Ice Cream Downtown
the girl
Graduation
As of tomorrow, L will officially be done with elementary school, but it was all over and done with today for all intents and purposes: tomorrow is a half-day, and today was graduation.
How in the world did six years go by so quickly? How did she jump from kindergarten — that first Meet the Teacher evening when she was enthralled with the reading pit in the library — to the end of her fifth-grade year when she looks more like a teenager than a kindergartener?
She’s no longer dependent on us for every little thing. She no longer seeks reassurance for every little thing. She no longer plays with toys or watches cartoons, except when she’s watching something the Boy has selected.
She has a sense of things that embarrass her when she once was, like most young children, virtually shameless. (And that sense of embarrassment is sometimes skewed in a distinctly teenage fashion — things that would never embarrass an adult, like taking a change of clothes in a small bag. “They won’t even notice,” I insisted. “They notice everything,” she insisted. I doubt it, but in that case, her perception is all that counted.)
It’s the end of a long chapter in her life, the end of elementary school, the end of childhood in many ways.
Party
Summer Nearing
Sunday
Playing in the Creek
Playing in the Creek
Sports and Ice Cream
The Girl had her first volleyball game today. It was as one might expect when the majority of the girls playing haven’t had much experience on the court. Most volleys were one of three types:
- A serve that doesn’t make it over the net or lands outside.
- A serve that plops in front of a player who, through a lack of experience and a bit of accompanying fear, made a slight effort to go for it.
- A serve that is returned and then plops in front of a player on the serving team, through a lack of experience and a bit of accompanying fear, made a slight effort to go for it.
Not a lot of action. But a lot of excitement: the girls were all thrilled when they managed to make a serve (which actually happened quite frequently); they were shouting encouragement and joy when they managed to return a serve; they encouraged each other when someone messed up.
It was a beautiful thing to watch.
While the Girl was playing, the Boy was having soccer practice on the other half of the court due to the unpredictability of the weather this week. He finished his hour-long practice drench in sweat and as eager as ever to play more soccer.
It was a beautiful thing to see.
The afternoon brought the Boy’s birthday party. We had an old-school, kids playing in the yard party. There were water balloons, brownies, sprinker antics, chips, volleyball over the sprinker, soda, soccer in the sprinker’s mist, ice cream cake, trampoline flights, pizza, and endless laughs.
It was a beautiful day to experience.
Trying
A busy evening for the Girl. Cross country try-outs from 6:00 to 7:15, then volleyball practice from 7:15 (obviously we were a bit late) to 8:15. Two things — sports, no less — about which she has never shown any interest until the last few weeks and now is bound and determined to participate in.
We arrived ten minutes early, and since the Girl is a rising sixth grader and most of the other kids were already attending the middle school, she stood around and looked like she felt a little lost. Friends were bantering back and forth, and she just stood and watched them.
She missed yesterday’s portion of the try-out due to her final choir concert for her elementary school, so as everyone began repeating the stretching and warm-ups from yesterday, the Girl was left looking around to see how everyone else did it. At one point, to stretch the quads, the coach told the kids to put their right hands on the shoulder of the kid to their right to help with balance. She did so, but the girl to her left didn’t put her hand on L’s shoulder. When it came time to repeat on the left side, L hesitantly reached her hand out to the girl on the left, noticed she still wasn’t balancing herself on anyone and managed to stretch without support.
How well I remember those moments of uncertainty at that age. Always looking about to make sure I’m doing what everyone else is doing. Trying hard not to call attention to myself in any way at all. Truth be told, I still behave that way in new environments with new people, but such a subdued L is an uncommon sight. I felt I was getting a little peek into what her first day of school might be like when, in a few short months, she begins middle school.
When did that happen? When did our little girl become a 5’3″ young lady who no longer looks like a little girl? I knew it was coming, but somehow I’d convinced myself it wasn’t just around the bend.
The try-out itself was instructive, for me and for L. She completed two miles in 22 minutes. It’s probably the longest distance she’s run. I sat in the car, reading (I’ve decided it’s time to reread a book that I promised myself fifteen years ago when I first read it that I would — must — read again, Steinbeck’s East of Eden), and I was aware of kids running in the field in front of the car, so I stopped and watched, waiting for the Girl. I was actually doing a bit of both, so when I didn’t see her, I just thought she’d passed by when I’d looked back down to read for a moment or two. Then I heard the kids behind me, laughing, complaining, resting. I went back to reading when a flash of blue caught my eye: L ran by, alone, dead last.
“I had terrible cramps,” she explained later.
“But do you know how proud you can be of yourself for not stopping?” I asked. It’s a big thing: our princess is learning to finish what she started, no matter what.
We jumped into the car and drove the few miles to the Y, where she’s going to be playing volleyball for the first time.
Almost everyone on the team is a complete beginner, so the coaches have to explain everything. The rules. Rotation. How to pass, to set, to serve. How to move once the ball is in play. At one point, L and a few other girls were on the sideline.
“You have to listen as I’m explaining to the other girls,” one of the coaches explains. “If you’re talking, you’ll have to run laps.”
A few minutes later, I heard him call out, “You three, take a lap!” L and two other girls began jogging around the court. I caught his eye, smiled, and gave him a thumbs up, which he returned, laughing.
After practice, I mentioned that to L: “Good job taking that lap without fussing,” I said.
“I wasn’t actually talking,” she explained. “I was just looking at the girl who was talking.”
“Better still,” I said.
That girl is maturing, I tell you.
Saturday in the Yard
The bushes in front of the house had just gotten out of hand: they shaded almost 3/4 of the height of the windows in E’s and L’s rooms. Every time I trimmed them, K suggested that I didn’t do enough, so today was the day: the bushes were getting violently trimmed.
That was to take only a couple of hours. I’d planned on mowing the backyard, trimming the bushes, mowing the front, and finishing before four. Two things slowed me down: E and the difficulty of radically trimming the bushes.
The Boy always loves helping me mow, which usually entails slipping between me and the upper bar of the lawnmower, resulting in an awkward position for me and generally slow mowing. Today it struck me: our lawnmower has rear-wheel drive, and so theoretically, the Boy could mow all by himself, with me just walking along beside to help control it.
When we got to the flattest portions of the front yard, I let him mow without my hand on the bar to guide it.
“I’ll just let you mow,” I said, “and then the spots you miss, you’ll have to go back and get.”
He loved the idea and promptly went zig-zagging across the yard. He tended to pull to the left, so he made strange arching patterns instead of the regular straight lines I obsessively put into our yard.
The period of time between the first bit of mowing and the second bit (the “flattest portions of the front yard” mentioned above) was approximately six hours, evidenced by the changing shadows in the pictures above.
In the intervening hours, we worked on the bushes. I trimmed; he loaded the cuttings into the wheelbarrow.
When we started, the foliage was so dense that it blocked most of the light and all of the sky.
When we finished, nothing was really blocked. I worried as I cut back the branches that it might be too late for such work, that I might damage the bushes by doing this. In the end, I thought that that might, in fact, be a blessing.
In between the first and the second bushes — lunch and a concert.
K and L spent most of the day inside, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Cleaning clothes, floors, bathrooms, and anything else that would sit still long enough. In the end, though, K had to come out: her garden beckoned.
“When will we ever have a relaxed Saturday?” K asked as we sat on the front steps watching the kids, who still had energy, play in the front yard.
“A relaxed Saturday? What’s that?”
After-Dinner Play
After dinner, everyone went out to practice sports.
The Girl finished her second day of tryouts today, and she came home feeling pessimistic about her chances of making the team. But did she give up? No way. On the way home, she and K stopped by the Y and signed her up for youth volleyball. And after dinner, she was out practicing an overhand serve as well as her underhand serve.
“You really should master the underhand first,” I suggested.
“I know, but this is what we were working on during tryouts today,” she replied.
The Boy finished soccer this weekend, but he’s still keen on practicing. For a while there, I was tossing the ball to L for her to practice passing and trying to kick the ball back to the Boy.
Occasionally, the two activities almost collided.
Finally, the Boy, exhausted, took a break
and then gave me some tree-climbing lessons.
Monday
A few Two random thoughts from the day:
The Girl is trying out for volleyball. She started working on her skills Saturday after having bought a ball that morning.
“How did it go?” I asked when I got home.
“I was the worst one there,” came the simple reply.
It turned out that it was a two-day tryout session, and so I immediately wondered if she’d be discouraged from her first experience and say, “I don’t have a chance of making the team. I don’t want to go to the second day.” And I was wondering how I might handle that. Is it something I should make her do in the interest of building character — following through on what you set out to do and all that? Or should we just let it go?
Turns out, the dilemma never presented itself: after gymnastics, she asked if we could go practice volleyball for a few minutes.
Second thought: While the Girl was in volleyball, I did some shopping, and I went through the self-checkout lane when I was done. If they’d had these things in Poland twenty years ago, I might not have stayed. It was tough, those first weeks; it was especially tough making friends when I didn’t speak the language. The store saved me. No self-service there: no, just a counter and a packed shelf behind it, with a sales clerk between you and your merchandise. So I had to ask for every single item. Which led to funny mistakes and misunderstandings. Which led to laughter. Which led to friendships.
End of Spring 2018 Soccer
The Boy finished his second season of soccer. It was a successful season, no doubt. Talking to the coach during Monday’s practice, I heard the kind of praise about one’s child that parents dream of. “He’s really got something,” he said. “He plays thoughtfully. He watches. He thinks. He doesn’t just barge in. He waits for a moment.” This jives with E’s own description of his strategy: “I just run around the edge [of the pack of children all trying to gain access to the ball] and wait for a good moment.”
(Click on the images for a larger view.)
After the game, spring planting. The Girl decided she wanted to help. Wanted to drive the stakes that will hold our simple borders in place. Wanted to rake the soil one last time. Wanted to put the young plants in the ground.
(Click on the images for a larger view.)
The Boy, just having woken up from a nap, had to fight for his right to drive a few stakes in…
Returning to the Old
Looking at old photos.
Found a few that needed Lightroom attention.
Attention given.
Spring Evening
Up and Down
In the morning, we had the school talent show.
A time for the Girl to shine, a time that brought applause and high fives.
The evening brought the second and final round of the Battle of the Books. The girls got in on a wildcard, and they were terribly excited about the prospect of being able to win the whole thing.
They were asked to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the competition, and everyone laughed that it was definitely a good sign.
They were up against the school that, in their minds, was the favorite to win the whole thing. The first round went quickly: seven questions to each, no mistakes from anyone. But these were the easy questions — they questions they’d been given before. “The practice questions” the judge called them. And it showed: very little consultation for each question from either side.
Round two featured questions that they’d never heard. Gone were the immediate answers. The teams sat huddled talking about each question, and after our girls gave their answer, the tension immediately increased as we waited for the magical words: “That is correct.” Everyone trying to read into the judge’s body language, tone, facial expression. A slight pause from the judge and everyone thinks, “No! We got it wrong!” only to have that assumption mercifully shattered: “That is correct.”
And then it happens: we get a question wrong. The other team swoops in for the bonus points (3 instead of 5) for answering it correctly.
“Now team B will get their next question.” Everyone knows what this means: there’s only one way for our girls to continue. The other team has to get this question wrong, and they have to get it right to get the bonus points to tie the match. But they get it right. And the girls’ faces all drop.
The winning team comes over and shows perfect sportsmanship:
But that does little to take the sting out.
Afterward, the girls talk about the answer and they’re sure their answer was just as correct as the other team’s, but it’s for naught.
Or is it?
There’s much to gain from losing, and perhaps even more from losing unfairly. If losing builds character, as they say, unfairly losing builds even more.
Tempers, Tacos, Chess, and a Church
A day of contrasts. At school, the kids in eighth-grade English as working on performances of small excerpts from The Diary of Anne Frank, the play based on Anne’s diary. Most of the groups are doing great: they work well together; they take criticism from each other well since they know part of their grade comes from how well they’re performing as a group; they seem to enjoy the challenge. Most of them. One group, not so much. The group just isn’t getting along. One girl — we’ll call her Alicia — has a temper that could be measured in nanometers, and she has to express her thought when she finds herself annoyed, which is frequently. Another girl — we’ll call her Susan — just doesn’t care, and she doesn’t care that other people might care, and she doesn’t care that her apathy affects them. And she has a temper as well. One boy in the group likes to provoke anyone and everyone he can. And finally, a third girl has made a big turn-around this year in my class and has gone from being nasty to being a fairly well behaved, decent working young lady, but one who doesn’t like it when things don’t go her way. So while all other groups were developing their ideas, rehearsing their lines, planning who would bring what props, this group broke into fits of frustration and argument literally every three or four minutes.
How can you teach kids any subject when first they need to be taught how to control their temper, how to control their tongue, how to control their sense of self-injury?
At home, the Boy and I initiated what we’re going to try to make into a daily activity: a bit of chess together. He knows how to move the pawns fairly well now. He knows the basics of the rooks. Next, we’ll introduce bishops, the king, the queen, and finish up with the tricky knights.
He’s learning to pile up attackers and count defenders to determine if he can take a piece or not; he’s starting to think offensively and defensively at the same time; he’s eager to learn more — all good signs. His mind is growing. His body, too — faster, in fact.
Tonight was taco knight (see what I did there?), and the Boy loves Mexican food. We have a little Mexican restaurant down the street where the two of us have eaten dinner when the girls are out on their own, and he’s always eager for more.
Tonight, he skipped the beans and the rice and ate not one, not two, but three tacos. Half the fun for him is actually making the taco.
The calm and the joy of chess followed by tacos seemed so jarring juxtaposed with the chaos my one group of students was experiencing. Those who were causing the issues — what kind of jarring, chaotic home life might they have? It doesn’t seem that people who would go home to some time with their family and a bit of comfort food would have that much difficulty keeping themselves in check because it would have been modeled for them and perhaps taught explicitly.
In the evening, when the girls have gone to gymnastics and shopping, the Boy and I decided to play with Legos, and we decided we needed to make something we’d never made before. We decided on a church.
As I was building the roof, the Boy declared that he would start working on things for the inside. After a few minutes, he showed me something he’d made.
“It’s that table, where they do everything,” he explained.
“The altar?”
“Yeah.”
And he made it complete with chalices and a paten.
Sunday Without L
Puppies are like newborns: you never really know how much they’re going to change your life — turn everything positively upside down — until you actually have one of your own. They will both affect your life in ways that you never imagined. Our puppy, for example, has transformed our backyard. It was once a place for us to hang out with the kids, to play, to swing, to bounce, to laugh. We two hammocks and a cloth swing in addition to our wooden swing and trampoline. Then we got a fence and let the dog spend time in our backyard without us. She destroyed the hammocks; she destroyed the swing; she dug up large swaths of the backyard; she would have destroyed trampoline if she could, I’m sure.
Today, we started replacing some things, with a different plan for keeping the dog at bay. In short, we’re taking everything down every time we finish playing down there. It seems a bit extreme, but there’s no other way to keep the dog from destroying it, short of getting rid of the dog. Which has crossed my mind. More than once. Or even twice.
The irony: the person who most loves the swing and the hammocks wasn’t here. The Girl spent most of the day with a friend from the church choir, which meant we were a family of three for most of the day. And that meant the the Boy didn’t have to “call” (as in, “I call the swing!” as they go running down to the back corner of the yard) anything. But he did anyway. Just for practice.
Birthday Party
It started with that warm sunlight that is a sure harbinger of warmer weather. The young leaves diffuse the light, making everything glow. It’s something I’ve tried to capture several times but have never really managed.
Perhaps I just haven’t tried hard enough — maybe I do that purposely to leave the mystery in place.
Soccer today was camera-less. I’ve taken probably a thousand pictures this season — what could happen today that hasn’t already happened this year? I cheered like a normal parent, sitting at the sidelines, not so worried about getting the shot as simply living in the moment. It made me think that I should leave it at home more often.
Today’s game was a loss — number two for the year. It wasn’t a horrible score: 3-1. Last week we were on the other end of a complete overwhelming of the other team. It was something like eight or nine to zero. For the entire second half, I was hoping the other team would score something. So perhaps it was a sort of mild karma today. Over-winning is not a good thing, and I was actually pleased to see them lose.
While E was learning how to lose, K was cooking and baking, preparing for Papa’s birthday party. On the way to Nana’s and Papa’s, K related an amusing story about E. He’s been struggling with tying his shoes. When it came time for new shoes, he’d insisted on Under Armor shoes because Nikes are no longer fashionable. However, this meant laces. He’s been trying to master the art of tying his shoes, but it’s been slow going. The other day in car line, though, a little girl asked him to tie her shoes, and since then, he’s been tying his own.
At Nana’s and Papa’s, we knew the aunties were waiting — a surprise for Papa.
Back home after the celebration, we planted more, weeded more, pruned more — squeezed a bit of a typical spring Saturday.
Spring Thursday
I know it’s a coast-to-coast question, but still, it bears asking: when is spring going to get here and stay here? Sure, we don’t have snow like Babcia has in Poland and folks here have up north. But still — we haven’t taken out our summer clothes because every time K thinks it’s time, we get a drop in temperature.
So the kids wear shorts every day that it’s feasible. The other day, it was 36 when we got up; the next day, it was 52. Tomorrow, back down to the low 40s.
All the flowers and berries are blooming, but if they had any kind of sentience, I would wonder if they really could make any more sense of it than we do.
