She shoots...she SCORES!

We got our first snowfall this week. My mind went to skating and I recalled something from a couple of years ago. I may have mentioned that Tio is a real boy’s boy. Loves sports, loves gaming, loves to tussle and show off with his buds. I took him to his first hockey game at Dartmouth College. It was spur of the moment and got the tickets at the arena. It was women’s hockey. No problem for me, but I wasn’t sure if he’d like it simply because they were girls and he was 9.

We’d had a couple of talks about respect for women and girls before that when he, like generations of boys before him, put girls down as being inferior simply because of their gender. I hoped he’d be okay because it was a live sport. When the teams raced out for warm ups they were all bulked up in padding, black skates, gloves, and helmet with face guard, you couldn’t tell them from droids except for a lot of ponytails.

After watching them work the rink for a couple of minutes Tio said, “Hey, Grampy! I think these are women.”
I looked at the tickets like I was making sure, “Hmm, you’re right! This is women’s hockey,” was all I said.
We watched in silence for a few more minutes and then he said, “Man, they’re really good!”

That’s the last word we heard on that. The game went into 4 overtime periods and he screamed his head off for the local girls. The following season I had to duck to avoid a puck in the head that one of those women shot into the stands. Tio still has that puck. I think we should go again soon. We’ve seen some great games.

The Pitter Pat of 16 Tiny Feet.

Dogs have been an integral part of my life since boyhood and especially since I met Tish. In fact we met because our puppies got entangled in front of my house one day. Actually, it goes back further. I rented that house because they allowed dogs. Doggy destiny if ever there was one. None of that cute little tale prepared me for the canine onslaught to come.

For the past 20 years we’ve had as many as six dogs at a time all living in the house. Right now we have four Australian Shepherds. I’ve had hot and cold relationship with them, the constant noise level on one end and loving to cuddle and watch them interact with each other at the other, the constant attention they need, the never quite sleeping attention they give. Tish adores them and because of them she’s become a professional canine behavior specialist.

But, man, what a learning curve. Constant noise, dog fights, dog bites, puke and dirty dog yards. A bed full of animals while we slept, a sofa crammed with fur, lapping tongues and noses when we hang out. Then there’s the floor covered with them constantly around our feet like a flock of sheep. Getting in synch with them wasn’t easy. There’s a rhythm to living with dogs to keep your own sanity and to keep them getting along in the house. Some of them never get along. I’ve torn up my share of fights and Tish has a constant fresh bite on one hand or the other from dogs at work. I remember once holding one high in the air while another hung on by her teeth, both of them suspended off the ground. It was like trying to pull taffy apart. That is, if taffy screamed and squirmed and bit and bled. We have a series of gates around the house to separate them when they don’t get along or one is in heat. Walking through our house is like prep for a hurdle race. Always lifting a leg over a barrier and opening others. If they had a hurdle event where you jump them while carrying two hot dinners and a beer, I’d win the Olympics.

So here we are all these years later and I’ve finally found my place with the dogs. Often, I’ve had one special dog that was mine alone and right now that dog is Bunnie. She’s a sweetheart of a pup but overprotective of me. That’s my fault and our resident canine expert tells me I need to do something about it. I agree totally but with all the other things going on in this house, who has time to train a dog, too?

Enter the grandsons and talk about a whirl of activity all the time. Kit likes the dogs the most, Tio the least. Doc sees them as background noise. Background, my left eye! They bark when a car goes by, they bark and jump when someone comes home, they bark at the wind blowing and they bark at each other. I don’t mean a pleasant little woof, either. I mean a cacophony of slathering, roof raising ruckus that dulls the senses and makes hearing anything else in life someone else’s enjoyment. “Be quiet!” “Shut UP!” “Leave it!” “Go lie down.” all join in as part of the chant to bring the total decibel level up to four dogs yapping and a group of humans yapping back.

I actually do love the whacked out beasts. Some days more than others but they’re definitely an important part of the insanity in our lives. Someday’s I do wonder what a quiet retiring life might be like. Tish has dreams of building a yurt on an undisclosed location that she and I can get away to.

I bet she’d want to bring the dogs.

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

When I was a kid I lived inside my daydreams. They were so vivid and so much a part of my life that if I ever write an autobiography, it’ll be from my daydream perspective. At eight, I was a secret agent driving a Jaguar XKE, a superhero named Fantam, and a half inch high adventurer. By 10, I owned a famous nightclub where I saved world leaders from international counterfeiters. In middle school, I safely crash landed a sabotaged airplane with all my classmates aboard on a desert island where we all lived for a year before being rescued. By the time I finished high school I’d flown a balloon solo around the world, traveled the entire solar system, and invented an undersea helicopter. It was a busy life and cost me a public school education by the time I finally turned to the real world.

Tio and Kit sing. Both of them. They hum and sing aloud without even noticing. I never thought much about this when I only saw them for a few hours a week or an overnight twice a month but it was constant. Living with them this past summer became difficult, not because they were noisy, messy kids who needed attention and were underfoot all day long, but because they were always singing. Every minute of every day. When they weren’t talking they were singing over each other, with each other, and at each other. It drove me out of my wits, invading my brains so thoroughly that I couldn’t think. Literally could not think. I had to ban them from the upstairs living room if they were going to sing. “Do it downstairs, outside, or in your own head, just not here.” Wanting to stay upstairs with me they tried to stop, but failed. By the end of summer, they had at least learned to recognize they were doing it and had some success in controlling it. After school started I learned from their teachers that they both disrupted the class with their singing and humming. Fortunately, by that point they’d come far enough to curb it in school and they’re much better at home.

As the summer drew to a close, I was starting to formulate a theory about why they do this. It’s an avoidance mechanism. Humming fills your thoughts with a distraction so that thinking about and being involved in real events around you become less vivid, less real. It occurred to me that my daydreaming had was the same thing: a way to avoid the troubles in my world. An entire childhood spent living in a fog seemed a matter of choice to me before. But looking back I could see that I desperately wanted to avoid the troubles in my family, my fears at school, and a world too large for me.

The proof of this came in car rides. I would tell Tio to be quiet saying, “Let’s talk. Tell me stuff, ask questions, whatever.” After a few moments of quiet, he’d start divulging horror stories about the drug abuse and misbehavior that went on in his former home and life. The silence was an ipecac that churned ugly and frightening thoughts up from the sub of his conscious. We talked about them without judgement so he could relate them without fear of retaliation, so that they could go their own way and he could move on with his life.

There’s still a lot hidden inside those heads, camouflaged by song and other mind games we all protect ourselves with. I guess as a writer and former daydreamer I have plenty still stuck to the bottom of my own cauldron that I dare not dredge up. I don’t want to force the boys to face their fears but I know it will be healthier for them when they do.

Can’t Live With Them...

Tio came to me yesterday with a problem. “Grampy?” he said with worry in his voice, “I don’t know what to do.” We sat down and I asked what the trouble was. He was serious, perplexed, and at odds. “There are two girls at school who want to go out with me. What should I do? Which one should I pick?”

Hmmmmm.
Tio’s been a ladies man since he was in first grade. He always had a ‘girlfriend’ in his mind or on the line. Every year there was a string of female classmates that he fancied and every year he got them to “go out” with him or shoot him down, which he always took graciously enough. The first day of school when he moved back into our town last midyear he came home and told me he had one picked out. She shot him down three days later.

I was just like him from first grade on, too. I was always in love with one girl or another in my class. Except for me my relationship with the girl in question was entirely imaginary. I daydreamed all sorts of fantastic adventures I’d have with a pigtailed blonde or brunette in tights and bangs on my are while we rescued the school from fires, intruders, or traveled the world after diamond smugglers. I never dared to actually talk with them. That would be suicide. Nuh Uhn.

Not our Tio. He never had a problem telling a girl he likes her and now that he’s reached the age of 12 and adolescence is just over the crest, things may start to get more serious. Right away I thought of a great William Steig cartoon from the 1930's where a 12 year old boy has a girl his age backed against the malt shop window, he with a mischievous glint in his eye and her in doubtful anticipation. The boy says, “I don’t buy dames chocolate malteds for nuttin’, y’know.” I suddenly saw Tio in that picture and it made me smile. He’s going to be a heartbreaker. Ladies beware.

I looked him in the eye and gave him my sage advice for the day. “If only I had been so lucky to have your problem.”

When You’re Full of Beans...

Last night we ate “alfredo au poulet maison” and “haricots au beurre faux et la muscade” (For the layman that’s homemade chicken alfredo and beans with margarine and nutmeg - but doesn’t it sound so tasty en francais?). The kids gobbled it up and I put it on the list for something to make again. After supper they wanted to raid their dad’s stash of peanut butter fudge swirl ice cream. Buddy has to put his name on it or it gets swallowed whole on the first day it lands in the freezer. Since he wasn’t home from work yet, we debated and in the end they each got a small bowl.

Kit brought his empty bowl over to the sink and said. “Mmmmm. I sure do love Dad’s cooking.”

“Me, too,” I replied.

What’s Up With Doc?

I should tell you a bit more about Doc. We call him that because he loves Bugs Bunny and “What’s Up Doc?” was one of the first phrases we got him to say clearly.
When he came here at 4 ½ he was still in diapers full time, his speech was way underdeveloped so he could barely pronounce consonants and his social skills were lagging. That didn’t mean he was a slow thinker or not a nice boy. He just hadn’t been exposed to or taught anything. I sure didn’t want to be unloading his shorts day and night so within 3 weeks he was toilet trained for keeps. Next, we worked with the preschool’s speech therapist and started insisting at home that he enunciate the words he was trying to say instead of garble them all together one long string of vowels. We really pushed it through the spring and summer and now, 9 months later, his speech is reaching kindergarten level. We hope that the trend stays good so he’ll be ready for first grade next fall.

He’s really a great kid. He likes to be with other kids, he chatters endlessly and repeats questions until the end of time. On the downside, he’s borderline compulsive obsessive and it take him a long time to get comfortable in new surroundings. No surprise there because he spent his first couple of years moving around more than Mayflower Inc.. Both his brothers have moved so many times in their lives I doubt they know all the places they’ve called home for a day.

I’ve read studies that correlate low income, less educated families directly to underdeveloped children and that the better the education the parents have the better chance at learning the kids have. That’s certainly been the case with these boys. Their parents struggled to make ends meet and have lagged on the income/education curve. But they both grew up in families with education and chose not to pursue higher learning, and limiting their options for higher earning. So what is it that makes them fall smack into the middle of this trend? Surely, they know helping their kids from an early age is beneficial, that working with the school only enhances their child’s chances, that involving themselves in every step towards early comprehension pays off in spades.

Yet Doc is a perfect example of a boy poised to fall through the cracks through no fault of his own. The schools in this country are collapsing under the weight of being too many things for our children. They can’t be police, social workers, parents, and teachers all rolled into one. First because we can’t afford it, and second because it doesn’t work.

I know today’s parents have a lot on their plates. Keeping up a decent standard of living calls for two incomes, no one is home full time anymore, and kids have a lot more distractions and demands on their time than it seemed even a generation ago. But parents of all educational backgrounds have overly busy work schedules and raise kids in this social environment.

I’d hate to think that a poor education/income = just don’t care.

The Kid's Eye View

I was tucking Kit into bed tonight and asked how his counseling meeting went this week.
“Fine,” he said.
“Do you like seeing him two weeks in a row?” I asked.
“Sure. Maybe I could see him more than that.” he suggested.
I pulled his blanket up around his chin and explained that people don’t see therapists more than once a week unless they’re really troubled.
“Like if they can’t find their keys?” he asked.
“Something like that.”

It zoomed me back to a talk I had with Buddy when he was that age. Same situation: tucking him in and answering a last question for the day. He wanted to know why we need taxes. I explained that taxes pay for the fire department and schools and building roads.
“You mean they pay for speed bumps?”
Something like that,” I said.