeat. Reverse and repeat. Reverse and repeat.

When they're in such a mood, it brings out the worst in them in another respect, too: they become the worst tattle-tales. I guess this is just another form of provocation, though.

Watching them in these moments, it might be hard to see the love they have for each other, especially when L's all worked up. But it's there, strong and bright and clear. Most clearly, it comes from E, who's not afraid to show his love and admiration for his older sister. She is everything to him, and he imitates her as much as he imitates K and me.

The Girl shows it in little surprising ways. This morning, "Polish Christmas" as they call it, she was up first. That in itself is a rarity. Still, there she was the first one up, with a little prodding. She had the first meeting of Battle of the Books this morning, and she had to be at school a little early -- with chorus, that means early starts Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for the foreseeable future. It's always hard to get her out of bed, but I thought I had the silver bullet today: "Mikołaj came -- I think he left you something." I expect her to bolt upright and start asking, "Where? Where? Where?" with a crazed expression. It would be a typical L action in many ways. Instead, she simply answered that she wanted to open her present with E.

"He's still asleep," I explained, thinking that would put an end to it all.

"Okay, I'll wait."

It was worth it.

L led E to his presents and celebrated with what Mikołaj brought him. (The prized present: a light and siren set to turn his bike into a "police vehicle" as he explained it.) Then she demanded that he lead her, with her eyes closed, back to her room to check out her presents. (The prized present: a new pair of pajamas emblazoned with L's morning mantra: "Five more minutes!")

In the evening, it was time for more holiday preparation: Saturday's a big smoking day for me, and we put around twenty-five pounds of pork loin in a brine to get it ready. The Boy, who's always wanting to cook, helped out. I taught him how to test the brine ("It should taste as salty as the ocean," I explained) and then spit it out.

Of course the spitting into a pot was the highlight. He was not at all disappointed that we didn't have the salt level correct the first time and had to keep adding and testing, adding and testing.

Afterward, a little work on the couch together.

What did Mikołaj bring K and me? This beautiful day.

The Real L

Monday 05 December 2016 | 0 Comments

Monday evenings, we get that rare chance to see the Girl in her element, to see her without her being aware that we see her, that we’re watching. I say “we” but it’s really only one or the other of us: one stays with the Boy, the other takes L to gymnastics, then does a bit of shopping while she bounces about.

I arrived back to pick her up tonight about ten minutes early, so I sneaked to a spot I could watch without her being aware. They were doing something on a bar roughly the width of one of the uneven bars but only about two feet off the ground, placing their hands on the bars and jumping on the bar before extending both arms upward. The Girl completed the exercise, got a high five from her teacher, then went to an aerobic ball and began bouncing up and down on it. The other girls were sitting still, waiting their turn and watching the other girls go, and L was bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, looking here and there, in her own world. They got up to do something else, and when done, L returned to the ball. Bounce bounce bounce. Up down up down up down up down bounce bounce bounce up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up bounce bounce bounce bounce down up down up down up down up down with such abandon and joy that I realized that she could probably just do that during the entire hour and be satisfied with time spent. I thought what a perfect metaphor this simple action, that in some ways I found annoying because I sensed that the other girls around L found it annoying, could cause her so much happiness. It was another of those “just let her be — don’t worry about what other kids think about her” moments. So they might have been annoyed — so what? So they might in some way reject her because they might think that’s childish in some sense — so what?

“You seemed to have a lot of fun bouncing on that ball tonight,” I suggested in the car on the way home.

“Yeah!” she said with her typical excitement.

“Don’t the other girls want to do that?”

“We take turns every week,” she said, looking out the window.

“And tonight was your turn?”

“Yeah — not everyone wants to do it. Some of the girls think the mats are more comfortable.”

I wondered at that. Perhaps some of the other girls just don’t care enough to put up a fight, because I can see L running for the ball to claim the first turn. That’s how she is with us, and with people she feels comfortable with. But these girls? Virtual strangers? I worry at times that she might not have the best social radar, that she might think she’s closer to some people than they themselves think they are to her. I’ve noticed little gestures from others at times, things I wonder if I should point out to L or just let her learn. Reading body language. It’s a skill that sometimes has to be taught, doesn’t it? And then there are those autistic souls who can’t pick up on those things to save their lives.

So no big epiphanies tonight. No big revelations. Just more wondering.

But not about the Boy: he was in perfect E-form when K started cleaning the oven tonight.

Rainy Sunday

Sunday 04 December 2016 | 0 Comments

"It's cold and rainy!" I said as I came back inside from taking pictures of the Boy, who was more thrilled than I was that it was cold and rainy. After a blistering dry summer, to have finally some cold, wet weather is a blessing.

It made the rosół we had for lunch all the tastier, the cuddling with Papa and Nana all the more comfortable, and family movie in the early evening all the more enjoyable.

The automatically created URL for this post indicates that this is the fourth time I've used "Rainy Sunday" as a post title:

Rainy Sunday

All within the last three years.

Lighting the House

Saturday 03 December 2016 | 1 Comment

Once again, a job to do: lighting the house. Once again, a Boy to help.

“Daddy, I need to be up there with you. I need to work on the roof.” How can I possibly resist? It makes the job more difficult, but it also makes it more enjoyable.

And occasionally, his help is actually help. “Bring me more lights,” I ask, and he chirps “Okay” and almost runs over to where the bag of lights lie on the ground.

This lasts for a few minutes — twenty at most — before he sees the neighborhood boys out and decides he has done enough to help. Without a word, without explanation, he runs off, and I am left both in peace (how fast can I get the rest of this done now? careful not to fall!) and a little lonely, sad even.

It’s a foreshadowing of things to come, I know. It’s already starting with the Girl — notice she’s not even in this post because she was doing her own thing. She did her cleaning chores and was left with an afteroon that she filled with chatting with her cousin in Poland on Skype, pestering E, and whatever else she might have been doing. She spent the night at a friend’s house, too.

It’s still so far away and yet so very close.