fun in threes, sometimes fours
the boy
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.
Blessing the baskets, digging the garden, and more.
The Boy, not even ten months old yet, can’t walk but can ride.
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.
"We want everything that has value to be eternal."
"Now everything that has a value is the product of a meeting, lasts throughout this meeting, and ceases when those things which  met are separated."
"That is the central idea of Buddhism (the thought of Heraclitus). It leads straight to God."
"Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my father and mother is even more salutary than meditation on death."
"Is there a single thing in me of which the origin is not to be found in that meeting? Only God. And yet again, my thought of God had its origin in that meeting."
And looking at our children, I have to think it was more than chance that led to my and Kinga's meeting, but doesn't every parent think that?
I’m certain that somewhere, in all the notebooks she kept, Simone Weil wrote something applicable to today, something that I could pair with the pictures of the Boy and the Girl playing on the kitchen floor, the Girl pretending to teach E how to bake.
Perhaps she wrote something about the importance of play, the relationship of siblings, or something equally profound. She does seem only to write about profundity in the journal excerpts collected in Gravity and Grace. With a title like that, though, one could hardly expect much frivolity. And considering her biography, it’s hardly surprising.
Still, it would have been convenient to look at the topical index and find “Play” instead of just topics like “Evil” and “Illusions” and “Self-Effacement.” How can I find any suitable quote from such topics to go along with the day’s pictures?
Perhaps if she’d had kids…
It's been some time since the whole family was together -- Nana, Papa, the Girl, the Boy, K, and I. But with a prognosis for wonderful weather and a completed recovery, there was only one thing to do: pack up the family and meet Nana at Papa's "spa" to have a mid-March picnic.
We took the kids' bikes (though E tends to use his four-wheeler more as a walker than anything), some sandwiches, a fresh Polish spring salad, some mango juice, and made an afternoon of it.
Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good.
The element of chance in our lives would probably overwhelm us if we knew its extent. A decision not to go with a newly-founded school's students on a field trip to the Baltic might lead to a chance invitation to a bar where one meets a new friend. A chance meeting of one's student with the friend's neighbor might get you both invited to an eventual wedding, where one suddenly discovers that the friend is really someone more wonderful than one imagined.
And from that string of chance -- or is it more? -- comes good. And so beauty.
A chance walk on an uncommonly warm February day might lead to a meeting that leads to a dear friend.
Spring is here?
