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the girl

Home Again

Sunday 02 March 2014 | 0 Comments

When I was a kid, my father went on business trips once or twice a year -- South Africa, England, and various states in the US. For me, it was a highlight, because we often got to take him to the airport. Watching planes take off and land from the observation deck was sheer heaven for a small boy. Of course the real highlight came on his return, for he always brought something back for us from wherever he sent. It was a bit like Santa in September.

An acquaintance at church mentioned at the post-Christmas-concert pot-luck that in 2013, he'd been in something like fifty countries on business. That's a lot of time in a plane, a lot of time away from one's family, a lot of nights in hotels. I both envy him and pity him. Seeing that much of the world would certainly be a blessing, and it would certainly help one appreciate what's here in the States and likely produce a sense of the possibilities based on what's in other countries. Travel changes the traveler forever. Still, so much time away from home, from family, makes it a bad trade.

As a teacher, I don't get many opportunities to go on business trips. Conferences are about the extent of it. So when I do go for a conference somewhere, I realize anew how much of an aggravation ten countries a year -- let alone fifty countries a year -- would be. But I also smile at the thought of seeing L's smile when I say, "Come here, sweetie, I brought something back for you."

Barszcz in the Family

Wednesday 26 February 2014 | 0 Comments

What Polish family would be truly Polish if barszcz weren't a favorite? For as long as I can remember, the Girl has adored it, placed it almost at the very top of her favorite food list -- just below pizza, of course.

The Boy has been warming to the idea, and tonight, he decided it was time to get serious about beet root soup.

Somehow he managed to get two spoons, and he did make use of both of them.

That only left one family member: the cat. K, though, solved that problem today, taking a few seconds that L hadn't managed to finish, running them through a food processor to grind up the sausage (the poor old girl has lost almost all her teeth), and pouring the resulting purple mush into Bida's bowl.

And so now it's official: the Scott family, to a person/cat, loves beetroot soup.

Bubbling Sentences

Tuesday 25 February 2014 | 0 Comments

He dashed to the bathroom as soon as he heard the water running, squealing "Bubbles!" He tends to pronounce that final "s" as a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative, though; in other words, he says "bubblesh!" Such a mouthful to describe such a simple sound -- admittedly, I didn't even know what it was until I asked Google -- seems an apt illustration for how the Boy in fact uses language. Seeing the bubbles foam in the bathtub, he returned to the back top of the stairs and called, "L! Bubbles! Chodz!" Three little words that communicated a whole cosmos of new understanding and excitement.

At it's most simple level, the Boy's utterance was a highly simplified, mixed-language group of sentences. "Hey, L! Dad's running the bath, and he's put the bubbles in! Come quick!" But the excitement in his voice added more: "Hey, I'm able to communicate a complete thought!"

Gratitude, Redux

Monday 24 February 2014 | 0 Comments

Being a parent means seeing constant development, but it's often so gradual that the moments that really shine don't as they slip into the continuum of the everyday. But every now and then, I catch a moment, something that reminds me how much I have to be grateful for.

I catch L curled up on the couch, reading. She whispers the words to herself, folds the back on itself, and settles deeper into the corner of the couch.

Upstairs, I play with the Boy as he rolls his many cars about the floor in L's room. "Eeee--oooo! Eeee--oooo! Eeee--oooo!" he cries, pushing his favorite police car in circles around himself. Then he tries to say "police car."

I'm grateful for getting to hear sounds like this, that I can witness the slow development of a mind, of a personality, of a worldview, and I can help shape it. And I'm thankful that I'm learning when to back off of this "shaping."

Later, he plays peekaboo when we are dressing him for bed, spreading his small fingers gingerly over his eyes, peeping through the lattice, probably certain I don't notice. I remember doing that. Or am I vicariously remembering L doing that? The two kids lives are winding together into my own memories, and others are slipping away -- like putting him to bed a year ago. It's so much easier than in the past, when it meant walking for twenty, thirty, forty minutes (or more) with him on my shoulder. We were hesitant to put him down before he was completely out for fear that he would begin crying, loosening the congestion and send it all flowing out because he was so often with the sniffles. Now it's a matter of a few moments. Slip the sleeper on, turn the light out, put the music on. He puts his head down on my shoulder. I pat his back. I pace back and forth a few moments, and when he's ready, he pushes up from my shoulder, gives me a kiss, and says, "Spac."

It's that backing off that seems to be leading L back to a lost love of reading, and it's that backing off that has led moments like our evening prayers with the Girl. We pray half a decade of the rosary, and once again, I show her how to hold the bead lightly between thumb and finger, letting the rest of the beads string out of the bottom of her hand.

With that energy she shows every day, every single day, getting her sitting still, thoughtful, is itself an accomplishment that we are only now realizing will come on its own, only with gentle guidance from us. It's been K that pushes me to that realization, though.

"She's just a kid," she'll remind with a smile. I'm thankful that sometimes I remember that without reminding.

So I finish up the day, with small thanks in three categories -- spirit, spouse, children -- and the realization once again that it wasn't that difficult to find significant markers of grace for which to be thankful. And I find myself thinking, "Maybe I could do this every day."

Gratitude

Sunday 23 February 2014 | 0 Comments

The small steps one takes to the greater goal: with the Boy today, it struck me that I don’t do enough with him during Mass to help him develop spiritually. I’d fallen into that silly line of thinking that he’s too young to get it. How ridiculous. We’d begun teaching him how to cross himself after dinner prayer. He gets the head — belly and shoulders, not so much. And he ends folding his hands together for “amen.” “If he can get that, of course he can begin other rudiments of the faith.” So today, during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we knelt together for a moment. He ran his car on the floor after a few seconds, but it’s the small steps.

Small steps can of course grow into gigantic leaps, and Polish Mass today showed that as well. The choir, which began simply as K singing along with the organist, has grown in all senses, so that today the choir boasted seven members including an international accompaniment section that included a trumpet player who’d learned the hejnał played from St. Mary’s Basilica in Krakow hourly. I recorded the final hymn; watching the video, K mused about the irony: “That’s one of our most patriotic hymn, and we had a Latino accompanist and an Irish-American trumpet player.”

I can’t deny that at times, K’s choir involvement bothered me. Not because of what it was but the lengths to which she sometimes went to participate, singing when she was sick, singing when she’d rather do just about anything else. To have such a woman in my life at all could not fail to make me a better man; to have such a woman as my wife often leaves me speechless.

Given the rambunctious nature of our daughter, such a temperament as K’s seems nonnegotiable. It’s certainly not environment and it’s not obviously genetic — at least not in the first generation — but there it is all the same: energy that can be frustratingly exhausting, frustratingly difficult to redirect, frustratingly everything. Yet it’s not hard to see the gifts and wonder packed into her small frame as well. While playing tag after Mass, she reminded me just how incredibly nimble-minded she is. “JesteÅ› berkiem!” one of the boys called out, and she smiled as she ran after him: “I know I’m it!” She lives in the midst of two languages, two cultures, so effortlessly. If only it were effortlessly: it’s another struggle sometimes, but these little moments that show us that it’s not all in vain are welcome.

Back at home, I returned to my morning task, grading essays on Romeo and Juliet. As they’re all turned in online through a course management system, I can see the resulting word-counts in a simple list. Quantity is not quality, but seeing word-counts that average close to a thousand words, I remembered students’ incredulity at the beginning of the year when I told them that by the end of the year, five hundred words would seem restrictively short. And here it was, right on my computer screen: proof that I’ve had an impact. It’s easy to say, “We teachers can only plant seeds,” after days that seem like staying at home and bashing one’s head into the wall repeatedly would have been more productive, but such moments of clarity make those days all worthwhile.

Four things to be grateful for, in four different categories — spiritual, spousal, familial, and career. And the fact that it was so easy for me to think of these four things is itself something for which I can be thankful.

Yard Sale

Saturday 22 February 2014 | 0 Comments

We see the signs for them all the time, in various neighborhoods: yard sale. It's an idea that has enchanted the Girl: take your stuff out into your yard and sell it. And earn some money.

So today, on the spur of the moment, she gathered some books she no longer wants, an old toy kitchen, and her bike (which we're hoping to sell to replace it with a more appropriate model) and set up shop in the front yard with her friend, W. She thought it would be so easy. If you offer it, they will come.

Except they didn't, to her disappointment. An early lesson in marketing and economics.

Pickles and the Giant Slalom

Wednesday 19 February 2014 | 0 Comments

The Girl is odd when it comes to food, to say the least. It's tempting to say it's due to growing up in a half-Polish household where we cook a great deal of Polish food. That explains her absolute love of beet root soup, and it might explain why she's not wild about things like hamburgers. On the other hand, pizza is another favorite, to the dgree that when asked about favorite foods, sometimes she lists pizza, sometimes barszcz.

Snacking and treats seem fairly straight forward: she likes most of the things typical American kinds like. Chocolate. Apples. Ice cream. Pickles. A whole jar. With the juice poured into a cup and savored through a straw.

The Boy sees the pickles, squeals "Pickle!" and grabs one in each hand and almost gets away with them both before K catches him and lets him know that one is enough. The three of them curl up together and watch Ted Ligety work his magic in the giant slalom.

Morning Slips By

Saturday 15 February 2014 | 1 Comment

The morning begins with cartoons. There is always a rotating group of favorites, with Peep and the Big Wide World recently coming back into favor. I've liked that show from the first time I heard the theme song: any animated series that uses banjo in its theme song in a non-Beverly-Hillbillies, non-cliche fashion already has an advantage in my opinion

Of course, cartoons entertain only so long. One can only sit comfortably on a couch and watch cartoons for one half of an episode before the urge to build a fort arises. L has been building forts for some time, now, and while there was a blanket-and-chairs period, the living room couch has become the standard construction material.

The Boy has recently learned the joys of the living room fort, and L, being the sweet girl she ~~can be~~ is, devised a two-room fort. E loaded his room with cars, cars, cars -- such a typical boy.

The Girl loads her's with plush toys and books, taking a battery-powered camping lantern into the fort to provide adequate light for reading.

The real test comes with it's nap time for the Boy. The television might have been off for an hour or more, but the two of them continue playing in the fort. Coaxing the Boy out of the fort and getting the Girl to clean up the fort can be equally challenging.

Sounds of Pax

Wednesday 12 February 2014 | 0 Comments

The falling snow, now turning to ice, pelts my face and creates a chaotic rhythm on my jacket.

As I head down the driveway, I hear the familiar crunch of ice underfoot, and immediately I am again taken back to the streets of Nowy Targ, the alleyways of Krakow, the walkway to my school in Lipnica.

I head to the back door so I can leave all my wet clothes in the basement, kicking the snow off my boots just before entering.

Sounds I haven't heard in ages. Music that takes me back in time.

Snow Day 2014 Redux

Tuesday 11 February 2014 | 0 Comments

It was supposed to be a three-punch storm. The first swing was Monday afternoon: nothing spectacular. Some rain with ice in it, nothing much to be thrilled with. When we went to bed last night, I wasn’t expecting much. Officials had called off school, but they do that at the whisper of icy weather, so that meant little to me.

In the morning, the second part rolled through. It began accumulating quickly, in the front yard, on the back porch, and I thought, “Perhaps something will come of this.”

But as the snow continued falling, the accumulation actually decreased in the backyard. The snow on the deck slowly disappeared and the yard itself turned into a mud bank.

Of course that was not enough to keep us from diving into the white front yard, L eager to build a snowman (“Babciu, dasz mi marchewka?”) and the Boy running about screaming “Bubbles! Bubbles!” The Girl teamed with young W from up the street, and the two of them made a little snowdrawf. Or snowman-ish-blob, which intrigued the Boy. Seeing the small sticks for arms, he pulled one out and began yelling, “Tick! Tick!” It means both “stick” and “outside,” for he goes to the door, often enough with coat in hand, and proclaims “Tick! Tick!” whenever he wants to go outside.

L was initially upset with the Boy’s obsession: he pulled out the carrot nose, ripped out the snowman-ish-blob’s right arm, and knocked one or two Sweet-Gum-seed-ball teeth out.

“Tick! Tick!”

Soon, however, attention turned to snowballs, and the snowman-ish-blob suddenly was not nearly as intriguing.

Yet nothing can hold their attention forever, and the last attraction was the sled a neighbor kindly made for L. Anyone with any sledding experience would have been able to tell L that three inches — max — of slushy snow is just not enough for sledding. But it’s one of the many things one has to learn for oneself from experience. They tried a few different variations before realizing the futility of it.

“Maybe tomorrow, when there’s more snow.”

It is supposedly more than a possibility; it is a certainty. “A historical storm,” local weather forecasters have said. “Historic,” I’ve said under my breath, thinking, “It’s not historical until it’s history.”

“We’re going to be talking about this storm for years to come,” they say. Provided it’s the six to twelve inches, it will be great; if the ice comes along with it, well, let’s just hope it doesn’t happen.