Homework
the girl
Confirmation
We parents wait for it all our lives, I imagine: confirmation that all the teaching we've done has somehow taken root and flowered. It comes sometimes in those little notes scribbled on our children's school papers or comments on report cards. We hear about it from grandparents or neighbors. And then sometimes we see it.
K arrived home with the Boy from a short trip to the grocery store and the pizza place only to find it had started raining. It wasn't raining hard enough for me to hear it, so I hadn't brought in the laundry drying on the back deck. (Truth be told, I wasn't even aware of it being out there, but that's an entirely different issue.) K rushed in, pizza in hand, tossed the box on the table and darted out through the back door. "My laundry!" Following a few moments behind, E appeared at the door, shopping in hand, car door closed, struggling mightily with the two bags of groceries.
He'd taken the initiative all by himself.
Coincidentally, one of the words in L's Polish lesson for the evening was "dżentelmen," the Polishized spelling of "gentleman," which has the same denotations and connotation.
In the end, I couldn't care less about how well he plays soccer. I'm more concerned with how he plays life. And while at the moment he seems destined to be darting around all the action in a soccer game, he seems to be diving right in to life.
Creators
Before school, the Girl decided she wanted to make pan pipes out of straws and cardboard as she discovered in one of her many craft books.
The Boy has fallen in love with experimenting with adding random things from the refrigerator.
Family Match
If the Boy plays Saturday like he was playing today, he'll be something else. He was going after the ball no matter who had it, attacking toward the net, shooting -- everything. We even worked on passing the ball to him for him to shoot even though that's a guaranteed impossibility for his game Saturday.
But if I think back to the Girl playing soccer, I remember doing things like this and then discovering that none of it would really stick. "Perhaps more practice," I'd say, and yet it wouldn't stick. And so what if it doesn't? He's only four -- that's the cause of the "problem" and the reason it's not important.
Note from School
Chores, Practice, and Dinner for Tomorrow
Closed
I arrived home today to find both kids with eyes closed tightly. Afternoon naps are always a little problematic because neither one of them really wants to get up. The Boy resorts to fussing; the Girl just steadfastly refuses. It doesn't matter what's for dinner; it doesn't matter who's just arrived; it doesn't matter period. Neither wants to get up.
"How long will the grilling take?" K asked as the dinner hour approached.
"About twenty minutes."
"I'll start waking them up in ten, then." And even then, by the time dinner was on the table, they were both still virtually asleep.
Then, as the sun closes up shop for the day, the second half of the trouble begins: neither of them is especially tired.
We do what we can to tire them beforehand. I took the kids on the trampoline for a while and then played soccer with the Boy as the Girl skated about the driveway.
Still, when it came time to go to sleep, E was just jabbering away.
Jumping
Sunday
After Mass during the school year, there are a few obligatories: a fresh pot of coffee and something sweet. Feed the soul, then feed the spirit. Something like that. Perhaps accompany it with something to read, maybe a game of chess. But eventually, it’s time for the trial and treasure, for it’s something K loves and loathes doing. Polish lessons.
The love is easy: it’s her language, her culture, that she’s sharing with her beloved daughter. The loathe comes from the frustration that sometimes accompanies it. Perhaps “loathe” is not the right word — perhaps it was just too alliterative to pass up. “It’s something that K loves and that frustrates her” doesn’t quite make it. Always searching for the right word, never able to find it, which is what makes the Polish lessons so frustrating for the Girl. Her passive vocabulary, like everyone’s, is much larger than her active vocabulary. She can understand more than she can say, like me in Polish.
E, on the other hand, has of late only a passive vocabulary for the most part. The production has ceased. However, we’re seeing that language and such is perhaps just not his strength. He can watch a cartoon about how airplanes fly and remember it long afterward. (Language, though? K was trying to teach him a Polish prayer the other evening, and he replied, “You must be kidding me! I can’t remember that!”)
In the evening, it’s time to feed the soul once again — a quiet bonfire in the backyard. The temperatures have cooled, the mosquitoes have disappeared, and we’ve entered our favorite time of the year.
We’ve been waiting all summer for this. The kitchen is mostly done, our routines have returned, the weather has cooled, and it’s time to start everything again. So what better way to end than with a song by Antoine Dufour, a Quebecois guitarist, who wrote a song for his yet-unborn son, a song about waiting, a song I’ve listened to at least a dozen times this weekend. Perhaps the most beautiful acoustic guitar song I’ve ever heard.
Sunday
