“Oh, L!” is a common refrain.
the boy
Spring Work
Spring is a time of expectation and rebirth. Or simply birth. With four weeks remaining until the Boy's due date, it's time to complete the final preparations: clothes need washing, cribs need assembling,
and final days as an only child need enjoying. We're all bursting at the prospect of a new member of the family, but I suspect that it won't take long for the Girl to start remembering how peaceful a Saturday afternoon could be when she was flying solo.
But there will be things only she can help with for several more years: her place as the special helper is secure for the foreseeable future.
So is mine.
Old and Young
There are times when the Girl most decided looks older than her actual age: riding her bike in the carport the other day was such a time; at the beach this summer was another. Yet looking older and being older are two different things. Indeed, looking older, acting older, and being older are three different things. Two of those three are out of anyone’s control. Acting older is a function of biology (brains and bodies must develop, after all), psyschology, and lastly, choice.
I try to influence that choice by increased reference to the Boy. “When Little Brother is here,” I’ll begin when I sense some fussing is approaching, “will you really want to act like such a little child? Don’t you want to be big sister?” Perhaps a bit manipulative, but isn’t that the case with most aspects of child rearing at this age? Manipulation will only get me so far in the game, though. The rest is her choice.
Tonight’s choice: to cook dinner. It’s a lazy, almost-emergency-nothing-planned dinner: we have a jar of spaghetti sauce and some noodles in the cabinets for such evenings. Perfect for a little girl.
“You’ll do the hot stuff, Tata,” she explains. “I’ll crush the sugar for the noodles and other stuff.” (I can never get “bullion” into her head; it’s always “sugar.”) She pours the jar of sauce into the pan, swirls around the water in the jar to rinse off the leftover sauce, cleans off the table — everything she can do, she does.
These are the small accomplishments that instill intense pride. “When Little Brother is five or six, he can help, too,” she says offhandedly as she crushes bullion cubes. “Guess what, Mama!” she almost yells when K walks through the door, “I cooked dinner!”
And so the future unfurls itself slowly in front of us. We watch and smile, anticipating and almost dreading: we’ll look back wistfully on these blog entries some day, we know.
But this is only half of the story.
As surely as she shows flashes of the years to come, the Girl reminds us that she’s still five. “Want to see how I can jump like a frog?” she asks after dinner.
If only she can keep this balance of youthful excitement over the most seemingly insignificant things and an increasing sense of responsibility, I’m quite certain of her future.
The Boy
“Big” Saturday
Holy Saturday in Polish is "Wielka Sobota", which translates to "Great Saturday" (though not "great" as a synonym for "fantastic"). It's the final day of preparation for Wielkanoc, which translates to "Great Night." But nestled in the hustle and chaos of cooking, cleaning, ironing, and fretting is a great (in this case, synonymous with "fantastic") tradition: the blessing of the Easter baskets.
Dressed in the traditional outfits of Podhale and armed with two baskets overflowing with food for Easter breakfast, we headed to the church early in order to get our obligatory Easter family portrait.
When we entered the church, the Girl was fascinated: so many baskets, so many colored eggs -- which to choose? Only a quick eye and a quicker hand kept the Girl from pillaging and plundering.
The baskets tell another story, though. The church wasn't filled, but there were enough pockets of English conversation in the generally Polish-expat crowd that it became obvious that others see the value and beauty of this tradition.
The priest, Father Theo, certainly likes the tradition. He positively beamed as he spoke, and the joy of his kind embrace of the tradition was infectious.
So contagious was his joy that he managed to talk a young lady into coming up to read the passage about the Passover tradition. No practice, no warning, just a kind smile and a compliment about her dress.
After the blessing, it was a free-for-all,
on both sides of the lenses. As I was taking a picture, I felt the crowd gathering about me. I realized the real picture was about ten steps behind me.
Shortly thereafter, the shot was about twenty steps in front of me.
And when you're carrying around a large DSLR, everyone asks you for a picture.
Then again, Father Theo has good reason: his camera is a Canon that lacks a screen on the back and, rumor has it, records the pictures on a thin plastic film. I don't believe it myself, but I can attest to the camera's lack of a LCD screen. How in the world does he preview his pictures?
How does he know, for example, that some outside shots need a little over-exposure?
How would he'd managed to slide his hand back into his pocket, concealing the remote shutter release?
Or know that he'd captured the petals of spring blossoms falling snow?
Or be sure that he's caught the conference of Polish women?
"Nonsense!" the Girl would declare. "All that matters is the tree I see the boys climbing and my first chance to try it for myself." With a nervous father always close at hand.
In the end, the best that could be said about such a busy day can't be said with words.
Happy Almost-Easter to all.
Stating the Obvious
"You've got kind of a big nose, huh?"
The words fell like grenades as the three of us bobbed about the shallow end of the pool. My best friend was talking to my new girlfriend my first girlfriend, truth be told who'd been the axis of my existence for the previous week of band camp.
The words hit her fairly hard, too, for her eyes teared up and she swam away.
I said something icy and hateful to my friend and swam off to comfort my lady.
Truth be told, she did have a nose that was a bit on the large size, though of course I was not foolish enough to admit it when my friend protested later, "But she does have kind of a big nose."
"You didn't have to say anything," I thought. I said, "No, she doesn't!"
She herself admitted it sometime later, with a laugh, even.
We were all twelve, and yet somehow my friend had not yet learned that you don't have to say everything you're thinking.
Many of the boys I work with daily, at age fifteen, even sixteen, still have not learned that either. If I go into work with a bit of razor burn, I get comments. Endlessly. If they think my clothes are somehow unfashionable, they let me know, then stand around in a circle and laugh about it as I stand there.
It's funny -- when I was their age, I did the same thing. But my friends and I talked about teachers' razor burn or mismatched wardrobe in hushed tones, and we would never be presumptuous enough to think that we could mock the teacher as if he were a peer. But that is exactly what many of the boys at the center do.
The worst was the first time I cycled to school. When they saw me in typical cycling clothes everything spandex, basically they howled with laughter. "Oh my God!" one literally screamed. "Look what a faggot Mr. S looks like!"
Part of what I try to do on a daily basis, then, is to encourage them to whisper among themselves instead of talking among themselves. And this is particularly frustrating, because it seems to them that I'm simply annoyed by their behavior and trying to punish them in some way or other. Quite frankly, it's easy to ignore such immaturity (and that's really all it is), but that's not my job -- and therein lies the frustration.
New School Year
I didn’t get a chance yesterday to write in here because I spent the only free time I had here in the house watching the Tour de Pologne, specifically the leg from Kołobrzeg to Szczecin. I thought it would be good for my Polish, but instead it was a bit of a waste of time because I fell asleep. Such is life.
Yesterday’s lessons were okay, except for the lesson with 4C. I wanted to kill them. Honestly, I remembered how they were my last year here and I thought they would probably be the same. I shouldn’t be so general like this — it’s not everyone, just the boys. The girls have their problems too: mainly, they won’t attempt much of anything (though I was impressed with blond Agnieszka yesterday who did utter a few sentences, and I’m not being sarcastic here). Still, I didn’t let it get me down too much. I finished the lesson quickly, then told them that the first thing we were going to do next lesson was assign some seating. The boys will certainly not be sitting anywhere near each other if I can at all help it.
I had the second half of 3B yesterday as well, and they were quite a joy. Of course I had them in a small group, and that’s always helpful. I wish they could all be small groups, but at the same time, that would triple my teaching load, and I’d have to teach the same damn lesson so many times that I’d be so sick of it.
Last night I cooked dinner for today: chicken cacciatore. I didn’t have any zucchini, but such is life. It still looks and tastes good. As I was cooking, I was thinking about all the different things I could cook while I’m here, and I came to the unfortunate realization that I should have brought a lot of spices with me, such as cumin (real cumin, not the nonsense they sell here under the name kminek), coriander, and such. But especially cumin. I’d love to be able to make piccadillo here, but I wouldn’t even consider it without cumin. I’m sure you can get it somewhere, though. Maybe even in Nowy Targ. It would also be helpful in making salsa and Indian food. If I can’t find it here, maybe I can request that as a care package. Anyway, I was thinking a big hit would be that rolled flank steak I used to fix, but I don’t know where I could get flank steak.
As I was walking to make the phone calls, I encountered Tadek as he was walking the other way. We shook hands, and he asked me if I’d been to Quattro. I said no, but that I might go after I make some phone calls. I was honestly thinking that I’d only be going if Edyta agreed to meet me there, but as I walked back toward the Mastelas’, I thought, “What harm could it do for me to drop in? If I know no one, I can sit and talk to the bartender.” I walked in and the first people I saw were Wiola (from class 4A) and Adela. I talked to Adela for about a minute, but I felt quite uncomfortable doing so. I thought for a moment that I’d made a mistake. I saw, though, that there was smoke coming from the booth around the corner, where I’d sat with Monika and Anita Saturday night, and I walked over to investigate. And there sat Beata P. I waved at her, then walked around to see whom she was sitting with. And there sat Teresa W. Beata almost immediately invited me to sit down with them, so I said, “Let me get a beer,” and thus began a very nice evening.
We talked about a lot of things, including why they were there. Beata failed a test today because she couldn’t get her computer to work. She explained it to the professor, and his response was typically Polish: “Trudno.” As was his suggestion as to how she could make it up. If she were to bring a certain amount of vodka and other spirits, as well as a little cash, she could pass. Typical.