Logic dictates that when one thing ends, another thing begins, and this new era has plenty of interesting fodder in the folds. For one, it, the new era, is marked by Marty and I being the parents of three grown children. There are many curious things about watching your children ste...
For years Bella wanted to be a waitress. I believe this began after she heard, "waitresses make bank!" After working a few counter-service jobs, she got hired at Red Lobster. They said she couldn't serve tables because she had no experience, but they would start her as a hostess and get her waiting tables in time. That never happened, and after a half year or so, Bella gave notice.
I recently, to Marty, compared Anthony to Bella saying that something he did reminded me of her. With zero pause, Marty quickly corrected me with the following.
Bella appears confident, even when she is not.
Anthony is confident, genuinely confident, and is never pretending.
Then you have Alex who might not look confident b...
i always wanted a sibling. i can't say if i wanted a brother or a sister more, but i always felt like i was missing out on something special living as an only-child. then over the years as a ravenous collector of people's personal stories, i heard some things that made me think maybe it wasn't all bad that i never had to share my toys or bedroom or mother with another. obviously that ship sailed l ...
this is a super small example of why the day countdown (Oct Gallery) matters as much as it does to me. because once bella leaves home, the family dynamic we have known since our family with children began is forever changed. and it is not about the giant factors like having an empty bed or one less dinner plate but these small daily moments that i will likely miss the most. these innocent interactions which most people seem to pay no mind are sort of thing i have most coveted and enjoyed watching. perhaps it is because i am an only child and never got to be part of such inter-play. unsure. but it is something i will miss dearly.
a few years back our car broke down in sidney nebraska. we were en route to utah for our spring break holiday. we left sidney with a surprising number of good memories and warm feelings having made the most of our two days in the small town.
a perfect example. one day while out for a walk (to the original Cabelas superstore), we saw this statue honoring the pony express. as the family read the related plaques that circled the impressive monument, bella climbed onto the horse and then called to me to take her picture. as i set up, marty snuck into the background and photo-bombed the shoot. then the boys joined in. and then, well it is just how things tend to unfold around here ...
in the end, we were able to pull out a decent family photo but those never seem to come at a simple trajectory.
and this episode reminds me of a story that marty tells of when she was a young girl. she grew up in a house with three older brothers. the few times she would bounce downstairs wearing any sort of makeup she would get mercilessly taunted by her brothers. a popular one was for them to ask who beat her up and if she would just give them their name they would go give them a good pounding. this constant jibing kept marty from ever drifting too far into the it-girl lane (it-girl/it-guy being what my family calls the fashion-governed, opinion-driven in-crowd). i'm thankful for this because i share marty's brothers sentiments about makeup on marty (but probably for different reasons)--for me it is not just that it doesn't look right on her, but i think it makes her look less beautiful, or rather, she is always more fetching without the 'enhancements', however minimal she claims they are. marty has no prayer with me because there has never been a day where i haven't thought marty looked her best in the first moments of the day where she is minutes out of bed, wonky hair and all. she hates my position on that but i stand by my claim. this is the life of a natural beauty.
but back to my other natural beauty, bella. i've seen some moments where bella has begun the slide into the it-girl world but each and every time our family tugs her back to the ground and keeps her from ever taking that part of the game too seriously.
at the tail-end the holiday break marty was woken up in the middle of the night by someone coming up the stairs. our kids are now old enough that we no longer have to participate in their bedtime rituals. that said, marty will still often do rounds of cuddles at bedtime but that tends to only happen on school nights because on the weekends and holidays the kids way outlast us, me especially as i t ...
alex is not the only one wrapping up certain experiences (end of soccer). we just went to anthony's last elementary concert. i gotta say, even if it is not the focus of this story, i'm very impressed how well i am handling all of these last-milestones with my children. it's no secret that i'm the only one anyone in my house ever worried about gracefully surv...
an exasperated bella interrupted marty and i talking to ask if she could be excused from the dinner table early. marty, breaking off from our conversation, exaggeratedly asked whatever could be more important than her family's company. we then looked to anthony (8) who, with sitcom perfect timing, was pushing his upper lip to his nose with his hand and saying "look alex, i can almost pick my nose with my top lip" and when you then looked to alex (11) he was in the midst of his own antic "but can you make you hair shake around like this" while he gripped the arms of the chair to brace himself and quickly rotated his head left to right making his winter mane flail wildly about. marty and i, both stifling laughter, especially at anthony's effortful, and ongoing, lip-nose contortion said, "yes, bella, you may be excused from the dinner table as it seems people are done eating." she pushed back from the table and walked out of the room with the classic teen-huff of annoyance painted on her person.
the boys were each in an after school program. anthony was in a mad-science session and alex was at his robotics club. in coming back from the bathroom alex found anthony sitting on the floor outside the mad-science room. he stopped and asked if he was ok. anthony said that there was a bully in the session today and he didn't want to be in there. alex suggested he just ignore him so he didn't have to miss the class (as both the boys always love the mad science curriculums). anthony told alex that's what he usually did but today he didn't have the energy or patience for it so was just going to sit in the hall instead. if you forget or are wondering, anthony is in second grade.
after returning to his own classroom alex explained his brother's situation to his club leader and asked if anthony could come sit in their room. the leader said of course and anthony was invited to the fifth graders space. they set him up with some drawing gear and anthony spent the remainder of the time drawing and coloring pictures.
in hearing the re-tellings of this tale from the various parties, i'm not sure which of my boys i'm more impressed with. my eight year old for having the sense to remove himself from a toxic and un-winnable situation or my eleven year old for supporting his brother both as a counselor and protector. for as great as all the laughs and cuddles and tickle-wars with your kids are, seeing moments of empathy and compassion and maturity from them warms the heart more than one might be prepared for.
a full week after this event when dropping the boys off at school a classmate walked by waving at anthony. once he had passed i asked anthony if that was the bully. he looked his way and said, "him? no. he's not a bully. he's just a liar."
alex had a last-minute sleepover. the next morning i stirred from sleep to find anthony sitting at the foot of the bed looking very dour. i asked if he was ok. he turned to me and very sadly said he missed alex. i couldn't recall seeing him look so sullen. i pulled the sheets back, offering him a spot to which he slid in and cuddled into me extra close.
for the most quiet and unassuming member of our family, alex's absence might in the end leave the biggest footprint for all of us.
the biggest problem we have with our two sons is they laugh so often and so loud they annoy and wake their sister with great regularity. watching them play and read and cuddle and rough-house and build together, at times for hours on end, has proven to be a magical combination for us. recently marty and alex had to go away for a few hours on saturday morning, a time i usually do my weekend chores and a time alex and anthony usually hang out. anthony was all over me with an attitude of, "c'mon dude, entertain my shit". his presence was so heavy i imagined how different life would be if he were our only child or if his older brother wasn't as open and engaging as he was and i had this urge to buy alex ten presents, some of which he really wants and some that he doesn't even know he wants in gratitude for how awesome he is to his little brother ... and by extension to me.
when the boys come into the bathroom when i'm showering, i have to hide behind africa until they leave.
this quote from bella quickly illustrates the downsides of having, aside from including a sprawling map of the world, a transparent shower curtain. our last shower curtain, which also possessed a clear background, portrayed the periodic elements (in honor of marty's return to teaching high school biology) which shielded, i'm told, much more of the human body from the occassional passerby.
another thing that happened this last weekend was bella, alex and i volunteered in a service project organized by the university i work for. in this program all incoming freshmen are encouraged to participate in this annual ritual where various projects are identified for them to work on throughout the city. these projects tend to be beautification efforts (e.g. clean-up, painting). last year i worked on a team that painted a high school football stadium. this year my team helped paint portions of an enormous inner city school.
the overall structure of the initiative is this. the university selects a number of projects to be worked on, via application i believe. each project is assigned a site manager. the site manager is responsible for organizing the overall effort. they will meet with the contacts at the work site, identify the work to be done, recruit and direct project managers, order the necessary supplies and manage all the communication between the relevant folks. for the last two years i served as one of the project managers. and each of the last two years i took bella and alex with me for the day.
on the day of, the project leads arrive early and figure out a game plan. then about a hundred students are brought by bus to each site. they are divided up among the project leads who direct and oversee the student effort. last year bella and alex just worked along-side the freshman (and out-worked, complaint-free, a great many of them). this year i asked bella and alex to be runners. given the size of the school we were working at and the number of efforts happening i asked them to move between the various teams carrying a crate of supplies (e.g. water, paint brushes, rollers, rags) around and asking if the groups needed anything special. when a group did need something, bella or alex would go find what they asked for and bring it back.
just after the students arrived, i was standing on a large stairway landing explaining our job to the twenty freshmen girls assigned to me. in the midst of the talk alex came up the stairs wearing an orange bandana, carrying his supply crate and began excusing his way through the collection of girls trying to pass. i stopped my instruction to introduce him, saying, "ladies, this is alexander and he ...". before i could continue he cut me off loudly proclaiming ...
hi. i'm alex. i'm a runner. that means i'll just be running all over the school taking things to people. if you need anything you ask me for it and i'll go find it. this is so you don't have to stop working and don't have to find anything. and i know where everything is at. so just ask me. and i'll get it for you. i guess that's about it. bye.
with this he put his head back down and continued cutting through the crowd and up the stairs to the collective, melting sigh of twenty, now smitten, college girls. this is an example of 'new alex' which appeared shortly after turning ten. 'new alex' is not only not meek and shy, he is actually quite outgoing, gregarious, and quietly charasmatic (and as just shown, able to turn a gaggle of college girls into doe-eyed, fan-girls with little more than a few quickly dashed-off sentences).
later in the day i saw bella and asked her how she was doing. she said ok but alex was making her angry. when i asked why she said that every time she went up to cute guys to ask if they needed anything they kept saying they did but that boy alex was already getting it for them. so, let's not forget to add hard-worker to new alex's resume.
anthony dashed through the kitchen wearing only his new under armor ski tights. he shook his bottom around a few times before running out. the next time he passed through he was completely naked. he ascended the stairs and once at the top screamed "i'm sexy, i'm so sexy" to which you heard a horrified bella scream "Noooooooo!" as if someone were about to dash a kitten against a rock.
it's hard to imagine days ever being nearly as interesting as when you have small humans making their unscripted contributions to your world.
one morning before school i listened to my boys, aged six and nine, engage in two philosophical debates. a few times they asked me for help but never at the points when they, by my estimation, most needed it. they only turned to me on matters where the answer seemed obvious or irrelevant.
the first topic dealt with what tables you're allowed to stand on and how it's weird that coffee tables are always ok but dining room tables are never ok and isn't that weird because the dining room table is bigger and seems like it would be safer and one would think stronger so why is it dad that we can never stand on dining room tables. the question caught me unprepared and eavesdropping on their wonderful logic as i made the bed where marty and i sleep. my pause and subsequent stammer brought them both to eye me with anticipation, wanting this feedback so their deep vivisection could continue. my answer was no more impressive than saying i guess i didn't really know why and it's just that some folks don't like it when you stand on tables where they eat, especially when they're eating on them, and especially when one of them is your mother. after this clarification, which satisfied them well enough, their vigor slowed for the subject.
then, less than ten minutes later in the foyer putting on shoes, they somehow wended into a conversation about what would happen if the earth died. first the two boys discussed how it might happen; meteor, explosion, sun dying, people fighting. anthony corrected alex saying it would be ok if the sun stopped working because then it would just be night all the time which would be kinda cool because then they could be up and awake in the nighttime. alex explained, with a respectful somberness that it wouldn't be that simple and if the sun stopped working everything, including people, would freeze and nothing would grow to which anthony gave a contemplative "oh". seeing his ruminative expression alex ended the discussion on an up-note by saying, if that happened we'd just have to hope god can put two more people on the planet to get it all started again. anthony agreed to this logic with a serious tenor adding it would be very sad if he couldn't do that for the earth.
alex's explanation may shed some light on part of the problem
upon walking into the kitchen, i found alex washing something in the sink and anthony standing on a stool, naked except for a lightweight coat. alex, completely exasperated, turned to me and said:
this young boy can't stop touching his penis.
between the frustration and the use of 'this young boy' aleo could have passed for an over-fifty elementary recess attendant who had just drug the reputed school miscreant to the office for the third time in one week. i calmly told anthony to stop touching his penis in the kitchen and went about my way. as i left the space i heard alex say:
yeah, the only time you can do that is when you're sick.
hmmm. when i was young i watched price is right when i was sick. but, perhaps that's what all those showcase showdown girls were about.
upon arriving at anthony's school (before summer break) the mother of anthony's best friend, grady, called for us to wait up. after reaching us, grady and anthony exchanged morning "heys". then grady's mom reminded her son about something. to this, grady began digging around his backpack. after finding the item he handed it to anthony who offered his upright palm. grady dropped alex's small swiss army knife into anthony's hand and said, "i can't keep this anthony". after i apologized to the mom who moved on, i knelt down and asked anthony to explain why his friend had alexander's new swiss army knife. anthony looked at me guiltily. grady's family moved on. i knelt next to anthony to begin discussing what just happened. part of the exchange:
TROY
now what will make me happy anthony is you telling me the truth about the knife.
ANTHONY
ok. i will tell you the truth but it will sound like it's not the truth.
TROY
ok. i know you'll tell me the truth because that is what will make me happy.
ANTHONY
i was at school and got a package. it said it was from alex and to anthony and in it was the knife.
i think we can collectively applaud anthony's intuition that that his answer may sound a bit askew. after a touch of work i learned alexander made some trespass upon anthony, making anthony quite perturbed. it retaliation, anthony snuck alex's new swiss army knife from its nail on aleo's bunk, stuffed it into his pants pocket and gave it to grady at school telling grady he could keep it forever and ever. when grady looked in his palm asking "for real", anthony replied, "yes for real".
