16.79km at 1:55:57 — average speed 8.7km/h
the boy
Helping
Babcia informs us that L has been absolutely wonderful -- "We have a great relationship!" she proclaimed. She's put the Girl to work, ironing, cleaning, changing bed clothes in the guest rooms.
This is honestly such a relief. The Girl can be, well, a typical twelve-year-old when it comes to helping around the house. I think I expect too much of her sometimes; I think I expect too little of her other times. Even though I'm a teacher and preach this to my students constantly, I forget it with my own kids: perfection is the goal but only insofar as continually striving for it ensures we never settle. Mistakes are part of that process; half-assed jobs are part of that process; even fussing at not wanting to do it is a part of that process.
I don't want to tinker about with the dishwasher tomorrow. I don't want to move the left-over bricks into the crawlspace tomorrow. I don't want to re-mount Papa's TV tomorrow. I say these types of things to the kids every time they complain about not wanting to complete this or that responsibility, but it's often more sarcastic than it needs to be.
The Boy likes helping, but he too is starting to complain about things. We all complain. I guess that's part of it.
Dishwasher Fun
The dishwasher stopped draining. This was what our kitchen looked like at about ten this morning as a result. My hope was that it was the discharge hose — I envisioned hopefully a hose blocked with some something that comes out of the hose when I blast water through it from the backyard garden hose. To get that hose removed required, obviously, removing the dishwasher. And then nothing came out of the hose. Which meant that the blockage was somewhere in the pump itself.
“It’s still under warranty,” I thought. “I’m not going to mess with it further and potentially void the warranty. I’ll just call and have Lowe’s make good on the three-year extended warranty we bought in 2016.” Only, it wasn’t an extended warranty: that would indicate an extension of the manufacturer’s one-year warranty. It gets extended. Lengthened. Stretched. Increased.
Lowe’s verbiage, which I didn’t understand until today, is “Protection Plan.” The protection plan kicks in from the date of purchase, which means for the first year, you’re doubly covered. Which means it’s not an extension but a layering. And the protection plan expired — you’ll probably guess — on May 31. We had 1,095 days of coverage, and 17 days later, we need it.
The upshot of this — if there is one — is that I can now feel free to tinker all I want without fear of voiding the warranty. Because there is none anymore.
The Boy, though, loved the whole process. “You need me to get behind the dishwasher?” was a common refrain.
Sunday
Morning
The Boy started the day with K on the back deck, working on something the Boy didn't really enjoy and also making a Father's Day card for me. I went out with a cup of coffee, and they resorted to whispers.
Afternoon
A 12.67km bike ride with the Boy. He tackled some climbs that he's never conquered before, and a couple of climbs that always kick his butt kicked his butt again. The one surprise: a climb he's never made it up kicked him. He stopped halfway up. It's a tricky climb: off-road, with a sharp left that also ramps up in steepness. He took a drink of water as he rested while I showed him how to take such a challenging turn.
"Hit it from the outside, then turn in sharply," I said. "Want to try it again?"
"Yes."
And he got it.
Evening
The buzz going around the Polish community lately: Aldi is selling kabanos, and all the Poles' opinion was unanimous -- surprisingly good. Today, I noticed them in Aldi. I showed a package to Kinga. Her eyes got big. "How many should we get?" I asked. "All of them," she said.
And of course, there was a bonfire.
Burning the Past
We sit around the small fire, burning Nana's and Papa's old documents. Nana hated -- hated -- clutter of every kind, but she was something of a hoarder in one sense: she kept all receipts and bills, neatly organized, filed away discretely. Had the IRS ever audited one of their returns, the auditor would have faced a mountain of evidence through which to sort. So as Papa downsizes, we have to get rid of stuff. And truth be told, there is no reason to keep tax returns and receipts from, say, 2006.
The Boy is eager to start the fire. He's as fascinated with fire as anyone, I suppose, and the act of setting something ablaze, of doing something so otherwise forbidden, makes him almost literally shake with excitement. Once the fire gets going, we pile on some bigger pieces of wood. Tonight, we're burning the remains of our broken swing as we talk about getting a new swing to replace it, all the time wadding paper and tossing it onto the fire.
Occasionally, a bit of glowing paper lifts out of the fire pit and wanders around indecisively in the hot up-drafts from the flames. The Boy stands on guard, ready to hunt down and stomp out any glowing bits of almost-flaming paper. Truth be told, it rained so much last week and the week before, and it's been so relatively cool that I doubt there's much of a hazard at all, but the Boy enjoys the responsibility.
After the last of the fire dies down, Papa and I watch a movie as K gets the Boy in bed. Conspiracy is one of those movies that sounds like it shouldn't be as moving as it is: it's literally set for 95% of the film in a single room, with about sixteen men sitting around a table talking. But it's what they're discussing that makes the film so moving and horrific: it's the Wannsee conference during which Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann disclose and explain to those present the plan for the use of gas chambers to eradicate the Jews from Europe and eventually the planet. Kenneth Branagh plays Heydrich, and as always, he's absolutely brilliant. He manages simultaneously to smile and seeth at the same moment.
Friday Afternoon
The Boy spent the week at scout day camp. Every morning it was the same: "I don't want to go!" Every afternoon, it was the same, too: "Today was so much fun!"
I arrived this afternoon for the normal pickup time only to discover a parking lot. "Oh, there must have been some communication about a final ceremony that I missed," I thought as I hustled to the interior of the church where the camp was held.
Sure enough, everyone was in the main meeting room -- the sanctuary is what it would normally be called, but I think this particular church used "worship center" as its preferred nomenclature -- and all the scouts and their parents were there. And of course, someone was handing out awards.
I seized up a little: the Boy doesn't get awards in situations like this often. At least that's been my perception. I couldn't care less, but I think it could.
So when his name was called for second place in his den for the bb gun range, I felt a little bit of relief. Everyone needs the encouragement of public recognition from time to time. Even I like it occasionally, though I find it embarrasses me a bit, as well.
When we got home, the Boy was eager to show K and Papa his certificate and, more importantly, his three days' targets. Each day showed significant improvement.
"See, the first day I didn't even hit the target..."
And after dinner, he was eager to take his own bb gun into the backyard for some target practice. We don't have much in the way of targets: we tend to shoot at leaves on a magnolia tree that has a large oak behind it: that way, if we miss, we just hit the oak. And if we miss the oak, there are only more trees behind that.
Afterward, since we hadn't gone exploring in a while, we headed out for some exploring.
And lastly, because they'd had a campfire-building contest ("We could only use flint and steel to start the fire, and we could only burn things we'd found around the fire pit," he'd explained), we made a fire. Partly because the Boy wanted to, partly because, in going through Nana's and Papa's papers, we got inspired to do the same, and the upshot of all that is simple: we have a lot of paper to shred or burn, and burning is faster. And more fun, E would insist.
Reading with the Boy
We try to get the Boy to read a little every night. Tonight we worked on L's old book about spiders. I found the place we'd left off, but the Boy insisted that he'd finished with K last night.
"Well, it doesn't hurt to read it again," I said. It might have sounded like I was just being lazy, but being able to read a tricky passage fluently will build his confidence. We learn by repetition, especially recognition of new words.
"The back part of a spider's body is called the abdomen," he began.
"Wow -- you read that tough word like a pro," I added.
"What word?"
"Abdomen."
He sighed. "Daddy, I recognized the word."
"I know. And that's a long word to know. How many letters?"
He counted: "Seven."
"You recognized a seven letter word!"
"No, wait," he said, counting hopefully again. "No, just seven."
He continued, stumbling a bit: "It has the spider's hear -- hear?"
"Heart," I helped.
"Heart and the spinnerets, which make silk," he continued.
"Spinnerets?!" I gasped. "Are you kidding? You read that like a pro as well!"
"But daddy, I stumbled over a" and he paused to count. "A five-letter word." He often stumbles over words, words that sometimes surprise me. And he recognizes and reads fluently words that sometimes surprise me. It's part of learning to read.
"That's okay," I reassured. "You stumbled over that word, but you nailed 'spinnerets.'"'
Many of my students over the years have face similar struggles, and struggling readers are not confident readers. I've sat with kids who were reading, asked them to read aloud, and heard difficult passages come out like this: "It has the spider's hea hear -- whatever -- and the spin spin -- I don't know -- which make the silk." If that's what's going on in their head as they read silently, and there's no reason to think it wouldn't be, it's no wonder they don't feel confident with reading: the struggle produces nothing but a confusing text. And they're likely to anticipate all this: before they begin reading, they've convinced themselves that they won't understand it. And all of this builds and calcifies into not a mere reluctance to reading but a positive aversion to it.
Confidence eliminates those "whatevers" and "I-don't-knows." And so I have the Boy read books a second, third, and fourth time.
"But I already know this book," he complains.
"I know -- that's the point," I think.
Building
A legacy of Nana: she kept so many of my old toys, and we’ve recycled them, giving them to our own kids. L was never interested in most of them; the Boy, though is a different story.
What does that say about gender differences? Our son is interested in his father’s old toys; our daughter isn’t. Is that nature? Nurture? Both? We’ve never told our kids “this is a boy’s toy” or “this is a girl’s toy,” but they’ve gravitated that way. Perhaps it’s so saturated in our culture that it’s impossible to escape.
The Boy’s latest interest: my old Girder and Panel building set. I was about his age when I got it, and I loved it immediately. The Boy had a similar reaction.
It took him a while to get the hang of snapping the girders together, and the windows were as frustrating for him as they were and still are for me, but his verdict was unequivocal. “I love it.”
Exploring with the Boys
Sifting Through the Layers
I spent the better part of today going through pictures, digital and print, looking for images of Nana to use during Saturday's memorial. I scanned about 30 images and found about 60 others in our digital collection, and I'm only through 2013. It was much like looking at old pictures of our children: we always feel like our children have always looked like they do today even though we know they haven't. The changes are so gradual that it takes an image from the somewhat-distant past to jar us into understanding -- realizing -- anew that our children are on an ever sliding spectrum, that they in fact don't look like this for very long at all.
So it was with Nana. I got used to what she looked like now and forgot all about the Nana of my youth, when she was simply "Mom." And then I began going through pictures and rediscovering images of Nana before I even existed, images of Nana when she was my age, images of Nana when she was the Boy's age.
I saw Nanas I never knew. I saw Nana as a young lady, about to go out for a night on the town, looking every bit like someone off the Mad Men series.
I saw Nana as a senior in high school, just a little older than most of my students, and I wondered what she was like in class.
I saw Nana when she was a mother but younger than I am now, with a version of me that's probably about E's age. It's as hard to imagine Nana climbing up into a barn as it is to imagine her bedridden and frustrated.
And now that she's passed, all these versions live on in various people's memories. "That was about the time I met your mother," Papa explained about the Mad Men photo. Her best friend since forever likely remembers first-grade Nana as they went to school together from kindergarten through graduation.
The rest of the day I spent working on Nana's obituary. Ever the English teacher, I examined examples before starting to write hers and I noticed I finally have an answer to students' common question when learning the difference between active and passive voice: "Mr. Scott, when do we use passive voice?"
"In obituaries, children, almost exclusively."
On Monday, May 27, Naomi Ruth Williams Scott, wife, mother, sister, and grandmother, passed away peacefully at home surrounded by her family after a six-month struggle. Naomi will be lovingly remembered by her husband of nearly 55 years, Melvin; her son, Gary; her daughter-in-law, Kinga; her grandchildren, Lena and Emil; and sisters-in-law Laverne Williams, Diane Mathis, Yvonne Van Seeters, and Mary Barnes, as well as many nieces and nephews, and countless friends. She was preceded in death by her father, Lewis Williams; her mother, Ruby Gordon Williams; and her two brothers, Nelson and Wallace Williams.
A native of Indian Land, South Carolina, Naomi graduated from Indian Land High School and married Melvin Scott in 1964. They lived for several years in the Charlotte/Rock Hill area relocating to the southwest Virginia/northeast Tennessee area, where they lived for over thirty years.
Versatile and skilled, Naomi worked various jobs through her life, including jobs in a flower shop, a printing and finishing shop, a travel agency, later in life, her own business. She would have argued, however, that her most important job by far, her only truly important job, was being a mother. She was a dedicated and loving mother who provided all who knew her a clear example of what it really means to be a mother.
Naomi was a very active church member in all the congregations she attended. She served as a deaconess in the Worldwide Church of God, where she also sang in the choir and provided quiet leadership through example for members. A firm believer in Jesus, she never wavered in her faith and leaned heavily on His love and promises.
The memorial service for Naomi will be this Saturday, June 1 at 3 PM at Woodruff Road Christian Church, 20 Bell Road, Greenville, SC. Following the service, there be time for fellowship and visitation with light refreshments to give everyone an opportunity to share with each other their memories of Naomi.
As Naomi felt special tenderness to all children but especially her son and grandchildren, the family requests instead of flowers memorial donations to the Shriners Hospital for Children and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Since her faith was so important to her and because the church has shown so much support in this time of need, the family would be honored with donations in Naomi’s memory to Woodruff Road Christian Church.
But bottom line, I look at these pictures, especially the most recent, of Nana and Papa, and it hits me again and again:
I simply can't believe she's gone. I imagine we'll all be experiencing that for many months.