the boy
Meeting Family Twenty Years Ago
It was twenty years ago today that I arrived in Lipnica Wielka, my home in southern Poland for seven years. Upon arriving, I wrote in my journal:
It has taken so much time to reach this point. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, sitting in my apartment at my site, Lipnica Wielka. In a way I want to cry – not from happiness or sadness. It’s just from relief. I finally made it.
At the time, I was so strung out and excited that I didn't even realize that it was also my mother's birthday. And today, thinking about the fact that it's Nana's birthday, I had no idea that it was also the twentieth anniversary of my arrival in Poland. One eclipsed the other, and then they changed roles and did it again.
The seeds of my own family start on that day as well. I didn't meet K immediately, but it was only a matter of weeks after that I met K in a small bar that served as a dance hall -- a disco as it was called -- on Saturday evenings for local youngsters (at least that's how I view the 18-25 bracket now). Twenty years later, we've started a new branch of our family trees.
The final connection for today: out of the blue, I decided to tinker the other day with the family tree I'd started creating on Ancestry.com. The site offered me a two-week trial subscription, which would allow me to delve into the records of the site rather than just use the site as a record-keeping mechanism. A few hours of research later and I have several generations of the family in America, back to the late eighteenth-century. Or do I? There's really no way of knowing whether or not the Robert Divenny (1773-1852) is my paternal grandfather's mother's grandfather or just some Divenny that seems to match enough of the criteria -- birth period and general location. And of course I don't know anything about the family tree going forward. Still, somehow have a potential name makes it all the more real.
Afternoon at the Lake
I wouldn't know about them but for the Olympics, which have put in us in front of the television more than usual lately, but State Farm has been apparently hiring known musicians to embed their "Like a good neighbor" in one of their stylized creations. Clever, I guess, but it's a meaningless ad if you don't have good neighbors. We have great neighbors, and we spent the afternoon at the lake with them today.
E has been eyeing our neighbor's boat for years, and Mr. F has been promising to take him out on the boat for ages. Today was the day. Mrs. P, who works at E's preschool, told us that he's been talking about today's outing for the whole week. "Everyone knows he's going out on the boat with Mr. F," she laughed.
When we arrived, everyone went straight into the water while Mr. F went to put the boat in the water. The plan was simple: swim, lunch, boat ride.
The first part of it went fine. They even managed to slip a short boat ride in just before lunch.
But then the rain began and intensified and it was fairly clear fairly quickly that we weren't going on another boat ride. The thunder began and it became clear that we weren't even going back into the water.
So it's a good thing the kids got the short boat ride in before lunch.
I was talking to the Boy about it, wondering how he'd take it. I tried to set things up to ease the reality of going home sooner than expected.
"But we're big boys and not really upset about it, right?"
"Yep."
"Because we can't control the weather, right?"
"Nope, can't control the weather."
If only all disasters were so easily averted.
Cooking Lesson
The Boy wants to learn how to cook.
Getting Out of Bed
The other day, the Boy had a bit of difficulty getting out of bed.
Dozen
A dozen years ago K and I wore these clothes to make a commitment to each other in front of our friends and family.
These pictures represent what that commitment was all about.
Saturday Ritual
Saturday is for the house, and while we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time and money on one part of the house — namely, the kitchen, we’ve neglected other parts of the property. With all the rain of the last few weeks, the yard had gone absolutely crazy, and there was much cleaning and rearranging still to be done in our downstairs.
K started with some final painting — the baseboards in the living room. The Boy, of course, just had to help.
“Daddy, you can’t touch this paint because it will just hurt you, okay?”
I tackled the yard.
It was finally not all that hot, but the humidity was stifling. Despite the discomfort, the Boy came out to help mow. This means he walked beside me for a few minutes, pretending to mow the steep section near the ditch.
After a shower, I checked out our oven.
The burners work, but the oven doesn’t ignite. In the end, the Boy and I decided that we should just call the experts who sold us the equipment and let them decide if it’s something I just didn’t do or there is some defect in the appliance.
Breakfast
Moving In
Three, maybe three and a half weeks ago, we reached a point in our kitchen remodel project that everything more or less looked like a kitchen. The counters and tops were in, and while the floor wasn’t finished yet, it was installed and looked like a floor. And yet there was so much to do — trim around the windows and doors, baseboard trim, final plumbing (including fixing problems the sewer line in the front yard and with the newly-installed gas line), lights, and the like. So it looked like we were almost there, but we were still so far away. All the changes from that point on were so small in comparison to ripping out a window and door to rebuild the header.
Finally, we’ve reached a point that we’re almost to the point that we can say, “We’re almost done.” “Almost done” because the under-the-cabinet lighting installation has been put off for some time, as has the final venting of the microwave through the room (right now, it’s just popped into the attic). So even when the back splash gets completed next week, and we finally move in the stove — the final appliance — we still won’t be complete done. And then there’s the new dining room furniture we’ve ordered so that every little thing in the kitchen, except for the coffee maker and toaster oven, will be new.
So today we made the final little adjustments and started moving in. L and I filled all the trim nail holes with spackling while E and K cleaned all the windows. Then I set out with the caulk gun to caulk the trim before it gets a coat of paint.
K, in the meantime, prepared all the new shelves with liners and began running all our dishes through the new dishwasher. We quickly discovered the enormous difference between the old dishwasher and the new: the old sometimes cleaned; the new is so powerful that it knocked the finish off a couple of items that we’d put in the bottom.
Tomorrow, the table migrates back to the dining area, where it will stay for a few weeks until the new furniture arrives, and we begin moving food to the kitchen, reverting our basement to just that. We’ll tear down the field kitchen in the backyard, move the grill back onto the deck, and begin to forget the work of the summer and just live.
This Week
