vaccuum… rinse and repeat
After an injury last fall which cut short her season, the Somerville Swing is back on the field this summer with a new set of moves…
Notice the left hook for initial propulsion, followed by the single arm finish. ‘Swing’ is really at the top of her game.
Rare footage from last year shows the beginnings of an approach which now, with increased maturity and strength, comes to full fruition.
During the winter, Rada and I play alot of chess, not so much so this time of year. But given the unrelenting rain, she pulled out the set last weekend and we set up the pieces.
She’s not a very good loser so I usually let her win the first few games. My strategy is to play the game in earnest until I’m just about to checkmate her, and then stop trying and let her ‘catch up’ and eventually win.
This time she started out as usual, chatty and silly, making the kings and bishops have little conversations. But a few moves later, interestingly, she got me into check. I quickly recovered, and returned to planning my strategy to ‘almost’ checkmate her, only to have her put me into check again. I recovered once more, but a few moves later she put me into check a third time and I realized with a pang that I was cornered. She’d checkmated me.
I was flabbergasted and annoyed. What a little twerp: who did she think she was, beating me at age 8, huh?
On the outside I was all proud and happy… “wow, sweetie! What a great job. Well done!”
But I continued to feel the uncomfortable surprise of having been sucessfully ambushed by someone of whom I’d always thought myself smarter. Gradually, however, a grudging admiration emerged. For the first time she had beat me fair and square. Way to go, girl.
“You are the best mom. I love you more than anyone else in the entire world. You are my beloved mom, and I love you a million trillion gazillion ninety hundred thousand zillion quadrillion 10 hundred thousand ninety nine billion times.”
(I guess I should soak it up now, might not be hearing much of this when she’s 15…)
Every non-rainy day we ride the bikes to school and work. There is a routine:
First Rada straps on her knee pads and I unlock the cables and u-locks. After this, we pull the bikes off the porch, put on our helmets, and attach any relevant cargo to the front platform of my bike. We do a final pre-flight check to make sure we’re set to go, and then head off.
We have a route. Rada always goes first. We start off on the sidewalk in front of our house. She stops 15 feet before every intersection. I consider telling her she can stop a bit closer but change my mind.
When we hit the playground we cut over to the path that goes behind the basketball court. This is the best part of the ride: no cars, no walkers, just our bikes and the asphalt river that takes us along.
Towards the end, we hit the sidewalk for one last leg of the journey. She purposefully yells out, “to your left,” to any pedestrians up ahead.
When we get to school, the knee pads are tucked into her backpack. I cable her helmet to her bike on the rack by the school’s back door.
I send her off with a hug and a kiss, get back on my bike and head towards work.
There is a piano in our apartment and I play it from time to time. When I was young and restless, I played alot, and once even fancied myself an expert of sorts. But now, with jobs, soccer practice, and daily laundry loads, I am content to get in a few minutes on the ivories here and there.
Rada enjoys music, but has showed no interest in the piano. Last winter she developed a yearning for the trombone and asked repeatedly for lessons. Worried that its weight would physically overwhelm her 4 ft frame, as well as in dreaded anticipation of the sonic emanations that would come from such a structure, I stalled and deflected for months.
Finally last week Rada turned her sites toward the violin. My ears perked up. String instrument, lightweight, fairies in the woods…? I went for it.
So last weekend we went to Johnson’s Strings for the rental. The store has shelves and shelves of violins of all sizes…. starting with little bitty ones no more than 10″ long and extending through violas, cellos and big bass viols.
We picked up a small violin for her, outfitted with bow, rosin, and shoulder pad. All the pieces fit neatly into a ultra-indestructible case.
In preparation of her first lesson Rada spent the week taking the violin out of its case, assiduously rubbing the bow with rosin, and then dragging it across the strings of the instrument. The resulting sound was excruciating like nothing I’d ever heard before: words fail me.
I’m sure that the lessons will soon infuse Rada with new skills, new techniques, new sounds.
Rada’s white mice Suzie and Sally had a short run with us. Only in residence five months last fall, they both became sick and died within a few days of each other. Sally was the first to go and was buried in the back garden behind the azalea bush.
Suzie, however, hung on for another week before passing away. By that time it had gotten quite cold and we decided to wait a few days for the weather to get a little better. So we preserved her in the freezer for a day or two. The weekend went by and we still hadn’t gotten the chance to do it. Then, over the next days, the temperature unexpectedly got even colder. The ground was now frozen solid, and I realized that we had missed a deadline: the burial would have to be deferred until spring.
Suzie rested quietly in the freezer the entire winter, largely forgotten except for repeated reminders to babysitters who might have mistaken her for leftovers and occasional moments when I would see the folded napkin in the baggy and temporarily forget what it was.
Last week with the beautiful weather and the ground soft from rain, Rada & I took our shovels, dug a good hole next to Sally and finally closed the loop. Rada said “goodbye Suzie, thanks for being my pet”. We filled in the dirt, patted it down, and went back into the apartment, quiet for a while, each in our own thoughts. It was an ending, and however minor, it was still noted.
I never thought I’d see this day. Look at her go!
And WITH NO TRAINING WHEELS.
Here she is with Pata Suyemoto,
the bike whisperer who made all it happen:
My friend Elizabeth describes herself as her daughter’s sherpa. For those of you not familiar with mountaineering, sherpas are local experts who hire themselves out to wealthy tourists to help with climbing the summit. The sherpas follow along behind the mountaineers, carrying tents, sleeping bags, emergency medical supplies, food for the evening meal, etc.
Elizabeth follows along behind her daughter Emilie, carrying school backpacks, extra shoes, snacks, emergency medical supplies and often food for the evening meal.
I, too, am the sherpa in my daughter’s life. Rada and I recently came back from a plane visit to my mother, and I experienced new meaning to the words ‘one carry-on bag per person’. As my daughter ran up ahead clambering off the plane, I followed behind with my carry-on, my personal bag, her carry-on, her personal bag, and two stuffed animals.
There is some poetic irony, however, to this. While visiting my mother, I went on a very productive shopping spree, and acquired way too many purchases to bring home with me on the plane. My mother graciously agreed to bring them back for me in her bags later this month.
