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Day 23: Conferencing and Apologizing

Tuesday 07 April 2020 | 0 Comments

Conferencing

We had a chat in English I today about the mad dog scene.

I was helping the kids see the significance of this seemingly out-of-nowhere scene. Students’ reaction to the chapter was fairly unified:

S1: It opened up a lot of questions to me about Atticus; what was his past life? How did he have the knowledge to shoot, and how did he shoot so well?

S2: I was in shock, mostly because of how I was pondering it’s relevance to the book. The act it’s self didn’t perturb me but it did show how close the community is.

Once I got the kids to see that the scene is there to set up one way that Atticus has, contrary to his children’s view, hero qualities in the traditional sense (read: macho sense), we’re ready for them to understand why he kept it under wraps for so long. (The Mrs. Dubose scene is critical for that.)

At the end of the conversation, one student asked me about our dog. (When experimenting with Flipgrid, I made a video for the kids, and in it, I showed them our dog.) There was a bit of a misunderstanding in our conversation today, though:

S1: How’s your dog?

Mr. Scott: She’s in heaven

S1: Wait, did she die???

Mr. Scott: She’s never had so much attention or gone on so many walks

S1: OH

S2: I was worried.

S3: I thought she died too-

S4: O I thought you meant she died

It struck me as odd that they thought I might use a phrase like “She’s in heaven” to tell them the dog had died.

Apologizing

We go on a walk just about every single evening these days, and when we come back, if we have time, the kids want to play a game. Monopoly has held a monopoly lately, but today, the Girl talked E into trying Sorry again.

She was probably sorry she did.

E jumped into the lead and before almost any of us had more than one pawn in the “Home” circle, he had three. And his remaining pawn was stuck at “Start.” Forever. And ever. So long that we all caught up to him.

I have to admit, I was really rooting for him. When I drew I “One,” which would have allowed him to start moving, I wished I could slip it back in the deck for him. He’s so frustrated with board games because he never seems to win.

I wasn’t exactly helping L, though. I Sorry’ed her a couple of times, and at least once, when I drew the “Move forward ten or back one” card, I moved back one just to knock her back to start. Part of it was to see how she dealt with frustration. She did admirably well — that girl is growing up. (Slowly, but I guess we wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, about most aspects.)

The game kept going until it was a four-way tie: all four of us had three of our four pawns in the “Home” circle and the other pawn three or four moves away from victory. K stole the win from E, which is fair in a sense: in Monopoly, we’ve taken to calling her “slum lord” because of her property choices and indebtedness. She deserved a win. (Though she did come out fairly strong on the last time we played Monopoly…)

“Can we play for second?” L asked.

I somehow managed to get second place, which I really didn’t want. Again, hoping for the Boy to get a little bit of an upset.

“Can we play for third?” the Girl asked.

And the Boy swooped in to steal third.

Day 22: Time, Organization, and Aim

Monday 06 April 2020 | 0 Comments

Time

“How long have you been home from school?” K asked as we took our now-nightly, post-dinner family walk. “Is this the second or the third week?”

Not willing to pull out our phones mid-walk, we couldn’t figure it out. Such are our days now: one day blends into another as effortlessly as — as what? I can’t remember a time when time itself seemed so free, so floating, so held down by so little. With the only thing to distinguish a school day from a non-school day being how the kids spend their mornings, the days are a blur now, a smear of time and virus.

How long have we been worrying about this? How long have these precautions been in place? The powers that be suggest that we’re not even at the halfway point, but it already feels as if this has been our reality for as long as we can remember.

It’s not that I’m complaining. We all understand why we’re doing it. We simply didn’t realize how quickly this would be how we define “normal.”

Organization

Today, L started a project with Papa to rearrange and reorganize all his file folders. Nana was a thorough bookkeeper, and she kept track of just about every significant (and many less-than-significant) documents that came through their house. Take receipts, for example: in case of audit, they’d kept tax records for years, including receipts. Every month’s receipts in separate monthly envelopes, all envelopes for a given year in a box for the year. We still haven’t burned all those. So that gives an idea of the granularity of their record-keeping.

Papa has decided he doesn’t need all the other records as well, so he’s thinning everything and reorganizing it. That’s where L’s responsibility begins: she is a fastidious organizer. She likes for us to sit in order of decreasing age at the table for dinner. You can see it in this picture, minus me. Some — namely I — might suggest that this is a bit much, a bit obsessive-compulsive. But when it comes to reorganizing, that’s just the mentality you want.

Aim

The Boy and I have been shooting his bb gun quite a bit these last few weeks. We have a few standard targets in the backyard: L’s archery target, a clump of trees backed by a forest of bamboo behind our neighbors’ lot (it’s possible to see the flight of the bb as it moves toward that clump of darkness), Clover’s ball (if she’s not out; if she’s out, we have to keep her away by kicking the ball to the opposite side of the yard where we’re shooting, always keeping an eye on her), the Boy’s basketball — a lot of targets. Lately, a favorite has been the Boy’s basketball, as it sits at the bottom of the hill and we stand on our deck. Google measures that distance at 69 feet. That’s a fairly impressive range for a seven-year-old to hit a basketball, but once I taught him to compensate for the effect of gravity on such a long shot (“Aim high, really high” I told him), he’s done it fairly consistently

In the late afternoon, when the sun had moved to the front of the house enough to provide some shade to the back deck, E sat with Papa on the back deck. They were shooting E’s bb gun at one of the small plastic cups (perhaps a little bigger than a shot glass) into which we put Papa’s meds every day. Papa took a couple of shots and missed; E took a couple of shots and nailed the cup; Papa missed another shot. “Do you want me to go get a bigger cup?” the Boy asked.

Day 21: Palm Sunday 2020

Sunday 05 April 2020 | 0 Comments

Palm Sunday -- always an important Sunday for Christians, but it's especially significant for Polish Catholic expatriates. It's one of those times when the ceremonies and traditions of Poland shine for a brief moment in our community. What to do when we're all shut-in like this, though? Continue as usual.

First, breakfast on new, freshly-ironed linen.

Holy Week in a Polish highlander house means the iron is out a lot. There's all the linens and such, but there's also much linen in the traditional outfits they wear to Mass, and even though we won't be going anywhere this year, I fully expect the ironing equipment to stay out for much of the week. (K's mother always irons on a table: she throws down a couple of blankets and off she goes. She's tried an ironing board but she's gotten so used to her table method that she just prefers it, and to be honest, it is more convenient when ironing a table cover.)

First, there's the palm. K and the Boy went outside to gather blossoms and foliage for the creation, taking some branches from our Leyland cypresses,

some blossoms from our neighbors' dogwood (surely they won't mind),

some blooms from the Azealia (same neighbor -- surely they won't mind), as well as a few treasures that grow by our creek.

K picked some fern fronds, nearly falling into the creek in the process, and the Boy discovered a lovely bit of green that he gladly picked to help with the palm background/base.

K thought it was very sweet, his excitement and his willingness to help. Neither of us had the heart to tell him they were weeds. Besides, what are weeds? It's an arbitrary determination -- it's simply a plant growing where someone doesn't want it growing. In that sense, even roses can be weeds.

The last element: some of the flowers growing by the creek in our next-door neighbor's property. K discovered them yesterday when she was going with L and E to see all the work they'd done cleaning the creek.

"Oh, such pretty flowers!" she said. "I shall come here in the early, dew-laden morning to pick some of these treasures." (Well, that's not quite what she said, but she's been listening to the Anne of Green Gables series, and that has a decidedly Anne-esque feel to it, and I feel fairly certain K would have said it if she'd thought of it.)

After breakfast, K leads the kids and Papa through a Palm Sunday service, of sorts, following the directions our local priest sent out. It includes a long reading about Jesus's trial and crucifixion, at the start of which Papa has to excuse himself temporarily and I head out for a quick walk. When I get back, the reading is still not done. It's a very long reading.

Lunch, which L and I cooked together, was followed by some outside time, kicking the ball for the dog, shooting arrows and bbs, jumping on the trampoline -- the typical things we've been doing for years but have done with increased frequency (i.e., almost daily) several weeks now.

After dinner -- homemade cinnamon buns -- we took K out exploring. She hadn't been quite the same distance (i.e., to the end of the little woods behind our house, where it drops into the next neighborhood), so we took her for a walk.

Overall, a lovely Sunday. A different Palm Sunday.

Previous Years

Palm Sunday 2019

Palm Sunday 2017

Palm Sunday 2015

Palm Sunday 2014

Palm Sunday 2012

Sixth Sunday of Lent 2013

Day 19: Shooting in the Cloudless Afternoon

Friday 03 April 2020 | 0 Comments

Day 18: Without Subtitle

Thursday 02 April 2020 | 0 Comments

"I just want some attention!" The Boy was frustrated: K was gone; I was working on school matters; the Girl was being a typical thirteen-year-old. It struck me at that moment how this quarantine is affecting them.

I've been using Flipgrid with some classes to take a wellness check. I recorded a video; kids record videos in response. The Boy has been watching the videos and responding with me, and a common thread in most videos is how much students miss seeing their friends. "I don't really miss school that much, but I miss interacting with my friends," one might say, and the Boy mutters, "Me, too."

A lovely portion of our evening family walk

So when he asked specifically and directly for attention, I thought about those responses and the simple fact that he has been isolated -- completely isolated -- from all his friends for weeks now. It's less annoying for the Girl because she Facetimes with her friends and texts them. We've set up a Facetime session with a few of his friends, and his teachers have done a great job using Zoom to get the class together at least once a week. (I've tried to do the same with my students, but with less stellar results.) But it's not the same: he cannot just contact his friends whenever he wants to. He is much more dependent on us.

It's one of those unexpected lessons we learn during this troubling period.

Day 15: Monopoly and Growth

Monday 30 March 2020 | 0 Comments

We were playing Monopoly again tonight (E’s choice), and E was having a hard time of it. He really didn’t have any property, and he was landing on L’s or my property fairly regularly. He soon grew fussy.

“I never win at this game!” That sort of thing.

L and I kept encouraging him to continue, but he was reaching a point of frustration that seemed like it might overwhelm him. And then he landed on one of the two orange properties that he was missing.

“I’m buying it!”

I glanced at my own marker: I was standing on the final orange property he would need.

I turned to L, who is always our banker, and said, “Oh shoot, I forgot to buy that property.” I looked her dead in the eye, hoping she would realize what was going on.

“Oh, you wanted to buy that?” She grabbed the card and traded it for a little cash.

I turned to E: “I’ll sell it to you.”

The point of the story is not helping the Boy like that. The point is L’s reaction. There was no “That’s not fair!” There was no immaturity. There was the simple understanding that we were going to try to help the Boy in some little way because his seven-year-old patience had reached just about the end of it.

“Our little girl is growing up,” I said to K when I told her about it later in the evening.

In the afternoon, he’d brought in some wisteria blossoms and declared, “I’m going to make some perfume!

Day 12: The Project

Friday 27 March 2020 | 0 Comments

The Boy's teacher was ambitious: a project during their time out of school. "Design your own island." The Boy came up with Ice Cream Island, with volcanos that spew ice cream, a chocolate lake, and a whipped cream waterfall...

The Girl let him use her paints with the understanding that she could help.

Day 10, Part 2: Blooms and Games

Wednesday 25 March 2020 | 0 Comments

Day 9: Conferencing

Tuesday 24 March 2020 | 0 Comments

Our admin staff held the first video conferencing session today at 9:30 on Google Meet. We'd had an informal one earlier in the week, but with everyone talking, it was far too chaotic for me. I thought I'd lose it. Very hard to follow. It seems everyone learned from the experience: the principal was unmuted, everyone else was asked to mute themselves. Questions went in through the chat box option.

E's class had their first video conferencing session on Zoom today. At 12:30 everyone logged on and the chaotic chatter began. The teacher had a clever idea: use classroom management techniques for quieting everyone. "If you can hear me, touch your nose." Everyone got a chance to chat and tell everyone what they were up to. The Boy seemed awfully quiet. When his turn came, he simply passed.

I held my first online conferencing session with students just after the Boy's. I used Google Meet. It stinks. After participating in a Meet and leading one, I've determined that it is useful for chaotic nonsense only unless everyone is muted but one or two. Next time, Zoom.

Still, it was a relief to see the kids again. It's only been a little over a week, but it feels like so much longer. "It's so much different than, say, spring break," I told them. "During a break, you know that in a week or two, you'll see your students again. Here -- who knows when we'll meet in person again?"

Afterward, once it finally stopped raining, I suggested to the kids that we take the dog for a walk. They jumped on it enthusiastically. The simple pleasures are becoming pleasures for them again. If there's one bright side to this whole pandemic, it's that.

On the walk, the Boy and I got to talking about favorite books and authors. "I think my favorite author is Roald Dahl," he said, then asked me about my favorite books.

"I think Absalom, Absaom! is the best book ever written," I said, wondering how he'd respond.

"Is that a book a kid could read?"

"No, most definitely not." I wouldn't even suggest to my best readers in honors classes to tackle that book. It's beyond challenging the first time through. Perhaps not as bad as Finnegan's Wake or even Ulysses, but quite a challenge.

"What other books do you like?" he asked when I'd finished explaining all that.

"I'm partial to Charles Dickens," I said.

"Didn't he write Moby Dick?" asked L.

"No, that was Herman Melville. But now that I think about it, I believe I see a little similarity between Dahl and Dickens."

E raised his eyebrows as he does when he's excited.

"They both tend to give characters names that somehow reflect their character." I explained how "Trunchbull" from Matilda seems to be a portmanteau of "truncheon" and "bull."

When we got back, I introduced E to "Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems." "Do you know how he is?" I asked.

"Yeah, he wrote the pigeon books and pig and elephant."

Then, at a little past three, I get this statement from the governor:

At this time, students, parents, and families should plan for South Carolina’s schools to remain closed through the month of April. Our dedicated teachers and school administrators have done a tremendous job in making it possible for our students to learn at home. We understand that the prospect of schools remaining closed for an extended period of time places stress and strain on parents and children. Rest assured, if there is any way to safely open our schools earlier, we will do that, but schools must remain closed to protect the health and safety of South Carolinians.

So it seems our adventure is just beginning. The worries will build, I'm sure, as the cases rise in our little state, and as our president begins to make noises that indicate he thinks money is more important than lives, I wonder if a crisis in government might accompany the crisis in our national well-being.

But as long as everyone ends up safely tucked in their beds at night, my primary anxiety is assuaged.

Day 8: Rain

Monday 23 March 2020 | 0 Comments

It was supposed to rain all day today. It was also supposed to be a day off school today, which would have made the rain seem particularly dreary as we would probably have gone out and done something on this early spring day. Since this is the sixth day without school, it just felt like the new normal.

In the morning, while K was reading with E, I spent some time working on a couple of web sites I’m creating, one for a friend’s about-to-be-launched home organization company and the other an online guide for the church we usually attend (the parish built a new church just a few years ago). The virus, though, has put a damper on both projects: no one would start a business right now, and the church is closed.

Once I completed what I wanted to do, it was nearing lunch. And it was also about time that I help hang L’s pegboard that she got from Ikea two months ago. I don’t like to rush into anything. And I didn’t have the appropriate drywall anchors. And I kept forgetting to get them in Home Depot.

Of course, there had to be some playtime. The Boy and I worked with Legos: he built a car; I built a suspension bridge. When she saw it, K laughed that I should have been an architect. (Forget for a moment that it’s actually civil engineers who design bridges — I knew what she meant.)

“Actually, I did. For several years.” I took drafting in high school to that end. “But then I realized I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. And besides, if I’d gone that route, who knows if I would have ended up in Lipnica?” Which is to say, who knows if we would have met? A change in career choice determined who I married? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s impossible to say.

It’s that kind of dumb luck — or lack thereof — that has me worried now. Our family is largely isolating itself, but someone has to go to the store occasionally, as I did this morning. (Only one dozen eggs per customer, I learned at checkout.) How many asymptomatic people are walking around? We take precautions, but in the end, it’s just a crapshoot in a sense. Just like so many other things in life that seem inevitable, I suppose.

Finally, in the afternoon, it stopped raining for a while. The kids and I went out to walk the dog. In the evening, it seemed like it had stopped again, but by the time we’d gotten ready and headed outside, it had started misting again. And then stopped. And in crawled L, rollerblades still on, to tell us, “Come on! It’s stopped! Let’s go!”

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