Cool Spring Sunday
the girl
Saturday Adventuring
The first day of spring work -- outside collecting hundreds of Sweet Gum seed pods to prevent potentially thousands of saplings, mowing, cleaning.
Dinner at Nana's and Papa's, preceded by some exploring.
Monday
When I got home from work, I asked the Boy if he wanted to go play outside -- to go exploring or something similar. With the coming cold spell, we have to make the most of the relative warmth while we have it. He was eager to go, and he was eager for L to join us.
He's always talking about doing things as a family. "When can we go on a family bike ride?" "When can we watch a family movie?" "Can we go on a family walk?"
L, now twelve, is starting to show typical teenager behavior, like a reluctance to hang out as a family all the time. She enjoys it, but she also loves "alone time" as she calls it.
Today, though, we were able to talk L into going exploring with us. The Boy, utterly thrilled, took the lead and instructed L how to cross the creek, how to scale the bank (of course she found her own way), how to navigate the thorny places.
Standing Still
Coming home this evening, L was playing a life simulator game on her iPod and mentioned that she was now forty-seven.
“You’re older than I am,” I laughed.
“No,” she explained, “you can change your age at the click of a button.”
“It’s a good thing you can’t do that in real life,” I replied.
What I had in mind was what I thought at her age: I can’t wait until I’m X years old. That always looking forward, always longing to be a little older, which struck around age six or so. “When will I be big?!”
“No, it’s a good thing,” she agreed. “I’d never press the button then.”
She was taking the opposite option, to which I replied, “Well, at some point, I’d just click the button for you.”
“Why!?” came the incredulous response.
“Because you’re not going to mooch off me for the rest of your life.” We both laughed a bit, but I got to thinking about what it might be like if we could have that option, if we could just stay one age for as long as we wanted to.
On the one hand, the nostalgic in me would love that, but what moment? While looking at the “Time Machine” posts at the bottom of the site, I discovered this shot from 2013:
The Girl was just a little younger than the Boy is now, and I hadn’t thought about how much different she was then than she is now. A six-year-old and a twelve-year-old are completely different people in many ways. Looking back, I can see traces of personality traits she now exhibits all the way back then, but the reverse wasn’t true: I had no idea how much she would change in six years (and, of course, how much she would stay the same).
Yet, within that little clump of nostalgia is a nightmare: if I chose that moment, then what about all the wonders that have happened since? Being stuck in one moment, after all, is what Bill Murray’s brilliant Groundhog Day is all about. But it’s more complex, because that film is really about being stuck in that moment without enjoying that moment, being stuck in a moment when all one does for one’s whole life is look toward other, more exciting moments.
I think I’ve lost the thread of where I was going with this, and that’s kind of the point perhaps. The key to life, rediscovered once again, is getting stuck in the moment by enjoying the moment so much that one doesn’t want to move forward but accepts the simple fact that that forward motion is, in fact, the moment itself. Axiomatic. The present doesn’t exist — it’s a sliver between the past and the future. That old chestnut. Living the moment means accepting that it’s just that — the moment.
So what to do in the moments of this afternoon? Go exploring, of course. Play in the backyard, of course. Enjoy the short bit of time we had between visits to Nana and visits to Papa and trips to church and more trips to church and cooking and lesson planning and everything that makes Sunday Sunday.
Five Years Ago
Five Years Ago
No, six — I forgot it was 2019. Papa was in the hospital, recovering from major surgery on his lungs. Now, six years later, it’s Nana’s turn to spend some time in the hospital and rehab.
I know she would have passed. Gladly.
Wednesday Night Inferring
A busy day for everyone culminates in us arriving separately at home after seven, two hours after we normally eat dinner. After school, a long meeting, and a visit with Nana (out of the hospital and back in rehab -- hurrah!), I'd stopped for something for us to eat; after work, shuttling the Girl to choir practice while taking the Boy shopping, running the Boy to basketball practice after dropping the Girl off at volleyball practice, then picking everyone up, K arrived shortly after.
As we ate, the kids and I decided that K's plan for the rest of the evening was flawed.
"I'll put away all the groceries and then go to bed if you'll put the Boy to bed."
"Nope. I'll put away the groceries while you take a hot bath, and then I'll put the Boy to bed while you go to bed yourself." L and E agreed -- Mama needed to call it a day. As I was bustling about the kitchen, I remembered it was garbage night.
"L, take the garbage and recycling out," I said, expecting a little fussing.
"Okay." Nothing more.
She came back in, a little whiny, and said, "E always takes out one of them. Can he take out the recycling? I'll go with him."
"No, sweetie, it's late. Just do a little more than you have to."
"Oh, okay." Nothing more.
From this, a simple inference: our daughter really is growing up. She's not just sprouting vertically (she's almost 5'4" now); she's not just developing into a young woman; she's maturing. With my nose pressed to the ever-present every day, I forget that sometimes. It escapes me.
While all this was going on, the Boy had started his homework.
"What are you working on tonight?" I asked him.
"Inferring. We learned it today."
As an English teacher, I've been working on the Boy's (and the Girl's) inferring skills for years. I taught him the word; he must have forgotten. The teacher did a better job today. "What's that?" I asked.
"Making a good guess."
Not a bad definition. I usually tell my students it's "making a reasonable guess based on evidence."
And there you might notice something: I teach eighth grade; my son is in first grade. Am I really teaching inferring again? Well, I'm not teaching inferring -- they know what it is. But we're still practicing it. Like mad. Especially (really, that should read "solely") with my lower-achieving students. I give them a text like this:
Every day after work Paul took his muddy boots off on the steps of the front porch. Alice would have a fit if the boots made it so far as the welcome mat. He then took off his dusty overalls and threw them into a plastic garbage bag; Alice left a new garbage bag tied to the porch railing for him every morning. On his way in the house, he dropped the garbage bag off at the washing machine and went straight up the stairs to the shower as he was instructed. He would eat dinner with her after he was “presentable,” as Alice had often said.
I then ask a question: What type of job does Paul do? How do you know this? I have the students back up their answers with three specific pieces of evidence from the text, then explain how that evidence is evidence. A good student response (an actual student response) looks like this:
Paul is a farmer.I know this because he is wearing muddy boots. Wearing muddy boots is evidence that he is a farmer because if he were to work in an office or inside he wouldn't have muddy boots. Also, he is wearing overalls in which he would not have been wearing if he was working inside. Finally, Paul’s overalls are dusty and most farmers work a lot outside so he must have gotten dirty from working outside.
So I applied the same thing to the Boy's work. The same thing -- a text followed by a question:
Everyone was singing for Mark. He blew out his candles. He had many presents. It was his special day. What special day was it?
E read the text and said, "It's his birthday!"
"How do you know this?" I prodded.
"Because he got presents."
"But we get presents at Christmas as well. How do you know it's not Christmas?" He looked stumped for a moment, so I told him what I tell my own students: "Go back to the text. Find something in the text that shows it's not Christmas."
He read a while, thought a while, then said with a smile, "Because it says it's his special day, not everyone's special day. Christmas is everyone's special day."
I thought he'd pick up on the candles. That's the more obvious piece of evidence. He went the more subtle route.
"That's great. A very good observation. Now, can you find a third piece of evidence?"
Again, he looked, read, thought. "The candles. You don't blow out candles on Christmas."
After a tiring day, what a perfect ending.
Pre-Bed Building and Reading
Eight Years Ago
We had a snow day eight years ago today — lots of snow. I took one of my favorite pictures of L that day. And now, it’s one of my favorite pictures of Bida as well.
Tough
No doubt about it -- this has been a tough week. Probably the worst week we've had in memory, K suggested. A good friend died on Monday; our cat died on Wednesday; Thursday saw two funerals (the friend and the cat, obviously) and a visit to the emergency room with Papa; and Nana still in rehab this whole week. The kids are likely feeling neglected but are showing great patience with everything. The parents are feeling exhausted. And, well, the kids, too.
Breakfast this morning started with a little nap at the table. After breakfast, we went our separate ways: the kids with K to church; I went to spend the morning with Nana.
When we came back, the clear skies, after weeks, months, no years of cloudy, rainy weather, called us outside. First things first: I finally finished up Bida's grave. We've been afraid that the dog might be too curious and tempted by the freshly dug earth despite the fact that we put a large stone to mark and protect the spot.
So today, I spread the best dog-digging-deterrent we've found al around: straw. K thinks it's because the straw gets in the dog's nose as she's sniffing around, which would cause a fair amount of pain, I suppose, if the strand of straw got jammed in a dog's nose just right. Or it could be that it hides odors, because the digging always starts with sniffing. Whatever the cause, we feel better about Bida's grave now, though we don't feel so much better about her absence. It's amazing how much a little old gray grumpy cat adds to the family dynamic.
Next, we went down for some swinging, jumping, and Clover-entertaining.
Next, a little homework. We're trying to get everyone back into a normal schedule, which includes daily reading and writing, especially for the Boy. The Girl takes her own initiative with the homework. The Boy -- not so much.
So we sat on the deck, and between yogurt breaks and tossing the ball for Clover, we finally finished the homework. The Boy was trying his best to make the process more difficult than it needed to be, and I just wanted to get through it all, because I knew what we were planning next:
Today's task: find a way to cross the creek. We found one, made another. Something tells me we'll be spending more and more time out there as the weather warms.
Finally, a small dinner with Aunt D, who's come to stay with her big brother and help out with everything.