Monday, July 17, 2017

Jordan's 13th birthday

Jordan had a passionate wish for his birthday this year: He wanted to have laser tag at Gas Works Park, something he remembered fondly from a friend's birthday party a few years ago. You can hire a guy to come out with armaments, train you and your friends, and run various fun games.





I hear they had a total blast. Me, I was picnicking with the grownups on the lawn; it was a beautiful summer day, after all. We guarded the cake. Jordan's design is somewhat similar to last year's. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the cake in its final form, with the collection of freestanding fondant people he molded in red and blue. 


Here's most of us at the picnic site.


Entertainingly, on summer Sundays a bunch of knights-in-armor meet up at Gas Works for live action role playing. We enjoyed them after the laser tag was done.



Aaron's 10th birthday

For Aaron's birthday he wanted a medieval party, inspired by the wonderful book The Inquisitor's Tale, which we read as a family and then recommended to the fourth grade class. He dressed as a knight.


Friends came in various guises - more knights, a peasant, and this very animated town crier.


We made marshmallow catapults out of craft sticks and rubber bands, and catapulted the dickens out of the backyard. It was hilarious!




As usual, Aaron designed his cake, and I executed it according to his instructions. This is a crest inspired by something D&D related. That's meant to be an eagle in the center, not a goose.



Happy birthday Aaron!!

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Latin

Jordan is heading out on tour with the boychoir this week. They will sing seven concerts in two weeks, in various locations around SF and LA. It's a ton of work, but they also get a lot of playtime. He did a similar tour two years ago and had a total blast.

Before leaving, they have a lot of homework, memorizing complex Latin lyrics. One of Jordan's more challenging songs is a Latin translation of the Song of Songs.

Nigra sum sed formosa, filiae Jerusalem.
Ideo dilexit me Dominus et introduxit in cubiculum suum et dixit mihi:
Surge, amica mea et veni.
Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit,
Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra, tempus putationis advenit.


I am black and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem.
So my lord loved me and brought me to the bedroom and said to me:
Rise, my love, and come.
For the winter is past, the rain is over and gone,
Flowers appear in our country, the time for pruning has arrived. 

These are boys who can be fully professional about almost any content, but it's probably just as well they're singing it in Latin and not English. I could wish for Hebrew, but never mind; I've made peace with the fact that the vast majority of Western choral music has taken place in a Christian context. And the fact that it was in Latin caused me to learn that the Hebrew word zamir, which I thought meant "singing," can apparently also mean "pruning"; since both songbirds and vineyards are appropriate to the setting, scholars have evidently made various interpretations. How about that?

It has been hard for Jordan to apply himself to his Latin memorization. This would be a slog for most people, and besides that it's summer, and this weekend was his birthday. He resisted. But he found that if he actually gave it his serious attention, he could totally do it -- in a lot less time than he had spent procrastinating about it. As in, after putting it off for eight hours, he put his back into it for all of fifteen minutes and was done. And who among us has not been there? We all have put off important tasks for weeks, or months, or years, only to find that when we finally faced the music (so to speak), it was only a couple hours of effort. Am I right? 

After one such session I asked him to write himself a note that he could read the next time he got frustrated. Here is what he said:


"Dear Jordan, this is Jordan. I am here to remind you that it is easier than it looks and that you should take it BIRD by BIRD. ps: Only look for 1 BIRD at a time. vps: Just keep trying, don't stop for anything."

The bird thing is from Anne Lamott, who told the story this way:
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'
Regarding "vps": Jordan thought "ps" stood for "personal sentence," and "vps" indicated a "very personal sentence." I explained to him that it means "after the signature" - yet more Latin.

Monday, July 3, 2017

Nostalgia

Today I went to pick up Aaron from the bus stop, actually the front steps of our temple, where he is dropped off after day camp at the Stroum JCC on Mercer Island. Mostly people were waiting in their cars (sigh), but there was another couple there with their toddler, waiting for the older sibling to arrive on the bus. I saw them and was transported back to another time, when Aaron was the toddler, and I would pick him up from the preschool in the same building, and wait for Jordan to get back from the same day camp on the same bus. There was another mom there every afternoon with her son; I didn't know her especially, but the kid was one of Aaron's classmates, and she was moderately friendly. She had long black curly hair and she would entertain her son by timing him as he raced up and down the ramp next to the stairs. Have you guessed? It was my good buddy Jessica and her son Adam. You meet the best people at a good bus stop.

Back in the present, Aaron arrived, and I told him about my reminiscing. He was astonished, and then philosophical. "Someday years from now, maybe you and I will remember today," he said. "Walking home from the bus stop talking about when I was little." Wow; yeah.