Taking Advantage of an Early Spring
the girl
Perfection
“I’ll never be an expert drawer!” E and I were sitting at the kitchen table after K and L had left for L’s pre-Mass choir practice, and E was trying to draw a sports car. He scratched out a basic wedge shaped attempt at a sports car, adding a deep arc for a driver’s seat, then put the pencil down and dropped his head into his hands. “I’m just not good at drawing!”
It’s tough reasoning with a four-year-old, and though I feared it feel ineffective in the moment, I thought perhaps he needed some perspective nonetheless.
“Son, it takes time,” I began. A thousand and one cliches seemed ready to rush from my mouth, but they were only cliches to me. “Everyone struggles at first when learning a new skill. No one is an expert immediately. It takes time.”
Yet his four-year-old horizon is not very distant at all. Later in the day, as we’re heading to a state park for a family bike ride, he will respond to his mother’s calming, “Only eight more minutes,” by counting to eight and demanding to know why we’re not there yet. At the sun-soaked kitchen table, though, his horizon was even closer. He flipped his sketch pad to a new sheet and tried again, with the same result. He crossed it out and again proclaimed, “I’ll never be an expert.”
I saw in this coming heartache, approaching frustration, a nearing narrowing of the Boy’s horizon. “What if he goes through life like this, thinking always that if it’s not perfect the first time, there’s no point in trying again?” I see it in my some of my at-risk students every day. They lack what, in edu-speak jargon, we’ve come to call “grit.” One girl experiences these frustrations on a daily basis: she wants to give up immediately if I offer any sort of helpful feedback that indicates the slightest flaw in her analysis. Unable to gain any perspective, she struggles with a stress she imposes on herself.
In the end, a lack of time saved the situation. Or at least put it off for a while. We got dressed and met K and L at Mass. As the homily began, it was as if the parish priest and the curria in Rome itself had seen our morning struggles and wove them into the day’s readings and homily. Father Longenecker was sketching the picture presented in the day’s readings. First, from Leviticus: Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy. A command from perfection for perfection. The second reading was from the first letter to the Corinthians: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy. The Gospel reading from Matthew followed in the same theme: So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The notion that we’re called to be perfect, aside from proving that Christianity is not a good choice for anyone looking for an easy religion, put the morning sketch session into a new perspective for me. In his own way, the Boy was living out the callings from the readings. He must have looked to me as we look to God, frustrated at our apparent lack of progress. Our perspective on a human life must appear to him like E’s immediate frustration when he was unable to achieve instantaneous perfection.
After Mass and lunch, we headed to a lovely local state park to enjoy the unseasonably perfect cycling weather. We rode 6.6 kilometers (4.1 miles) and climbed a total of 86 meters (282.1 feet). A fair amount for a four-year-old.
He had to get off and push a few times, but his tenacity at some of the steeper portions of the short incline was impressive. It was a mirror image of the morning, for it was only toward the end of the ride that he really started suggesting, in words and actions, that he might not make it back to our starting point.
What made the difference? Why did he exhibit tenacity in one endeavor and not the other? Was it merely the physicality of the cycling, a tangible activity with a clear end? Was it the fact that a flawed sketch sits on the page and reminds him of his seeming failure whereas the road’s inclines simply disappear behind him? I sit here at the end of the day thinking that perhaps I should have the answers to those questions, and I realize that if I’m not careful, I’ll start doing the same thing he did with his drawing: why am I not the perfect parent? By now, such thoughts leave as soon as they enter my conscience, right? Hardly.
In the end, it was a reminder paradox that perfect days are perfect because aren’t.
Early Spring?
Thursday Afternoon
How do you lose the gas cap off your mower? Fairly easily it turns out, as I discovered Saturday. So when we were talking about what we’ll be doing this weekend over dinner, K suggested I work on the leaves in the backyard again. Great idea, but I’ll have to get a gas cap before I can do that. In the meantime, to get a little exercise and outside time after dinner, we searched for the gas cap.
For a while.
Soon enough, though, the boys decided it was time to play. We captured K and tried to pull her to our lair, but she’s a strong one, that K. But turnabout is only fair, and so the Boy turned traitor and jailed me in the hammock, taking a brief break to get the Girl swinging.
Treasures
Columbia Zoo
Gift to Sing
An audio recording from rehearsal.
Columbia
The Girl has loved performing for years. She doesn’t often have an audience, but she really doesn’t need one.
On a weekend trip, she can entertain herself in the hotel room dancing about as if she were on the biggest stage in the world.
She can dance a little reel on the way from the table to retrieve a spoon for little brother’s soup as if she were part of a touring dance troupe.
A hairbrush can be a microphone and the hardwood floors throughout our house make every space a recital hall.
This weekend, though, it was a little different. It wasn’t the improvised routines that fill her week with little joys as she imagines herself on this or that stage. It wasn’t plunking away with her piano teacher. It was an auditioned role. A practiced and prepared role. And it wasn’t just her: it was almost three hundred kids across the state, all practicing with their music teacher after school, learning the same songs in big city schools and small rural schools. Students of multiple ethnicities, races, religions, and mental aptitudes with one thing in common: an ability to sing. A gift in common. A gift they are willing to share.
And in the midst of all this, like magnets to a pole, two Polish families found each other and the girls made friends instantly.
Late-January Monday
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fairly typical Monday. Last Monday, we had no school, so K and I went out and bought a new car. The Monday before that, we were out of school because of snow. Or was that the previous Monday? Going back further there was winter break and so on. So today was a normal Monday. Up early, kids ready, off we go.
The afternoon was fairly typical as well. After chess club, I arrived home late. Everyone was in the backyard. I made my afternoon coffee, poured it in a travel mug, and headed out — only to see everyone coming in.
“I’m coming in to get dinner ready,” K said. The temptation was to be lazy, but laziness is what we got all weekend, with the rain, rain, and more rain.
“I’ll go down with them,” I suggested, and both the kids squealed and excitedly ran back down to the trampoline/swing/hammock/bridge/hiding spot area we’ve been developing over the last few years.
Afterward we had dinner. Relatively uneventful — which is really saying something. The kids lately have been bickering like mad over the slightest thing, and it turns dinner into something less than perfectly enjoyable. We decided to conduct an experiment — the “we” being K and I, for the kids would never agree to it. Not knowing what influence was primarily responsible for their behavior (for it’s not been just the bickering), we’ve eliminated all possible influences for a week: no television, no computer, no friends. Just a week to refocus and recharge. The kids this weekend had to find other ways to entertain themselves when we weren’t playing with them. L read, played with her Legos, drew. The Boy drew, played with his Legos, looked at books. The results are beginning to show: tonight, a much calmer dinner, with no hysterics about anything. In the evening, a calmness that hasn’t been in our house for a while.
Board Games
Chasing the Unseen
I know we’re entering a new phase in the Girl’s life: chasing. It’s not just that now, with her birthday last month, she’s in the double digits. There’s more to it than that. She’s not a tween, is she? Isn’t that eleven? Twelve? Yet there she was this afternoon, down on the hammock, talking to her male friend as he sat on the other hammock.
It’s not that I’m suggesting that they were discussing anything more mature than a ten- and eleven-year-old should discuss. She still says that boys are icky. (Hopefully that will last for another couple of years, when they can comfortably become iffy at best. Maybe a blossoming interest when she starts high school?) No, it’s not what topic they were chasing down; it’s that they were talking. They weren’t playing; they weren’t running; they weren’t being silly. They were sitting and talking.
The Boy doesn’t talk with his friends. They play. They play with an intensity that makes me envious, with an energy that makes me wonder if I ever had even a small portion of it. They’re talking consists only of what they’re playing.
“Pretend I’m a policeman…”
“Let’s go to the trampoline!”
If I had to bet what L and W were discussing, I’d say it’s probably Pokemon-related. That’s what they talk about most of the time. That’s their common interest. But still — talking, not playing.
We’ve started chasing her. She’s still a little girl, but that’s ending in the next couple of years. Given my shock when I look past entries from the “Time Machine” widget here on this silly site and think, “Dang, that was three years ago?!” I know that those two years will pass so quickly that I won’t even notice if I’m not careful. And then we will be chasing her. Chasing her growth. Chasing the unseen.
Later in the day, the Boy gives chase in a different way. Playing on the driveway, he crashes to the concrete as he’s chasing a ball. His palms hit with an audible slap, and I could feel the burn in my own palms.
But not a peep, only a little cry of panic as he saw the ball heading to the edge of the driveway, threatening to roll down the hill and into the creek that serves as the boundary between our backyard and that of our neighbors’ yards. He popped back up, scurried to the end of the drive only half a blink too late. Down the hill rolled the ball.
There was a time when he wouldn’t head down that far into the yard without an adult, just as L was at that early age. But today, he didn’t even hesitate, didn’t even look to see if an adult was anywhere around. He just slowed a bit to make it down the tricky part, chasing the ball with the certainty that he could catch it that only a four-year-old could hold.
Snowy Sunday
Even after a second day of sledding, this time in even colder weather, the Boy was ready for a bit of ice cream.
If only he could get it out…
First Snow 2017
Like most snow storms in the South, this one was the talk of news and neighbors for almost a week before it hit. The possibility of snow grew into the certainty of snow, and the depth of that certain snow increased as well. By the time I went to bed, meteorologists were predicting six inches for our area. That’s like three feet of snow in northern climes — something of note.
The kids grew increasingly excited as the projected storm’s intensity promised to be greater and greater. E was squealing on a regular basis Friday night with excitement about the impending snow.
What we got in our area was somewhat more restrained, though. Probably an inch, maybe an inch and a half, of icy, hard snow greeted us this morning. The Boy was ready to go, though.
“I’m going to eat half a bagel for breakfast, then get dressed, then check the street, then go to R’s house.” By nine, he was out. Shortly after that, the Girl joined him. Shortly after that, the neighborhood joined them.
In the afternoon, with such a gorgeous blue sky, we had to go for a walk, and with the roads clearing, we decided to go to Conestee Park. Wearing his gum boots, the Boy had to walk through as many puddles as possible, and both of the kids had to grab, fling, kick, and toss every bit of snow possible. The result: two wet, tired kids. Exhausted.
Until we arrived back at the house and saw the neighborhood kids sledding. Amazing what that will do for one’s energy.
Tree Lighting
Didn’t ever post this, I think.
New Year’s Eve
The Boy had a birthday party across the street. The Girl is having her birthday sleep over. I read a book, set off some fireworks. A good evening.
2016
Mope
We might be behind the times, so to speak, but K and I have been watching The Crown this week, and it seems there’s quite a bit of moping in that film. Most obviously, there’s Edward VIII, who gave up the crown in order to marry an American divorcee. The Duke of Windsor spends most of his screen time moping about this or that. He mopes about his allowance not being sufficient to entertain as he wishes. He mopes about how his family treats him — they’re all mad at him for the crisis he plunged the country into when he abdicated, but also they’re probably a little angry about him being a fairly open Nazi sympathizer who even went to German in ’37 and met Hitler. He mopes about how his wife won’t be allowed to come to the coronation of Elizabeth. He mopes about the pageantry of the coronation as he mocks with with his friends while watching it on television. And he seems to mope about not being king as well.
Yet in all that moping about, there are some problems of lesser, moral men that he doesn’t have to deal with. We don’t see him moping about his sibling drawing a mustache on him as he slept. The Girl has taken to “mustaching” him at night, and while he thought it was funny at first, he no longer does.
“I hate mustaches!” he declared this morning.
I do, too. They always make a man seem a little creepy to me, a little less trustworthy. I wonder if the Duke of Windsor ever wore a mustache — it might suit his personality. It certainly did Hitler’s.
He probably never moped about having to clean up his room after a play date. The man probably never cleaned up anything in his entire life.
To E’s credit, though, he didn’t mope today about having to clean up his mess.
“But I didn’t make it all!” he began, and I thought it was coming. The fuss. The mope. The crisis.
“Well, you should have asked your friends to help you clean up before they left.”
“I did. And they didn’t help.”
“I’m sorry.”
And that was about all there was to it. He cleaned up half the mess in the late afternoon and the other half just before bedtime, and he was calm the entire time. He might mope later in life about his allowance, but that’s still a ways off.
The Duke of Windsor also never had to mope about a repetitive task like opening seemingly endless bags of chess pieces and putting them into draw-string bags. Since I have waited for that moment for ages — getting chess sets for the chess club I sponsor at school, thanks to the generosity of the PTSA — I didn’t mope about it either.
I guess about the only thing I moped about today was all of the Duke of Windsor’s moping…
Inspired by the Daily Post’s prompt of the day: Mope.
Chores and Jobs
Chores — the Girl unloads the dishwasher, the Boy sorts the silverware. Today, though, the Girl was in a hurry for him to finish so they could watch a little after-breakfast TV, so she was insistent on helping him. He, however, would have none of it.
“L, that’s my job!”
The more restless she grew, the more insistent he became. I stood there watching, intervening as little as possible, a few disparate thoughts running about in my mind.
- The Boy is clearly proud of what he’s doing and that it’s his established job. He doesn’t have a lot of responsibilities yet, and often his help, as cute as it is, is more trouble than help. This is one of the things he can do that actually is very helpful. I think he senses that and is proud of contributing to the family.
- He has a totally different outlook on work than the Girl. For her, chores are just that: something that must be done, something that is as inescapable as unenjoyable. The Boy, though, loves helping, loves working, loves getting involved. He plays at work: he digs in the backyard, pretends to mow, conducts culinary experiments on the small countertop beside the stove as we cook (which usually involves mixing random things from the fridge).
- Sometimes help comes from less-than-perfectly-altruistic motives. Sure, the end result was fine: the Girl wanted to help the Boy. But why? Still, that she finished her job and then wanted to help with his — that’s something.
- The thought of having my job (singular) is enviable for a lot of adults, I think — and I’m including myself in that “a lot of”. So there’s an irony: kids look forward to being adults, and adults often look back wistfully at childhood. The truly happy individual is the one always happy where she is.
Backyard Free Time
Looking Forward
The Girl has a way of getting into something and being very passionate about something but then letting the fires die a little.
Will archery be the same? Is it important? We’re having fun now, spending time together, just enjoying it all.
