“Can we go outside?” L asked.
“Of course.”
“I know what we can do!”
“What?”
“We can make balls out of the snow and then throw them at each other.”
“Excellent idea.”
the girl
Before the Storm
The day before Christmas Eve in a Polish household is always frantic. Cakes to bake, salads to make, and general culinary chaos.
The heating system dying in the morning didn't help, though. The verdict: the zoning system's main control board is malfunctioning. Cost: the part alone runs $1300. Time to make some decisions. Merry Christmas from Arzel.
In the meantime, we have baking to do. Cheese cake, for instance, requires room-temperature ingredients, a fact inconveniently forgotten by inexperienced bakers the world over.
Fortunately, we had a little helper today to get us through the tough parts. Without her valuable advice and assistance, I'm sure we would have got finished much more quickly than we did been at a complete loss.
With her in the kitchen, it's a constant battle against her curiosity. "I want to do it!" is her refrain.
At the same time, how can one battle curiosity? Who would even want to? It's a question of direction and redirection.
Polyglot Concert
Our daughter, thanks to a bi-lingual mother and multi-lingual daycare, knows songs in four languages.
First Solo
Jasełka
Nativity plays date at least from the time of St. Francis of Assissi, eight hundred years ago. This weekend, the concept was, once again, Polish-ized.
To be fair, it was not a one-off occurrence. Nativity plays, called jasełka (ya-sewl-ka) in Polish, are as customary during the Christmas as wreaths and carols.
Unlike the modern American nativity play, which is often relatively high tech and performed by adults, Polish nativity plays are almost always entirely a production of children and adolescents -- under the direction of adults.
So in schools and churches throughout the Polish community worldwide, children are have been putting on nativity plays much like the one the small Polish community here watched this afternoon.
Yet this play was somehow different -- incredibly different -- than all the plays I watched while teaching in Poland. During the final days before Christmas break, students and faculty gathered to watch the year's play: it was often, it seemed to me, an attempt by the directing teacher simply to impress the other teachers.
These actors were American children of Polish heritage, children who speak English naturally and Polish only when spoken to by an adult. Their Polish has the traces of limited exposure: accents, weak grammar, lower-level vocabulary: they speak Polish like I do, in other words. For all intents and purposes, Polish is a virtually-foreign language to them.
For them, it's the language of parents and parents' friends, a language to be spoken only when spoken to. When they sit around, waiting for their scene during rehearsal, they lapse to the more comfortable English, the language they speak without thinking.
And yet they memorized line after line, exchange after exchange, and performed it with few cues.
It was a showcase, a moment for kids to show their musical, acting, and linguistic talent. It was a celebration of one of the pivotal events in history -- the pivotal event in the West.
At the heart of the afternoon was the sense of community, the sense of belonging. In between scenes, the audience joined the kids in various renditions of the most popular Polish carols. Put ten Poles in a room together and they'll end up singing: yet somehow, in suburban America, it had a special glow.
For K and me, there was a first -- a first of many, I'm sure. As part of the finale, L sang a solo.
She was was off pitch and out of tune, but it was the sweetest moment I've ever experienced as a father.
Stacking the Deck, Redux
L and I are playing Candy Land. It’s a dry, boring game, to be honest, but I’m not doing it for my own entertainment: that comes from watching her.
Still, I’ve been trying lately to make it a learning experience, as a way to help her deal with her frustration. It’s a simple premise: stack the deck occasionally, placing the Candy Cane Forest card for the next drawing when she’s seventy-five percent complete.
“Oh, rats!” she declares, retreating almost to the beginning of the game board.
I try to make it a little more frustrating, dropping the ice cream cone card into place for my next drawing. Will she get frustrated that she “obviously” has no chance to win? Will she want to stop? Will she complain?
No — nothing but a laugh.
There’s only one thing left to do: make sure she gets a few doubles to catch up — not win, but catch up.
The game takes longer than it would have if we’d just drawn and let chance decide the winner. But the girl has uncanny luck and wins more often than not. A loss or two does the spirit good.
Fourth
Time is a relative thing. Scientists tell us that we can travel so fast that time slows. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII convinced the whole western world to skip ten days.
Yet it's the smaller moments that have the true significance.
It's the smaller moments that see a devoted mother spending an entire Friday afternoon baking a cake for a little girl and her guests.
It's the sweeter moments that see the welcoming of a beloved friend with mutual squeals of joy and anticipation.
It's the moment less than the flickering of a candle that we all remember, the moment that a little girl has been excited about for days.
It's the moments that finds us surrounded by friends,
friends who have taken a few minutes out of their lives to come celebrate with us.
Within these series of moments, I catch a glimpse of the future. It happens every now and then: a pose, an expression, a gesture, and suddenly I see what our sweet daughter will look like in five, ten, fifteen years. A birthday celebration offers a hint of birthdays to come, and the bitter-sweet realization that these present moments are disappearing all too quickly.
The pony rides will disappear. "Oh, Tata -- I'm not interested in ponies anymore." It's bearing down on us, this reality, and I both dread and eagerly look forward to it.
In the meantime, we -- family and friends -- enjoy the moments of helping and hugging, the moments of screams of laughter often followed too shortly by cries of frustration. There's a big girl inside our L, but she's still a little girl. Almost one year older now, but a little girl all the same.
"Technically, it's not your birthday," I try explain to her.
"You mean I don't have my birthday party?" she replies, in a panic.
"No, you're having your party today, but your birthday is Thursday."
"But Mama said today is my birthday. Today is my party!" There's a certain panic in her voice that tells me that time is such a relative, elastic thing -- after all, in Asian cultures, children are born one year old -- that I can shift time and calm a panicking daughter with few repercusions.
"Well, Mama was right," I relent.
"You were just joking," L giggles.
Perhaps, but not about this: happy early-birthday, our sweet daughter. May all your birthdays be raspberry-covered and laughter-filled.
The Girl Dancing
Sunday Afternoon
“Tata, I want to help!” she calls as she hops down the deck stairs. With an armful of branches and twigs, I’m agreeable, but I smile, wondering how much help I’m actually going to get.
“Grab a couple branches,” I explain, “and follow me.”
We march to the street, L chattering all the way, explaining how she’s going to explain tomorrow how she helped her daddy.
Suddenly, behind me, I hear it: “Ouch!” She’s rubbing her eye; I’m wondering when she’s going to ask for a bandage. It’s been her obsession lately: no matter the wound, no matter the location, there must be First Aid.
“The stick went in my eye,” she says, with concerned voice. After so many months of learning her various voices, I know it’s nothing serious. It’s not quite play — something did happen — but perhaps her concern is exaggerated. She sees K and me hurt ourselves, and she models the reaction.
“Come on,” I say offhandedly. “You’ll be fine. Little things happen when you work as hard as you’re working now.
She plods along, amending the story she’s going to tell tomorrow, practicing the Tragedy of the Stick.
As we’re returning to the backyard, the late afternoon sun reflects off the golden autumn leaves, and it’s as if she’s walking into pure light or developing a halo. I walk about twenty paces behind, watching her hair bounce and sway as she dances into a golden November afternoon.
Helping Papa
