Fathers’ Day Ride
the girl
Best Friends
I've been working on a little photo book project for a friend of Babcia's, which means going through a lot of older pictures. Older pictures.
This is L and her bestie C, now both seventeen and substantially bigger.
Saturday
We took a bike ride this morning.
In the evening, the Boy went for a sleepover, the Girl was at work.
We went out for dinner.
Southern Exposure Tournament 2024
The Girl came home with three medals this weekend: two for track and a third for the volleyball tournament, which they won for their age group.
"I think I've gotten more medals this year than all other years combined," the Girl said as we walked to the car.
It's good to see your kid meeting with such success. Losing builds character, that's a certainty.
But every now and then, it's good to just see them dominate.
First Summer Meet
It became apparent from the start that this was our first summer meet.
“These folks came prepared to camp out here all day,” I texted K.
In the end, it was a fairly successful day: second in high jump and second in jav.
Wednesday Work
Anniversary
It’s been five years now since Nana passed. E is the same age now that L was then, and now L is only a few short months from being a legal adult.
A common theme in my writing is the suddenness and recurrence of my realization o f just how much time has passed since a certain event, and using that realization to project into the future with the realization that it will come just as quickly as this moment has arrived. Almost thirty years ago, for example, I left for Poland for the first time; project those same nearly-thirty years into the future, and I’m almost eighty, the age Papa died two years after Nana, now three years ago. See? I just did it again: created a loop of time.
In those five years since Nana’s passing, the GIrl has grown almost an entire foot; the Boy has reached a point that we just barely have to look down while talking to him. In those dunce years since Nana’s passing, the Girl has become a volleyball star and broken then re-broken high school track and field records; the Boy has picked up guitar and trombone as well as becoming a confident soccer player.
In another five years, the Girl will be finishing up college, lining up graduate school (with her interests, she will likely end up getting a doctorate straight away), and firmly established in a life of her own, a life without (to some degree) K and me. In another five years, the Boy will be almost done with high school, thinking about college, and probably still playing trombone and Fortnite. I’ll be creeping ever-nearer my sixties; K will be in her fifties.
With all this in my head, we go to Polish mass in the afternoon, and while everyone is getting the pot luck afterward read, the Boy heads out to the playground and it's clear how much he's changed...
Pictures from State
Twelve
The Boy is twelve today. He's nearing K's height, and he's losing the last vestiges of little-boy-ness that we've all grown so accustomed to. He's not a little boy; he's a little man. Almost.
We celebrated his birthday in a modest way today: the party is Sunday, and the Girl wasn't even able to participate because she was at volleyball practice. But we made him a good dinner, bought him a small Key Lime birthday pie, and the K took him shopping.
What he bought is telling: no more toys, not even anything guitar-related. He wanted new shoes and new clothes. He's changed his hairstyle (his choice), and he thinks about his appearance these days. No longer a little boy.
Sunday Here and There
