Just before Christmas

These are some wonderful boys: tall, strong, resiliant. I say resiliant because just tonight I threw Eli on the bed (the most fun they have is being thrown), and overshot: BAM! His head made a deep dent in the lathe and plaster walls. We took a black felt-tip ink pen and wrote in really small letters: Eli's head was here. Ouch! 12/20/04. Now, no mystery.

What a good day. I have been feeling pretty scattered, busy and confused, but today I was able to get the right medicine: getting presents for people. I was tricky: when we went last week, I asked Joe and Eli what to get for Jackson and Drew. Joe grabbed a set of model cars and pleaded to get it for him (or them, but they were pretty much forgotten). Eli swooned over a soap-making kit. And so my list was complete. Hee hee.

I wrapped them on the living room floor and loved it, my eyes buring from the cold air I'd been out in periodically all day, papers smouldering upstairs awaiting a grade, and got them all wrapped and under the tree before the boys came over. It was pretty wonderful to watch them sort through them: they figured out who had more (Eli) but decided that was ok because Joe had the largest present.

I heard today that unconditional love is loving someone with no expectations or requirements that they act in any particular way to earn your love. Your respect, maybe, but your love, no.

Good day, good day, good night.

Christmas tree, 2004

After some negotiation, Faith and I worked out a way for the boys to help me get a Christmas tree while it's still light out. I rushed home from work to buy a Christmas tree stand and some Walmartish things, and got the boys and got gas and got money and got us to the tree farm just in time, as the sun was setting. It was 4:00. Eli said "Dad, look!" as we were trudging up the hill, and we all turned, Joe and I, and saw the sun slide brightness under the huge cap of clouds that had covered the region all day. It was a pinkish wash against blue-gray. And we turned and walked in the snow up the hill, Joe talking excitedly: "Dad, do you think we will find a good tree?" and "Are those the Scotch pines up there on the hill? How can you tell? Are you sure?" We found them, and saw why they were only $10.00: there was hardly one that stood straight or was not brown with age. But we were tireless. Finally, with great excitement, we cut the top off of one tree. Now, I have dragged trees before; usually, it's not a problem. This tree, however, old and gnarled and generally wizened, was heavy as lead. I realized with relief that the path back was all downhill, but it was still maybe a quarter of a mile, and the snow was deep. So I pulled, with some vigor at first, but Dad got REAL TIRED near the end, switching hands and answering questions and hearing the boys wonder aloud. But we made it! The men tied the tree into our trunk and (among inevitable questions about whether the tree would fall out and how I knew it wouldn't), we made it home and now had a new chore: cleaning up the living room, which Henry had asked me to clean out months before. Now it was either my junk or a tree, and the tree was going to win. So we carried boxes up the attic, many, and Joe helped manfully. Finally clean, we tried to get the tree in the door, but NO: the tree we chose was too fat to even fit in the doorway. I pulled and pulled and finally it scratched its way in.

The boys were wonderful: excited, helpful, interested. They helped me twist the little anchor bolts that hold the tree in and we found to our dismay that the new Walmart stand was not made for trees like ours; ours was too thin and too crooked. So finally we just leaned it up in the corner, an accidental-seeming necklace of blue lights wrapped twice around its huge waist.

It is rather lovely, I think.

Drawing

Today winter has arrived. Snow fills the backyard of Henry's house, and Eli and I are sitting here after breakfast. Henry is rustling up breakfast before a busy day teaching at SU. It's very bright outside, cold, and Eli is drawing faces and faces and faces from a sketchbook by Ed Emberley. Eli says "He is my favorite writer of all the drawing books." His favority author is Mary Pope Osborne. Eli was concerned that I might misspell her name, so he came over here and helped me re-type her name. His sweatshirt smells clean and good and his bulky, muscular body wiggles as he searches patiently for the letters "r" and "n" and "e." Eli draws for hours, literally, drawing in a slow straight sequence, face by face, all through the book.

I helped out in Eli's class the other day, helping the kids ...

These are some of the things we talk about when we're together:

I caught a butterfly right here, Eli says, when we walk past a certain spot on the sidewalk..
Fairly Odd Parents [a TV show] and what the kid said...
If there were only 2 months per season, then it wouldn't add up to twelve
Oz and lb: I used to think that these were pronounced "OZ" and "LB", but now I know they are short for "ounce" and "pound."
Blackberries in their garden are really good.
Eli got English Ivy; his is growing but most kids' died; his is in the bathroom, which is maybe why it survived.
How do you spell Halloween?
Ask Henry about getting a cat--go on, ask him. Ask him!

Eli, Joe, Dad, Thanksgiving, frog

Eli and Joe came over today for THREE days during Thanksgiving break. They'll stay with their Mom on the last days. But today, we had to figure out what we wanted to do. So each of us took a sheet of paper and wrote down our favorite activities. Eli wanted to buy a pet--that was his number one choice. Joe wanted to go to ComixZone for Garflied comics. Both Eli and Joe wanted to go to the Sponge Bob movie. So we did. [It was very fun! we also got to get a new frog. we named]* him Twinky. Yes, Twinky. He's green, very fast, medium-sized, and very froglike.

Eli came to the top of the attic stairs the other day and looked thoughtful. He paused. "Dad," he asked, "is everything either a want or a need?" I wasn't exactly sure what to do with this question. Humm. I tried to hedge, but Eli typically would have none of it. Yes or no. So I said yes, which was wrong! He said, "What about an eggplant, huh? That is neither a want or a need." Somehow I felt like I missed something important, but I wasn't sure what it was, like feeling a surge in the ocean under you and knowing that somthing big just passed by, but not really seeing it.

We were a little at sea, anyway. Eli was unsure yesterday if he wanted to go to Jacqueline's for Thanksgiving; today, he seemed a lot more ok with the idea--I wasn't going to force him--and we agreed to go. Therefore, I do not have to scrounge around for a last-minute Thanksgiving dinner. The idea even struck me of going to a restaurant, but that really seemed pitiful, so I was relieved when we decided to go.

We went and the four boys (Jacqueline's two and my two) played for hours while the adults talked. Adults are so boring! They talk and talk and talk. They hardly ever want to ride on each other's back or scoot across the floor on their backs. There is no good reason for this.

By the time the three of us headed back, we were all tired. Joe and Eli fell asleep in the back seat and I drove. It was dark out now, of course, only a month from the solstice, and the highway was empty and black and I thought a lot about how thankful I am that we have each other.

Secret forts

Since I wrote last, winter came. All the trees dropped all their leaves, and now I have only three more classes before Thanksgiving. Three. I see the boys in the afternoon on Monday and Wednesdays, which means that today they just left. I see them in the mornings too, for some one-on-one time--Eli comes Tuesdays and Joe on Thursdays--but I'm going to be alone tomorrow (no Joe) because I have to get work done.

It's been great to see them this week. I had them all weekend and we went to Drew's birthday party in Endicott, and the boys played and played. We found a rotted mouse corpse in the garden hose--much discussion about that. Personally, it nearly made me THROW UP to see it slither out of the dark hose. Bleh. But then we went to see The Incredibles, a new Pixar movie (Steve Jobs, who runs Apple Computer also owns Pixar, so I like Pixar). The movie was fun: bright, fast, funny, sort of conservative in its message, which is fine. Joe, Drew, Eli and Jackson all loved it. Jacqueline did too, and she sat in front of me, mesmerized.

I saw the boys this weekend, when they began their "forts." These forts are like small treehouses in the attic, constructed out of boxes, pillows, sleeping bags and everything else. They both have one, but Joe has gone crazy over making his. He even has a pad of blank paper, a pad of lined paper, a cup with pens and pencils, a cactus (!) and a vase ("Look, Dad, I decorated it!). Tonight we set up the stereo that I found on the side of the road and he has radio Disney. He is in heaven, and said, "Hey, Dad, why don't you sit down for a minute and talk to me?" I did, too, and he showed me all the parts to his fort. It's great to see him so PROUD.

Eli, however, has put his efforts into other things. He taught me to do karate (the three punches, blocks, and kicks). He's very fast and very nimble, a lot more than I am. He was a good teacher, and I had to say "Yes, Sensi" or "No, Sensi" when he spoke to me. The key thing about karate is *discipline*. Eli also drew on a large chalkboard I found in the attic. Last night it was a still life: grapes, bananas, and all sorts of things. But his good work in these other areas means that he didn't have much time for his own fort. Tonight, as I was wiring up Joe's stereo, he suddenly felt that his fort was dumb in comparison to Joe's. There were some tears, and he said that he felt that Joe was better at a lot of things. We talked a little; I told him that my brother used to feel just he same way when he was younger. And Joe was really kind. He said that Eli was better than he at art and was more creative, too. Joe added also that Eli was better at karate and was much stronger. I told Eli that it was up to him to feel better, not up to Joe to make him feel better, but soon he did feel better, and when I wasn't looking wrote on the large chalkboard the following message:

THANK YOU!

LOVE, ELI

And then made waited on the landing for a good long time before we saw it, and so it occured to me: the one thing that Eli is especially good at is being grateful and happy. That is a very special fort all to itself.

Dad on Wednesday night.

Halloween

Saturday was the warmest October day I have ever remembered. The leaves were falling like rain. The huge maple in Henry's yard lost about a thousand yellow leaves, each bright as a yellow crayon, and filled the yard along with a thousand red leaves, a thousand purple leaves, and on. Though last week I raked the yard until sweat rolled into my eyes and I got a big scab on my left thumb knuckle, the yard is full again. Perfect for Halloween.

Saturday evening Joe and Eli wanted to sleep on the front porch, folding out the couch into a bed. I said I had to check the weather report to make sure they wouldn't get too cold, and it looked ok, so we did it: piles of blankets, all the stuffed animals (Squiggley, the octopus; Mona Kako, the Koala; Rabby, the rabbit; Alley, the alligator). And me. I got between them and we all three read: Joe read his fat adventure fantasy novel; I read *Time* magazine (stupid magazine in that surburban-hip minivan voice) and Eli read a chapter book for the first time! He really likes them and at one point found a really funny part that he laughed aloud at, and that he read back to us. I remember so well the day I walked into the boys' room and saw Joe lying on his stomach, feet in the air, reading all by himself; today was just that day for me and Eli. I suddenly realized that he is going to read all his life and be defined--from his dreams to the way he looks for things to the buildings he lives in and visits--by reading. Maybe it's too dramatic, but his is how he will know the dead.

Pretty fitting for Halloween, huh? Reading is like meeting with ghosts....

Eli used to say he hated reading. He used to say he hated music, but last night, before the reading in bed, we did dancing in my room. They played selections from their favorite pop CD and they danced, Eli making moves much like he saw kids doing at the Westcott Street Fair, break dancing and stuff like that. He moves with a grace and power that is much more certain than he used to. In fact, I remember well when he used to actually *fall off* anything he was on. It happened so suddenly and abruptly it was as if he had been swept to the ground. Sometimes his milk or plate would go with him. Sometimes the chair. He was always unscathed, though. He was swept up by a river we couldn't see.

Last night we moved our clocks back, give the day an hour's head start on us. So in the morning, it's lighter; in the evening, it's darker. Tonigh will be dark as we go from house to house, and we are definately going to Paul Aviles' house, my oldest friend. Joe is going as a movie theater carpet, complete with ground-in gum, soda cups and popcorn. Eli is a lizard. I think this says volumes about who they are....

And to start the day, another surprise from Eli. He asked if I were hungry, and I said yes, so he asked if he could light a match to light the stove on Henry's ancient fancy gas stove. I said....I said....well, I said....ok. Ok. BUT BE CAREFUL. It was time for him to do these things. And I wrote a letter of recommendation for a faculty member here who is changing jobs. While I searched for words to describe the faculty member, Eli cooked and cooked. He made me wait and brougth me down with my eyes closed and this is what I saw: first, the table was completely set with forks and plates and cups. In front of my plate was a hot cup of coffee that he made entirely himself for me; in front of his plate was a glass of orange juice. On our plates were two fried eggs and a piece of toast with butter. He even put pepper on our eggs! It was wonderful. How many meals have I cooked for them? None I will remember. But this one, I will remember for a very long time. It turns out he is a very good cook.

Then we went outside to await their mother's minivan taxi to church. Before she came they played catch the leaves, chasing after the wavering leaves as the fell. Caught some, too! And then they asked to do another big-kid thing, going around the entire block by themselves. They are very cautious about the cars moving in and out of the driveways. But I waited on the sidewalk near my house here and listened for screeching tires, slavering dogs, comets falling out of the sky, breaking limbs (of trees and/or boys), and the like. After a minute or two, Joe comes loping around the corner; another half minute and Eli appears from the other direction. And the leaves and the leaves and the leaves and evertything is changing, fallling, growing, moving.

They are good boys, doing well.

Four boys--yikes

It's Sunday tonight and yesterday we had the four boys together. In age order, they are Joe, Drew, Eli, and Jackson. Joe and Eli yelled with delight when Jacqueline finally arrived (I made the mistake of promising them that she would arrive at noon, but upon assisted reflection, I remembered that it was much more open than that). So they arrived! So they ran in the leaves! So they played in the huge plastic vase that a boy can climb into and be rolled around in! They had leaf fights!

Before they arrived, my boys worked so hard with me to clean the house. Joe "got down on his knees and scrubbed pavement stones" as the poet William Butler Yeats puts it: Joe scrubbed the bathroom floor, toilet, tub, sink, mirror, and everything else. He was also very curious about the ways that the toilet valve worked, how it let in a certain amount of water when flushed and then stopped, so there was much gandering into the dark tidal pool of the toilet.

If I knew what was going to happen later, I would have put some apples and bread in the bathroom. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Eli helped me clean the music room, vacuuming, dusting, and making the futon there. I cleaned the living room and kitchen. The house looked good!

And then we raked the front lawn (to make a leaf pile for later), and there was some discussion about whether that was "fair," but we figured that out; the result was that Joe and Eli both helped with the good rakes to make the lawn look good.

The inside was clean (dishes done, bathroom done, music room done); the outside was clean (raked). Now what?

And as I mentioned Drew and Jackson arrived and ran around outside like banshees. Much excited yelling, happy exclaimation. I was puttering around inside, trying the an old skeleton key in various locks, and tried the bathroom lock from the inside.

That was a mistake.

The door locked fine, but the key would not turn to unlock. No unlock. NO UNLOCK. I was trapped in the bathroom. I had soap, shampoo, hot water and a lot of toilet paper. I would starve in there, but I would be clean, clean, clean. I tried the key until I bent it into a pretzle and broke it. I leaned out the window and Jacqueline passed me a pair of plier to my feet (I was dangling off the roof), and with them I took out the hinge pins and tried to take the door off the hinges. NO LUCK! I was still trapped, completely trapped. I bent and heaved, jostled and pried, but to no effect until Jacqueline followed my instructions to throw herself against the door and BAM! it came off the hinges.

Saved.

It was a rather exciting day, and Joe read through the entire thing; Eli watched with curiousity.

Apple Pie II

It was so very good. I put a piece in a small tupperware container for Eli and when I dropped Joe off today, I stopped by Eli's classroom and pulled him out of the classroom and we put it into his backpack.

Pie from our own neighborhood.

I love this.

Apple Pie

Today is Wednesday, and I come home from work (fast) and drive to Joe's soccer practice where his mother has let him out, and gather up Eli. Usually Eli wants to kids the soccer ball around before we go to get crickets for the frogs, or cheese for the boys, or milk for breakfast. But today I kicked the ball very hard and Eli chased it to the edge of the field whereup on noticed this gigantic apple tree. I mean really big, huge and old. I have never seen an apple tree grow big, and as we stared, we realized that it was studded with apples, but only up high, where the kids and adults could never reach. The trunk was too tangled and spiky to climb up high--though we tried, Eli first--and so we tried Plan B: throw the soccer ball at the apples. Amazingly, the first time I threw it, I got a huge apple down into the grass. Eli was unsure about the spots and gnarled scars, but I was used to wild apples, so I bravely bit in. And it was sweet--different from any apple you get in the store, where the sweet ones taste like candy; this apple was like wine or real maple syrup, sweet and light and tangled. Eli liked it too. So we ate several, and I kept throwing the soccer ball for more apples when THUCC! the soccer ball gets stuck in the tree. Really stuck, way up. So I climbed up and shook the branch: down came the big black and white soccer ball and down came about ten red apples like little bombs. None hit Eli. Then I got an idea. We have an hour while Joe is practicing. Why not get a pie crust and make this into an apple pie? Why not?

So we do. And we get home and Henry is broiling fresh bluefish. We have bluefish and french fries and spinach (not popular). It's great. Before we eat Eli and I peel a LOT of apples and core them. Joe brings in his new rented French horn and WOW is it beautiful: long, complicated pipes connected with valves, a large flared horn (where you put your right hand). Joe shows me how to blow into it, how to hold my right and left hand and I love the sound it makes: low and muted and far away. He plays several notes and I play several and we put it away. Joe can now play at least four instruments a bit: French horn (the latest), cello, recorder, and piano. Next? Oboe? I suspect Eli will pick up the clarinet, which he says is his favorite.

We can smell the pie in the house. Brown sugar, butter, cornstarch, lemon, spices. Lots of apples.

Will it be ready before their mother comes to whisk them away? Will they get a bite?

Dad

pics and movies of Joe and Eli

For those of us who tire of text, here are some living color pictures of the boys. Either click on the title ("pics and movies of Joe and Eli," above), or type in the internet address listed directly below. They go to the same pictures.

http://dinosaur.cortland.edu/kidpics

This actually took a few hours, as I have a movie too that I wanted to post, but I could not get Dreamweaver, Microsoft Word, or any other program to handle the large .mov (Quicktime) file. Bummer.

But looking at all these pictures made me think once again how fast these boys are growing and how they are going to grow regardless, and how good they are at finding and making their own way.

Joe to school RUSHING

Well, I learned one thing today that I am very very unlikely to ever forget: when you write a blog, especially a long, edited, heartfelt blog, you must POST it before you try to change the settings. If you don't post it first, you will lose your long, edited, heartfelt blog.

Luckily, I didn't forget what we did this morning, today on this Thursday when I pick Joe up. He was late coming to my car--his Mom let him oversleep--and I arrived sleepy and glad. We went directly to my house on this beautiful, hollow, bright October day, and made French toast and Joe made great coffee (I'm still drinking a cup). He was very interested in the way that the coffeemaker worked, the tube in the back, and though he had asked about this before, today he seemed to really understand it. He also helped me drop the gooey French toast in the pan, and was very careful not to burn his hand. While I cooked it, he talked to me about Garfield (he and Drew LOVE Garfield): Joe told me about a particularly funny cartoon wherein Garfield was confronted with the necessity of a diet. This is something Garfield did not appreciate. Not even a bit. We talked about atoms, the endurace race Joe was going to be in early when he got to school, and I finished my first cup of coffee while we played a game of chess--well, part of a game--and he is getting pretty good. Apparently, he listened to Henry carefully when Henry was talking about "controlling the center" of the board. Joe went off to play Bugdom; I started to catch up on my reading (a journal from 2001! was on the front porch) and after five minutes I roused Joe from Bugdom (level three!) and we got in the car with Eli's drawer and piece of pipe and golf-ball collection. When we got to school, I tried to hug Joe but he was really worried about being late and squirmed and pushed himself away, but when I got to the bottom of the hill I saw him standing there, waiting for me, waving, making sure I saw him. It was good, because although we still are too rough with each other sometimes, I was reminded about how much we love each other.

Now off to work!


David

Hello to Joe and Eli (chicken tandori)

Dear Joe and Eli,
This is my new blog. You can go to it whenever you want (if you can get on the internet) and read what I have to say. You can reply to it, too, which is pretty neat, and if you don't type very well, you can always just give me a call. I would like to just write you a letter now and then, but it could get very expensive, so I think I'll just use the blog.

In this blog, I'm going to name stuff we do. Tonight, for instance, is a Wednesday night and I drove up from Cortland after work to my house, changed fast, and drove with Henry down to Joe's soccer game at Barry Park. He is the gold team, of course, and I found Eli there (Mom left), and I picked him up and Henry went to Peter's with me and Eli.

We got the food we needed for Henry to cook a very unusual supper--but more on that later.

So we dropped Henry off to cook. Eli and I kicked the ball around for a while, then saw Mom running past in the park with Latte. He ran after her (after looking for cars, of course) and we ended up on the edge of the water in the lake. It was very beautiful, blue, cool and hot at the same time, and we saw a turtle swim and paddle around under the alge as if he were looking for something important. We never figured out what it was, but we did have a conversation about snapping turtles and Bobby's house--until we saw the resident Great Blue Heron, who was standing extremely still--they are very good at that--and we watched him watch us. I have been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson, so I thought of how Emerson would have looked at this giant bird.

Eli played with a muddy puppy, then we got a juicebox for Joe, watched him play a bit more, and went home. There, Henry had a *very interesting* supper for us: chicken tandori: curry and peas and potatoes and gravy and rice. Joe and Eli thought it was sort of hot, but they were very polite. They told Garfield stories (until I stopped them) and we talked about rides at the fair and vomiting for a long time. Then the boys went upstairs; I checked my e-mail and Joe read and Eli played wit the frogs Speedy and Browny until Professor Palfi came up and looked at the frogs with us and watched Joe play Bugdom (he recently got to level four, a feat that takes a lot of time). Joe was serious, but polite and very good at explaining the game; Eli was patient and through with the professor as he explained about the frogs. Henry was just trying to get Tibor Palfi to look at the lastest draft of his book on drugs and the brain. I guess they did.

Then Joe and Eli and I went to the park and played catch in the dark with the large plastic softball-shaped ball. Joe threw it very hard at me, but I caught it. Oh, I forgot to mention that we took pictures of the frogs and mailed them to Mom.

All is well here. I love it when the boys come over. They are getting very tall, becoming good storytellers, and generally treat each other well.

That is all for October 6, 2004. I see Joe tomorrow morning at 7:45! We'll have fun (and food).

Joe squirts like a whale

I forgot to mention that just as we were going downstairs in Henry's house, Joe walks out of the bathroom with his squirrel cheeks full of water. He asks me "Dad, do you know what I have in my mouth?" and of course it can't be water because he just talked. So I give his fat cheeks a little squeeze, and lo and behold, he squirts like Old Faithful or a huge whale. Water squirts on the stairs, and he starts laughing, and loses the rest of the water on his yellow shirt, and wipes up the water with his sock, and I'm laughing so hard I think I will fall down the stairs, and we decend to the exotic smell of curry.