The stairway leading up to Doctor Reefy's office, in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Store, was but dimly lighted. At the head of the stairway hung a lamp with a dirty chimney that was fastened by a bracket to the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector, brown with rust and covered with dust. The people who went up the stairway followed with their feet the feet of the many who had gone before. The soft boards of the stairs had yielded under the pressure of feet and deep hollows marked the way.
At the top of the stairway a turn to the right brought you to the doctor's door. To the left was a dark hallway filled with rubbish. Old chairs, carpenter's horses, step ladders and empty boxes lay in the darkness waiting for shins to be barked. The pile of rubbish belonged to the Paris Dry Goods Company. When a counter or a row of shelves in the store became useless, clerks carried it up the stairway and threw it on the pile.
Doctor Reefy's office was as large as a barn. A stove with a round paunch sat in the middle of the room. Around its base was piled sawdust, held in place by heavy planks nailed to the floor. By the door stood a huge table that had once been a part of the furniture of Herrik's Clothing Store and that had been used for displaying custom-made clothes. It was covered with books, bottles, and surgical instruments. Near the edge of the table lay three or four apples left by John Spaniard, a tree nurseryman who was Doctor Reefy's friend and who had slipped the apples out of his pocket as he came in the door.
At middle age Doctor Reefy was tall and awkward. The grey beard he later wore had not yet appeared, but on the upper lip grew a brown mustache. He was not a graceful man, as when he grew older, and was much occupied with the problem of disposing of his hands and feet.
i don't want to say i was first, but ... uhhmm ... i was first
last month i talked about my friend e-love and what a special teacher he is. yesterday the Milken Family Foundation was talking about him when they recognized him with a national educator award and a check for $25,000.
i don't want to call the milken folks a johnny come lately but me and my people have already been there. sure they came with an extra 25 large but to me that kinda smells like someone trying to assuage their guilt for not being the first to applaud my man's gifts.
and as if the national award, the check, and the troy shout out weren't enough, the dude also welcomed his second child into his family last sunday.
kudos on all your successes my friend. there isn't a soul who knows you who would say you didn't earn or deserve this recognition eric. although, if i may make a suggestion, you might want to spread the props out a little more evenly. you're creating a pretty high stick for your next twenty years in the classroom.
From the pressline: "the Milken award is so prestigious it's been called the oscars of teaching." love it!
while walking by bella's room, i heard bella say in a flat, conversational tone to a visiting neighbor girl, "my mom said when i get married i can do the french kiss."
this comment stopped me dead in my tracks. if i were one to say hail marys i imagine i would have uttered one right there, complete with waving the sign of the cross but since i'm not a formally religious fellow i instead closed my eyes reverently, considered how unprepared i am for my future and continued on down the stairs.
marty expressed to her older sister that she was surprised to already be fielding puberty-related questions from bella. marty thought she had a few more years of girlish innocence in her oldest child. to this, marty's sister said her own daughter, at thirteen, had bigger breasts than she, the mother, did so girlish innocence becomes girlish curiosity real quick.
the mom went onto share a detail from when her husband gave the talk to their son when he was around eleven. after explaining the hows, the whats and the whys of it all the boy sat there stupefied at this new intelligence. after a few moments of silence he turned to his dad and mustered the eyes-down courage to ask a single question, "so, just how long do you have to do that for?"
when marty recounted this to some girlfriends, she laughingly added that the only right answer is, at least four minutes. i told marty if she keeps bragging about my sexual prowess to the neighborhood ladies, one of them might swoop in and steal me away. through her belly-laughing marty was able to tell me she's willing to take her chances on that one.
i try to spend lunchtime with bella and alex once a week. alex has lunch first. then recess. then bella has lunch. and then her recess. how they are spaced out is kind of lucky for me in that i get to visit with each of them separately but it does make for a pretty long lunch routine, even for me.
depending on the weather and my clothes and how much time before i need to be back at work, we may play ogre at the recess. ogre essentially consists of me chasing forty plus kids around the playground for twenty minutes while they dash and dart and scream wildly knocking into playground equipment, each other and me. the game's end is marked by a loud hand-held whistle blown by a recess attendant. this sends the kids dutifully racing to a numbered paw print painted on the ground to line up for their return to class. the rapidity in which these children switch gears, especially leaving something they're enjoying, is impressive. i slowly amble over to the head of the line and wait for them to begin the march back inside. as they pass i give them high-fives thanking them for playing ogre and telling them to do good in class. they eagerly ask if i'll be back tomorrow and that i didn't tag them and i'm too slow and they're too smart. i laughingly tell them that i can't play tomorrow but will try to come back next week.
my first few visits to the lunch table each year is met with rabid enthusiasm and intrigue. once the newness wears off, it's as if i'm just another student unexcitedly nibbling at a four-hour old pb and j. recently at bella's table our group experienced multiple bouts of silence, some lasting two or three minutes. full silence among five or six kids and one adult in a raucous cafeteria doesn't happen much, based on my experience, so when something of the like occurs i'm intrigued and i study the faces of each child trying to see what they are thinking. last week, one boy broke the lull by pointing across the table and starting the following conversation.
i've seen isacc cry.
well, i've seen you cry. i've seen amit cry too.
i've seen bella cry. and you. and you.
i've seen george cry, a lot.
uhhm, i haven't seen chris cry, but he's new, but i have seen isaac and bella and amit cry.
after gleefully taking this in and waiting for everyone to go, i interrupted the confessions
so if i'm hearing this correct, it pretty much seems like everyone here has seen everyone else cry, except for chris and that is only because he is new.
the kids looked around and nodded in agreement. what struck me most about the round robin was that there was no agenda at hand. no one was trying to make anyone else feel badly. there was no accusing or mocking tone. it was just a group of children announcing statements of fact. i repeatedly looked at chris the new kid during this confessional. while this discussion bounced around the table chris sat there with long rangy curls of blonde hair, his eyes darting from speaker to speaker. the whole time he had a natural smile which was partially blocked by the sandwich triangle he was holding with both hands just in front of his mouth. his smile was so easy, so natural, it seemed like there was nowhere he'd rather be. and as i took stock of his mood and the quirky community i was in the midst of, if asked, i think i may have agreed with his sentiment.
in march bella will be nine. that means half of her time with us will be done. and in the half we have left, we will see her less and less every year as she becomes more mature, independent and able. and when she turns eighteen and goes off to college, i imagine we'll see less of her for the rest of our lives than we have seen of her up to that point.
i imagine it feels good when the work starts paying off
the Liefer family of five were walking along. one of the younger children did something that caused a parent to chastise them. the child resisted the parent, asking why they couldn't do what they wanted to do. the parent stalled, unable to verbalize the reason. the first parent looked to the second parent for help. before either parent could say why they wanted the behavior to stop, their oldest child, a girl of ten, interrupted the process saying, "you can't do it sam because it's not the Liefer way".
it was saturday morning. i was in the kitchen. marty was upstairs in the shower. the kids were in the living room. some yelling and fighting broke out. it didn't sound physical (yet) so i let it go and continued working on the dishes. some moments later i heard marty come down the stairs. she engaged the kids asking what was the problem and what they were fighting about. thinking i could help i moved to the foyer drying my hands on a dish towel. i looked at marty standing at the foot of the stairs, a towel around her head but naked otherwise and still wet from the shower. i then looked at the line of kids now quiet and staring back at her. as i scanned the row i spotted one extra kid in the mix. it seems a boy from around the corner had come over and joined the fray. when i saw him in the line-up i paused and took in his startled face and wide eyes. i looked back at marty who had just noticed the outcast. seeing him, she pulled the towel off her head and began wrapping it around her body. in embarrassment she asked shortly, "and why are you here ben? does your mom know you're here?" to this line of questioning ben lifted his gaze from marty's now towel-covered body to her face, ignored her questions and innocently asked his own, "why are you naked?"
i don't mind saying i derived more enjoyment out of this boy's simple question than a man my age should have.
i spent the week in michigan for work. i spent most of my time at michigan university but had lunch with a friend at michigan state on the way out. here are a few iphone images from along the way.
a spliced view of university of michigan's campus from my hotel window (the big house is in the upper right corner)
a shot from one of my two meals at blimpy burger
my view from the office i worked in at michU
dan brown and pepper-bacon macaroni from zingerman's road house
my view while working in michU's law library. (absolutely breathtaking)
and just a few shots from the very different feeling michigan state campus.
colors beginning to turn over the river running through campus
of course, i was the exact same when i was their age.
in my thirties i coveted young people's lithe, able bodies and their ability to stay up all night and work all day. now that i'm forty the only thing i covet is their endless supply of free time. and seeing how so many aimlessly piss it away makes me want to weep.
rough housing and tickle fights end in one of two ways in our house; when someone gets hurt or someone pukes (from laughing too hard).
this is no lie and i'm not embellishing for effect. last thursday marty went to a girl scout meeting leaving me to put the kids to bed. after baths and before i started reading to the boys a huge tickle fight broke out on my bed. it was me against bella and alex and anthony. about five minutes into the affair, i was tickling bella and she started coughing. i stopped. she turned her head and vomited a dark swill onto the comforter and floor. you'd think she would spin on me in anger or disgust at this turn but instead her face brightened and she said, "hey, i just threw up! does that mean i don't have to go to school tomorrow?" i had the parental duty of telling her that throwing up only gets you out of school if you can wretch without anyone touching, tickling, or gagging you. i was dismayed, but not surprised, to see the wheels in her head processing this new piece of knowledge. i'm sure if it's possible to will yourself to vomit, bella is about to become one of its most ardent practitioners.
at a dinner party, one of the mothers in attendance approached me and said the children were downstairs having a debate about whose father had the loudest and smelliest flatulence. she told me that bella was delivering a very persuasive argument which the woman doubted anyone would be able to best. i smiled awkwardly and said 'kids' with a shrug of my shoulders.
on the way home i contemplated explaining to bella how some things are personal and my gas is not something to be shared publicly. i never got a chance to have the talk because i got distracted thinking about today's post where i would talk about her talking about me and me not talking to her about how it wasn't appropriate for her to talk about me publicly.
