The Girl got braces today. She wasn't happy. Neither was our bank account. But such is life for us all...
Braces
the girl
Family Sunday
It was a dreary, rainy day today, but none of the adults were complaining. Far from it: it’s been so long since we’ve had any rain that I wouldn’t have minded if it rained all day long. But E was sad: we’d planned on going to the zoo since the morning because, according to the forecast, the rain was supposed to stop after lunch. It didn’t, so we didn’t.
Instead, we stayed inside and played Peanut Butter and X — can’t remember the other half. Maybe cabbage? It’s basically the card game BS. It’s a silly game that a seven-year-old can understand, though he doesn’t understand the nuance.
“Now I have to lie!” he proclaimed at one point.
“Now we know that you don’t have what you’re going to say you have,” L laughed.
“Now don’t give him a hard time,” I chided.
“Now I don’t want to play!” E fussed.
We talked him down from his frustration and continued, even managing to make it fun again.
Afterward, I decided it was about time to teach L how to play hearts. We played an open hand with three people so I could show them how to play, but I was doubtful from the outset that the Boy would be able to keep up.
In the evening, we expanded our circle, playing a full game (i.e., four people) by adding K and Papa to the mix. After four hands, we were all virtually tied. Probably the perfect way to end.
Perfection
Lena’s team went undefeated this year, including winning the championship tournament tonight.
Tooth Fairy
“What should I do with my tooth?” the Girl asked. She’s had to have three baby teeth pulled because they just weren’t coming out correctly. This last one was the final to come out before she gets her braces on, something she’s not really looking forward to.
“Why not put it under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy,” I suggested.
She looked at me, furrowed her brow, screwed up her lips, marched over and said, “Right.”
“Well, why not? Get a little money. She gets another tooth. It’s win-win.”
Again, “Right.”
“What do you mean, ‘Right’?” I tried to keep from smiling, but I could feel the edges of my lips creeping upward.
“I know it was you guys,” she proclaimed.
“Oh, really?”
I’ve been waiting for this conversation for years now, wondering when she would admit that she knew K and I were the Tooth Fairy and Santa.
“Yes, I saw you!”
“And how do you know it wasn’t the Tooth Fairy. She could be a shapeshifter.” I was wondering if she would come back with, “Those don’t exist, either!” but instead, she just insisted again that she’d seen me.
Then the bombshell: “E doesn’t even believe in Santa!”
Last Swim
Our kids have grown up swimming in the pool at Nana's and Papa's condo complex. More often than not, we were the only ones there, and the kids really came to think of it as a private pool for us. "Oh, someone's here," was the common moan when we pulled up to find that someone from the complex was already there. In all the years we've been going there, I can think of exactly one time when it seemed crowded: at most, there were half a dozen other swimmers there every other time.
Most often, Nana and Papa would meet us at the pool, and we would try to entertain them by entertaining ourselves. Lately, though, say in the last two years, Nana and Papa made it less and less frequently. With the problems she had with polymyalgia rheumatica, Nana had greater and greater difficulty walking, and they came less and less frequently. And then Nana passed away, and all the changes that came with that...
Now we're getting ready to sell the condo, and so this season will be our last season swimming there. Which meant today was our last day swimming there.
It's not the loss of the pool that has drawn me into a thoughtful mood but what it means -- the end of an era of our lives. Nana's passing was, of course, the most significant, the most painful, but since then, the door to that era has remained slightly open. The apartment was still there, still filled with furniture, dishes, clothes, and all the memories attached. After the estate sale, most of the furniture was gone. A few trips to a local charity and almost everything else is gone. The apartment is empty except for a large dresser that Nana and Papa bought in 1979 from a family in the apartment complex where we lived. They were going through a split up and everything had to go.
In 1979, I was six, so this dresser was a constant presence in my life, the one piece of furniture connected to the time when I was E's age. We've been trying to sell it for ages. We've dropped the price again and again until it's now almost free, and still no one is interested.
That seems somehow sadly appropriate. Who wants someone else's 40-year-old memories?
Through all this, though, we kept going to that pool this summer. Somehow I was unconsciously thinking, perhaps, that continuing ritual kept everything from changing for good.
I guess what it is, is simple: that pool represents my kids as kids. It will bookend a period when they were both kids, for L at nearly 13 is no longer a little kid. She's nearly as tall as K, and her interests are maturing to match: she's started watching Grey's Anatomy on Netflix because so many of her friends have been watching it, and she wants to keep up with them. When we go to the store, she's asking to buy makeup instead of toys. The thought of going to Starbucks for some iced coffee drink nonsense thrills her. Our Daddy-L time is no longer playing with this or that but practicing volleyball. She's getting braces soon and will likely not find boys disgusting for very much longer.
It's all inevitable, but that doesn't make it any less bittersweet.
Down at the Swing
Afternoon at Conestee
The Boy has been begging us for family time. I must admit: he's sometimes the driving force that finally pushes K and me to plan some time for the four of us together. He really wants us to take a bike ride together, but right now, my back wheel has a broken spoke, and the Girl is not the easiest person in the world to convince to go on a ride. So we settled for a walk in our favorite local park.
We took a long line for the dog and let her play in the river. She's gone from being terrified by the water to loving it. Well, maybe not quite loving it: She doesn't really like actually swimming, but she does enjoy splashing about.
The Girl managed to get Clover to realize, at least for today, that when she tangles her leash around a tree, she just has to go the opposite way to unwrap the leash. A simple thing, and yet not so simple.
Winning, Losing, and Soccer Practice
The Boy headed over to his young soccer team with a nonchalant gait that suggested ambivalence.
"Run, E," I said. "Show some enthusiasm."
He broke into his power stride: he slams his feet down in short strides and rocks his whole upper body back and forth. It's not a particularly efficient gait, and I've tried several times to help him improve it.
"Slamming your feet down quickly doesn't help you run faster," I once explained. "In fact, it really has the opposite effect." We practied a better step together, but anytime he wants really to run, he reverts back to his jerky, stomping gait.
I suppose his thinking is logical in a way: to run full speed, you have to put all your energy into your run. What more obvious way is there of accomplishing this than expending massive amounts of energy in slamming your feet down?
So he was running across the field toward the circle of players while I retrieved my folding chair from the trunk. I closed it, looked up, and saw E sprawled on the ground, his arms out at his side, his feet still traveling upward as he rocked ever so slightly onto his upper body from the momentum of the running and falling.
I sighed.
The Boy has such a time with his self-confidence. He's keenly aware that he's slower than a lot of his peers; he's quite cogniscient of the fact that he's far from the most aggressive player on the soccer field; he knows he doesn't play any number of sports as well as his friends. The only thing he feels truly comfortable and confident doing is riding his bike with me.
I couldn't tell what happened in the end. He just got up and continued over to the group, but I don't know if anyone said anything, but I don't think that's even necessary: we're perfectly capable of feeling we've made a fool of ourselves without anyone saying a word.
The question was, should I say something?
There was a part of me that wanted to talk to him, wanted to reassure him, wanted to make sure he was okay, that his ego hadn't taken too big of a hit. Yet there was another part that felt I should just let it go. Bringing it up later might not do anything positive, I thought.
In the end, I just let it go. He never said anything about it, and it seemed like the coach was giving him a little extra dose of praise later -- perhaps thinking the same thing I was and trying to give that confidence a little boost? I don't know. I didn't talk to him about it either.
It's that fine line -- when to step in and when to back off -- that I suppose every parent tries to find in every situation.
When we got back home, the Girl was asleep: she'd just finished a volleyball game and had been fighting a sniffle for most of the day. "Just let her sleep a while," K said, and so we did.
"How was the game?" I asked.
It turned out that L's team didn't just beat the other team; they completely demolished them. "I'm not sure the other team had a total of 25 points in both sets combined," K said sympathetically.
The coach of the other team had come out and told the audience that they were a young and inexperienced team. "Please give them all the support you can," she said.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. In a way, that's like saying, "We know we're about to get our asses handed to us, but cheer for them anyway." It's a tacit admission of what's about to happen. And yet what's wrong with that? Isn't that really just knowing one's own limitations?
In my own brief coaching career, I got reprimanded by a parent when, after a player on our team, watching the other team warm-up, declared, "We're going to lose! There's no doubt," I replied with, "Yes, you certainly are." Dramatic pause. "If that's how you see it, that's exactly what's going to happen." I continued by pointing out that they'd given up before they even started, and nothing good ever comes of that.
"Well, I think you could have been more encouraging," the mother said.
Perhaps. By that time, the girls had lost not only every single match but every single set. We won one set the entire year and lost every single match. I'd been trying to encourage them, but I suppose it wasn't enough -- not for the girls, not for this particular mother, not for any of them.
It was my one and only season of volleyball coaching. Fortunately, I have a lot more seasons of parenting to get it right.
At the Lake
Sometimes, we just don't think things through and come to regret the results. Some mini-disasters would be so easily avoidable if we simply stopped for a moment, looked at what we were about to do, and asked, "Is this really a great idea? What's the worst that could happen if I do this? What's the best?"
Twelve-year-olds who are sure they're about to turn twenty are particularly suspectible to this. I know I was at that age. At that age, we have an excuse: our brains simply haven't finished forming despite all outward appearances to the contrary. After all, our bodies are soon reaching their fullest potential, and our learning curve has not been anywhere near as steep as it was when we were first wandering about the world. Surely the brains are done at that age. But they're not, and this is especially true of the area of the brain that controls impulses. So we do things at that age without thinking about it because the portion of our brain that does that thinking isn't fully developed yet.
This weekend at the lake with friends, L did something that could have foreseeably mini-disastrous (super-duper-mini-disastrous, micro-disastrous, even, but disaster was still the little nugget at the center of it all) consequences and resulted in the unintended destruction of someone else's property.
The Girl, though, was calmly willing to go to the owner and discuss with him what happened. It helped that he was on his back porch and that she didn't have to knock on the door. Still -- a proud little moment for us.
Volleyball
