Funeral
the boy
Just the Two of Us
A Sunday morning that begins like this is likely to end as a somewhat sad Sunday. Not enough baggage for the whole family. Someone's staying. In this case, the Girl and I as K and the Boy head to Poland.
We try to make the best of the morning. There's more tadpoling -- it's a new term for us -- and some experimentation.
We try our hand at making a dam, but it is only moderately successful. The child in me begins scheming how we could reinforce the dam, make it more nearly water tight, soon enough the Girl loses interest and we begin looking for flowers.
Some day. Some day, we'll build that dam.
Old Ball Game
I never really played baseball as a kid. Due to various other commitments, Little League in all its guises was always out. Except for softball for the men, the church league in which I often participated didn't really offer ball/stick sports.
Riding a bike -- I did a lot of that. I lost a lot of skin in various wrecks and came to accept the fact that strawberries are always in season. The Girl, bless her heart, has not yet come to accept the fact that skinned knees are a part of the bike riding experience. The dreaded turn at the park notwithstanding, there really have been few occasions for the Girl to get bloodied up. In a sense, I'm thankful for that. Still, a bit pain, some skin left on the pavement -- what doesn't kill us and all that.
The Boy gets a hefty dose of pain on a daily basis, with slips and bonks, miscalculated head motions, blind ignorance. It all comes with the job of being a normal ten-month-old. His pain is a little more difficult to deal with as a parent: we can't simply explain, "Rub it out -- it will make you stronger. Just tough it out." In fact, we might not even always be sure what is causing the pain.
Pain and baseball (finally) don't often together either. Unless you count frustration -- the steep learning curve that's necessary for even simple catch. Though I biked more than I baseballed, I always enjoyed a game with kids of the neighborhood. Some of them played real ball -- and were good -- and I often felt a bit out of the loop. If we were picking teams, I was almost always selected last, for I was as ignorant of the concept of a strike zone, swinging at most anything, as I still am about the infield fly rule. But I enjoyed playing catch with Dad, and I enjoyed play baseball well into the late darkness of a summer night, with both teams taking occasional timeouts to catch new fireflies to smear the ball with florescence.
Now I'm on the other end of things, the teacher, not quite sure if I can really teach something I don't know how to do well myself. I can at least teach the Girl to throw overhanded, to snatch a ground ball, and to pound her fist into her pink and purple "Girlz Rule" mitt.
And we can share the evolving joy of a game of catch after dinner.
Balance
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton
For the first few months of our lives, it's our goal, our solitary goal, though we're not even aware of it. Trying to calm that sloshing inner ear so we can crawl, stand, walk, run -- it's all we struggle for during our first months. In truth, it's what we struggle with our whole lives, always upping the challenge, always looking back at our earlier miracles of balance as if they were simple magic shop card tricks all nine-year-olds revel in. They are miracles because all motion, not just walking, is controlled falling. Coordinated near-disaster.
The Boy, lately a master of scooting who is graduating slowly to crawling, nonetheless likes to press his luck and try the stairs. It strikes him suddenly, this urge that, like Everest to George Herbert Leigh Mallory, inspires him to climb simply "because it was there." Often he's on the other side of the room when he realizes he hasn't ascended the stairs in some time -- usually a few minutes -- and with a shout of recognition, flings his entire body forward, catching his whole upper weight with his chubby arms, lowering himself into position, then crawling like some new army recruit scooting under the barbed wire of an obstacle course. There's not much question of balance in this scooting, but the force with which he throws himself forward from a sitting position to all fours rivals an Olympic tumbler's dismount of the high bar: a loud thud after moments of seeming almost to hover in the air, most of us holding our breaths even though we know, most likely, he will make it.
The slick torture of our hardwood floors (with the old linoleum of the kitchen) has made crawling an exceptional challenge. Knees slip out from under the Boy faster than he can cope with, and after a few feet of crawling, he usually resorts to his scooting. Balance.
For her part, the Girl has taken on new challenges of the inner ear. Ballet would be the epitome of these new contests between self-control and inner ear, but it's only weekly. Limited. But never mind: she finds new tests of balance daily, like twirling seemingly endlessly to transform all possible potential bubbles to kinetic bubbles. Her ability to turn in circles, evidenced by so many pieces of playground equipment, makes most sane adults dizzy at even the thought. Yet there she is, turning, turning, turning, turning, turning.
Her latest balance challenge: roller skates. They might more aptly be named "roller walks" or "roller slips," but that's the nature of learning to keep ever-moving feet, unpredictably moving feet, under us. She hangs on with white knuckles to the stroller, demanding that we come to a full stop before she'll even consider --Â consider -- letting go.
It's been so long since I had anything with small wheels under my feet that I can't remember what to do, what knees, arms, thighs, arms, waist, or anything else should be doing, but I'm pretty sure that those locked knees are disaster in the offing.
"Bend your knees," I suggest. "Bend your knees a bit. Don't keep them so straight, so locked." She bends her knees to approximately 110 degree angles and promptly flops backward. She looks up at me with a hint of a glare, a hint of frustration, a hint even of betrayal.
"Not so much," I smile reassuringly, remembering that each question of balance consists of yet more, seemingly smaller mysteries of the inner ear.
Park and Ride
It’s the second day of Easter, and if we were still in Polska, everyone would have the day off. As it is, the twist of luck that gives L and me the day off due to spring break isn’t nearly so kind to K: she heads off to work while I stay behind with the kids.
The clouds subside by the time E goes down for his first nap — easy, gently, for he’s so tired that he doesn’t even have the energy to fuss. After lunch for us all, we head to the park.
The Boy gets on his four wheeler and sits and inspects the playground. The kids at the swings are out of control; those darting around the jungle gym are perhaps worse.
After a few moments of thought, he heads off to a somewhat deserted corner of the playground.
Easter 2013
An Easter of firsts. And seconds. And thirds.
The first time in three months that everyone is together at Nana’s and Papa’s for dinner.
The first time the Boy tries ice cream.
And the second time he tries ice cream. It’s a hit from the beginning. He watches K eat her cone, reaching for it incessantly.
Until he gets his third taste. And his fourth. And some more — too many to count.
He’s sold.
Holy Saturday 2013
Blessing the baskets, digging the garden, and more.
Sleepy Boy
Easy Rider
The Boy, not even ten months old yet, can’t walk but can ride.
Sixth Sunday of Lent 2013
Palm Sunday is not supposed to be like this: rainy, cold, miserable. The expressions tell the whole story: we’re not pleased with the lack of spring. It makes the whole process somehow just a touch gray, literally and figuratively.
It’s hard to smile when the temperature outside never rises above the low forties, and the rain has been puttering down, on and off, for three days.
Even the Boy, not feeling 100%, got a bit of the Polish-American Gothic vibe.