fun in threes, sometimes fours
the boy
The skittishness is subsiding, and even E's squealing can go unnoticed. She sleeps in the middle of the floor sometimes, and she's seeking out company rather than desperately searching for a hiding place. The Girl is learning the old maxim, "If you love someone, set her free," and Elsa is beginning to come back, showing it was meant to be.
In short, she seems to be happy to be part of our family.
The Boy and the Girl often end the evening together in the tub. "Bubbles!" cries the Boy as he runs to get L.
Sometimes, L gets an urge to play teacher.
The Boy has learned how dispense water from the refrigerator. He makes a circuit of it: fill up a glass, take a drink, toddle over to the sink, pour out the remainder. Repeat.
Evening play with the Boy: we put the cards out on the steps, one at a time, sorting. We place Emily on Emily, Thomas on Thomas, and it's all going quite well for the first few cards. E takes a card, looks at it, and places it on the right stack. Soon there are three stacks, and the accuracy decreases. Soon, with five, six stacks, he loses interest in place them on the right stack and simply begins tossing cards on the stairs.
Later, as L is working on her homework, the Boy begins rifling through a pack of bandages. One variety: no sorting, but still there's the question of manipulation, of getting them all in a stack, all in a row, so to speak.
It's captivating to watch, whether cards or Band-Aids, because we never really know what he's trying to do, and I'm not sure he does, either. Patterns emerge that seem to be purposeful then disappear into new chaos.
When I was a kid, my father went on business trips once or twice a year -- South Africa, England, and various states in the US. For me, it was a highlight, because we often got to take him to the airport. Watching planes take off and land from the observation deck was sheer heaven for a small boy. Of course the real highlight came on his return, for he always brought something back for us from wherever he sent. It was a bit like Santa in September.
An acquaintance at church mentioned at the post-Christmas-concert pot-luck that in 2013, he'd been in something like fifty countries on business. That's a lot of time in a plane, a lot of time away from one's family, a lot of nights in hotels. I both envy him and pity him. Seeing that much of the world would certainly be a blessing, and it would certainly help one appreciate what's here in the States and likely produce a sense of the possibilities based on what's in other countries. Travel changes the traveler forever. Still, so much time away from home, from family, makes it a bad trade.
As a teacher, I don't get many opportunities to go on business trips. Conferences are about the extent of it. So when I do go for a conference somewhere, I realize anew how much of an aggravation ten countries a year -- let alone fifty countries a year -- would be. But I also smile at the thought of seeing L's smile when I say, "Come here, sweetie, I brought something back for you."
What Polish family would be truly Polish if barszcz weren't a favorite? For as long as I can remember, the Girl has adored it, placed it almost at the very top of her favorite food list -- just below pizza, of course.
The Boy has been warming to the idea, and tonight, he decided it was time to get serious about beet root soup.
Somehow he managed to get two spoons, and he did make use of both of them.
That only left one family member: the cat. K, though, solved that problem today, taking a few seconds that L hadn't managed to finish, running them through a food processor to grind up the sausage (the poor old girl has lost almost all her teeth), and pouring the resulting purple mush into Bida's bowl.
And so now it's official: the Scott family, to a person/cat, loves beetroot soup.
He dashed to the bathroom as soon as he heard the water running, squealing "Bubbles!" He tends to pronounce that final "s" as a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative, though; in other words, he says "bubblesh!" Such a mouthful to describe such a simple sound -- admittedly, I didn't even know what it was until I asked Google -- seems an apt illustration for how the Boy in fact uses language. Seeing the bubbles foam in the bathtub, he returned to the back top of the stairs and called, "L! Bubbles! Chodz!" Three little words that communicated a whole cosmos of new understanding and excitement.
At it's most simple level, the Boy's utterance was a highly simplified, mixed-language group of sentences. "Hey, L! Dad's running the bath, and he's put the bubbles in! Come quick!" But the excitement in his voice added more: "Hey, I'm able to communicate a complete thought!"
The small steps one takes to the greater goal: with the Boy today, it struck me that I don’t do enough with him during Mass to help him develop spiritually. I’d fallen into that silly line of thinking that he’s too young to get it. How ridiculous. We’d begun teaching him how to cross himself after dinner prayer. He gets the head — belly and shoulders, not so much. And he ends folding his hands together for “amen.” “If he can get that, of course he can begin other rudiments of the faith.” So today, during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we knelt together for a moment. He ran his car on the floor after a few seconds, but it’s the small steps.
Small steps can of course grow into gigantic leaps, and Polish Mass today showed that as well. The choir, which began simply as K singing along with the organist, has grown in all senses, so that today the choir boasted seven members including an international accompaniment section that included a trumpet player who’d learned the hejnał played from St. Mary’s Basilica in Krakow hourly. I recorded the final hymn; watching the video, K mused about the irony: “That’s one of our most patriotic hymn, and we had a Latino accompanist and an Irish-American trumpet player.”
I can’t deny that at times, K’s choir involvement bothered me. Not because of what it was but the lengths to which she sometimes went to participate, singing when she was sick, singing when she’d rather do just about anything else. To have such a woman in my life at all could not fail to make me a better man; to have such a woman as my wife often leaves me speechless.
Given the rambunctious nature of our daughter, such a temperament as K’s seems nonnegotiable. It’s certainly not environment and it’s not obviously genetic — at least not in the first generation — but there it is all the same: energy that can be frustratingly exhausting, frustratingly difficult to redirect, frustratingly everything. Yet it’s not hard to see the gifts and wonder packed into her small frame as well. While playing tag after Mass, she reminded me just how incredibly nimble-minded she is. “JesteÅ› berkiem!” one of the boys called out, and she smiled as she ran after him: “I know I’m it!” She lives in the midst of two languages, two cultures, so effortlessly. If only it were effortlessly: it’s another struggle sometimes, but these little moments that show us that it’s not all in vain are welcome.
Back at home, I returned to my morning task, grading essays on Romeo and Juliet. As they’re all turned in online through a course management system, I can see the resulting word-counts in a simple list. Quantity is not quality, but seeing word-counts that average close to a thousand words, I remembered students’ incredulity at the beginning of the year when I told them that by the end of the year, five hundred words would seem restrictively short. And here it was, right on my computer screen: proof that I’ve had an impact. It’s easy to say, “We teachers can only plant seeds,” after days that seem like staying at home and bashing one’s head into the wall repeatedly would have been more productive, but such moments of clarity make those days all worthwhile.
Four things to be grateful for, in four different categories — spiritual, spousal, familial, and career. And the fact that it was so easy for me to think of these four things is itself something for which I can be thankful.
The Girl is odd when it comes to food, to say the least. It's tempting to say it's due to growing up in a half-Polish household where we cook a great deal of Polish food. That explains her absolute love of beet root soup, and it might explain why she's not wild about things like hamburgers. On the other hand, pizza is another favorite, to the dgree that when asked about favorite foods, sometimes she lists pizza, sometimes barszcz.
Snacking and treats seem fairly straight forward: she likes most of the things typical American kinds like. Chocolate. Apples. Ice cream. Pickles. A whole jar. With the juice poured into a cup and savored through a straw.
The Boy sees the pickles, squeals "Pickle!" and grabs one in each hand and almost gets away with them both before K catches him and lets him know that one is enough. The three of them curl up together and watch Ted Ligety work his magic in the giant slalom.