The Bumpy Road to Brotherly Love

There exists in our house this morning a time of holiday peace and love. Down the hall in the living room the two sons are chatting amicably as one of them plays NCAA football on the Wii. In fact, the older one is even sharing his most-valued playing tips with the younger one, and the younger one is even politely voicing his appreciation for this.

It's like the front of a Christmas card, isn't it? One would think such domestic peace lives in our house like this all the time.

But alas, it does not. In fact, the road to this brotherly love has been a bumpy one, starting Monday morning when the boys began spending their holiday period of "all day for the next two weeks" togetherness. Unfortunately, what started as a road of joy and anticipation went quickly downhill from there. Yes, there were some times of working and playing together, but it slowly began to decline into joking jabs, intentional irritation, and slapstick humor lacking in all self-control. Then it moved to yelling and some pushing and shoving. Angry tirades began to spurt up here and there, putting the mother on "intervention standby status". In fact, after noticing a ominously quiet spell after an especially explosive ping pong match in the garage, the mother seriously wondered if one of them had slayed the other and was even then working up the nerve to tell her the bad news.

All of this negative behaviour worked its way into a frothing bad sibling frenzy last night, when the whole family was going out to dinner with friends (whom, incidentally, they like and want to think well of them). On the way to this dinner the parents were aghast to hear the resounding sounds of slaps and punches coming from their two boys who had the extra bad luck of having to sit next to each other in the back of the suburban.

Oh, the horror of it. A severe punishment was quickly brought down on their heads, and they both spent a somewhat somber dinner out with friends, hopefully mulling over their misdeeds.

This morning, both boys awoke repentant and intent on reversing some of their deserved punishment. They were put through the paces by their father, and then were both so appreciative to have the punishment reversed that now they just love each other.

Which leads the mother to wonder, would it have just been better if they had just punched and slapped each other about mid-Monday afternoon, and we could have achieved this level of peace a long time ago? An unconventional method of parenting, I know, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

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What Was Lost Has Now Been Found

Remember the lost boomerang story? How Jacob and his friend Josh threw his boomerang up into a tree and it got stuck it and we staged a late-night boomerang rescue? How I gave the boomerang up as forever lost and instead mused about parenting dilemmas involved in such childhood "traumas"?

Well, the good news of the week is that the boomerang has been found. Jacob and Josh were walking across the schoolyard this week and saw some boys playing with it. I suppose it fell out of the tree with all those fall leaves, like some kind of dream gift from the sky to a group of young schoolboys. Actually, it's quite amazing that it didn't get confiscated before Jacob and Josh spotted it, since boomerangs aren't your usual accepted playground toy, but nevertheless, there it was.

Jacob has to go through some clever identification questions to gain it back ("Where is it from? How much did it cost?"), but finally he convinced them it was his, and brought it home.

Really, with this end result it turned out to be the best of all scenarios: boomerang was trapped, parents made an effort to rescue boomerang, boomerang remained lost and child dealt with loss of boomerang, boomerang shows up later and is found.

Truly, all is well again in Boomerang World.

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Letting the Ball Fall to the Ground

I suppose that in the case of most sports, one is supposed to hold on to the ball. Football, basketball, baseball - catching and holding on (at least for a little bit) is very crucial to how all of these sports are played. The ball is important.

I've been thinking about this metaphor a lot lately in terms of the boys and sports. Anyone who read my posts from this past spring knows that we had some trying sports times when we first came to Fresno. Both boys went though sporting seasons that all but crushed their sporting self-confidence. I came out of the seasons disappointed and a more than a little bitter that what I thought would be a great transitioning aid to their move to California turned out to be more harmful than good.

It's just that before we moved (and the first few weeks during our time here) I pictured their sports teams a vehicle of sorts - one that would bring them new friends and acquaintances, feelings of success in the their new town. But it wasn't that way at all.

With the fall came new sports. I posted several times in September about soccer with Jacob, and how I bribed him to go to a new team after his school team didn't have enough players. How the bribe was successful and how I thought he had a found a team where he could really feel comfortable. I didn't write about the rest of the story, though.

To make a long story short, it didn't work out. He practiced with this second team for two weeks, and every practice I would check with the coaches, saying, "You've got his name, right? You know he's signed up and all?" They said, "Yes, we've got him. He's good." But when it came time to pass out the uniforms for the first game, they didn't have him. His name was not on the list, and he stood and watched as the other boys got their uniforms and his name wasn't called. Unfortunately, other new players had also come to the most recent practices as well, and by then they had too many to put on the team.

There was a chance that he could play on that school's B team, but if you know anything about Jacob, starting over with a new team is just not his thing. Plus, the B team coach told me he didn't even know if Jacob could actually play on his team, because he thought maybe he was supposed to give preference to the boys from his school. The result of this was me with my "Whatever" coffee mug in hand, considering trying to fight to get him on the B team. However, it seemed an uphill battle, he was extremely resistant to the idea, and after all of this I was just weary of it all.

In the end, I just let it go. I stopped trying to push the symbolic basketball of "hope and adjustment" to Jacob and I just let it fall to the floor. I took a deep breath and realized that I was the one pasting all of the "new-town-adjustment " stickers onto the ball. Because the truth is that Jacob is happy. He is adjusting well. He doesn't seem to need those teams at all. In fact, they probably did more harm to his adjustment than good, but who was to know that when we started?

That ball has now rolled off in the corner of our messy garage somewhere. The "hopes and dreams" stickers that I had glued on it have fallen off and lie on the ground beside it. I am trying (even today as Jericho heads off to school basketball practice) to leave it there. If the ball gets picked up again, it will be because the boys pick it up, and they can do with it as they wish. I will try and keep my expectations and hopes off of it.

I'll do my best just sit back and watch, and cheer when I can.

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A Foot on Both Paths

Last Tuesday Jason and I staged a Boomerang Rescue. This came about after Jacob had been playing up at the school yard with his friend Josh with the boomerang that he got as a souvenir from Disneyworld last year. Yes, I was also a little worried about them throwing a boomerang around, but fortunately they foresaw this danger and wrapped it in a bandanna for protection. Actually, we all know that this would be no protection at all, but considering how hard it is to throw a boomerang correctly, I wasn't too worried about it.

The unfortunate news was that the boomerang, powered by the strong arm of an 11-year old and aided by a very gusty wind, flew up into a tall tree and became stuck. The boys attempted to throw other things at it to get it down, but the end result was that Jacob came home very disconsolate that his prize souvenir was now stuck in a tree.

As always in these situations, a parent has several choices. You can always take the "Teach Them That Sometimes Boomerangs Get Stuck in Trees" path. My mom always summed this up with her "Balloons break, only the best players get to play, and you're too old to cry" speech. The other alternative as a parent is to take the "Try to Make Things Better Because Sometimes That's What Families Do" path. Whichever one you choose, there seem to be some kind of positive effects on the long-term development of the children, as they learn lots of important things from both.

Of course, with the first road, you get to stay in your warm house and watch TV. On the second road, you get to go out into a dark, blustery October evening with your flashlights and long, long ladder.

Standing in the schoolyard with my sweatshirt hood tied tightly around my face, watching Jacob and Jason up in the tree, I got to thinking: Will this be the night that Jacob will remember his parents going above and beyond to help him recover something that was important to him? Of course, then came the next thought: Or, will this be the night that Jacob remembers his father falling out of a tree and breaking some important body part? Then this thought: Or, will this be the night that Jacob remembers the police coming out to question his parents, as they in their hooded sweatshirts climbed up a long ladder in the dark into a tree right next to the school library where people were still meeting?

As it turns out, he won't remember the evening in any of those ways. We were not able to even locate the boomerang, much less climb up through the branches to get it down. However, as we headed back across the school grounds with our ladder and flashlights, Jacob seemed quite content with the situation. In a way, we were traveling down both roads. He learned that sometimes things get stuck, and life manages to continue on just fine - the sting of losing something good does eventually fade. But at the same time, he learned that sometimes families do go above and beyond to try to make it right. Even if they fail, they do try.

Perhaps sometimes having a foot on both paths is the best path of all.

photo by Luis Beltrán (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)

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Tattoos of my Discontent

Well, yesterday I mentioned in passing that the boys had several weekend sporting events that were - not so fun. At least they were not so fun for me, the mother who sat and watched her talented sons sit on the bench - in two sports and four separate sporting events.

I could write for miles about how frustrating it is for me. However, I will not carry on about that at the moment. I will however say that a telling symbol of my sporting malcontent showed up on my inner arms this morning. These were in the form of little, inch-long black marks imprinted repeatedly on my inner arms, around the elbow area.

These came about at Jacob's basketball tournament. He played (or didn't play, as the case was) in three of these games. Of course you have to pay to attend these games, and when you pay they stamp your hand with the "This One Paid a Whopping $5 Per Day" stamp. But now little replicas of the stamp are on the inside of my arms...after I spent most of all of the games clenching my crossed arms tightly to myself...in my extreme discontent.

Sigh. Are these signs to calm down during these sporting events? To take deep breaths and assume a less-imprintable position of meditation as the game goes on? Perhaps to hummm softly to myself, or perhaps just to gently blow on the stamp to let it dry before the game begins. I am really not sure.

I suppose I really do need to figure that out (and take another shower) before the next slew of sporting events begin. Tomorrow.

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Six Happy Things

In the midst of a weekend filled with discouraging, disappointing, and dissatisfying sporting events that our sons are taking part in, here are six things that are making us happy right now.

1: My new spring mug that I found at the fancy Sur la Table store last weekend, marked down to a mere $2.99. Cute and my favorite color - green.

2. This "stained glass" piece of lupine flowers that is now finally finished and is displayed in one of windows. A couple of years ago when we were on Prince Edward Island in Canada, I saw one just like this, and thought, "I could make that." So I did. It just took me a couple of years to get it all done.

3. The boys' new shorts (with pockets) and jackets (also with pockets, although that doesn't matter). They're never been too much into non-athletic type shorts before, and I was surprised when they picked these nice plaid ones.

4. These recent pictures of the boys that my new friend Sandra took and gave me. (Thanks, Sandra.)

5. Jacob's Domo collection. Today he found Domo #6 at a yard sale for only $.25. What a deal.

6. This green package of gum that I splurged on at Starbucks yesterday. The gum is not that great, but the container is great - shiny and green (see #1, above).

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An Unfortunate But Inevitable Equation

Here is the Equation of the Day at the Locke house:

Large amount of force + Front tooth = Less of a front tooth

Yes, it is true. We had a tooth trauma, as Jacob had a bike accident yesterday evening and broke off part of his tooth. Apparently he was riding on the sidewalk down to the basketball court and had to ride off of the curb into the bike lane when some runners came up behind him. After they passed he attempted to jump back up onto the sidewalk, but unfortunately did not make it. The resulting jolt him sent him over the handlebars and tooth-first into the sidewalk.

Fortunately, two good things happened after that. (Well, three, if you count the wonderful fact that he did not hit straight on his head and get a concussion or worse, and yes, he was wearing a helmet.) The ladies that had just passed him came right back to him, and Jason came up in the car right after this. Jason had been planning to come down in the car to watch him shoot baskets before he went to his evening meeting, so was right there quickly on the scene.

Bless his heart. He lost about a third of his front right tooth. It's sensitive and aches from the impact (as does his lip that got cut), but isn't giving him too much pain.

So after a call last night to one of our new church friends, we got the name of a dentist, and this morning I called him. They can see Jacob tomorrow morning, which is wonderful (but not if you're Jacob and have to go to school today with a broken tooth).

I suppose we can add this to our "services" tally for all the new services we've been forced to learn about our first month here. We now know of a Computer Doctor after a virus ate our computer. We found a good place to get new tires after we got a flat last Friday night driving to dinner. Now we have a a dentist.

I suppose some would say that we're being tempted with trials in our new home, but another way to look at it would the "Fast Track to Learning Our Way Around Fresno". Or perhaps it would be our Cliffs Notes to Fresno, if the Cliffs Notes were really quite expensive.

Ah, well. Off to the Ladies' Bible Study, and to hope that Jacob is not too bothered to be at school and hope that we don't need to acquire any new Fresno services today.

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Only A Few Sentences

Well, I have not written in a few days, despite having our new computer set up here at home (hurray)!

We had a fairly calm and relaxing weekend, but one of the most interesting things that I have been really thinking about the past few days is this:

Anyone who challenges a 10-year old to stick Flaming Hot Cheetos up his nose must take responsibility for the consequences of that suggestion.

That's all I have to say for now. More (although not necessarily on that subject) tomorrow.

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