In the beginning

Sometimes it is hard to get things going. Especially when you keep getting to 85% stern and then breaking into laughter. Today was such a day. A day where everything that seemed important took a great length of time.

The sharing of

The Countess Becca took half our brood elsewhere. I kept the younger half on top the mountain to engage and argue.

The aging of a young man

In the process of trying to start Important Things, I accidentally began playing hide and seek indoors with a 3- and 5-year olds; the students I was tasked with educating upon this Thursday; a Thursday which also happens to be the 20th anniversary marking the formal union of me and the le Countess. But that is another thing for another time.

Amidst a savage and utterly chaotic match of hide and go seek, I suffered a serious injury which took place as the result of a technically-difficult move I was attempting, which involved rounding a corner at ultra-high speed, and then wiping out and badly injuring the large toe of my left foot. Or maybe it was my right. Anyway, I was injured badly, and it will leave me physically deficient for a long time to come. In answer to your question, the answer is yes: I did, in spite of my incapacitation, chase the fugitives down and bring them to justice. Or rather, the classroom. A very just and merciful classroom, that also doubles as our living room and dance floor.

Escape

After bringing them to justice in our living room and preparing an onslaught of education beginning with a deep dive into Latin prefixes, they made a break for it.

I finally located them in our bedroom, ensconced on our bed, legs crossed and grins gigantic as they usurped pillows and plastered their filthy feet all over our clean spread. One read intently through my library copy of the marvelous 2013 book The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date. The other flipped through my latest copy of Wired magazine, which I have not yet read. I hauled them back down for re-education. This time there would be no escape.

Nature

I sighed as I watched him with a watering can. He carefully bypassed administering any water to the thirsty plants close by; instead, he carefully sprinkled the entire contents all over the dead grass a few feet away.

‘I’m watering the grass,’ he explained unnecessarily.

Disgruntlement

At some point he became irritated with me and began making a list (with a little help from me) of what he planned to do today. It was done on Post-It notes and included:

Look for pumpkins
Have a water balloon fight
Race boats on a pond…
…but before that, build a pond (‘…which will require a lot of digging,’ he explained)
‘Run around the house in socks so that we can slip around’
Buy pumpkins
watch TV

Regarding television

‘Not Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood…we want something that has a villain. And that’s funny. And scary. And we could probably learn something from! I like Mr. Rogers, but it doesn’t really have a villain.

‘Yeah, we like villains!’ His younger brother yelled in support.

Or, I said, we can keep practicing reading.

So that’s what we did for a while, which is both beautiful and sad (which a lot of things are, and that’s okay). Beautiful in the sense that it’s wonderful to want to learn to read, and sad in the sense that the stated reason for rejecting television is because Mr. Rogers isn’t scary, doesn’t have villains, and is not very funny. I’m so sorry, Fred.

Note: PBS Kids has been a viewing fixture in our household for well over a decade, and we’ve heard an increasing refrain from our Older kids as the Youngers discover different programs they’re drawn to. The refrain is this:

‘Awww…The Odd Squad?! Childhood! That reminds me of childhood!

Additional note: the individuals making this statement are ages 15 and 12, which according to my estimates and research, does not entirely remove them from being past the crushing burden of childhood.

Worship

We discussed Moses and the golden calf, and there might have been references to the state of cryptocurrency somewhere in there, and how the Bible might feel a little different if Bitcoin was an accepted transactional currency. Or was that a conversation? Maybe it was in my head. I probably will integrate that into a future discussion.

Our golden calves and sacred cows today: what do we consider unassailable, beyond criticism; what do we worship and elevate as precious and worthy of veneration or adulation?

Snack

What are you doing? I yelled.

They looked up from the sink, where they were washing a variety of peppers.

The Elder looked up. ‘We’re making ourselves a snack.’

‘Yeah.’ The Younger said. ‘We’re making peppers for a snack.’

And that is what they ate, loudly, for a snack.

Books

Truck by Donald Crews

The Last Castle

King Kong’s Cousin

ELA and Math at age 5

We discussed the number ten and practiced adding and subtracting. Or rather I should say, I started the discussion, and shortly thereafter, the five-year old took over and began teaching his younger brother. Sometimes teaching feels like a worthwhile version of multilevel marketing, where maybe you get a little credit for starting something, and get a little emotion benefit (payment) from seeing others carry on the work you started.

That might be one of the worst and least relevant analogies I’ve ever used.

We also discussed the letter M and sang Monster’s Mulberry Bush multiple times.

We came up with rhyming words for words starting with M. Like mat…bat, cat, fat, hat, pat, rat, sat…

Yoga

Jaime Amor, the YouTubing cofounder of Cosmic Kids Yoga in 2012, is one of my favorite contemporary educators. The joy she brings to her various yoga videos is infectious and impossible not to get caught up in. Just watch this one. On your feet now. Your body and soul will thank you.

Lunch

Outside, and there were more peppers, in addition to PB&J sandwiches.

Music

I tried teaching some piano. The first ten seconds went well.

Nap

The Elder fell asleep on the couch.

Would you like me to read some more with you? I asked his brother.

After careful consideration of under three seconds, he decided rather than read with me, he would go lay down by his brother and take a nap.

That is exactly what he did. Mixed feelings.

More Telly

I found what I thought was a great solution to one reluctantly choosing Mr. Rogers and one reluctantly choosing Sesame Street: I found an episode of Mr Rogers visiting Sesame Street! Whoa! Nice job, Dad, way to go!

You’d think, yeah? Nope. They were equally underwhelmed. Sad.

I agreed after to let them start an episode of Odd Squad on PBS Kids.

‘Daddy,’ he assured me, ‘we’ll probably learn something about, uhh, numbers and stuff on here!’

‘Yeah Daddy!’ His younger brother boomed in agreement, ‘and it’ll be scary and have a villain!’

Dock

We walked along the Columbia and looked for fish or sharks, but found neither. But they found cool sticks.

Park

There is a curious thing about our boys: I know they’re not me. I know this, and I support their right to pursue being themselves, in general, and to engage in the pursuits that most interest them.

There’s also certain things that everyone should learn to do, like

playing catch. Throwing a ball back and forth.

Playing catch with a ball (or some semi-safe object) is one of the simplest ways to play and engage with someone else. Movies and stories are filled with descriptions of boys who just wished their fathers had played catch with them more.

But here’s the thing with my boys. Virtually every time we start playing catch, they want to turn it into some other type of game, or throw it the opposite direction, or imagine the ball is some alien object and the goal is to bat it down, or…oh look, there’s a spider!

There is usually something else that grabs their attention. Something that is suddenly more interesting than playing catch. Maybe a bug, or a pine cone, or a suggestion that we could play a “better game, like hide and seek.”

So this dad has played a lot more hide and seek with his boys than baseball or catch. There’s some sort of lesson in there. I guess we’re all pretty good at hiding. Or hunting down people who are hiding.

Our daughter seems to enjoy, or appreciate playing catch with me. And I love that too.

So after a marathon session of catch with the younger boys that lasted around ninety seconds, they headed off to hang upside down from a fence, look at a dried up pond, inspect a gravel pile, and unsuccessfully hide from me behind a tree. Que sera sera.

1645

Finally the other half arrived. The Countess and I selfied our 20th, and we sat down for our picnic table anniversary feast of Baja Fresh beans and rice with our four kids to celebrate our two decades together.

Onward, onward we bumble into the unknown. The benefit of celebrating an anniversary in this way?

I don’t know. But I’m alive, I got some exercise, I taught some stuff, I learned some stuff, I made some good memories, I laughed hard, and I still love the woman I’ve been with for two decades. Our lives are full and rich and fast and sometimes hard.

Maybe that helps keep us interesting, healthy, and even sometimes fun.

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