Boxcar Children

A New York Times article today about books to make sure you read your kids. Boxcar Children (Gertrude Warner) is at the top of her list. I LOVE this series, written in the forties and fifties. The first volume is the best, of course. A suddenly orphaned foursome, living on their own to avoid a tyrannical grandfather they never knew. Living well on a rural railroad siding. A little suspense, with happy endings. Now that's a good life.

Makes me want to build a fort in the woods behind our house and move in.

Matteo watched the Tigger movie (Disney) last night, and the drama and suspense almost did him in. He's super-sensitized to loss and threat. He couldn't look when Pooh Piglet Rabbit faced the end-game avalanche. Tigger lost an important letter when saving his friends. Matteo couldn't let go of that, even though the Disney plot resolved it: Tigger wanted to find his family of origin, and the Disney plot carefully inserted Pooh Piglet Eeyore to satisfy that longing, but Matteo didn't buy it. He cried himself to sleep over Tigger's existential loneliness. He didn't buy Disney. He wept for Tigger, and I held him, tear welling up for his weeping. We were a sweet mess.



This is Teo's last week before Montessori begins, he's having a great time "directing" his starlet Annika in the movie of their lives. She doesn't mind doing whatever he wants. But he can't take things she has. And when she grabs something of his, it's over. The producer, Papa, gets involved: "Cut!"

Annika is loving swinging on swings, and Matteo is enjoying hitting (t-ball) and fielding balls that I throw to him on the deck. From there he can launch some pretty long throws from deep right to make the tag.

Night Shift

I was toast all day,
after getting up at 4 am to deal with Annika.

Both kids were home. Teo wanted so badly
to be doing something. The sky opened up
with some sunshine. It was becoming irresistible.

Just at the end of Sesame Street
(Teo’s one TV option – it’s so great, really)
I got Annika, full up with applesauce and formula –
to go to sleep. So we had hours of needing
just to hang around and wait for her to wake.

When Marin came home at 2, we got out,
so she could sleep.

I pushed Annika and Teo up the subdivision streets
and into the Birch Hill Cross Country ski trails.
We wanted to go “to the top of Birch Hill”
which, sadly, is an eyesore of transmission towers.

Because of two weeks of rain
the mushrooms were everywhere.

Note: we have been having a great week
of potty training for Matteo. Our HUGE stash
of M&M’s is becoming depleted.
Five for a poo, two for a pee. Yaay!
And if we go a full day – ICE CREAM!

Note 2: Last night Annika went into my care
at 3:30 am, I think. I decided to try what worked
last night, sans the movie. Rocking her in the chair
with a pacifier seemed to work.
My legs had become sticks of wood, and my butt
a bedsore by the time 6:30 came around,
and I had to pee.

We did watch 15 minutes of a Nova
at 3:30 am on how bacteria communicate (!)
and 10 minutes a program at 4:00
called “Carrier” about an aircraft carrier
and what kinds of religion goes on on the carrier.

It was a little depressing. All these Catholics and
charismatic Christians talking on and on,
proselytizing, using the ship’s closed circuit TV
to push America’s religions.
And one solitary Jew, the only one on the ship.

Nothing about the people who don’t buy it. I mean,
conventional religiousity. How about the ethics
of the present war. How about killing people in general.

There were several fliers saying, one after another,
that whatever the commander in chief orders,
they’re there to do. Consummate techno-geeks.
How does that make them any better
than the Germans proudly improving the systems
in the death camps, huh?

Oh my. Maybe I shouldn’t be blogging.
At least not on this little sleep.

"Cat's in the Cradle"

Heading into the deep freeze. Weekend temps expected around minus 40.

The clouds opened this afternoon (Friday), and the sun oozed out toward dusk, a golden egg-yolk floating in butter, as the ice fog from our little town hazed away all definition. And Aurora Energy, burning coal to heat and power this town from it’s downtown location beside the frozen river, drilled it’s plume into the sky from a hypodermic black stack with a fierce, spinning urgency against the setting sun.

The days layer on the details, but lack a theme. I want a lesson plan with Teo, something that we’re building upon week by week.

He is stalled out on swimming again, it’s been two weeks since he let go of my neck and began clutching his “noodle.” Now, we both are on our own, by his vociferous insistence. If I approach his flotilla, he spins around away from me with a “NO, Papa.” He doesn’t want to jump in from the side, or fly out of the water above my head on my hands (very controlled, no splash, what’s not to like?), or swim noodle-free, or even let go of whatever he has in his hands (little plastic junk, small plastic critters, balls) so he can better maneuver on his noodle.

All of these activities have in the recent weeks brought him great delight and the satisfaction of achievement. But that was then.

He may appear to other parents, who are all playing, holding, cooing, laughing with their kids – teaching them floating, and kicking, and the like – like an illustration of the rich man who can’t let go of his stuff, loses his friends, his bearings, and goes down with his hands clutching his treasure.

Too dramatic, Marin always scolds me. Lighten up. He’s a kid.

Okay, to myself I appear to be the father who is too preoccupied by other things to know who his child is, what his child needs, and who is condemned to the sad ending of that Cat Stevens song, “The Cat’s in the Cradle,” where the businessman father is asked by the young son, “when you coming home Dad?” and the Dad: “I don’t know when,” he answers, but assures the son, “we’ll get together then, you know we’ll have a good time then.”

The verses sing through the son’s inexorable growing up, until the father does have time to spend, after his retirement, but then the son has a job, and has learned the refrain, and sings the “no time, now, but we’ll get together later” song back to his dad... Now that I'm a Papa, the song can well me all up.

But even if Matteo resists me whenever I (a) want to sing a song (“NO, Papa.”) or (b) do a puzzle with him (“I don’t WANT to.”), or (c) swim with him, we still get to paint pictures a couple times a week, and I get to tell him a story after Mama reads him a book at night, usually around 9 pm.

These days I spring him from his crib, into the pitch black of the guest bedroom, and we curl up and I tell a story – right now we’re into the story of a huge blizzard which paralyzes all of Fairbanks. I’m as much a victim of these nightly stories as he, meaning, I put myself to sleep, too, and wake up around midnight, needing to brush my teeth and change into pajama-surrogate clothing for my “real” bedtime. Sometimes Marin stirs and comes over to wake me, but usually she’s exhausted, and long asleep by the time the “musical” beds gets resolved.