Cooking
the boy
Snow Day 2016, Part 2
Another day off school, another typical Greenville County Schools snow day -- not a bit of snow visible in our part of the county, but apparently enough snow in the north portions of the county to render things unsafe. And so we kept ourselves occupied today in a variety of ways -- details when you mouse-over.
Two Conversations
One
Mama, why does Daddy have bronchitis?
I don’t know.
Is he going to die?
No, honey.
Two
Daddy, hear that? (Slightly congested cough.)
Yes. Are you okay?
We were out for that spacer [walk] yesterday, and there was cold air, and I had it in my mouth, and I swallowed it.
Did you get some medicine?
Yes, Mama posmarować-ed [smeared] me with special olej [oil]. I’ll be okay in a few minutes.
Garbage-Bagging
"It's supposed to start around seven this evening," I explained. "That's what all the meteorological reports suggest." The slight bit of icy snow that frosted the ground yesterday was not enough to do much of anything, one would think, but when you're on the South, any amount of "snow" is significant for children. So the suggestion that we might have even more snow was the stuff of sweet dreams as the kids plodded off to bed. "Is it snow?" was the mantra of the evening, but they went to sleep with complete confidence with the weather reports, knowing that they were only off by the time.
From the moment they woke up, the kids were at the window, ready to go out, ready to play in the snow. "There's so much snow!" E chirped again and again. It's only the second or third time the Boy has seen snow, so any snow at all is significant. When Dziadek was sick a few years ago, K to the Boy with her for a visit in the middle of January, and so E saw real snow, deep snow, snow that covers everything and utterly transforms the whole landscape, but of course he doesn't remember it.
When we finally made it outside, we had a dilemma: the young man who was sledding with us yesterday had come in the morning and taken his sleds with us. What to do? "I guess we sled like I did when I was a kid," K said. And so we took an old sleeping bag -- though, properly speaking, it should have been straw -- and used it to stuff a garbage bag. K also thought we might try E's old inner-tube we used at the pool. "It's not like we use it anymore." As the finishing touch, our neighbors invited us to use their yard -- slightly smoother and with fewer trees.
When the kids came in, they were soaked. And that's as it should be.
Snow Day 2016
We don't get much snow here in the South. Even an inch is enough to disrupt everything. We do get a lot more ice, I think. Even then, the slightest little bit makes the news. This morning, for example, a news caster commented on the fact that there were icicles on the trees, "And they don't fall off when I shake the branch." No joke.
Still, when we get a little snow, or even a little ice that is masquerading as snow, we make the most of it.
Papa’s Hard Hat
Śpij, kochanie
“Daddy, I want to go to sleep.” And so I put up the book, turn off the light, and start the music.
The Boy rolls over on his back, and I rest my arm along his back, running my fingers through his hair gently. He stops moving, his breathing slows, and within moments, he’s asleep. Still I lie, continually stroking his head, rubbing his back. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and sinks deeper.
W górze tyle gwiazd,
W dole tyle miast,
Gwiazdy miastu dają znać,
Że dzieci muszą spać.
Just listening to the Polish lullaby gets me thinking of all the twists and turns it took to get me to this moment in which I’m listening to a song in a language I never dreamed of learning, thinking how appropriate the lyrics — “Above, so many stars / below, so many cities. The stars let the cities know / That it’s time for children to sleep” — are some nights when the Boy tosses and turns and turns and tosses as my Polish wife puts our daughter to bed in the next room. All those little twists and turns, those seemingly insignificant decisions that led to meeting, returning, dancing, flying — all the things that led to the present moment, the present family.
“It was fate,” some might say. “It was the hand of God,” others might rejoin. “It was a happy sequence of accidents,” still others might insist. Fate, accident, God — whatever the cause, I’m grateful for all the steps, trips, and slips that led to this moment. Remembering that on a regular basis, I think, is the key to happiness.
Sunday in the Park
The patriarch of the Buendía family, José Arcadio Buendía, spent the last days of his life under the chestnut tree in the courtyard of his home. Even when villagers carried his body to his bed as his end became increasingly obviously near, he woke and went back to the tree every morning as "a habit of his body." Thus Marquez describes it in his classic One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I am re-reading some twenty or twenty-five years after I first read it. The idea of a habit of one's body stuck with me all these years, and tonight, when I finally read that scene, I smiled. It was one of the passages of the novel I couldn't recall where exactly it fell but read eagerly in search of it.
Part of the joy of watching children, I think, is that they have no habits of the body yet. They don't get up at five thirty and make the morning coffee without thinking about it. They don't come to an intersection intending to turn right but pulling into the left lane out of habit. They don't have a routine they follow in which they suddenly become aware they're half-way through the routine. Every action is new. Every action has a certain uncertainty to it that demands their attention and their care. Every act brings forth a joy of the novel.
Peeling Eggs
The Boy is always eager to help, especially when it comes to cooking. Any time K is standing at the stove, E bounds over to the dining table, grabs a chair, and slides it across the whole room to the stove.
"I want to help!"
Most often, that's just stirring. It's simple, difficult to mess up, and difficult to make a mess doing. Today, though, as I was rinsing the boiled eggs we'd be putting in our żurek later, he decided he wanted to learn how to peel the eggs. Rather, having just woke up from a nap, he was encouraged to learn. Bribed, for he's awfully fussy when he's awakened prematurely.
"Want to help me cook?" I began.
He was reluctant at first, but the words "learn" and "something new" seemed to pique his interest, and soon enough, he was peeling an egg.
When it came time for dinner, he was quite insistent that he got the egg that he had peeled.
"Bardzo słuszna koncepcja."
Final Sunday of the Break
Just as predicted, we blinked twice and it was Christmas Eve; another two blinks and it was New Year's Eve. And now, it's all over again. Another Christmas break is little more than memory. But that's not a bad thing: Most of our lives are memory. The present is just a passing phase that disappears as soon as you acknowledge its existence. The future is relatively uncertain. So it's our memories that make up the majority of our life.
Today was glorious, but we were all tired, so we stayed home. It was a lazy day from the beginning: the alarm went off at seven, and it took only a moment for K and me to decide that the eleven o'clock Mass was a better option than the nine o'clock Mass.
We were thinking about going for some afternoon outing, perhaps hiking somewhere, but soon after Mass, as we were heading to the car, I think I'd decided that even going to a nearby park might be too ambitious.
So in the end, we spent the day at home. There was an abundance of trampoline time, including the fun game of Charge Yourself with Ample Static Electricity by Shuffling Around the Trampoline with Your Socks On Then Discharge It All Onto Daddy's Bald Head. A fun game, that.