Hey all - this weekend, I'm trying to kick the life out of a portfolio I have to get done for MA teacher accreditation, so it doesn't look like you'll get much out of me in the way of blog entries. But I do have a moment to just tell you this: Today, Janneke took Q to his soccer game while I stayed behind and took T to a birthday party. That is to say, no Papi at the futbol. And the results?
Janneke says he kicked heinie. Lots of good, aggressive moves, three shots on goal (none scored, though one, according to teammates standing there, should have been counted), hard-nosed play against an older team that played a very physical game. Great news.
Bad news, if what I want to do is watch - but great news in terms of his development.
T had no problems at the birthday party. She had me stick around for twenty minutes or so, then stuck her head out the back door of the house and shouted, "GO AWAY NOW, DAD!"
So there you have it. Neither kid wants me around - and both are probably better off for it. At least in these particular situations.
Back to portfolio-bustin'...
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Quick Update
Q now knows I'm not going to his game on Saturday. Doesn't really know why, but he knows. Things that Have, Probably Not Coincidentally, Happened Since:
Q has announced plans to spend a few minutes every day kicking a soccer ball so he "won't lose (his) skills".
Q has announced his latest eventual career aspiration: Soccer coach.
Q has played in two scrimmages in practice, yesterday and today, in which he was the only player on his team to score a goal. And in the second of which, and I am witness to this, he was hard-nosed, loose-limbed, speedy, graceful, and aggressive, running down people from behind and taking the ball away, zig-zagging through traffic, standing in idle moments while being coached with his hands on his hips, one leg cocked, listening but sizing up the other side at the same time instead of fiddling with the hem of his shirt and looking around for Mami or Papi. He is trans-frickin'-formed.
In other news, I spent the day at home today (dentist and doctor appointments), and so Janneke took advantage and went to the office early. I rolled out of bed around 7:10 and walked past T's room, where her bed was still a jumbled mass of pajamas, stuffed animals, and pillows. "Let her sleep," I said to myself. Q was in the kitchen eating breakfast. I greeted him and went to the living room to do my morning exercises.
On the floor, I heard the front door open. "Oh-oh," I called out, wondering what Janneke had forgotten. But Q, who could see the front door, cried, "T! What are you doing outside?"
I rolled over and stood up, and there was T, calm as can be, still in her pajama bottoms (she'd changed out of the top), wearing sneakers, with a jacket and her black "Madeline"-style hat on. "I just took a walk," she said.
Why in heaven's name I didn't get a picture I will never !!@#9*!@ know.
Q has announced plans to spend a few minutes every day kicking a soccer ball so he "won't lose (his) skills".
Q has announced his latest eventual career aspiration: Soccer coach.
Q has played in two scrimmages in practice, yesterday and today, in which he was the only player on his team to score a goal. And in the second of which, and I am witness to this, he was hard-nosed, loose-limbed, speedy, graceful, and aggressive, running down people from behind and taking the ball away, zig-zagging through traffic, standing in idle moments while being coached with his hands on his hips, one leg cocked, listening but sizing up the other side at the same time instead of fiddling with the hem of his shirt and looking around for Mami or Papi. He is trans-frickin'-formed.
In other news, I spent the day at home today (dentist and doctor appointments), and so Janneke took advantage and went to the office early. I rolled out of bed around 7:10 and walked past T's room, where her bed was still a jumbled mass of pajamas, stuffed animals, and pillows. "Let her sleep," I said to myself. Q was in the kitchen eating breakfast. I greeted him and went to the living room to do my morning exercises.
On the floor, I heard the front door open. "Oh-oh," I called out, wondering what Janneke had forgotten. But Q, who could see the front door, cried, "T! What are you doing outside?"
I rolled over and stood up, and there was T, calm as can be, still in her pajama bottoms (she'd changed out of the top), wearing sneakers, with a jacket and her black "Madeline"-style hat on. "I just took a walk," she said.
Why in heaven's name I didn't get a picture I will never !!@#9*!@ know.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Lopsided Anecdotal Evidence of Fragility
A week's worth of Williamstown, and I'm pretty well grounded again, though there have been some upheavals to keep me from feeling like I never left. Nothing serious, but when I'm thrown out of my usual patterns, I get very disoriented. And there's been a lot of that this week.
Sunday, a day after arriving back from Wisconsin, we took Q to his first spring soccer game, and last season's late-in-the-year tentativeness was on full display. You've never seen a more frightened and reluctant player - adept, now, at arriving JUST a moment too late to get a contested ball; booting any ball he comes in contact with away from himself as fast as possible; following attacking people from the opposite team at a trot rather than running them down like the Q of old. I held my tongue, but as I gradually convinced Janneke that he wasn't just tired, that he wasn't doing just as much as the other kids, it came over me: He's afraid to make mistakes. I think I'm intimidating him from the sidelines.
So I've resolved not to go to several of his games now. See if by not attending, I can help to readjust the space they take up back down to its proper size - reduce the importance of the games so he can enjoy them again. I think I prasied him too much when he was great, and gave too much advice when he wasn't, and now I represent the possibility of failure. It's too much for him - and we've been noticing a real tendency to climb into our laps like he's four again and straddle us, hugging and humming contentedly. He's clinging to his littleboyhood; bigness is starting to scare him a bit. Like the time he figured out there was no Santa Claus, and laughed about it...and then four months later, professed fervent belief again. Innocence is a difficult thing to let go of.
Then on Monday we got the call that Q had head lice. What fun. I got the call, actually - in class. They told me they hadn't been able to get hold of Janneke, and that Q would be waiting for me. I quickly arranged coverage and drove the 45 minutes home, convinced I was itching the whole way. Q launched himself happily out the door of the school the second he saw me, but I went back in with him to consult with the nurse a bit - and to have her check my own bald, but still sufficiently hairy (perhaps...?), head. She fond nothing.
So we stopped at the supermarket for a couple of the DDT shampoos they sell for such occasions, and I lathered Q up and set him down in front of Sponge Bob Squarepants while I scurried around the house, washing and disinfecting everything his head had touched in the last week or so. Such onerous labor, let me tell you - and it's our third bout this year. It's a bleedin' plague in Williamstown this year - we know four other families who've had it and have heard of a number more.
On one of my zoomings past Q, I noticed, suddenly, that he was crying! I sat down with him and asked him if the lice had made him sad. "No - me duele la panza." And that night he was vomiting, and the next day he didn't go to school. Janneke took him to work with her, and Wednesday he was still off, so I stayed home. (Though I had to blaze in at 5:30 and leave my plans on the desk for the sub, then zoom back and take over so Janneke could go to work.) Wednesday afternoon we took Q to his piano lesson, and while he took it I shot off to daycare and picked up T, so we could hit the doctor's office - and when we came back to the piano lesson, Ed, his brilliant teacher, told us he'd been able to do very, very little, between trips to the bathroom and heavy sighing. Poor little guy. We apologized to Ed and hit the doctor's office, and got everything confirmed: Virus, nothing really to do but keep him hydrated and wait it out. Which would be the plan for all of Thursday as well.
Janneke is at the end of her semester, and I'm at the beginning of the fourth quarter - so our stress levels are not at all similar. And she doesn't teach Friday, so if he had to stay then, it would be her day. So I stayed again on Thursday.
That day Q and I drove to Pittsfield to buy a new basketball rim, since the old one, which had come with the house, had given way. (Two years ago I replaced the backboard, which had rotted through; this year, the rim. Next year it'll be the steel arms that hold the backboard onto the roof.) Q's really a pretty darn good shot nowadays - though he could only work up about ten minutes of shooting before retiring back to Sponge Bob. So I stayed outside and went 1-for-22, something like that, and did some really spectacularly bad dribbling.
By this time I had no frickin' idea where I was, what day it was, or what my middle name was. I'd not really taught more than a class and a half in over a week, and was spending long, odd days at home while Q recuperated on the couch watching more "Sponge Bob" and I did yard work or practiced the guitar. And Q was only gradually getting better, able to eat a little more each day, still turning down most of the most basic of foods. Thursday night we were speculating that he might be milking it in the hopes of missing Friday school as well, and did so in German, so he wouldn't understand; then we switched back to Spanish, and Janneke said, "Pero manana, quiera o no, el come. Porque no se puede vivir asi." ("But tomorrow, like it or not, he's eating. Because you can't live like this.")
Which Q, of course, interpreted as "Q is going to die."
That led to another long session of gangly-legged nearly-nine-year-old spread-eagle on our laps, gently sniffling as we explained that that was not exactly what Mami had meant. He really is uncomfortable with getting bigger, I think, with becoming "too big to cuddle", as they say in "Raising Arizona". He felt OK Friday, and went to school, but he really lost weight those few days. He's stretching out, too, but we can't help but feel his back and his arms all the time now and fret over the couple of pounds he lost. He informed us early this afternoon that he didn't want to go to Sunday-night pickup soccer, and we readily agreed. Again, with the sports thing!
Because this afternoon, as he sat on my lap in the park, he said he didn't know how he was going to get enough money when he got older to buy a house. "WHAT?!?! Why are you worried about that?" And the explanation came that he wasn't super-good at any sport, so he would probably never be a professional, and wouldn't earn millions, so he wouldn't have enough money.
Oh!, the many angles from which we tried to gently debunk this latest misconception. I think he hears all his very-sporty friends talking about their bright futures in various sports - Eli, after all, is a superior baseball player; Sammy D and Brady are the MVPs of Q's soccer team (though, I'm telling you, when Q isn't worried about it, he is every bit on a par with them); Jay is an amazing goalie; Sean's Dad is a basketball coach, and he's already dribbling between his legs...Q, meanwhile, is A-OK at all of these, and the best in town at none. So naturally he's concluded that all his friends will be Rookie of the Year, and he'll starve to death.
We talked at him for a while, gently, until he said he didn't want to talk about it anymore - he wanted to play baseball. We grabbed the gloves and played a rousing game of catch, he, Mami, and I, while T finished up a play date in the park with her friend Hazel. Man...Their little psyches are such delicate things. It reminds me of one of the last emails my Mom wrote me before she couldn't any more:
"I remember all the time you were growing up, you were so tender hearted and I thought that I hope you toughen up as you age because you would be hurt by a lot of people who were ignorant and never think of anyone but themselves and howthey feel."
Chilling, the way that could be me, writing to Q. Peas in a pod.
Three nights in a row, he's woken up in the middle of the night and come to our bed to spend the rest of it with us. Tonight we drew the line, though, and said that if he needs comforting, one of us will go to his bed. Whatever the root cause of it, Q needs comfortin'. Luckily, it's what we most love to do.
Don't worry - I'll write about T as soon as she gets sick and has her psyche crushed. Shouldn't be long. I give it a week. Meantime, here's a little something to tide you over: T at ballet, practicing for her upcoming role as a lump of sugar:
Sunday, a day after arriving back from Wisconsin, we took Q to his first spring soccer game, and last season's late-in-the-year tentativeness was on full display. You've never seen a more frightened and reluctant player - adept, now, at arriving JUST a moment too late to get a contested ball; booting any ball he comes in contact with away from himself as fast as possible; following attacking people from the opposite team at a trot rather than running them down like the Q of old. I held my tongue, but as I gradually convinced Janneke that he wasn't just tired, that he wasn't doing just as much as the other kids, it came over me: He's afraid to make mistakes. I think I'm intimidating him from the sidelines.
So I've resolved not to go to several of his games now. See if by not attending, I can help to readjust the space they take up back down to its proper size - reduce the importance of the games so he can enjoy them again. I think I prasied him too much when he was great, and gave too much advice when he wasn't, and now I represent the possibility of failure. It's too much for him - and we've been noticing a real tendency to climb into our laps like he's four again and straddle us, hugging and humming contentedly. He's clinging to his littleboyhood; bigness is starting to scare him a bit. Like the time he figured out there was no Santa Claus, and laughed about it...and then four months later, professed fervent belief again. Innocence is a difficult thing to let go of.
Then on Monday we got the call that Q had head lice. What fun. I got the call, actually - in class. They told me they hadn't been able to get hold of Janneke, and that Q would be waiting for me. I quickly arranged coverage and drove the 45 minutes home, convinced I was itching the whole way. Q launched himself happily out the door of the school the second he saw me, but I went back in with him to consult with the nurse a bit - and to have her check my own bald, but still sufficiently hairy (perhaps...?), head. She fond nothing.
So we stopped at the supermarket for a couple of the DDT shampoos they sell for such occasions, and I lathered Q up and set him down in front of Sponge Bob Squarepants while I scurried around the house, washing and disinfecting everything his head had touched in the last week or so. Such onerous labor, let me tell you - and it's our third bout this year. It's a bleedin' plague in Williamstown this year - we know four other families who've had it and have heard of a number more.
On one of my zoomings past Q, I noticed, suddenly, that he was crying! I sat down with him and asked him if the lice had made him sad. "No - me duele la panza." And that night he was vomiting, and the next day he didn't go to school. Janneke took him to work with her, and Wednesday he was still off, so I stayed home. (Though I had to blaze in at 5:30 and leave my plans on the desk for the sub, then zoom back and take over so Janneke could go to work.) Wednesday afternoon we took Q to his piano lesson, and while he took it I shot off to daycare and picked up T, so we could hit the doctor's office - and when we came back to the piano lesson, Ed, his brilliant teacher, told us he'd been able to do very, very little, between trips to the bathroom and heavy sighing. Poor little guy. We apologized to Ed and hit the doctor's office, and got everything confirmed: Virus, nothing really to do but keep him hydrated and wait it out. Which would be the plan for all of Thursday as well.
Janneke is at the end of her semester, and I'm at the beginning of the fourth quarter - so our stress levels are not at all similar. And she doesn't teach Friday, so if he had to stay then, it would be her day. So I stayed again on Thursday.
That day Q and I drove to Pittsfield to buy a new basketball rim, since the old one, which had come with the house, had given way. (Two years ago I replaced the backboard, which had rotted through; this year, the rim. Next year it'll be the steel arms that hold the backboard onto the roof.) Q's really a pretty darn good shot nowadays - though he could only work up about ten minutes of shooting before retiring back to Sponge Bob. So I stayed outside and went 1-for-22, something like that, and did some really spectacularly bad dribbling.
By this time I had no frickin' idea where I was, what day it was, or what my middle name was. I'd not really taught more than a class and a half in over a week, and was spending long, odd days at home while Q recuperated on the couch watching more "Sponge Bob" and I did yard work or practiced the guitar. And Q was only gradually getting better, able to eat a little more each day, still turning down most of the most basic of foods. Thursday night we were speculating that he might be milking it in the hopes of missing Friday school as well, and did so in German, so he wouldn't understand; then we switched back to Spanish, and Janneke said, "Pero manana, quiera o no, el come. Porque no se puede vivir asi." ("But tomorrow, like it or not, he's eating. Because you can't live like this.")
Which Q, of course, interpreted as "Q is going to die."
That led to another long session of gangly-legged nearly-nine-year-old spread-eagle on our laps, gently sniffling as we explained that that was not exactly what Mami had meant. He really is uncomfortable with getting bigger, I think, with becoming "too big to cuddle", as they say in "Raising Arizona". He felt OK Friday, and went to school, but he really lost weight those few days. He's stretching out, too, but we can't help but feel his back and his arms all the time now and fret over the couple of pounds he lost. He informed us early this afternoon that he didn't want to go to Sunday-night pickup soccer, and we readily agreed. Again, with the sports thing!
Because this afternoon, as he sat on my lap in the park, he said he didn't know how he was going to get enough money when he got older to buy a house. "WHAT?!?! Why are you worried about that?" And the explanation came that he wasn't super-good at any sport, so he would probably never be a professional, and wouldn't earn millions, so he wouldn't have enough money.
Oh!, the many angles from which we tried to gently debunk this latest misconception. I think he hears all his very-sporty friends talking about their bright futures in various sports - Eli, after all, is a superior baseball player; Sammy D and Brady are the MVPs of Q's soccer team (though, I'm telling you, when Q isn't worried about it, he is every bit on a par with them); Jay is an amazing goalie; Sean's Dad is a basketball coach, and he's already dribbling between his legs...Q, meanwhile, is A-OK at all of these, and the best in town at none. So naturally he's concluded that all his friends will be Rookie of the Year, and he'll starve to death.
We talked at him for a while, gently, until he said he didn't want to talk about it anymore - he wanted to play baseball. We grabbed the gloves and played a rousing game of catch, he, Mami, and I, while T finished up a play date in the park with her friend Hazel. Man...Their little psyches are such delicate things. It reminds me of one of the last emails my Mom wrote me before she couldn't any more:
"I remember all the time you were growing up, you were so tender hearted and I thought that I hope you toughen up as you age because you would be hurt by a lot of people who were ignorant and never think of anyone but themselves and howthey feel."
Chilling, the way that could be me, writing to Q. Peas in a pod.
Three nights in a row, he's woken up in the middle of the night and come to our bed to spend the rest of it with us. Tonight we drew the line, though, and said that if he needs comforting, one of us will go to his bed. Whatever the root cause of it, Q needs comfortin'. Luckily, it's what we most love to do.
Don't worry - I'll write about T as soon as she gets sick and has her psyche crushed. Shouldn't be long. I give it a week. Meantime, here's a little something to tide you over: T at ballet, practicing for her upcoming role as a lump of sugar:
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Ocooch Swan Song
Spring peepers out the window in the sloughs by the river as I sit in the dark at my father's place at the dining room table and write this.
Dad's gone to bed - hoping to be up early and not miss anything of our last day on this particular trip. Jayne's downstairs with T, having agreed to have her in for a sleepover; Q's asleep in what used to be Jayne's room. About half the packing is done.
We had a memorable evening - post-supper, we all drove downtown to the park by the swimming pool, where Q and I tried to play catch with Grandpa and the football. But Grandpa couldn't see it well enough to catch it, and his shoulder isn't what it used to be for throwing. So he wandered off, and then I had Q go and round him up so the three men could go to the basketball courts half a mile away and shoot around with the much larger and less velocity-prone ball, leaving the girls to swing and slide.
Q did 75% of the shooting, but Grandpa got in there too, hitting a couple of jumpers once he'd learned the limits of his age and his strength again. He suffers with that, though he smiles as he does - at the end of the evening, when he, Jayne and I sat on a bench and watched T and Q zoom round and round on a merry-go-round, he summed up the basketball experience this way: "Well, I discovered yet another way I'm not worth a shit anymore." But he also reveled in watching Q hit some long jumpers and dribble his way past me (not exactly a difficult thing to do), and stood beneath the basket to rebound for him very happily. It occurred to me while we stood there shooting that I was five times Q's age, and Dad, ten times. We let that sink in with smiles on our faces as another shot swished through.
Back home, T ran toward the house in the very-near-dark, rounding the end of the car just as Blue, Dad's heeler-collie mix, raced around the same corner in the opposite direction, wildly excited at our arrival, and they crashed, T sprawling out into the gravel. So we had tears and an emergency treatment by Auntie Jayne of some abrasions that were vanishingly mild. That fragility combined with the sudden knowledge that she hadn't seen Mami in a while, and when she got on the phone with her, T started a long jag of gentle, shuddering sobbing against my shoulder. Which I did not mind in the least.
Grandpa had taken the kids on a long 4-wheeler ride just prior to supper, each one with binoculars dangling from the neck, down to the river bottom and around a maze of fallen logs to a spot where you can see the giant bald eagles' nest across the river. Q claims to have seen one, but Grandpa wasn't so sure. At any rate, the best thing that place had to offer was the chance to throw sticks into the river, and Q very nearly put a big one across, or so I'm told. Their return saw both Auntie Jayne and me snapping photos and filming like mad. I've never seen three happier people.
All this post-3:30, because that was when we rolled in from our five-hour drive from Uncle Jim and Auntie Sarah's house, where we'd been since noon the previous day. Drove all the way to Two Rivers, which I think is a fantastically picturesque little burg, because Baby Liam, as we call him (and who is now two and a half), just received a baby sister named Finley. She is perfect and gorgeous, and Liam is in love with his cousins. We all went swimming at our hotel the night before in their indoor waterpark (not one but two slides, a lazy river, wading pool, basketball pool, lily-pad crossing, and a hot tub), and then out to supper at a restaurant in the Lambeau Field atrium, and then this morning they'd played together for another couple of hours, and when we left, Liam cried stood in the yard with Uncle Jim and wailed profoundly as he waved goodbye. I will remind him of that scene in joking fashion when Liam turns his meathooks and brawn against mighty foes at Lambeau Field himself as a highly touted rookie defensive end. That kid is all power.
Auntie Jayne and I, then, had 10 hours in the car over two days to talk and catch up, and did we ever. It's been great to get to know her better again these past few days. My fantasies of a life here are bubbling at a full boil now - every trip up on the hill on the 4-wheeler shows me a new are where I'd like to clear the trail better, pull up all the honeysuckle (I actually pulled some at various stops along the way - thanks, Mark and Ronadh!), cut some trees to improve the view, fix the fences, build a horse barn...And then reality comes back in and I know I'm not here anymore. And haven't been for a long, long time.
Poignancy!, thy name is Gays Mills.
Pictures and films to follow - be patient, they'll be worth it...
Dad's gone to bed - hoping to be up early and not miss anything of our last day on this particular trip. Jayne's downstairs with T, having agreed to have her in for a sleepover; Q's asleep in what used to be Jayne's room. About half the packing is done.
We had a memorable evening - post-supper, we all drove downtown to the park by the swimming pool, where Q and I tried to play catch with Grandpa and the football. But Grandpa couldn't see it well enough to catch it, and his shoulder isn't what it used to be for throwing. So he wandered off, and then I had Q go and round him up so the three men could go to the basketball courts half a mile away and shoot around with the much larger and less velocity-prone ball, leaving the girls to swing and slide.
Q did 75% of the shooting, but Grandpa got in there too, hitting a couple of jumpers once he'd learned the limits of his age and his strength again. He suffers with that, though he smiles as he does - at the end of the evening, when he, Jayne and I sat on a bench and watched T and Q zoom round and round on a merry-go-round, he summed up the basketball experience this way: "Well, I discovered yet another way I'm not worth a shit anymore." But he also reveled in watching Q hit some long jumpers and dribble his way past me (not exactly a difficult thing to do), and stood beneath the basket to rebound for him very happily. It occurred to me while we stood there shooting that I was five times Q's age, and Dad, ten times. We let that sink in with smiles on our faces as another shot swished through.
Back home, T ran toward the house in the very-near-dark, rounding the end of the car just as Blue, Dad's heeler-collie mix, raced around the same corner in the opposite direction, wildly excited at our arrival, and they crashed, T sprawling out into the gravel. So we had tears and an emergency treatment by Auntie Jayne of some abrasions that were vanishingly mild. That fragility combined with the sudden knowledge that she hadn't seen Mami in a while, and when she got on the phone with her, T started a long jag of gentle, shuddering sobbing against my shoulder. Which I did not mind in the least.
Grandpa had taken the kids on a long 4-wheeler ride just prior to supper, each one with binoculars dangling from the neck, down to the river bottom and around a maze of fallen logs to a spot where you can see the giant bald eagles' nest across the river. Q claims to have seen one, but Grandpa wasn't so sure. At any rate, the best thing that place had to offer was the chance to throw sticks into the river, and Q very nearly put a big one across, or so I'm told. Their return saw both Auntie Jayne and me snapping photos and filming like mad. I've never seen three happier people.
All this post-3:30, because that was when we rolled in from our five-hour drive from Uncle Jim and Auntie Sarah's house, where we'd been since noon the previous day. Drove all the way to Two Rivers, which I think is a fantastically picturesque little burg, because Baby Liam, as we call him (and who is now two and a half), just received a baby sister named Finley. She is perfect and gorgeous, and Liam is in love with his cousins. We all went swimming at our hotel the night before in their indoor waterpark (not one but two slides, a lazy river, wading pool, basketball pool, lily-pad crossing, and a hot tub), and then out to supper at a restaurant in the Lambeau Field atrium, and then this morning they'd played together for another couple of hours, and when we left, Liam cried stood in the yard with Uncle Jim and wailed profoundly as he waved goodbye. I will remind him of that scene in joking fashion when Liam turns his meathooks and brawn against mighty foes at Lambeau Field himself as a highly touted rookie defensive end. That kid is all power.
Auntie Jayne and I, then, had 10 hours in the car over two days to talk and catch up, and did we ever. It's been great to get to know her better again these past few days. My fantasies of a life here are bubbling at a full boil now - every trip up on the hill on the 4-wheeler shows me a new are where I'd like to clear the trail better, pull up all the honeysuckle (I actually pulled some at various stops along the way - thanks, Mark and Ronadh!), cut some trees to improve the view, fix the fences, build a horse barn...And then reality comes back in and I know I'm not here anymore. And haven't been for a long, long time.
Poignancy!, thy name is Gays Mills.
Pictures and films to follow - be patient, they'll be worth it...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Gays Mills Express
Howdy all, and I apologize for the extended absence - events conspired, all that. But there we are.
Where are we? Wisconsin, naturally. I've got this week off, as do the kiddles. (T has off when we say she has, but luckily for her, we say she has.) Janneke stayed behind to man the ramparts while we zipped across the country, courtesy of Amtrak.
That's been the biggest adventure so far: luxury accommodations in a sleeper car, waited on hand and foot by dedicated, chipper, energetic employees in white shirts and ties while gently rocking on the rails. Ainsley was the name of our general steward, a very personable man of 45 or so who came and got us at meal times and made our beds and otherwise made sure we were comfortable; Kwame was the other main character, who amazed the kids with his ability to pour soda from a can while being heaved about at a curve in the tracks without spilling a drop, let alone falling. They loved every second of it. So much more comfortable than flying - tickle fights on a giant couch in our cabin replaced endless hours of whining about your bum being too hot and the guy in the seat next to you oozing over into your space again. Lovely experience that we'll be repeating in just a few short days on the return trip.
Picked up the rental car in Chicago, at the depot, and literally turned twice when leaving Union Station before finding ourselves on 90 heading west and north. Easiest trip ever. Cooperative and thoughtful kids, well-thought-out itinerary...Can't complain.
Gays Mills is poignant as always. I have a hard time seeing the place with forty-year-old eyes. Part of its charm is that my eyes are suddenly 16 again when I'm here, and the particular scale and arc of the hills and the bends in the river ring together in a chord that puts me straight into the same emotional state I was in back in the day. Which, as those of you who know me from then will know, is a mixed bag at best. So I simultaneously feel youthful and anxious, groove-sliding and washboard-bumping all at the same time as the past and the present wrestle with each other. Very fraught.
I took a jog yesterday north on the road my Dad and sister live on, and went probably two miles before turning back. I jogged over culverts where I used to set traps for raccoons, past a giant old twisted oak where, when I was ten or eleven, I found a baby raccoon, which we failed to nurse back to health, dashing my dreams of reliving "Rascal" by Sterling North. I passed two houses, which my Dad had purchased downtown in Gays Mills and then moved on truckback out to their current resting place. We had helped him to pour the cement pads they stand on, and had done some of the hammering and nailing when they were lowered in place by a crane, all of which seemed very grand and entrepreneurial at the time. One of them sold, and has now been re-sided and re-roofed, and stands as a hunting cabin for some outlander I don't know and have never met, surrounded by ground that has been transformed into yard from the thistly pasture it was when we worked there; the other has fallen into rot, looking every bit the abandoned project it is, grown in with weeds, topped with a fallen-in, broken-backed roof. I passed the bend in the river where some years a go a blue bus came to rest and still stands in the long grass, roughly parallel to the swoop of the bank. Its back doors stand open, a heap of nameless refuse lying beneath, thrown out - by Tracy, the ghostly, bearded man who rides his bike slowly up and down the road, hauling a handmade trailer where he piles sticks and treasures, and who lives in the bus, somehow; stays alive over the winters somehow, despite the evident lack of a chimney, past the little corral where his donkey lifted its head and stared at me. Past a farm where there has always been evidence of habitation, but where I have never seen anyone, not since a bizarre birthday party I'd been driven past in the car as a kid, back before the old house that stood there was finally razed - the place had suddenly been alive with people, dozens of them, adorning the porch and charging back and forth across the front yard beneath a colorful banner, only to disappear again along with that original house, leaving only occasional signs of life, like the dog that growled at me as I ran past, or the laundry on the line, but never again any actual humans, not once in the hundreds of times I've been past there. I jogged by a pasture where a palomino horse grazed on the tiniest shoots of grass, and watched as he threw up his head at my passing and began to trot towards the road, as if to intercept me, and I thought certain he would crash against the fence - except there was no fence, and he trotted into my path and stood there a moment, vaguely threatening, before dashing past me, hooves clattering. Toward the end of the road where the Georges live, whose sons were basketball players ages ago, where my sister's dog Lily came barreling out of the woods, having traversed the same distance through the forest on the ridgeline and found me there, as if she'd planned the whole thing. And then we turned and ran back, past Tracy, who was now out, standing above the road, across from his bus, in front of a dilapidated sticks-and-straw wigwam he'd tacked together for his dog, which whined at me and Lily as we passed. All the way home.
And now I have two children awaiting me in a double bed - neither could bear to sleep alone tonight, so I put them in together with the promise that I'd crawl in among them when I got tired enough. A moment which is fast approaching.
Where are we? Wisconsin, naturally. I've got this week off, as do the kiddles. (T has off when we say she has, but luckily for her, we say she has.) Janneke stayed behind to man the ramparts while we zipped across the country, courtesy of Amtrak.
That's been the biggest adventure so far: luxury accommodations in a sleeper car, waited on hand and foot by dedicated, chipper, energetic employees in white shirts and ties while gently rocking on the rails. Ainsley was the name of our general steward, a very personable man of 45 or so who came and got us at meal times and made our beds and otherwise made sure we were comfortable; Kwame was the other main character, who amazed the kids with his ability to pour soda from a can while being heaved about at a curve in the tracks without spilling a drop, let alone falling. They loved every second of it. So much more comfortable than flying - tickle fights on a giant couch in our cabin replaced endless hours of whining about your bum being too hot and the guy in the seat next to you oozing over into your space again. Lovely experience that we'll be repeating in just a few short days on the return trip.
Picked up the rental car in Chicago, at the depot, and literally turned twice when leaving Union Station before finding ourselves on 90 heading west and north. Easiest trip ever. Cooperative and thoughtful kids, well-thought-out itinerary...Can't complain.
Gays Mills is poignant as always. I have a hard time seeing the place with forty-year-old eyes. Part of its charm is that my eyes are suddenly 16 again when I'm here, and the particular scale and arc of the hills and the bends in the river ring together in a chord that puts me straight into the same emotional state I was in back in the day. Which, as those of you who know me from then will know, is a mixed bag at best. So I simultaneously feel youthful and anxious, groove-sliding and washboard-bumping all at the same time as the past and the present wrestle with each other. Very fraught.
I took a jog yesterday north on the road my Dad and sister live on, and went probably two miles before turning back. I jogged over culverts where I used to set traps for raccoons, past a giant old twisted oak where, when I was ten or eleven, I found a baby raccoon, which we failed to nurse back to health, dashing my dreams of reliving "Rascal" by Sterling North. I passed two houses, which my Dad had purchased downtown in Gays Mills and then moved on truckback out to their current resting place. We had helped him to pour the cement pads they stand on, and had done some of the hammering and nailing when they were lowered in place by a crane, all of which seemed very grand and entrepreneurial at the time. One of them sold, and has now been re-sided and re-roofed, and stands as a hunting cabin for some outlander I don't know and have never met, surrounded by ground that has been transformed into yard from the thistly pasture it was when we worked there; the other has fallen into rot, looking every bit the abandoned project it is, grown in with weeds, topped with a fallen-in, broken-backed roof. I passed the bend in the river where some years a go a blue bus came to rest and still stands in the long grass, roughly parallel to the swoop of the bank. Its back doors stand open, a heap of nameless refuse lying beneath, thrown out - by Tracy, the ghostly, bearded man who rides his bike slowly up and down the road, hauling a handmade trailer where he piles sticks and treasures, and who lives in the bus, somehow; stays alive over the winters somehow, despite the evident lack of a chimney, past the little corral where his donkey lifted its head and stared at me. Past a farm where there has always been evidence of habitation, but where I have never seen anyone, not since a bizarre birthday party I'd been driven past in the car as a kid, back before the old house that stood there was finally razed - the place had suddenly been alive with people, dozens of them, adorning the porch and charging back and forth across the front yard beneath a colorful banner, only to disappear again along with that original house, leaving only occasional signs of life, like the dog that growled at me as I ran past, or the laundry on the line, but never again any actual humans, not once in the hundreds of times I've been past there. I jogged by a pasture where a palomino horse grazed on the tiniest shoots of grass, and watched as he threw up his head at my passing and began to trot towards the road, as if to intercept me, and I thought certain he would crash against the fence - except there was no fence, and he trotted into my path and stood there a moment, vaguely threatening, before dashing past me, hooves clattering. Toward the end of the road where the Georges live, whose sons were basketball players ages ago, where my sister's dog Lily came barreling out of the woods, having traversed the same distance through the forest on the ridgeline and found me there, as if she'd planned the whole thing. And then we turned and ran back, past Tracy, who was now out, standing above the road, across from his bus, in front of a dilapidated sticks-and-straw wigwam he'd tacked together for his dog, which whined at me and Lily as we passed. All the way home.
And now I have two children awaiting me in a double bed - neither could bear to sleep alone tonight, so I put them in together with the promise that I'd crawl in among them when I got tired enough. A moment which is fast approaching.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Eye of the Tiger
That's the song that both kids have been singing at full voice at every opportunity. (And the day, we've come to learn, is pretty much one long opportunity.) It also describes T's aesthetic sensibility, as revealed in the following series of photos, taken by T:
Skittles, unsuspecting, gets a flashbulb in the puss.
Victim number 2.
"...before turning the camera on herself."
I swear, the camera just loves some people...
...and dogs...
...while being distinctly ambivalent toward others.
T is very proud of this ship. Q built it, but she, all by herself, put the stormtroopers on it.
The top of the shoe box that her ballet slippers came in.
The frosting for the cupcakes that T helped Mami to make.
The fruit basket the family bought for us and brought to our summer visit. T took must really like it. That's probably why she took the picture.
Or perhaps because it was in front of her.
Yeah...That's seeming more likely.
Wonder what this guy's celebrating.
Um...Probably ought to do some cleaning up in there.
Q, this morning, did the rounds with me at the Williamstown Camp Fair Or Whatever It's Called, where everyone who locally does a week or more of camp sets up in the Elementary School gym to take advantage of the presence of hordes of people, who come through for the Elementary School Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser Hoozier-whatsis. This event keeps up the age-old tradition of volunteer parents flipping mealy pancakes and undercooked bacon to hand out to other parents who shell out $16 for the privelege of eating them. At a determined point, the flippers and the eaters change places, and the event continues. Q was interested in the usual stuff: Soccer camp (he loved it last year, and he'll go for 2 weeks again), lacrosse camp (a new one - he saw the flyer and immediately expressed interest, and, given his speed and abandonment of baseball, a likely sport for him in the future), and basketball camp. All local, all affordable, all no problem. No surprises. But then at one point he walked up and handed me a brochure and then charged away again, wordlessly. I looked down at the brochure:
"MCLA Robotics Camp"
I was very pleasantly surprised! This is a distinctly learning-based activity, and he's very excited about it. Not that he doesn't like to learn - he loves to. In fact, while we were playing ping pong the other day, he started regaling me with detail after detail, fact after fact, about the life and accomplishments of George Washington Carver. I asked him where he'd heard all this. "MCAS", came the response. (Massachusetts' standardized test that determines if schools are making adequate progress. 3rd grade is one of the years they test them.) "That test was a lot of fun." But when it comes to camps, he really expects a lot of whiz-bang and gee-willikers, and learning doesn't really register in that way with him. Of course, the brochure does say something along the lines of "For kids who like robots and building things with legos". Pretty much a bull's-eye.
Rainy, half-snowy day, so post-pancakes, we came home (all but Q, who was happy to be invited to a playdate with a friend we saw there), where T helped Mami make cupcakes for tomorrow's skating birthday party. At which I will do a lot of filming, and then, some day, edit together a snappy version for all of you to enjoy. But not for a while, probably. Things have been kind of gummed up lately, what with all the guitar-playin' and such. Just not finding the time. Ain't that the way? Then one day you turn around and you're dead. Welcome to life.
Banzai!
Skittles, unsuspecting, gets a flashbulb in the puss.
Victim number 2.
"...before turning the camera on herself."
I swear, the camera just loves some people...
...and dogs...
...while being distinctly ambivalent toward others.
T is very proud of this ship. Q built it, but she, all by herself, put the stormtroopers on it.
The top of the shoe box that her ballet slippers came in.
The frosting for the cupcakes that T helped Mami to make.
The fruit basket the family bought for us and brought to our summer visit. T took must really like it. That's probably why she took the picture.
Or perhaps because it was in front of her.
Yeah...That's seeming more likely.
Wonder what this guy's celebrating.
Um...Probably ought to do some cleaning up in there.
Q, this morning, did the rounds with me at the Williamstown Camp Fair Or Whatever It's Called, where everyone who locally does a week or more of camp sets up in the Elementary School gym to take advantage of the presence of hordes of people, who come through for the Elementary School Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser Hoozier-whatsis. This event keeps up the age-old tradition of volunteer parents flipping mealy pancakes and undercooked bacon to hand out to other parents who shell out $16 for the privelege of eating them. At a determined point, the flippers and the eaters change places, and the event continues. Q was interested in the usual stuff: Soccer camp (he loved it last year, and he'll go for 2 weeks again), lacrosse camp (a new one - he saw the flyer and immediately expressed interest, and, given his speed and abandonment of baseball, a likely sport for him in the future), and basketball camp. All local, all affordable, all no problem. No surprises. But then at one point he walked up and handed me a brochure and then charged away again, wordlessly. I looked down at the brochure:
"MCLA Robotics Camp"
I was very pleasantly surprised! This is a distinctly learning-based activity, and he's very excited about it. Not that he doesn't like to learn - he loves to. In fact, while we were playing ping pong the other day, he started regaling me with detail after detail, fact after fact, about the life and accomplishments of George Washington Carver. I asked him where he'd heard all this. "MCAS", came the response. (Massachusetts' standardized test that determines if schools are making adequate progress. 3rd grade is one of the years they test them.) "That test was a lot of fun." But when it comes to camps, he really expects a lot of whiz-bang and gee-willikers, and learning doesn't really register in that way with him. Of course, the brochure does say something along the lines of "For kids who like robots and building things with legos". Pretty much a bull's-eye.
Rainy, half-snowy day, so post-pancakes, we came home (all but Q, who was happy to be invited to a playdate with a friend we saw there), where T helped Mami make cupcakes for tomorrow's skating birthday party. At which I will do a lot of filming, and then, some day, edit together a snappy version for all of you to enjoy. But not for a while, probably. Things have been kind of gummed up lately, what with all the guitar-playin' and such. Just not finding the time. Ain't that the way? Then one day you turn around and you're dead. Welcome to life.
Banzai!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Self-Indulgence
Here comes a big spoonful thereof.
So the talent show went fine. I was more nervous than I thought I would be - the place was jammed, 500 people or more. And they had us all sitting in the "green room" watching the feed on a TV before we would go on. It was surreal - all of us nervous, probably, and watching each person march out to the spotlights and then march back in. We'd cheer them when they came in, tell them they did well. Even if they hadn't.
That very afternoon, right as school got out, I had gone down to a nice park area and had a jog, then come back to the school and eaten. Then I just wandered around a bit, killing time. I went down to the theater, where they were doing sound checks, and where Peter and Beth, two teachers who are former musicians, were practicing. They're really, really good. Competent musiciansd, who'd come up with an original song about the school's mascot. And I have to say, sitting there listening to them, I got a sinking feeling. I thought I was pretty good, but these guys were amazing. To my ears, anyway.
I went back up and ran over my song in my head, and wondered about a particular little "zap" sound that Latin guitar players seem to get when they play. I'd never been able to figure out how to do it. So I went to my room and went to Youtube and did a search to see if there was anyone who gave a tutorial on such things. And I found this guy. If you watch, at about 3:09, he shows exactly how it's done:
Strange, but that's the first guy I'd ever see explain that little move. I went down to where my guitar was (the teacher's cafeteria) and tried it out. I had a bit of a hard time doing it in a natural way, but after a few minutes I more or less had it. And I had this strange feeling that I should incorporate it into the song I was going to play.
So the long and the short of it is that when I made that long, but extremely short, walk from the greenroom to backstage and out into the lights, I was about to play this song in a way which was more authentic, but which I'd never really run through completely. Which added to the nerves.
I heard a female student call out, as I settled in to my chair, which I'd had to carry out with me: "Mister Johnson, you rock my world!" Others around her laughed, and she did too, and so did I. It was very nice of her - it really helped to break the glass around the moment.
And y'know what? That little rasgueo I'd just learned kind of worked. Once it started not working (which was probably hard to notice, since if it doesn't work, all you hear is the chord being played), I stopped trying to work it in. And it seemed to be pretty well received by the Publikum. I got a nice round of applause, very warm and seemingly sincere. Much louder than I expected - that was a lot of people.
The nicest moment, though, was when I came back into the greenroom. All my assembled brothers in arms - a lot of students of mine, others I know but haven't ever taught, many I don't know, along with a few faculty - hit me with an absolute wall of sustained, vigorous applause. I grinned and nodded and said "thank you", but really couldn't adequately thank them for how nice that made me feel.
The students were amazing throughout. No matter how painful or long or boring the things on stage might have seemed, no one - No one, not once, never - made anyone feel bad. Everybody was cheered on, and some of the warbliest, stock-still, nervous performances of the night were met with the fiercest applause. Everybody seemed to know how much it had taken for those particular people to stand up there and pull their chests open and expose their beating hearts like they did, and their peers and friends rewarded them with blazing firehoses of affirmation. I stood in the back and smiled and cheered and watched any number of kids go through what was quite possibly the most transformative moment in their lives. It felt like a real privilege to witness it.
And Peter and Beth absolutely brought the house down at the end.
In other news, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.
So the talent show went fine. I was more nervous than I thought I would be - the place was jammed, 500 people or more. And they had us all sitting in the "green room" watching the feed on a TV before we would go on. It was surreal - all of us nervous, probably, and watching each person march out to the spotlights and then march back in. We'd cheer them when they came in, tell them they did well. Even if they hadn't.
That very afternoon, right as school got out, I had gone down to a nice park area and had a jog, then come back to the school and eaten. Then I just wandered around a bit, killing time. I went down to the theater, where they were doing sound checks, and where Peter and Beth, two teachers who are former musicians, were practicing. They're really, really good. Competent musiciansd, who'd come up with an original song about the school's mascot. And I have to say, sitting there listening to them, I got a sinking feeling. I thought I was pretty good, but these guys were amazing. To my ears, anyway.
I went back up and ran over my song in my head, and wondered about a particular little "zap" sound that Latin guitar players seem to get when they play. I'd never been able to figure out how to do it. So I went to my room and went to Youtube and did a search to see if there was anyone who gave a tutorial on such things. And I found this guy. If you watch, at about 3:09, he shows exactly how it's done:
Strange, but that's the first guy I'd ever see explain that little move. I went down to where my guitar was (the teacher's cafeteria) and tried it out. I had a bit of a hard time doing it in a natural way, but after a few minutes I more or less had it. And I had this strange feeling that I should incorporate it into the song I was going to play.
So the long and the short of it is that when I made that long, but extremely short, walk from the greenroom to backstage and out into the lights, I was about to play this song in a way which was more authentic, but which I'd never really run through completely. Which added to the nerves.
I heard a female student call out, as I settled in to my chair, which I'd had to carry out with me: "Mister Johnson, you rock my world!" Others around her laughed, and she did too, and so did I. It was very nice of her - it really helped to break the glass around the moment.
And y'know what? That little rasgueo I'd just learned kind of worked. Once it started not working (which was probably hard to notice, since if it doesn't work, all you hear is the chord being played), I stopped trying to work it in. And it seemed to be pretty well received by the Publikum. I got a nice round of applause, very warm and seemingly sincere. Much louder than I expected - that was a lot of people.
The nicest moment, though, was when I came back into the greenroom. All my assembled brothers in arms - a lot of students of mine, others I know but haven't ever taught, many I don't know, along with a few faculty - hit me with an absolute wall of sustained, vigorous applause. I grinned and nodded and said "thank you", but really couldn't adequately thank them for how nice that made me feel.
The students were amazing throughout. No matter how painful or long or boring the things on stage might have seemed, no one - No one, not once, never - made anyone feel bad. Everybody was cheered on, and some of the warbliest, stock-still, nervous performances of the night were met with the fiercest applause. Everybody seemed to know how much it had taken for those particular people to stand up there and pull their chests open and expose their beating hearts like they did, and their peers and friends rewarded them with blazing firehoses of affirmation. I stood in the back and smiled and cheered and watched any number of kids go through what was quite possibly the most transformative moment in their lives. It felt like a real privilege to witness it.
And Peter and Beth absolutely brought the house down at the end.
In other news, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.
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