Fridays

Fridays are independent study time for Vivian. Which mostly means a free day with one or zero fun projects. One week she baked a cheese cake. A couple of Fridays ago she made Chinese fried rice. Jo found her a recipe and she did almost everything else herself. By the time Evan walked in after school, the house smelled like a giant wok.  Back during our summer travels, Vivian, Evan and I had stayed back at Alu & Michelle's while Jo had directly returned to Austin from Sweden. During those few days we bought take-out from a small family-owned Chinese restaurant in Wakefield every day. Somedays we hit it twice a day. The kids loved the shrimp fried rice like their life depended on it.

So Evan walks into the house and announces that it smells just like the fried rice at Uncle Alu's. Which is a very high compliment to the chef. Then he proceeds to take three helpings and stuff himself till we were out of rice. This is the same kid that usually looks at his dinner, turns his nose up, and asks "Daddy, is there anything else for dinner" and then forces himself to eat a few morsels.

Another Friday Vivian and I went to the sculpture garden at Laguna Gloria museum about two miles from home. Vivian photographed the sculptures and the artist information and described what each sculpture made her think. This one here is the most visible - in scale and form. At about 35 feet tall, it looks like it is made from crushed aluminum roasting pans (the artist covered a styrofoam model with aluminum pans and then used the lost wax casting method to create the final sculpture in stainless steel).

We walked along the beautiful gardens and then hurried back to the air-conditioning of the car, hot and satisfied in a way that only a trip to the museum can make you feel. At home the neighbor came over and Vivian and her took turns painting each other nails and then decorating each nail with tiny flower stickers. And I heard E say "I wish I could grow up and do this all the time. I would open my own nail salon". Vivian started to open her mouth, caught my eye, and just nodded. Are we burdening our children with our expectations? Or are we pushing them to strive to their potentials? Vivian - answer this one for me in about 50 years.

Beach Again

For the Labor Day weekend we drove to the south Texas coast. It's only slightly prettier than the east Texas gulf coast. But we had a great time. Here's the weekend in photos. Two dogs, two kids, five adults, one house.

One very dark night we were walking along the beach. The dogs and Travis and I were a bit away from the rest when the ladies suddenly shed their clothing and charged into the surf. That left Evan by himself - he isn't prone to public nudity. From where I was, it looked like Evan sat down and drew things on the sand, averting his tender eyes from the rowdiness around him and waiting for the ladies to return and get clothed. Later I asked him about it. I expected him to say that he had kept drawing in the sand and didn't care or know what was happening around him. Which is how he started, but soon let on that he knew who had kept their panties on, and when I doubted him, he went on to describe said panties. I guess the sand wasn't that interesting. 

A Child's Brain

It's been three and a half weeks of teaching Vivian at home and everyone's still alive. We've pulled back from proofs of Pythagorean theorems to mundane multiplication tables. But this week I hope to dive into other interesting mathematical topics. So wish us luck.

There are occasional tears. But it's mostly fun. You can concoct a novel problem pretty easily. It isn't completely and fully novel (nothing is usually) but something that she hasn't seen before - at least not in this form. And then, in the construction of the problem, you leave her hints to other things she knows and reminders of other scaffoldings that her minds has built. And then you sit back and watch the fireworks. Her brain throws them up in the air. Some fizzle. Some start blossoming but then crumble to dust. Then there's a stray rocket here and there. Then silence. I start to ask and Vivian shushes me. And then, if we are lucky, there is an explosion of neural energy. New connections rise exponentially. And amazing shit happens.

Sure enough Jo and I feel like we have jobs now. And our lunch dates are a thing of the past. But multiple times a week, we now go get lunch with Vivian. And that's fun too. Specially when we share the cheese plate at the Epicerie.

I admire people who think outside the box. Even if I was culturally inclined towards conservatism, I'd have a hard time with doing things a certain way just because that's how we've done them. There should be a better reason or a better way.

So I had to laugh when this transpired the other day. Evan, Jo and I were at the dining table. Something happened and Evan said "new Grandma". Jo said "Grandma's aren't created just like that. So you can't have a new grandma."

I said "Unless your mother and I divorce and one of us marries someone who has a mother who is alive and then you could have a new grandma".

He thought through that one.

And then Evan said "Or if Grandma turns gay and marries another woman".

That's thinking outside the box in so many ways. Whatever Evan's village is doing, it's working out. Thanks everyone.

Oh - and Jo texted this scenario to Carol, just to let her know what her grandson is contemplating. 

Happy Birthday Grace

Grace turned 13 last week. Evan and Vivian have six cousins in New Braunfels - so there's a birthday on an average of every two months. But this one rocked the adults. I think we were all thinking the same thing. Time is galloping through the fields of our lives - completely wild and unchecked.

Grace was the baby. She was three months old when the kids came to live with Nicolle and Michelle. Kai was comparatively an adult at almost two. I wasn't into babies back then. But Grace radiated calm and happiness and grace and a deep deep sense of destiny.

She was everyone's little baby. Her older siblings treated her like royalty. She didn't crawl or speak very much because she didn't have to. She'd look at someone and point to something and they'd bring it to her. Everyone carried her everywhere. And Grace just smiled and that was all the reward anyone ever needed.

So it's a bit of a shock that Grace is suddenly 13. How on earth did that happen? What was I doing while that happened? Am I thirteen years older too? Simple questions with incomprehensible answers.

Grace has grown into a wonderful person. Sometimes it takes some work to coax her old smile out from behind a full-blown teenage scowl. But when it arrives it is worth the effort and all is right in the world again. 

Go

Remember the Pokémon Go craze? May be it's still on going but I don't see children in parks muttering to themselves and staring at phones and walking around in circles anymore like I did a month ago. 

We never did download the game on our phones. Lazy luddites. Aunt Cole walked into the White Wooden House one day and found a Pokémon hovering in our kitchen island and let Evan throw a Poké Ball at it and capture it. That's the closest either he or Vivian have come to playing it. But many of their friends had some serious playing experience by the time school started. 

Evan hasn't owned a deck of Pokémon  cards either. He has occasionally received a card or two from a friend at school. But he watches the show on Netflix (in Spanish when we can help it) and has learned up about all the creatures. He knows them, their powers, where they live, how they perform against other species, their evolutionary trees, and loads of other shit that are just a jumble of words to me.

So I wasn't surprised when a parent stopped me at school around the first week and said that Evan must play a lot of Pokémon. Why - I asked. Because my son says he is an expert, he replied. The other kids act like they know a lot, he continued. But everyone can tell when they are bullshitting, while they know that Evan is really an expert.

I'm glad he's using his brain cells for something. Our routine at pick-up every afternoon:

Me: "Evan - how was school?"

Evan: "Good..."

Me: "What did you learn?"

Evan: "Nothing"

Me: "Whew - I'm glad. I was scared the teachers may have tried to teach you something"

Evan: "No Daddy. They didn't teach me anything"

Cocks Not Glocks

The household is slowly getting back into the school schedule. Meanwhile down the street at UT it's been more crazy. The campus carry law went into effect on August 1. The nice conservative private schools politely said no thanks gov, why the fuck do we want guns on campus. But state schools like UT got stuck holding the shovel. So students made headlines when the protested by carrying their dildos on campus (which could be construed illegal under university and state law) as a part of the "cocks not glocks" campaign. This is at least as funny as the time when the police confiscated tampons but allowed guns into the Texas Capitol.

Keepin' it weird in Austin.