NPR, Homosexuals, and Obama
We’ve our own little fun Q&A for the Vander Veen family:
Q: What makes you smart?
A: NPR (national public radio)
Q: And what makes you stupid?
A: Sponge Bob’s Square Pants and TV like it.
I am an NPR junkie. The girls and I listen to it on the way to school and on the way back. Sometimes we play songs. But most times we listen to NPR.
And, oddly (and proudly), they do listen. Often they don’t get what’s being said, but they pick up sentences and phrases and then ask questions.
So car rides become lessons in whatever topic of the moment NPR focuses on.
Which, this past week, was homosexuality. NPR ran the tape of Obama sharing his evolving thought.
Q: Papi? What’s a homosexual marriage?
A: It’s when two guys or two girls decide to marry each other.
Silence as this is processed. Then,
Q: Does that mean they have sex?
A: Um, yes.
Long silence followed by a very puzzled question.
Q: How?
At this point I try and wrap up the conversation because, frankly, I wasn’t going to try and explain the concept to them while driving to school (Monica to Kelly: “Now Kelly, we don’t talk about this with our friends because some families are different.”). We’ve a very handy book that helps explain all things surrounding sex and I wanted to wait until we were at home to tackle that difficult question.
That said, there was a moral question also being asked here. That is, what did mommy and papi think of this “homosexual marriage” thing? It’s something our church denomination is wrestling with (I would argue much of our country is wrestling with) and Renee and I have also grown in our view points if you will. Speaking personally, I’m more inclined to think we should separate a civil marriage from a religious marriage (like many European nations do) and maintain the spirit of our first amendment (separation of church and state).
But these are complex issues to a 6 and 8 year old. So we try and keep things simple.
At least until NPR complicates the next thing!
He said a square word
Kelly at the dinner table.
“Mommy, Papi just said a square word.”
“A what?”
“A square word!”
Confused looks all around. Finally Kelly says “You know, a bad word”.
“Oh, a swear word.”
For the record, I didn’t say a square or swear word.
It was a crooked word with a goofy grin.
Kelly Almost Snorts a Worm
Kelly and I have Spring Break this week and we’ve a good size list of honey-dos we’re working through.
Kelly at the Mailbox. She helped pound the post.
First on the list was installing a mailbox. Our local mailwoman is terrified of our dogs (Lena in particular goes nuts with barking – even with a bark collar). After a couple of firm (but polite) letters from local post office…not to mention going without mail for days (DOGS OUT written across letters), we decided to put a mailbox a couple of feet outside the dog fence.
The dogs still bark and the mailwoman is still jumpy (the invisible fence is sorta like faith), but we’ve gotten our mail finally.
Also on the list is prepping our garden for summer. We’re doubling the size this year, that means digging out sod and filling it with a good mixture of compost, top soil, and peat moss. Not that there’s much of a science to it, but the Vander Veen family is getting good at creating compost (even if the kitchen compost is mostly egg shells and coffee grinds).
Anyway, digging out sod turned up a lot of gooey earthworms that the robins loved. Today Kelly found a huge earthworm trying in vain to climb out of the garden pit.
“Cooooool Papi!” she yelled.
Seeing what was bound to happen, I said, “Kelly, please don’t taste or smell the earthworm.” (See sense cycling).
Sometimes with Kelly the verbal (corrective) prompts arrive way too late to compute against the quirks hardwired in the mind. In her brain, I was already tardy in my request.
Picking it up, Kelly managed to (just) not lick the squirming worm. She did, however, cup it in her hands and take a good snort. For a brief second I envisioned a slimy earthworm plugging up her nostril – a wormy mustache of sorts. But no, having snorted, she threw the worm towards the woodpile.
“Kelly,” I said. “I need you to stop sniffing things. Please.” She was having a particularly sniffing day. By afternoon she had sniffed concrete, asphalt, grass, a mailbox, and a weed-wacker.
“Okay Papi!” She said with the biggest smile.
That’s the thing, it’s exasperating but cute at the same time. And a little funny.
Chacos Day 2012
Note: For Context – View Here.
This very well may be the earliest Chacos Day ever.
Miles Traveled: 1 World Span. Miles Walked: Thousands.
We’ve freak weather year this year. Winter didn’t happen. Skipped us entirely. Not a snow day taken (and I expect our students to be all the smarter for it). Summer came at the start of March, with daffodils pushing up at the beginning of February. I had to mow the yard March 20th. And today it was 85 degrees according the car.
Crazy. Makes me look over the shoulder to wonder what kind of summer this will be. I hope it’s not dry and dusty in June.
I missed a Chacos Day entry for 2011 and that, frankly, wasn’t right. I can’t remember the date when I dug them out of the closet, blew off the dust bunnies, and strapped them to my feet (the arches feeling so very delightful). They got mild wear and tear last summer – their soles mostly on Michigan beach sand and the YMCA down the road.
This year will be different. Be noted: March 21st was Chacos Day. They will travel far this year. In two weeks they head back to Texas (their hometown), with a good and purposeful trip to the hill country (may even dip in the Guadalupe River). Summer they’ll be in Tennessee, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, possibly Canada, and the ever beautiful UP of Michigan (love her so).
They turn 12 this year and if that isn’t a testament to a spectacular product, I don’t know what is. I might finally pick up a new pair at REI. We’ll see. The canvas straps are finally starting to rip.
But I bet I can get another summer out of them.
Happy Chacos Day. Summer is coming.
THE
There are few more head banging, frustrating, pull-out-your-hair UGGHHH moments than trying to teach your child a SIMPLE concept and them positively, absolutely, rapturously and completely NOT getting it.
Ren and I have spent 3 hours¹ teaching Kelly to read the word the.
THE is a black-hole in the neurons of Kelly’s mind. She uses it every day. Correctly. She just can’t read it. It becomes THIS, THEY, and (weirdly) WHATHOW.
We strategize. We plead. We threaten (I know, bad parents). I come up with funny faces and song notes (this helps, a little). We praise when she gets close (whathow).
But sometimes that mental block just ain’t moving.
So we try again tomorrow. And she’ll get it right on the first knock.
__
¹This is not an exaggeration.
Nightmares
Tonight, while putting Monica to bed, she starts asking questions about Columbia. Ren calmly answers them, summing it up as “you would have had a very different life if you had stayed there.”
And she would have. We know this because she and Kelly have an older sister whose life, sadly, followed the same road as the girls’ mother. A bleak life.
Monica has misty memories of her older sister. She tries to tell us them tonight. Puzzle pieces that don’t make sense.
And 20 minutes after falling asleep we hear her sobbing.
“Hook, Hook, Hook has come,” she says. We recently watched the Spielberg movie “Hook” and she’s been trying to scare Kelly with it every week since.
Sometimes little girls describe their fears in stories and retellings of movies. Ren and I gently rub her back, kiss her cheek, and describe her real home. A fire going in the fireplace. Two dogs curled on our laps. Food on the counter. Light music playing. Books on the shelf and some in our hands. Parents, Grandparents and Tios and Tias who love them.
She falls asleep.
March 4 Ramblings
Today is Renee’s birthday and we spent the afternoon, like most afternoons, at Sam and Karen’s eating food, playing with cousins, and relaxing. We do a good job of making Sunday a Sabbath, trying to not spend time working, logging on, and getting side tracked with business.
It’s good for the soul.
Grandma Karen made a fort downstairs. Using the ping-pong table as framework, she draped blankets and cushions as walls with chairs as four corner turrets. It was awesome.
Kelly ran to me and asked if I would play with her. She asks this often. It sometimes makes me sad because it feels like a very temporary moment. Like this moment won’t last because teen years are around the corner with make up, girl friends and, yes, boys. And Papi and Mommy will shift to the side.
“Let’s play pretend,” Kelly said. ”You be the grandpa, I’ll be the mommy, and you’re coming to visit my pong-ping house.”
“I’m the grandpa?” I asked.
“Yes, and I’m the mommy.”
And for that moment, walking into the fort that was a house, I had a deja vu sense of future. Kelly chattered away about making eggs, me having to take care of my grand daughter and how I wasn’t supposed to give them too much candy, a husband who looked like Justin Beiber, and how she loves her job as a “C.E.O” of a 45 company a.k.a “princess”¹.
A worthy goal.
__
¹For a long time, the answer to “what do I want to be when I grow up?” was “princess”. Over time I’ve been able to convince my daughters that monarchies go against the wonderful values of republicanism…not to mention it’s not possible in America. They now use the American equivalent: a CEO of a fortune 500 company. Sort of a bad family joke.
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