Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Salsa Girls
Like teenagers who have left home for the first time, our tomatoes, in boxes spread throughout the office at the back of our detached garage, are maturing off the vine. Elizabeth barely saved them from a couple of wicked cold nights. We didn't get to the peppers, and they turned into long, discolored, mushy incarnations of their previously sassy selves (sassy ones pictured above). This means salsa season is over, because now if we wanted to make a batch, we would have to buy most of our ingredients from the grocery store, which as yet seems like an awful idea to me, as garden-fresh produce is still too fresh in my memory. But I can't complain. It was a good salsa year. We made a lot of salsa, and we ate a lot of salsa, and almost all of it was very good. It was a good salsa year in another way, too: we discovered that both of our daughters really like the stuff, even when it is of about medium spiciness.
I already knew that Sonora liked salsa, but Rowyn, in her short life, has been a little pickier than Sonora. So I feared our youngest daughter would shy away from this magnificent blend of tomatoes, onions, and peppers. But last August, I gave Rowyn a corn chip lightly dipped in a batch of fresh salsa. She sucked the light red juice off, and then held the empty chip up and said, "Mo, Mo" rather emphatically. So I dipped her chip again and again she licked it clean. Then we gave her a little cup of salsa, which she dipped dry. Finally, Elizabeth gave her the whole 5-quart glass bowl--there was maybe half a cup left in the bottom--but instead of just dipping more chips in, Rowyn heaved this heavy bowl up to her mouth and began drinking the salsa juice. And this wasn't some wussy batch of salsa, either; there were a couple of jalapenos and a few other sort-of-hot peppers in the mix. I was genuinely proud of Rowyn and Sonora. These are MY girls, I thought to myself.
When I say I was proud of them, I'm not exaggerating. I felt the same swelling in my chest when Rowyn gulped down the last of the salsa as when Sonora learned to ride a bike or when she hiked the whole 3.5 mile long Kamiak Butte trail without any assistance. I didn't know I felt so strongly about salsa until that moment, but now that I think about it, this saucy stuff has been with me my whole life. Even in the late 70s early 80s, a decade before most of the U.S. had discovered its now favorite condiment, my family and I were eating salsa. We would put it on tacos and enchiladas, dip corn chips, Frito's, Wheat Thins, saltine crackers, and vegetables in it, and yes, sometimes some of us would even drink a little bit of it.
Every summer my dad, with the help of my mom and some of the kids, would hack away at onions, tomatoes, and chillies. We would throw it all in a big pot and we would can it up, though it never tasted as good after being canned as before. In the winter, though, a can of that salsa tasted like a warm morning. Even my grandma liked to make salsa, though she favored a sweetened green salsa with a tomatillo/shredded zucchini base. Salsa was so important to my parents that they spent an unthinkable amount of time dicing and then drying heaps of salsa ingredients. Their thought was that they could give this as gifts to their children-who were by then mostly all grown up--because dried salsa would be more portable than canned and could be taken with a person in an emergency. That way, even if there was some natural or personal disaster, my parents' children wouldn't be without their salsa.
Perhaps one of the reasons Elizabeth and I get along so well with our in-laws has its roots in salsa, for hers is also a family of salsa connoisseurs. In fact, the recipe I use (with adaptations) comes from the family recipe book Elizabeth's mom put together for her kids several years ago. On more than one occasion, I've experienced a pleasant sense of home-ness while crammed in together with the sisters and Mom Porter in her kitchen chopping salsa vegetables together, and then again a few hours later when we devour together that whole gallon of salsa.
And I guess that is it, that is why I was so happy when I realized that not only Sonora but also Rowyn loves this stuff. It felt like a solid confirmation of heritage: I am my parents' son and my grandparents' grandkid. And these two little tomato-faced girls are ours, not just biologically, but, perhaps more importantly, they are our kids culturally. I won't be putting together bags of dried salsa for them, but when they leave home as young adults, I hope they take with them positive, strengthening associations of home. I hope that they will grow tomatoes and peppers and onions and chop them up together into a medley that will remind them that they belong.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Great Wife
I just want to give a shout-out to Elizabeth for being super great this summer. When I came home from a youth activity with a snapped clavicle on the second day of my summer break, she had a TV tray all set up next to the living room recliner, where I was ordered by the doctor to sleep. On it were a bottle of water, pain medication, remote controls for the TV, etc., and some books and magazines. Several times each day, she would ask me if I needed anything, if I was doing okay. She would lovingly scold me when I would try to do things I shouldn't have been doing and patiently endured my high levels of "I'm broken, what should I do?" anxiety. In one such moment of high anxiety, she even helped me fashion a very uncomfortable figure 8 brace out of some climbing gear and a messenger bag strap.
When I ditched her and went to Europe with some of my siblings and parents, she was happy I had the opportunity to travel and has never begrudged me the trip; she was just glad I brought home some German chocolate.
For my birthday, she asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted the family to go on a bike ride and have a picnic at the half way point. I wanted to see how my collarbone would fare while riding, and I have this dream of us being a family that does lots of biking together. She was glad to come along and even held back from mentioning that the time I had chosen was stupid because it bridged Rowyn's nap time. She was even mostly calm when Rowyn shrieked like a child possessed by a demon for the second half of the ride.
When I got my tonsillectomy, she again prepared the TV tray for me out by the recliner (I was supposed to sleep sitting up a little bit so that I wouldn't choke on my blood). But this time, in addition to the books and magazines, she also presented me with a fistfull of DVDs and a bouquet of hydrating/nourishing drinks. Throughout the week, she made several soups that were blended smooth so I could eat them. Not only was she able to make soups using produce from our garden, but they really were good, and all of them could be eaten warm or cold. And again, she stopped me from doing things that the doctor said could cause blood to start gushing in my throat.
I just wish I were better at taking care of her when she is down. I feel as if our relationship is pretty balanced in most ways, but she has got me completely beat in the area of taking care of people who are sick or hurt (and celebrating birthdays; she's really good at that, too, whereas I suck at it). My excuse is that I come from a family which has sort of a fend-for-yourself mentality. And that attitude seems to be pretty deeply ingrained in me. I'm usually extra helpful for a few hours after she has gotten hurt or fallen ill, and then I sort of drift off into a weird non-helpful mode. This ineptitude of mine is really frustrating to her, and, frankly, also to me.
It was very pleasant this summer to have someone anticipating my needs when I couldn't take care of myself. Some day, I hope, I will learn to do the same for her when she is in need.
When I ditched her and went to Europe with some of my siblings and parents, she was happy I had the opportunity to travel and has never begrudged me the trip; she was just glad I brought home some German chocolate.
For my birthday, she asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted the family to go on a bike ride and have a picnic at the half way point. I wanted to see how my collarbone would fare while riding, and I have this dream of us being a family that does lots of biking together. She was glad to come along and even held back from mentioning that the time I had chosen was stupid because it bridged Rowyn's nap time. She was even mostly calm when Rowyn shrieked like a child possessed by a demon for the second half of the ride.
When I got my tonsillectomy, she again prepared the TV tray for me out by the recliner (I was supposed to sleep sitting up a little bit so that I wouldn't choke on my blood). But this time, in addition to the books and magazines, she also presented me with a fistfull of DVDs and a bouquet of hydrating/nourishing drinks. Throughout the week, she made several soups that were blended smooth so I could eat them. Not only was she able to make soups using produce from our garden, but they really were good, and all of them could be eaten warm or cold. And again, she stopped me from doing things that the doctor said could cause blood to start gushing in my throat.
I just wish I were better at taking care of her when she is down. I feel as if our relationship is pretty balanced in most ways, but she has got me completely beat in the area of taking care of people who are sick or hurt (and celebrating birthdays; she's really good at that, too, whereas I suck at it). My excuse is that I come from a family which has sort of a fend-for-yourself mentality. And that attitude seems to be pretty deeply ingrained in me. I'm usually extra helpful for a few hours after she has gotten hurt or fallen ill, and then I sort of drift off into a weird non-helpful mode. This ineptitude of mine is really frustrating to her, and, frankly, also to me.
It was very pleasant this summer to have someone anticipating my needs when I couldn't take care of myself. Some day, I hope, I will learn to do the same for her when she is in need.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
-ectomy
Up until a week ago, when I had my tonsils scooped out of my throat while I was unconscious, I was sort of proud of having really, really big tonsils. I would show them to people and they were virtually always impressed. "Wow," they would say. "Those really are big." I would nod and say something final, like "Yep. They've been big since I was a little kid."
When I was six, my family doc told me I had the tonsils of a thirteen-year-old. As a short, skinny "late bloomer"--I wrestled in the 75 pound weight class in eight grade and I only had to worry once about not making weight--I held onto those words well past my thirteenth birthday. When I was fourteen, I imagined I must have tonsils the size of someone in his twenties. This was consoling. I didn't really start growing toward my current height of 6' 2" until the summer before my senior year in high school. There wasn't much that was impressive about me: I was smaller than average, had below-average grades, didn't have any discernible musical talents, didn't have a car, didn't play on any of the sports teams, and wasn't stunningly attractive. I was "cute," in the way little brothers are cute. So, my tonsils were one of my only real assets, and I would show them off in times of insecurity.
Even into adulthood, my tonsils had remained an asset. Sometimes, if I liked someone and thought they were good friend material, I would tilt back my head, or, as the case may be, squat down frog-like and tilt back my head, and open my mouth and perform a sort of exaggerated, prolonged yawn while they inspected the large bulbs of lymph tissue at the back of my mouth. They would usually peer in cautiously, move their heads right and left pigeon-like, and then their eyes would widen, and they would say "Golly, those really are big."
But now they are gone. A lot of people get their tonsils out because of frequent infections, tonsillitis and the like, but I haven't had much trouble in that area. I used to get yearly bouts of strep throat, but that ended when I was about 19. For the most part, my tonsils treated me pretty well. We had a relationship of mutual respect. Except, of course, that they sort of obstructed my airway all the time, made it hard for me to swallow sometimes (and sometimes got food stuck in them that formed these funky-smelling little white balls that I would cough up about once a month--I called them "pearls," but Elizabeth didn't agree), made me snore with ever-increasingl intensity, and caused me to breathe badly while I slept. But I didn't really fault them for this. It wasn't like they were being malicious. They were just being their big selves. It's just that they were standing right in the doorway of a rather important passage.
So I went to my local family doc and asked him about them. He said, "Those are pretty big. They should come out." He didn't really hmm and haw about it like he does about most everything else. And then I went in for a consult with the Ear, Nose and Throat doc. He said, "You should probably have those removed. Having a tonsillectomy will likely help you snore less or not at all, and will probably make you breathe better at night." In the back of my mind, I kept asking myself Why, for the last three decades, when they look in my mouth and smash my tongue with a giant Popsicle stick, did other doctors not immediately exclaim, "Let's cut those things out of there!" But there was no use asking such a question now.
Because of my marvelously loud snoring, Elizabeth and I have been sleeping farther and farther apart. She was wearing earplugs, which helped, but I was waking the baby up and, even with Elizabeth wearing earplugs, my snoring was loud enough to keep her, and sometimes the baby, from going back to sleep. Besides wanting my wife not to rue the moment I entered the bedroom, I was also hoping that a tonsillectomy would help me sleep better, which would cause me to wake up with energy and vigor in the morning, which would in turn cause me to have more motivation, stamina, insight, and talent. So, I went in for the surgery.
Things went pretty well in the hospital. About seven different women in scrubs made rotating visits. I couldn't keep straight who was from the lab, who was from the pharmacy, who was just an assistant, who was my nurse now, who would be my nurse later, who would be my nurse during surgery, who was my nurse anesthetist who would be shoving a tube down my throat, etc. But they were all friendly and didn't mind that I had confused one for another and forgotten their names. Finally, one of these women pumped some stuff into my IV line and told me, "Teenagers love this stuff. They always ask me if it is for sale somewhere. But it's not for sale. For some reason, they just laugh and laugh and laugh." I asked her what this stuff was for and she said, "to help you feel okay about surgery." I thought that it was probably a little late not to be okay with surgery, but didn't tell her this. Instead, I let the artificial feeling of euphoria invade my body and enjoyed the gurney ride down the hallway, though I didn't feel any uncontrollable urges to giggle. I remember greeting my doc, all decked out in surgical scrubs, and then my pre-surgery memories stop.
When I came to, or rather, when my brain began coherently recording memories again after I came to, I was chatting it up in German with a nurse from Germany. She had been in the U.S. for the last twenty years, but I must have recognized her accent and we played get-to-know-you in German in the recovery room. When she departed she told me my German was good, which pleased me, but the ironic thing is that it couldn't have been that good because MY UVULA IS MISSING.
You see, to roll the German "R" properly, one needs to get the uvula and other loose soft-palate materials jumping around in the back of one's throat. It's not like the Spanish R, which is rolled with the tip of the tongue on the hard palate.
I made the discovery of the snipped uvula a couple of days after my surgery. My curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see what this bundle of horrible pain looked like (this has been painful, very painful, and nauseating, but enough bellyaching), so, standing before a mirror, I gingerly spread my mouth wider and wider until I could see back there. Sure enough, my big, fluted, fleshy tonsils were gone, replaced by white scabs over inflamed red throat skin. But to my astonishment, the white scabs continued above my tonsil-holes, up along my soft palate right up to where my uvula used to hang. Now it just forms a rather shallow V.
I didn't realize it until then, but I was also sort of fond of my uvula. It fit. It dangled there between my giant tonsils sort of like the buddy who is always brought along as the third wheel because he is good at helping the conversation along at awkward moments. Actually, more often than not, it didn't hang freely, but was sort of stuck to one tonsil or the other. But my uvula was never a problem. I had never even thought of cutting it off; it looked so harmless and good-natured. And apparently, besides my uvula, my doctor felt like digging out some of my soft palate as well. Unexpectedly losing some extra skin while I was anesthetized was sort of shocking and a little dismaying.
In a way, I feel as if I've been circumcised again, and, once again, nobody asked me if that was okay. It's not okay, just so you know.
I've been doing a little research and, apparently, uvulectomies (a word I never knew existed) and trimming off a little extra soft palate tissue are often done to try to help people with sleep apnea. When I had my consult with the ENT doc, I mentioned that I stop breathing at regular intervals throughout the night and could possibly have sleep apnea, so maybe he took that as the green light. I'm not sure. I have an appointment with him in a couple of days and I'm going to ask.
But the damage is done. He's not going to sew anything back on (and I don't get to keep my tonsils in formaldehyde either--I had to sign a release saying I agree to this). Perhaps my new and improved mouth/throat will work wonders for me. Apparently I snore no more, not even a little bit, which keeps things peaceful in bed. I have yet to reap the rewards of extra energy, motivation, talent, and insight, but it's only been a week. Maybe those will come. And, after a few more times waking up to discover that I have not unexpectedly lost a little body part while I was unconscious, I'll probably feel safe again. And the pain will eventually go away.
I'm going to miss my tonsils, and my uvula, and my soft palate tissue, and I will have to find new ways to show my friends I love them and make myself feel special, but eventually, I am sure, I'll be glad to have had my elective tonsillectomy and my involuntary uvulectomy. It was all just useless tissue anyway, right?
When I was six, my family doc told me I had the tonsils of a thirteen-year-old. As a short, skinny "late bloomer"--I wrestled in the 75 pound weight class in eight grade and I only had to worry once about not making weight--I held onto those words well past my thirteenth birthday. When I was fourteen, I imagined I must have tonsils the size of someone in his twenties. This was consoling. I didn't really start growing toward my current height of 6' 2" until the summer before my senior year in high school. There wasn't much that was impressive about me: I was smaller than average, had below-average grades, didn't have any discernible musical talents, didn't have a car, didn't play on any of the sports teams, and wasn't stunningly attractive. I was "cute," in the way little brothers are cute. So, my tonsils were one of my only real assets, and I would show them off in times of insecurity.
Even into adulthood, my tonsils had remained an asset. Sometimes, if I liked someone and thought they were good friend material, I would tilt back my head, or, as the case may be, squat down frog-like and tilt back my head, and open my mouth and perform a sort of exaggerated, prolonged yawn while they inspected the large bulbs of lymph tissue at the back of my mouth. They would usually peer in cautiously, move their heads right and left pigeon-like, and then their eyes would widen, and they would say "Golly, those really are big."
But now they are gone. A lot of people get their tonsils out because of frequent infections, tonsillitis and the like, but I haven't had much trouble in that area. I used to get yearly bouts of strep throat, but that ended when I was about 19. For the most part, my tonsils treated me pretty well. We had a relationship of mutual respect. Except, of course, that they sort of obstructed my airway all the time, made it hard for me to swallow sometimes (and sometimes got food stuck in them that formed these funky-smelling little white balls that I would cough up about once a month--I called them "pearls," but Elizabeth didn't agree), made me snore with ever-increasingl intensity, and caused me to breathe badly while I slept. But I didn't really fault them for this. It wasn't like they were being malicious. They were just being their big selves. It's just that they were standing right in the doorway of a rather important passage.
So I went to my local family doc and asked him about them. He said, "Those are pretty big. They should come out." He didn't really hmm and haw about it like he does about most everything else. And then I went in for a consult with the Ear, Nose and Throat doc. He said, "You should probably have those removed. Having a tonsillectomy will likely help you snore less or not at all, and will probably make you breathe better at night." In the back of my mind, I kept asking myself Why, for the last three decades, when they look in my mouth and smash my tongue with a giant Popsicle stick, did other doctors not immediately exclaim, "Let's cut those things out of there!" But there was no use asking such a question now.
Because of my marvelously loud snoring, Elizabeth and I have been sleeping farther and farther apart. She was wearing earplugs, which helped, but I was waking the baby up and, even with Elizabeth wearing earplugs, my snoring was loud enough to keep her, and sometimes the baby, from going back to sleep. Besides wanting my wife not to rue the moment I entered the bedroom, I was also hoping that a tonsillectomy would help me sleep better, which would cause me to wake up with energy and vigor in the morning, which would in turn cause me to have more motivation, stamina, insight, and talent. So, I went in for the surgery.
Things went pretty well in the hospital. About seven different women in scrubs made rotating visits. I couldn't keep straight who was from the lab, who was from the pharmacy, who was just an assistant, who was my nurse now, who would be my nurse later, who would be my nurse during surgery, who was my nurse anesthetist who would be shoving a tube down my throat, etc. But they were all friendly and didn't mind that I had confused one for another and forgotten their names. Finally, one of these women pumped some stuff into my IV line and told me, "Teenagers love this stuff. They always ask me if it is for sale somewhere. But it's not for sale. For some reason, they just laugh and laugh and laugh." I asked her what this stuff was for and she said, "to help you feel okay about surgery." I thought that it was probably a little late not to be okay with surgery, but didn't tell her this. Instead, I let the artificial feeling of euphoria invade my body and enjoyed the gurney ride down the hallway, though I didn't feel any uncontrollable urges to giggle. I remember greeting my doc, all decked out in surgical scrubs, and then my pre-surgery memories stop.
When I came to, or rather, when my brain began coherently recording memories again after I came to, I was chatting it up in German with a nurse from Germany. She had been in the U.S. for the last twenty years, but I must have recognized her accent and we played get-to-know-you in German in the recovery room. When she departed she told me my German was good, which pleased me, but the ironic thing is that it couldn't have been that good because MY UVULA IS MISSING.
You see, to roll the German "R" properly, one needs to get the uvula and other loose soft-palate materials jumping around in the back of one's throat. It's not like the Spanish R, which is rolled with the tip of the tongue on the hard palate.
I made the discovery of the snipped uvula a couple of days after my surgery. My curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see what this bundle of horrible pain looked like (this has been painful, very painful, and nauseating, but enough bellyaching), so, standing before a mirror, I gingerly spread my mouth wider and wider until I could see back there. Sure enough, my big, fluted, fleshy tonsils were gone, replaced by white scabs over inflamed red throat skin. But to my astonishment, the white scabs continued above my tonsil-holes, up along my soft palate right up to where my uvula used to hang. Now it just forms a rather shallow V.
I didn't realize it until then, but I was also sort of fond of my uvula. It fit. It dangled there between my giant tonsils sort of like the buddy who is always brought along as the third wheel because he is good at helping the conversation along at awkward moments. Actually, more often than not, it didn't hang freely, but was sort of stuck to one tonsil or the other. But my uvula was never a problem. I had never even thought of cutting it off; it looked so harmless and good-natured. And apparently, besides my uvula, my doctor felt like digging out some of my soft palate as well. Unexpectedly losing some extra skin while I was anesthetized was sort of shocking and a little dismaying.
In a way, I feel as if I've been circumcised again, and, once again, nobody asked me if that was okay. It's not okay, just so you know.
I've been doing a little research and, apparently, uvulectomies (a word I never knew existed) and trimming off a little extra soft palate tissue are often done to try to help people with sleep apnea. When I had my consult with the ENT doc, I mentioned that I stop breathing at regular intervals throughout the night and could possibly have sleep apnea, so maybe he took that as the green light. I'm not sure. I have an appointment with him in a couple of days and I'm going to ask.
But the damage is done. He's not going to sew anything back on (and I don't get to keep my tonsils in formaldehyde either--I had to sign a release saying I agree to this). Perhaps my new and improved mouth/throat will work wonders for me. Apparently I snore no more, not even a little bit, which keeps things peaceful in bed. I have yet to reap the rewards of extra energy, motivation, talent, and insight, but it's only been a week. Maybe those will come. And, after a few more times waking up to discover that I have not unexpectedly lost a little body part while I was unconscious, I'll probably feel safe again. And the pain will eventually go away.
I'm going to miss my tonsils, and my uvula, and my soft palate tissue, and I will have to find new ways to show my friends I love them and make myself feel special, but eventually, I am sure, I'll be glad to have had my elective tonsillectomy and my involuntary uvulectomy. It was all just useless tissue anyway, right?
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Lee European Vacation
So, at the end of last year, when my parents, siblings, sibling-in-law and I planned our final route for our European vacation , one of the concerns was that we were trying to go to too many places in the two weeks--the last two weeks of July--we had available. We had seven countries--Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, and Austria--on the agenda. When we got to Europe and mentioned our plans to any European, the response was almost universally one of horror, for Europeans (including my brother-in-law Basilios) generally like to vacation for several weeks in one spot and really relax and savor the local culture. In addition to worries about trying to do too much, I also worried that seven of us might not all get along traveling together in a small RV. But I think everybody enjoyed the trip. I know I did. Below I'll do a skeleton sketch of some of the places we visited. Sorry about the many photos. I had over 1000 to choose from, and the thirty or so here seem to me like a pathetically small sampling (I really wish Blogger would come up with an easier way to build posts with photos and words).
We started our journey in Munich, Germany, and then spent a day driving along the Romantic Road, which is basically a series of towns and castles that preserve a middle-ages flair.
Next, we picked up my sister Trudie and her husband Basilios and headed for Switzerland, where we visited Zurich and Zermatt. Zurich had good food and a relaxing atmosphere.
Zermatt is a little town at the bottom of Switzerland. It is so deep into the Alps that no roads go beyond it; Zermatt is a dead-end town, but a really cool one. It is the leaping-off point for people who want to climb the Matterhorn and a tourist destination for people like us who just want to see the Matterhorn. My sisters Trudie and Kristinia and my brother Clinton and I took a cog-wheel train up to the top of the Gornergrat, where we had terrific views of the surrounding mountaintops and glacier fields. We hiked back down, which was a little more strenuous and took a little longer than we had anticipated (we were all pretty sore for a few days afterward), but hiking through the Alps was one of the highlights of the trip.
After that, we decided that, since we were there, we should catch some Tour de France action. So we stopped in at Bourg Saint Maurice, which was the start of one of the legs of the race. It was too crowded to see the starting line of that day's leg but we got to see all the cyclists getting ready and appreciated the tremendous effort that goes into this race. We also got to see Lance (swoon) leave his team's bus and ride down to the starting line.
From there, we journeyed to Barcelona, Spain. At first, the heat was stifling, and the traffic, with hundreds of motorized scooters aggressively swarming like wasps between cars, was stressful. But we soon adjusted to the heat and began taking the public transit instead of driving the unwieldy RV, and when we started playing in the Mediterranean, we started to really like Barcelona. One side note: all of the males on the trip were injured except Basilios. My dad had recently tripped and messed up his knee. Two weeks before the trip, I broke my collarbone diving for a catch while playing ultimate Frisbee, and two days before the trip Clinton sliced his hand wide open (notice the blue surgical glove he is wearing to keep from getting his hand wet--it didn't work). So Basilios was the only male who could enjoy the water injury-free, and he did enjoy it, diving under the waves like a giddy seal.
In the city, we visited the Picaso Musuem, which shows the evolution of his artistic vision from his days as a student through his cubist works. We also toured the masterpiece of Gaudi--an influential modernist architect--La Sagrada Familia, an astounding building, and walked around the Gothic Quarter (narrow, medieval-feeling streets packed with little shops, musuems, and a few old churches), and down Las Ramblas (a main pedestrian boulevard that is lined with little shops. Strangely, many of these temporary shops were pet stores).
Barcelona is a city I wouldn't mind returning to.
On our way to Verona, Italy, we stopped for a day on the beach near the French Riviera town of Frejus. This stop was definitely too short. The weather, sand, and water were nearly perfect. We were sad to leave. We lived it up while we could, dancing at the campground discoteque, going swimming in the Mediterranean at midnight, and going swimming again in the morning.
In Verona, we watched Verdi's Aida in a Roman arena, built in 30 A.D. While the opera went sort of late (it ended at 1:30 a.m.), the experience of listening to and watching this well-performed masterpiece in a 2000-year-old venue with great acoustics was well worth it.
Venice was next on our list, and while the town was overrun with tourists like us, it was still impressive. The floor mosaics on the church floors were one of many artistic flourishes that struck me. Venice is very photogenic. Basilios, whose father is Greek, was able to point out many of the Byzantine influences throughout the city. Although everyone knows it is a problem, it was still sad to see the Adriatic Sea lapping at the tops of the last barriers that stand between the city and a flooded ruin.
For various reasons, I don't have photos of our journey through Slovenia (a green, hilly, quiet country, where we stopped in at Izola and waded into the Adriatic Sea) and Austria, where we visited Graz and Vienna. In Vienna, I missed Elizabeth the most. We had been there nine years earlier as adventurous, backpacking newlyweds, and memories of us together flashed their way back into my consciousness. She and I will have to go back in the near future. As with most of our other stops, we only got a tiny taste of Vienna, and of all the places we visited, I think this is the city where I would have most liked to spend more time.
Even though the trip was rushed, and we weren't able to stay anywhere as long as we would have liked, I'm glad we went, and I'm glad we were able to see so many sites, eat so many different types of food, smell so many different smells, speak (0r try to speak) so many different languages, and swim in different bodies of water. It was a memorable trip that will give each of us different choices of places we might visit in any future trips.
We started our journey in Munich, Germany, and then spent a day driving along the Romantic Road, which is basically a series of towns and castles that preserve a middle-ages flair.
Next, we picked up my sister Trudie and her husband Basilios and headed for Switzerland, where we visited Zurich and Zermatt. Zurich had good food and a relaxing atmosphere.
Zermatt is a little town at the bottom of Switzerland. It is so deep into the Alps that no roads go beyond it; Zermatt is a dead-end town, but a really cool one. It is the leaping-off point for people who want to climb the Matterhorn and a tourist destination for people like us who just want to see the Matterhorn. My sisters Trudie and Kristinia and my brother Clinton and I took a cog-wheel train up to the top of the Gornergrat, where we had terrific views of the surrounding mountaintops and glacier fields. We hiked back down, which was a little more strenuous and took a little longer than we had anticipated (we were all pretty sore for a few days afterward), but hiking through the Alps was one of the highlights of the trip.
After that, we decided that, since we were there, we should catch some Tour de France action. So we stopped in at Bourg Saint Maurice, which was the start of one of the legs of the race. It was too crowded to see the starting line of that day's leg but we got to see all the cyclists getting ready and appreciated the tremendous effort that goes into this race. We also got to see Lance (swoon) leave his team's bus and ride down to the starting line.
From there, we journeyed to Barcelona, Spain. At first, the heat was stifling, and the traffic, with hundreds of motorized scooters aggressively swarming like wasps between cars, was stressful. But we soon adjusted to the heat and began taking the public transit instead of driving the unwieldy RV, and when we started playing in the Mediterranean, we started to really like Barcelona. One side note: all of the males on the trip were injured except Basilios. My dad had recently tripped and messed up his knee. Two weeks before the trip, I broke my collarbone diving for a catch while playing ultimate Frisbee, and two days before the trip Clinton sliced his hand wide open (notice the blue surgical glove he is wearing to keep from getting his hand wet--it didn't work). So Basilios was the only male who could enjoy the water injury-free, and he did enjoy it, diving under the waves like a giddy seal.
In the city, we visited the Picaso Musuem, which shows the evolution of his artistic vision from his days as a student through his cubist works. We also toured the masterpiece of Gaudi--an influential modernist architect--La Sagrada Familia, an astounding building, and walked around the Gothic Quarter (narrow, medieval-feeling streets packed with little shops, musuems, and a few old churches), and down Las Ramblas (a main pedestrian boulevard that is lined with little shops. Strangely, many of these temporary shops were pet stores).
Barcelona is a city I wouldn't mind returning to.
On our way to Verona, Italy, we stopped for a day on the beach near the French Riviera town of Frejus. This stop was definitely too short. The weather, sand, and water were nearly perfect. We were sad to leave. We lived it up while we could, dancing at the campground discoteque, going swimming in the Mediterranean at midnight, and going swimming again in the morning.
In Verona, we watched Verdi's Aida in a Roman arena, built in 30 A.D. While the opera went sort of late (it ended at 1:30 a.m.), the experience of listening to and watching this well-performed masterpiece in a 2000-year-old venue with great acoustics was well worth it.
Venice was next on our list, and while the town was overrun with tourists like us, it was still impressive. The floor mosaics on the church floors were one of many artistic flourishes that struck me. Venice is very photogenic. Basilios, whose father is Greek, was able to point out many of the Byzantine influences throughout the city. Although everyone knows it is a problem, it was still sad to see the Adriatic Sea lapping at the tops of the last barriers that stand between the city and a flooded ruin.
For various reasons, I don't have photos of our journey through Slovenia (a green, hilly, quiet country, where we stopped in at Izola and waded into the Adriatic Sea) and Austria, where we visited Graz and Vienna. In Vienna, I missed Elizabeth the most. We had been there nine years earlier as adventurous, backpacking newlyweds, and memories of us together flashed their way back into my consciousness. She and I will have to go back in the near future. As with most of our other stops, we only got a tiny taste of Vienna, and of all the places we visited, I think this is the city where I would have most liked to spend more time.
Even though the trip was rushed, and we weren't able to stay anywhere as long as we would have liked, I'm glad we went, and I'm glad we were able to see so many sites, eat so many different types of food, smell so many different smells, speak (0r try to speak) so many different languages, and swim in different bodies of water. It was a memorable trip that will give each of us different choices of places we might visit in any future trips.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Beginnings of Harmful Intent, or When Do We Start Wanting to Hurt People?
Recently Rowyn has been more of a challenge to put to bed at night. I used to be able to lay her down on the bed, place a pillow one one side, and cuddle up to her other side, and then she would go to sleep. Or if she was having a difficult time, I would hold her in my arms and bounce her lightly while swaying from side to side. This would take longer (20-30 minutes), but it worked well. (I don't want to give the impression with this post that I'm some kind of super dad who puts the kids to be all the time. Elizabeth ends up putting Rowyn to bed 90% of the time, but I've noticed a few things the last few times I've helped her fall asleep).
However, a couple of times when I've recently tried to put her to bed, neither of these techniques have worked. For a week or two, Rowyn took to arching her back, screaming, and thrashing about while going to sleep (or not going to sleep, as was more often the case). She created a marvelous spectacle; she almost seemed possessed by evil spirits. But what really caught my attention was not the squirming, arching, and angry screaming, but the way that in the midst of her apparent fury, she would reach up her plump warm fingers and trace them softly, tenderly even, along my cheek or chin or nose. The contradiction in such moments between her touch and her demeanor was almost surreal.
The first time she did this, I cringed at first because I expected her to try to scratch me or pinch me or pull a few strands of my pathetically thin beard. She was upset and I thought she would lash out at the person nearest her--in these cases, me. I thought such reactions were more or less instinctual, especially in the pre-verbal and early-verbal stages, when part of a person's frustration likely arises from not being able to make oneself understood. If a baby or toddler was frustrated, I thought, it would be natural for that kid to want to bite or scratch or hit. But no matter her emotional state, Rowyn has never shown toward me any sense of malice. It makes me wonder where hurtful responses come from in children. At what point do we begin to desire to hurt others? Is it learned? Do some kids just demonstrate their anger more physically than others? If so, why? Genetics? Parental influence? Diet?
I suppose these are more or less fruitless, unanswerable questions, but they have been on my mind since the first time 11-month-old, in the middle of an awful fit, reached up to my face and told me through her fingertips not that she was frustrated with me, but that she loved me. And why did this surprise me?
However, a couple of times when I've recently tried to put her to bed, neither of these techniques have worked. For a week or two, Rowyn took to arching her back, screaming, and thrashing about while going to sleep (or not going to sleep, as was more often the case). She created a marvelous spectacle; she almost seemed possessed by evil spirits. But what really caught my attention was not the squirming, arching, and angry screaming, but the way that in the midst of her apparent fury, she would reach up her plump warm fingers and trace them softly, tenderly even, along my cheek or chin or nose. The contradiction in such moments between her touch and her demeanor was almost surreal.
The first time she did this, I cringed at first because I expected her to try to scratch me or pinch me or pull a few strands of my pathetically thin beard. She was upset and I thought she would lash out at the person nearest her--in these cases, me. I thought such reactions were more or less instinctual, especially in the pre-verbal and early-verbal stages, when part of a person's frustration likely arises from not being able to make oneself understood. If a baby or toddler was frustrated, I thought, it would be natural for that kid to want to bite or scratch or hit. But no matter her emotional state, Rowyn has never shown toward me any sense of malice. It makes me wonder where hurtful responses come from in children. At what point do we begin to desire to hurt others? Is it learned? Do some kids just demonstrate their anger more physically than others? If so, why? Genetics? Parental influence? Diet?
I suppose these are more or less fruitless, unanswerable questions, but they have been on my mind since the first time 11-month-old, in the middle of an awful fit, reached up to my face and told me through her fingertips not that she was frustrated with me, but that she loved me. And why did this surprise me?
Monday, February 16, 2009
A Good Weekend
So, I know not too long ago I was lamenting the lack of snow, but this weekend made me really look forward to the coming summer. Here is a chronicle of the weekend:
Saturday we went to Klemgard County Park, a great park that is nestled in to a long valley, which is only about 8 miles away from our house. We hiked on part of the hiking trail, crossed an old bridge that spans nothing and goes nowhere,
had a picnic under the old bower,
and played on the playground.
That evening, while I watched the kids, Elizabeth cooked one of our favorite meals. I'm not sure what the name of it is (if it even has a name), but it is a pasta dish with bacon, capers, lightly sauteed zucchini, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes. It is all mixed up together along with a Gorgonzola and white wine sauce.
After the kids were in bed, Elizabeth and I watched Before Sunrise, the prequel to Before Sunset, both excellent films (we watched the sequel first a couple of months ago), though Before Sunset is the better of the two, in our opinion. It was Valentine's Day and we are not usually V-Day people, but we sort of caught the Valentine's spirit and talked about how in love and happy we are. Even though we know we feel this way, it is good to verbalize it occasionally.
Sunday was a slow, lazy day. We went to church, came home, I took a nap, we went for a walk, cooked dinner, put the kids to bed, and then read and surfed the Internet.
Today, President's Day, was busy, but in a good way. This morning, Sonora and I went outside and trimmed some of the apple trees. We also spent some time climbing the trees
and playing ponies (Sonora's latest obsession). Some of the prettier apple branch clippings we bundled into a stick bouquet that we later presented to Elizabeth, who had been inside working and taking care of Rowyn.
After about an hour and a half of tree trimming, Sonora and I decided to build our first fairy house. Sonora has been curious about fairy houses since watching the movie Kristen's Fairy House, a gift from her aunt Vanessa. We chose a secluded spot behind the wood pile at the edge of our back yard. We used a sparkly rock as the floor and constructed the little dwelling out of as many pieces of curved wood as we could find. It's not an elaborate house, but it was fun and Sonora is half convinced that a fairy is going to move in.
When the fairy house was done, we ate lunch, went for a long walk together, played in the park, washed out buckets for food storage, cleaned out the garage, washed the cars, cooked and then ate dinner, and put the kids to bed. I still have a few hours of grading to do tonight, but this weekend was mostly free of school work. We were able simply to be together, which was really nice, though it made me long for summer. Mid-June, which is when my summer break starts, is still a long way off.
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