Division of Labor

Holy cannoli, T can sure wail when she feels like it.

Trying to draw a tee-shirt was she this afternoon, frustrated by her inability at first to draw its outline without crossing over inside those lines - that is to say, making a single perimeter with no transections anywhere. She threw her marker and opened her mouth wide and waaaaaaailed, eyes wide. It was such volume, such from-the-diaphragm power - Janneke and I basically just left the room. There was no reasoning with her, no talking to her - we tried. She wailed louder. Not wanting to reward her for such behavior, but knowing, as we do, that trying to impose consequences on her for continuing to act out-of-control once she's already lost control is a zero-sum game, we simply retreated, Janneke to the treadmill downstairs, I outside to put a rain gutter back on the house. (A small section had fallen away from the roof.)

I was up on the roof ten minutes later, finishing up, when I heard T's wailing sudenly get louder. I walked to the front of the house, on the roof, wondering why I could hear her now, and sure enough she had come outside from the front and was making her way to the back. I walked along the edge of the roof, silently, watching this bird's-eye-view of the top of her little head as she made her way around toward the back, where surely she would find me. She could see the end of the ladder, after all - I had to be close! So she got louder and louder.

Then she had to stop and open the gate, which was a little tricky, because it had a stone leaning against it. you have to kind of push the gate forward in order to let the latch swing, but not so much that you push the stone (which keeps Skittles in the back yard) and make it fall. Then you have to open the gate toward you (again, so as not to make the stone fall), and re-close it behind you. This whole process takes a good thirty seconds if you're five and not very big for your age. And during that whole time, the wailing ceased completely.

Only to resume once she was on the other side. Her head looked left and right, and left and right, but never up - ladders, it seems, don't quite compute totally yet. And now it became words: "Daaaaaaddy!"

I called out to her and asked what was wrong, and she explained. I told her I would be down in a moment, and I came down the ladder to total silence. Saving it up, it seems.

I turned to face her, and was hit full-force again. But I managed to fend it off this time - "T, no me podés hablar así. No es hablar, es gritarme. Cuando me puedas hablar, te ayudo. Hasta entonces, no."

Amazingly, she calmed down, allowed me to put the ladder away, and accompanied me inside for some lessons on how to draw a T-shirt outline with long sleeves and one arm bent jauntily back toward the waist. She practiced, got good at it, and then happily churned out twenty of them while I snoozed on the couch. For maybe five minutes, before we all headed out to Q's soccer game.

Q had a day-long 3 on 3 tournament yesterday. Janneke and T stayed home, and I sat and waited and watched from 8:15 to 5:15 in Great Barrington, an hour away. Q had a blast, goofing around with his friends between games and playing during them. And in the end they did very well - there were three groups of U-10 teams, and they came through group play unscathed, 3-0. Putting them into the semifinals against eventual champions Lenox, where they lost, 4-2. Q scored both goals; he had also had a game where he scored 4 of the team's 7, and another where they stopped trying to score at halftime and still wound up invoking the mercy rule at 10-0. A very respectable showing.

But Q is back to his zombie ways much of the time, and I absolutely do not understand it. In the semis, he sleepwalked through the entire first half, and most of the second. Intimidated by Lenox because he knew they had tied the other Williamstown team 5-5 in group play. And of course the other Williamstown team is better than Q's team, or so he believed. So naturally they would lose to Lenox.

Partway through the second half, Q woke up and started playing aggressively, weaving through for two lovely goals. To hear him tell it, it was because his coach told him during a break, "Stop trying to pass. Just dribble past people and score." He was charging toward his third when he was tripped from behind, resulting in a PK, which he missed (off the post!). Time expired, and their day ended.

I was guilty of some loudly-delivered encouragement on the day, and feel terrible about it. BUT! Today I redeemed myself a bit. They had another game against that same Williamstown team, made up of his friends, which Q is convinced is better in every way. And so for the first half he stood and watched everything happen, made token efforts at resistance, saw who he was up again and basically gave up on trying to dribble past them, etc. It was excruciating to watch. The other team went up 2-0 almost immediately, and I am here to tell you, both goals went right past the somnolent Q. He was always behind the play, always lagging, always half-speed and late. By halftime it was out of hand, 5-0.

And then, curiously, in the second half, when the pressure was off and the other team was basically not trying to score anymore, Q woke up. Many long, beautiful runs, several shots, one goal (on another PK after his shot was stopped in the box with a handball) - again, about 25% of the game, we saw what Q can do.

Tragic, then, when the final whistle blew, to see Q's hands go to his head, and cover his eyes, then his face, and see him wracked by sobs. And to see him wordless when greeting our hugs and questions, to see him walk dejectedly ahead to sit on a lonely park bench halfway to the car and stare, slump-shouldered, at the light rain / heavy mist, beaten. To finally coax out of him, an hour later, with a chin wiggle, "I'm sad that we lost."

Because I tell you truly, this did not have to be. That other team has a stronger overall roster, but not a man-jack of them is better than Q, and none is faster. When he's relaxed and wants to play, there is not a kid around to stop him. The best 3-on-3 team in Berkshire County had no one to stop him - he pounded through two, nearly three unanswered, in about four minutes, once he woke up. The team that came in second in his division could do nothing but fall over and flail as he fired through goal after goal - with the left, with the right, from near, from far. When Q is The One, with the fire in the belly, he is as good as absolutely any 9- or 10-year-old in this league. But he often isn't that.

And it is not my job to make him that. It is my job to hug and squeeze him, take him home and comb his hair, tickle him after supper in one of his favorite games (I give him something ALMOST impossible to guess ("I'm thinking of a mammal"), and every time he guesses wrong or needs a clue, I tickle him), smile at him over his dessert and talk about anything at all. Except his own personal performance in the game. That, now, is off limits.

I did all those things tonight. I have a wonderfully beautiful little boy asleep upstairs after a hard athletic day, where he suffered through his bouts of doubts much more painfully than any of us did, wondering why he does this more fervently and more frustratedly than anyone. But now he's dry and warm and loved, and the last three hours of his night, he spent laughing and safe. That's my job.

Anybody can coach him. Only I can be Papi.

Fighting the Good Fight

So, yeah. T in the car on the way home said, in English, "Today was the worst day of my life."

Which usually turns out to be nothing. She's said this before, on numerous occasions. But I'm not about to dismiss it - I ask, "Por qué, mi amor? Qué pasó?"

And it turns out that, in addition to another event later in the day of less consequence, this is what happened:

Sitting around their table at Kindergarten today, one little girl said, "Raise your hand if you believe in God!"

T was the only one who didn't.

And all the other girls yelled at her.

"What?! You HAVE to believe in God!" "God does so many great things for us!" "The whole world is because of God!" Etc., etc., etc.

And T said that she answered, "Well, everybody gets to make their own choices." Which sounds exactly like the sort of adult-toned speech-parroting that she's so incredibly good at.

And when they still didn't leave her alone, T went and talked to her teacher, who told her that, sometimes, when people are being mean, you just have to ignore them.

After T went to bed, Janneke and I talked, and Janneke, who's been much more on the warpath with this particular issue lately than I have, said that she wanted to talk to the teacher about it. And I think that's probably the best move. Doing nothing is not something we want to do - and talking to the parents of the other kids isn't exactly what we want to do either. But we do want to make sure that there's no anti-anti-religious pile-ons happening, either. I would love to have the teacher explain, in no uncertain terms to these kids, and if need be, to their parents, that belief in God does not make a person good, or nice, and non-belief in God does not make a person bad or mean. I find myself quite insistent on that point, suddenly: We must insist in all classes that atheists are equally valid, nice, and moral. Make that known. And if parents have a problem with it, they will have to lump it. Because this is a public school, and all beliefs, and non-belief, deserve - and will get, by thunder - equal protection.

T absolutely does not like being the odd duck. She asked, as we sat in the driveway, doors to the car open, I not quite arisen out of the driver's seat, she still buckled in in back, whether it was OK for her to believe "in the good God". I said she could believe absolutely anything she wanted. That no matter what she ever decided to believe, we would always love her, and she would always be our little Grugrita.

It concerns me - somehow, Q never got any flak. Or the flak he got was something he could bat aside. T, though, was hurt by the whole interaction. I wonder if I was sufficiently Ward Cleaver for her...Hard to say. She went to bed pretty happy, so maybe I did OK.

But, of course, what should happen tonight before shower time but T comes up to me, smiling shyly, to show how well she's memorized the Pledge of Allegiance.

With "under God" right there in the middle of it.

I smiled and congratulated her effusively, even as Janneke and I locked eyes and grumbled.

There's fights out there, if you want to fight them. And maybe we do...but maybe T doesn't. And maybe she shouldn't have to.

So, Anyway...

Like I was sayin'...I think between the new school year, Facebook (which makes me feel like I'm in touch with people, though this is illusory, I think), and Skype, I feel much more connected than I used to, and the blog business has fallen by the wayside. Making this a difficult task: Where to pick up? What details have been leapt over that would otherwise have made it into some post or other here? Tough call. Tough call.

T got off to a beautiful start in Kindergarten. (Part of her first day is in a video below.) She loves her teacher, and was a very giddy and bubbly host when she took us on a tour of her classroom at the WES Open House. She was the absolute last student there - we didn't get to her room until 7:40 or so, and the event ended at 8:00. We had been so busy, you see, being given a tour of the classroom over in Ms. Shannon's 4th-grade room, by a tour guide who had a clipboard, on which was a series of items he was required to show us. This list was thirty-five items long. So, yeah, it did take something of a while.

Q's back on the soccer pitch, and is loving it. He scored two against Berkshire Hills Black the other day, and although the team lost, 4-6, it seemed obvious to me that overall, Williamstown were the more advanced side. There are a few players on the team that are young or unskilled or both, and they tended to let some very easy shots by during their tours on defense; meanwhile, W-town had a lot of very near misses, including one that should have been a penalty shot, as you'll see in the soccer video, should you care to watch. Good game, though. There are a lot of 4th-graders who are very good, and there had been talk of having one powerhouse team and another developmental one, but there were a ton of kids out this year and they decided in the end to have three teams and divide the top-flight players up among two of them. So Q's on the field with some great players and some close friends. We've been seeing the Backiels again at games, which is great - they're a hoot, and we hadn't seen much of them since last fall, what with Q not playing baseball anymore.

I don't talk about school much here, but I have to say, I have the best AP class ever. I've decided to focus on short fiction, and have divided up the class into groups of 2 to 3. Every Thursday, one of these groups has to tell to the rest of the group a short story that they have read, and do so with all the important symbolism and such intact, so exactly that the rest of the group is capable of telling the whole story back to them by the end of the hour. Friday, all the other students get a copy of the story, and the presenters use it to anchor a discussion about the meaning and symbolism of the story, the author's intent, etc., and to teach to the rest of the group any interesting grammatical elements, turns of phrase, or expressions they picked up in the text. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, we all read stories together that are not the same ones as the ones the student groups present. We've gone through the cycle once, and man, it was awesome. I felt like I was in grad school again. SUCH a special group of students - I get misty when I think they're leaving this year.

But not before we go to Ecuador! That's right, this year in February we're all heading south again. I've got 90% of the trip planned and reserved. It's going to be great - 22 kids signed up so far, 6 chaperones. Can't wait.

T has also started Irish step dancing. I've not been to a lesson yet, but T came dashing into the bathroom to open the shower curtain and show me her steps when she arrived home after her first one, so it seems to have been a big hit. Believe me, I know this is going to get filmed, and soon.

Man...There's just too much to tell. Best if I start up again with the random everyday stuff, rather than give a ton of past events short shrift. It's starting to feel dull and newsy, and nobody likes that. So I'll sign off - but not before leaving you with the promised school video. You'll laugh, you'll cry. And then you'll feel really stupid.

Chao!

T'S FIRST BUS RIDE on her FIRST DAY of KINDERGARTEN

Long Time, No Screed

Hey, man - How the hell are you! Sorry I ain't rapped at you for a while, but the Man here's been busy. Kids are well, as you'll soon see; wifey's fine, my own health's good. Summer ended, school started, and T became a kindergartener! It's all been very exciting, and I swear, I'll be telling you most of what's worth telling in the coming hours. But first, let's just pop the latest in video memories at you here. Now, this isn't much - a long video about T's first soccer practice and Q's first game of the fall season. No big deal. But they're the only one I can put up right now - my time video-wise has been taken up principally with a movie about last April's trip to Gays Mills. It's about an hour long, and is absolutely epic. Train travel! 4-wheelin'! Train travel...! And not that much else, really. But there's a lot of each of those things.

All right, with no further ado, here's Part 1 and Part 2 of the soccer video. Batten down the hatches.