The Frozen Tundra

Hey, folks - some news and some thoughts, submitted for your perusal.

Janneke went onto campus this evening to hear a colleague give a presentation, so not too long after supper it was just me and the wee ones. We entertained ourselves with a tickle fight on the floor in the living room for a while, but when that got old (for me, not them), we moved out to the front room, which has become the music room. Q practiced playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", T opened up a "Curious George" coloring book and pretended to sing Christmas carols from it, and I watched. Then Q stopped playing and started batting a balloon around, so I picked up the guitar and strummed out some songs. "Driver 8", "Swan Swan H" - the usual three or four songs that everyone who's spent any time around me has heard me sing. The only newish ones were "The Great Beyond", "Let Down" and "1979"

It made for a nifty scene - T, singing along but not singing along, using the now-empty guitar stand as a microphone or a lectern for her music book alternately, and Q, nonw booting his balloon around the room as if it were a football. I ended a song, and both asked me immediately to keep going, so I played another. And now I was strictly background music as they ran fantasies and images through their heads, each lost in a little world of imagination. Q stripped down to his underwear and began running with his football from the front door all the way to the picture window, dodging imaginary tacklers and landing every time in the recliner for a touchdown; T danced and watched herself reflected in the window, and then in the mirror in our room, singing songs as they came to her. And I got my now uncallused fingers sore as can be, and stressed out my slightly-froggy throat. But it was well worth it - I got a good 15 or 20 minutes of uninterrupted kid-watching. It was like the music coming out of me rendered me invisible. Like I was in a duck blind, watching how the wildlife acts when they don't know there are any people around. Q had sweat at the top of his gray underwear by the time he was done.

When it was time to go to bed, they opted to draw instead of read, and T drew a very abstract-looking gingerbread house. Q drew Greg Jennings of the Packers, crossing the goal line while a desperate Charger dives to try to stop him. (Q thinks the Chargers will beat the Patriots. And both of us are feeling pretty good about the Packers' chances against the Giants. I hope they make it - otherwise, we're going to have some moping in the house for a while. And not just from me.) Yesterday he announced, "I can name 10 Packers!" I tried to keep track of them with him, but we kept forgetting which ones he'd already said. So I grabbed an old envelope and a pen and kept track. Here's the list, in order, as he named them:

Bubba Franks
Brett Favre
Al Harris
Aaron Kampman
Donald Driver
Donald Lee
Greg Jennings
Ryan Grant
Charles Woodson
AJ Hawk

He also popped "Dorsey Levens" and "Robert Brooks" in there, but I had to object, since they aren't current players.

Last night before dinner Q was asking for stories about the Packers. So I told him about how Warren Sapp cheap-shotted Chad Clifton, and how when the Packers next played the Buccaneers, they took Sapp out of the game when it came time for the Pack to grind out the clock with running plays because they knew we were going to trap-block him into oblivion, and how satisfying it was to watch him stand there on the sidelines, afraid to go back in. And that wasn't enough. So I told him about Max McGee drinking too much the night before the Superbowl because he didn't think he'd play, and feeling terrible, but then having to play because of injury, and having the best game of his life despite his headache and nausea. And THAT wasn't enough. So I told him about Brett Favre responding to the death of his father, not by taking the game off, but by playing because, as he told his teammates, "You're my family, too". And how he wound up with an unbelievable game where his receivers refused to let anything he threw up go uncaught, and how even the Raiders fans were cheering for Brett, and how the whole night turned into a nationally-televised expression of the players' devotion to each other.

That one finally seemed to do it. He just turned to his supper and thought and thought and thought. And then, when I picked him up from day care today, his teacher told me, laughing, that Q had told her the Max McGee story. Q grinned up at me, nodding, and asked, "Is Max McGee still alive?" I had to say no, and to explain that he had died quite recently, a grandfather, elderly and married and happy, in a fall from his roof. Q looked positively heartbroken. That story had really affected him.

Parables, moral lessons, lists of holy names, a desire to emulate the storied actions of heroes..."Sunday school" takes on a whole different meaning around here.