Grandparents Day (Part 3)

Performing in front of a roomful of rich grandparents must have been stressful. I am sure that KT the kindergarten teacher was grateful when time for a break came. Many of the small classes at the private school have a teaching assistant. The young man who fills this role for RG’s class took the children to the playground; Grandma and I followed.

The children scattered to various play activities. I spotted RG and another little girl following the TA to an equipment shed. As I approached the conversation clued me in that the other little girl is someone I will call BIP for Bad Influence Peer.

The TA was telling the two little girls (in a gentle and kindly manner) that it was problematic to let them play together because they often got into trouble. They would have to promise to be good, he said, for him to allow their companionship for the rest of the day.

Eager to get to some favorite toys, they agreed. The TA handed them both some hand scoops and they ran off with them.

I followed at a discreet distance. Random Granddaughter and BIP were digging and scooping leaves and dirt in and out of holes with considerable intensity with the two scoops.

I looked at BIP with some curiosity. The word “fox” came to mind, for two reasons. First, she is very pretty. I have no doubt that when she is 15 she will be regarded by the boys as a “fox” (or whatever the slang for an attractive girl is by about 2020.) Second, she struck me as having a cunning, calculating expression, fitting the connotation of cunning, crafty.

I heard RG say to BIP, “Let’s be good today, so we can get to play together.” RG is trying to be a good influence I thought. I could not tell if it was working.

Grandma and I had errands to run and tasks to do on our day on the mainland, so we left, with plans to join the mommies and RG for dinner that night at their house.

Grandparents Day (Part 2)

Imagine a school which is something like a combination of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford with a student body of highly intelligent, very creative, frequently neurotic young students. Most come from wealthy backgrounds, though there are a number of “scholarship” students as well, selected on a combination of merit and a desire to promote diversity. Instead of young adults ranging from late teens to early twenties, the students range from preschool to eighth grade. You will find something like the private school Random Granddaughter attends as a kindergarten student.

When Mrs. Random and I arrived for Grandparents and Grandfriends day, we were escorted into a lobby with the other Grands. We were quickly and efficiently registered, receiving a sticker displaying our name, our grandchild’s name and marked with a color indicating grade level (green in our case indicated our grandchild is a kindergartner). A large movie screen presented a show documenting a trip by eighth graders to Vietnam.

I joked earlier about RG “adopting” rich grandparents to get in their will. My prediction has had a slight detour with truth in a surprising way, which I will get to in a bit. However, Mommy (a teacher at this school) confirmed that the Grands day is in part a marketing promotion to bring in students and bequests for this expensive to operate private school.

 

After a brief wait a staff member welcomed us and described the plan for the day. At a little after 9 am the grandparents would go on a school tour, and then go to their assigned classrooms. However, we kindergartener grands were directed to go our grandchild’s class right away, so we missed the tour.

In our kindergarten (one of three) we found 13 children gathered around the teacher listening as she read to them. [Each classroom at the private school has 16 students; 3 were away on Thanksgiving travels.]

Grands gathered in a circle of folding chairs surrounding the class. The kindergarten teacher, whom I will refer to as KT, was a pretty, buxom young woman who spoke to the children enthusiastically and positively. Although I did not encounter the other two kindergarten teachers, I could see why Mommy had selected this woman as RG’s teacher.. The mommies try to be positive and upbeat with RG, and careful about what she encounters in the arts, to maintain her innocence and enthusiasm for life as long as possible.

KT read a story, more of a chant, actually, about picking things out of a bucket. The moral was to pick good things out of the bucket; things to be thankful for. The teacher then greeted the Grands and explained the children would perform “The Gingerbread Man” for our entertainment. The children gathered in groups by characters. Several children got to play each character. For example, there were two gingerbread men (both girls), one blond, one light brown. The characters were always referred to in the singular and performed, spoke, and sang in a group.

We saw Random Granddaughter in a group of three girls, each playing a cow, indicated by a hat with horns.. RG nodded slightly when she saw Grandma in the audience, but otherwise ignored our presence.

KT narrated the play and frequently prompted the children with lines and cues. Mommy later told us that this teacher loves to use drama in her class. “I generally avoid trying to direct plays cast with small children,” Mommy said with admiration.

At the end of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear goes mad after learning of the death of his daughter Cordelia. They play is often considered one of the most wrenching and depressing of Shakespeare’s tragic creations. For a time, a happy ending was tacked on to productions. As Wikipedia summarizes:

Nahum Tate produced an adaptation in 1681: he gave the play a happy ending, with Edgar and Cordelia marrying, and Lear restored to kingship. The Fool was eliminated altogether, and Arante, a confidant for Cordelia, was added. This was the version acted by Thomas Betterton, David Garrick, and Edmund Kean, and praised by Samuel Johnson.

This page provides a pretty typical version of the traditional Gingerbread man story.  When I worked as student teacher in ghetto public schools I sometimes told it to small children, taking great delight in presenting the tragic ending where the fox gobbles the runaway cookie man. As I remember, the little ghetto children (growing up in an atmosphere of crime and gangs) took some delight in the violent ending.

At the end of the kindergarten play, when it is fairly obvious that the fox is going to gobble the Gingerbread Man, all the characters gather in the meadow and have a jolly picnic in peace and love. This provides the uplifting and politically correct version of the story suitable for a private school for (mostly) rich children.

After the ending, the children all sang a song. Up to that point, Random Granddaughter’s acting (in what was obviously a bit part) had been a bit perfunctory, but when it came to the song, she participated with great enthusiasm, singing loudly and gesturing firmly.

After the conclusion, each child received a large paper apple and dropped it into a large symbolic Thanksgiving pot, telling the audience what they were thankful for. “My family” was a frequent choice. RG said, “My family…and trains, planes, and automobiles.” As I can say with some confidence that RG has never seen the movie of that title, it was an interesting contribution on her part.

At that point, the children went into the audience to sit on their grandparents’ laps. The grandparents were asked to share a favorite memory of their grandchild.

RG came and sat in my lap. Grandma shared, “We were present when RG first crawled by herself and when she took her first step.”

 

 

 

Grandparents Day (Part 1)

“Please take your toe out of your mouth,” said Grandma. It is fairly common for people to nibble at stubborn cuticles, but not many do it on a toenail.

I was reading a book to Random Granddaughter called Zoo Babies while Mommy fixed a roast chicken as a two days before Thanksgiving family dinner. Mama had been studying at the University, and had not arrived home yet. It was the evening of the day Grandma and I had visited RG at kindergarten on Grandparents and Grandfriends Day.

I had found the book at the recycling center, in the trailer where they stack books people dump in the waste paper and they think might be attractive to someone or other and they sell for about 50 cents or so. This book, copyright 1953, was attractive to me because my family owned it when I was nine years old so it made me nostalgic to encounter it again and to bring it as a gift for RG.

Later that night, after dinner, as we drove home toward the ferry, Mrs. Random said, “RG is very limber, being able to stick her toe in her mouth.”

I replied, “Perhaps she can show her trouble-making school friend how to do it and she can go home and impress her billionaire daddy. ‘Look what Random Granddaughter showed me how to do at the School for Very Bright Children,’ she will say when she gets home.”

 

[to be continued]

Part 1: The Va-Va-Voom Sisters

The Va-Va-Voom Sisters are three sisters who live in the Pacific Northwest, whose first names all start with the letter “V.” I have never met the oldest, V1, who lives in Idaho. Although I haven’t seen them for a while, I consider V2 and V3, whom I met in my last job, when I worked for a library system, as good friends and charmingly eccentric people.

V3, the youngest, told me that their father is an airline pilot. His dream as a dad was to teach all three of his daughters to fly. Unfortunately, they all hate flying and get airsick. I presume they all still love each other, but if you are a parent, don’t get your heart set too much on your children loving your dreams and passions. None of the Va-Va-Voom girls will go up in a plane with dad.

In several chapters, I will describe why I enjoyed knowing them so much.

Final Chapter of a Story of Late Dawning Realization

 

My sister, as with all my siblings, is very intelligent (if quite eccentric). After a slow start, she eventually went to college a couple of times, relatively late in her life. In her forties, she went to the University of Wisconsin and studied Greek Philosophy and Ancient Greek (the language) because she felt like it. Later she got a degree in Library Science (I am not sure where) and became the director of a small library in Vermont, so she could live near her daughter and her two grandchildren, where she lives now.

I suspect that if my niece and her husband lived near us, my barely extended family and my sister’s barely extended family would hit it off well. But it’s impossible to know these things for sure.

 

In any case, a few years ago, I thought again about that meeting at Beelzebub’s apartment with with his “niece” (if indeed she was a relative of his), Lucille. I had completely forgotten Lucille for many years, and had not even made a connection with what happened to my sister. (I had only met Lucille for a few minutes and at that time in my life, constantly moving from high school to high school in different states, my childish mind was in confusion and turmoil.)

Strange as it seems, it only dawned on me suddenly at the age of 60, that Beelzebub was a a serial sexual predator who preyed on young girls such as my sister. Whether Lucille really was his niece

I don’t know. Although I sensed something was wrong by Lucille’s tense, agitated manner, I was far too immature and naive to understand that she was trying to communicate, Help, I am being held prisoner by a rapist!

In retrospect, Beelzebub’s comment to 14-year-old Random about how people would not understand his “unconventional life style” now strikes me with horror.

 

Obviously, my parents had no grasp of this as well. Fairly or unfairly, I hold them responsible for what happened to my sister, However, life is very strange. In this case, a terrible event, the rape of my sister, turned into the birth and blossoming of a wonderful person, my niece J.

 

 

 

Recently, there have been several shocking news items about young woman being held prisoner for long periods of time by an older man who raped the victim over a long period of time, undetected by other people who encountered the victim but did not realize what was happening. The story I tell is slightly different, but not that much.

When I was in high school, my life was a bit in tumult, as we moved frequently and as I attended six different schools, and as I was in immature introvert. I only met Lucille for a few minutes, and forgot about her completely, until my brief encounter with her popped into my mind a few years ago.

Life is very strange. Sometimes something good emerges from something awful.

 

(There is a little more to this story, but I am not willing to put it in my blog. I will send it to a few friends by email, who usually get communication from me by tat method. If you are a reader and want to be on the list, email me at eman_modnar@yahoo.com. At the moment, I am planning to email David, woo, pandemonic, and Pete. That covers most of my regular readers, I think. If I left you out, don’t be insulted; just drop me a line.)

Part 3 of a Story of Late Dawning Realization

I remember J (my niece) visiting us when she was about 12. My wife and I compared her to our daughter, a year or two older, very unfavorably, and predicted that J would be a very messed up adult as she grew older. We lost all contact with my sister and my niece for a number of years.

When we were living in Oregon a number of years ago, J called us one day and told us that she was going to college in California and working in a conservation program for youth. She asked if she could visit us. At the time, my daughter was attending college at Oberlin in Ohio.

When J came to visit us, my wife and I, expecting a very messed up young adult, were surprised to meet a pleasant, mature, self-possessed young woman. We took her out to dinner and had a lovely time. She came to visit us a couple more times, eventually bringing along a boy friend, S, she had met at college. He also proved to be an intelligent, courteous, and delightful young man. Both niece J and boy friend S graduated together with degrees in environmental engineering of some sort. They moved to the east coast of the United States and got married. A few years ago, I attended a couple of family reunions on the East Coast, organized by my Aunt Naomi and financed by her millionaire daughter, my cousin Joanna. Now living in Vermont, both niece J and her now husband S attended. They not only attended, they served as brilliant organizers and facilitators, taking people on hikes through Vermont and later New Hampshire wilderness and invariably being kind, patient and endearing to everyone at the reunion, ranging from little babies to aunts in their seventies.

Being a rude person, I said to my sister, “I am surprised at how well your daughter turned out. When she was a teenager, I thought you were a terrible mother and your daughter would be ruined for life.”

My sister’s answer was, “I was indeed a terrible mother. I have no explanation of how well she has turned out except that she had a lot of strength of character and she attended a Waldorf School.”

[I am a little skeptical of that explanation. My youngest brother and youngest sister attended a Waldorf School and they are both seriously messed up individuals.]

Unfortunately, as my daughter and her partner live here on the West Coast, and J and her husband S live in Vermont, they have never had a chance to meet as adults, nor have their children had a chance to encounter each other. My daughter and her partner, of course, are parents to the inimitable Random Granddaughter, now attending kindergarten at the School for Very Bright Children.

J and S have two children. My sister, very close to my Aunt Rose, like her became a follower of the weird semi-cult of Anthropacifism, based on the teaching of the German nut philosopher Rudolf Steiner. The Anthropacifists are best known in the United States for the Waldorf Schools and for biodynamic farming. My niece’s two children go to a Waldorf school. Although I consider them to be nutty overall, the Waldorf schools have some good points going for them, and bio-dynamic farmers have some success with their method of agriculture, which includes some peculiarities such as planting by phases of the moon.

Part 2 of a Story of Late Dawning Realization

The significance of Lucille’s behavior only popped into my consciousness a couple of years ago, though it should have been apparent to me about 45 years ago, as I shall explain in part three of this post.

About six years after the Rockland County episode with Beelzebub, I was living in Los Angeles, after flunking out of college and going out with Mrs. Random to be. One day I learned that my parents were having great difficulties with my sister D. They decided that she needed to get away from home.

There was a precedent in that they had sent me to live with my aunt Rose (mother’s sister) for a year when I was four years old. I suspect the year with Aunt Rose saved my youthful sanity.

However, my parents told me that my sister was going to stay with Beelzebub for a while, which struck me as very strange. Also, my sister was about 16 years old at the time, instead of four years old as I had been when sent to live with my aunt.

A while later, after I had been married for a little while and our own daughter had been born, I learned that my sister was pregnant, and that Beelzebub was the father. My sister came home, had the baby, raised her daughter as a single mother and never married.

Beelzebub never suffered any consequences for this statutory rape (as it should be described as my sister was underage when she became pregnant) and never paid any child support. As far as I could tell, my parents never took any action to hold Beelzebub to account.

As a young, immature married person I thought of my parents, What were they thinking? but mostly I thought about my my own marriage and my own child. “

Random Granddaughter Executes Her First Commission as an Artist

Sunday, child genius Random Granddaughter is coming to visit. As she does not have a driver’s license yet (as far as I know), I presume she will bring the mommies along. Mrs. Random and I always like to see Mama (my daughter) and Mommy (her out of law partner) along with her little highness (though she is not that little, already being tall enough to play center on a kindergarten woman’s basketball team).

After she announced at the age of five that her career goal was to be an artist (apparently displacing her goal at four of becoming a triple threat fire chief, railroad engineer, and ferry captain), I came up with an artistic commission for her. As I am not very close to my siblings, either geographically or emotionally, I cannot say for instance how old any of them are. However, I still remember the birthday of my brother B (who lives 3000 miles away in Portland, Maine) as well as the birthday of my sister D (who lives a hope skip and a jump away from brother B in Vermont, where she is head librarian of a small library) though they are not close at all for reasons I will not go into.

My other brother J is a little closer in Missouri, though beyond hope emotionally as he is bi-polar. I don’t want to go there as I am close enough already to that mental state. My other sister, P, lives even closer in California, and beyond beyond hope emotionally as she is a “born-again” religious fanatic and a narcissistic monster. I live next door to being a narcissistic monster myself, so I certainly don’t want to be any closer to sister P.

Brother B is about three years younger than I am. I thought to myself, I did not even wish him happy birthday for his 60th birthday. What a terrible big brother am I!

Through the mommies, I asked Random Granddaughter to create a birthday card for my brother in time for his birthday of June 2. A couple of weeks ago an envelope arrived in the mail, inside another envelope. The inner envelope which contained a couple of butterflies painted on it, was sealed. A note from my daughter said that neither she nor Mommy had seen the card as RG had painted it and sealed it into the envelope.

I sealed it in a fresh container envelope and mailed it to brother B in Maine. I emailed him a warning that he was about to receive a birthday card that no one had seen, so I was not sure it was decent and appropriate. A few days later he emailed me back that he had received the card and it was quite decent and appropriate.

I should tell him to hold onto the card and pass it on to his grandchildren (as yet unborn), as once RG becomes a famous artist, even her pre-kindergarten works will probably sell for millions of dollars at auction.

An Even Later and Even More Appropriate Post for Memorial Day (Part 1 of 2)

 

 

 

 

On most Wednesday mornings I volunteer with a group of church members who cut and split wood to donate to elderly people and to people in temporary financial distress to use for heat. My closest neighbors in the woods where we live on a large island (on our five acre lots “close” means they live about a quarter mile away from us), members of this Protestant church, invited me to participate in their “wood ministry.” 

I usually ride to and from the splitting with him. After each morning of sawing and splitting and hauling and delivering, the volunteers, all male, all church members, and all retired, gather at their church for coffee and snacks. At 65 years of age, I am the “baby” of the group. I am the only member of the volunteers who is not a member of the church.

Last Wednesday, the Friendly Neighbor (as I dub him in my blog) and I walked out to his pickup truck to head home. It was a sunny summer day. He commented on how attractive the few scattered clouds looked against the blue sky. As he is an interesting person of many talents and experiences, I asked, “Did you ever consider being a pilot and flying among those clouds?”

He replied, “Indeed I did. I passed all the physical exams and qualified for the training. However, my father died and I felt a responsibility to take care of my mother. Though it turned out that I could have gone on to fly. It took a while, but after my father died my mother found a job and was able to take care of herself.”

At first I thought he was talking about flying as an avocation, but then he said, “One of my best friends, a person a couple of years older than I and a person I really looked up to, was the first American pilot shot down in the Vietnam War.”

I then realized he had planned to be a pilot for the Air Force in order to fight in Vietnam.

He continued, speaking of his friend, “He was a very talented and capable person. He had been accepted into medical school. However, he really thought of himself as a person who had been given a lot, and he felt an obligation to give back. He felt he would be helping people live free, and not be prisoners under Communist control.”

He then continued, “He was not the only close friend I lost in Vietnam. Another one of my friends was shot and killed as he was getting off a ship to go ashore in Vietnam for the first time.

“In terms of my pilot friend, who had always been listed as missing in action, a few years ago, I just happened to read a local [Puget Sound] newspaper which carried an article about how his body had finally been recovered, long after the war was over. It was just a coincidence to see that article in a local newspaper [as he was not from Puget Sound], but I was very glad I had.

“The loss of those two close friends really brought the war home to me.” [A few days after he told me the story, I was able to find on the web the story about how the pilot's body was recovered

 I listened quietly and respectfully. There was really nothing more for me to say.

[The rest of his story will be provided in my next post.]

 

 

 

A Mystery about My Father

 

 

When I was a child, it was clear to me that

A) My father was a very intelligent (perhaps brilliant) man.

B) He was unable to get and keep (until late in life) a decent job.

C) My parents’ marriage had been a very bad idea.

One thought that has occurred to me only recently is that my father got my mother pregnant before they were married and that they had to get married. No hint of this was ever spoken to me by any of my relatives, but it might account for their ridiculous and pathetic joining together as a couple.

As I was growing up, I had the impression that my father had started attending the University of Chicago as a young man, but had dropped out about a year before he was to graduate because

D) He got married.

E) I was born.

F) He joined the United States Army (during World War II) and was assigned to serve in India.

I can’t remember if they ever specifically told me that sequence of events. I remember some college textbooks around published in the 1930s around our house. I remember my father talking about finishing his degree by distance learning. A lack of a degree (or so I understood) was one of the main reasons he never seemed to be able to get or keep a decent job (until the very last years of his life).

Quite a while after my father died, my extended family had a couple of family reunions on the East Coast of the United States (paid for by my “Chinese” millionaire cousin, Joanna Nichols).

At the first reunion, my father’s three sisters, Diana, Naomi, and Henriette sat around reminiscing about their childhood in Chicago in the 1930s and answering questions from the rest of us (the younger relatives).

I asked about my father dropping out of the University of Chicago.

My three aunts looked astonished. “Michael never attended the University of Chicago,” my aunt Naomi said in a definite manner. “He might have taken a class or two at the community college in Chicago, but that would have been the most college education he ever had.”

I was astonished. I looked at my mother in puzzlement. At that time, my mother was aging and failing fast but she was still coherent (though none of us realized that she was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s Disease). However, whether she was very weary that evening or chose to act as she was too tired to follow the conversation out of embarrassment, she acted as if she didn’t understand what we were talking about.

So I don’t know. Did my parents intentionally create a myth (mainly aimed at me, as the oldest of their five children) about my father dropping out of college when no such circumstances were in fact true? I will never know, I guess.