22 August 2007 - Summer Report

Old House

As of August 15, 2007, we’re a one-house family again! The old mortgage has been paid off, and I’ve some money in my pocket to apply toward reducing the new mortgage. We stopped by the old house to say our final good-byes. The boys had a lot of “firsts” while we lived there: their first dog, their first private bedrooms, their first schooling, their first swimming pool, their first English, their first plane ride, their first visit from Santa, their first zoo—the list goes on and on. The boys are like me, though: they get sentimental about people, not places. Although we loved that house, and have many wonderful memories to savor, the memories are about our family, not the building.

New House

We’re settling in nicely at the new house. We can’t afford to do much real decorating, but little by little we’re marking territory as our own. Pictures on the walls, furniture in the “right” spots, drapes in two rooms, shelves with the right things in the right places, and plants here and there, all work together to make the house feel like home.

Vegetation

Speaking of plants, we’ve had a bit of fun with gardening this summer. We brought some ferns back from Sister Bay, Wisconsin, and planted them in a semi-shaded spot alongside the house. When I was a child, we brought knee-high white birches from Wisconsin and planted them in Illinois. This summer, when we visited Illinois, the boys got to see how those little saplings had turned into mighty trees. I knew trees would never survive two weeks in the car, so I didn’t try to bring white birches back to Texas, but I’d hoped the ferns might survive. No such luck. I finally pulled the rotted brown sticks from the ground and threw them away.

We’ve also planted flowers in front of the house, and several trees in the back and side yards. We have an Autumn Blaze Maple, four Leyland Cypress, six Crepe Myrtles, a Red Oak, three Hybrid Poplars, two rows of Wax Myrtles, and a Little Gem Magnolia tree. All of these are doing well, but the prize is an Empress tree (Paulownia). We named her Gabriel (“Gabby” for short), and we expect her to do very well. Paulownia can grow 15-20 feet in the first season, and in a few short years turn into a large, spreading shade tree with beautiful purple flowers. Right now, Gabby looks like a bean sprout, just under two feet tall. She started three weeks ago with just three delicate leaves, and now has over thirty leaves. She may grow a little more this summer, but will probably spend her energies developing her root system and save the growth for next spring. I’ve started taking pictures so you can see the amazing growth. I wish I’d thought to take one when we first planted her, too.

The red-tipped Photinias around the pool and against the back fence are finally starting to shoot up. As with any transplanted bush or tree, it takes time to recover from the shock of being moved. Photinias are rapid growers once established, and it’s good to see that these are adapting well to their new home. The general rule for any transplant is “First year sleep, second year creep, third year leap.” Photinias tend to skip the creeping part and get right to the leaping after getting established. By early summer next year, we should have a solid privacy hedge around the pool.

We have a few more bits to go. I’d like some rose bushes in front, some wildflowers in back, and trumpet vines (or Banksia roses) for the fences. I also have a large number of seedlings from Arbor Day coming in November. These are a lot less likely to flourish in our climate, but at $2.00 - $5.00 per plant, it’s hard to resist trying them out. Among the seedlings are Yellow Birch, Forsythia, Sweetbay Magnolia, Yellow Poplar, Paper Birch, Elberta Peach, and Giant Sequoia.

It’s fun having enough yard to plant real trees along with bushes and garden-type stuff, while still having huge swaths of grass left over. Even if all the trees take off and grow to their fullest, the smallest grassy area in back will be larger than our entire yard (front and back) at the old house, and the largest grassy area will remain as big as a soccer field. Right now, of course, the yard looks like a field with twigs sticking up in various places, but one needs to look with future-vision when gardening. The Sequoia, for instance, won’t be a full tree until the boys are my age now, and will keep growing long after their own children are adults. It won’t reach full size in our climate! The roots of a tree like the General Sherman Tree can cover four acres, and the trees themselves can top 250 feet. We’ll be very lucky to see our Sequoia put on two feet a year, or get larger than 50 feet ever. But still, to be safe, I’m going to plant it in a back corner of the lot. Other trees grow like weeds, reaching their full height and spread within a dozen years or less.

Boys

Speaking of growing like weeds, the boys, too, are still growing. They’ve each put on just over three inches a year for the past three years. Zack is now exactly four feet tall, which means he can go down most water slides and ride most roller coasters at the theme parks. Nicky isn’t so terribly skinny these days, but he still looks a bit like a colt with his long, spindly legs.

There isn’t much summer left. The boys start at their new school on August 27th, and we don’t have many plans between now and then. I’ve been trying to have at least one friend over each week, and we’ve been able to have all of their best friends visit at least once. Quite aside from the ten-mile distance imposed by our new location, even in summer it’s difficult to find days when their friends don’t already have something going. I don’t know how other parents keep up with soccer, summer camp, music lessons, vacations, scheduled play dates, karate, and so on, and so on, seemingly endlessly. It’s all I can do to tutor the boys in the mornings, let them swim in the afternoons, and keep them reading and learning throughout the day.

The most important thing we’ve been doing this summer is Family School. My goal was to help the boys learn what they should have learned during the last school year, so they could start out on a level with their peers. For the boys, that mostly means vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary, and reading, reading, reading, with a little bit of math, time-telling, and science thrown in for good measure. Nicky is now reading for pleasure, and Zack will read if one stands over him with a whip and a chair.

Nick still has trouble wrapping his brain around the different bases used for calculating and expressing time (he’s not alone—our system doesn’t make much sense, when you think about it), but is making good progress. Zack isn’t quite there yet with time-telling, although he can usually look at a clock and puzzle out the current time.

Dogs have only two kinds of time: always and never. When you’re there with them, you’ve always been there with them, and will never leave. When you’re away, you’ve always been away, and will never come back. Zack’s time is kind of like that, too. He very vaguely remembers the orphanage—mostly the way one remembers a dream, or something that happened to someone else—and to him the now is eternal. What he remembers very well, though, are the life lessons he learned before the age of four, at a time when he shouldn’t have been worrying about anything except his toys.

Next month, I’m planning to take a short trip with my brothers. It’s been on the calendar for months now, with my departure date and return date clearly highlighted. We’ve talked about the trip many times; Zack knows where I’m going and why. Yet last week, when Nick mentioned the trip, Zack calmly asked me, “Are you coming back?”

Thinking perhaps he meant to ask when I’d be coming back, I went over the schedule with him again. But he was too unemotional, too uninterested in the answer. So I asked him if he knew I’d always come back to him. He shrugged his shoulders.

I reassured him over and over that I’d always come back, and he seemed to accept it. But the next day, when I asked him if I’d come back home after my trip, he said, “I don’t know,” in a wooden, uninflected voice.

So now I make sure to remind Zack at least once a day that I will always come back. We look at the calendar together and count the nights that I’ll be away. He’s started asking if I could just cancel the trip—which is better than thinking I’ll abandon him—and seems to understand that I want to be with him, want to come back, would never leave him.

He may never get to the point of really believing it, not deep down inside, not in the places where nightmares walk, where life has taught him he must never trust adults. Why should he? First his biological father disappeared, then his biological mother, then his aunt, uncle, and cousins. Probably each one of them told him exactly the same things I tell him, about loving him, wanting to be with him, wanting to take care of him. They all lied, so why should he believe me?

Zinnishly, Nick is now secure enough to be perfectly content with my going away. He wishes it weren’t for so long, but doesn’t have any worries about whether or not I’ll come back. He may rediscover his separation anxiety once I’m actually gone, but I think he’ll be okay.

Nicky has grown tremendously this summer in terms of emotional and intellectual maturity. He's also reached the point where he really wants to understand how things work, why things are the way they are. I can't always answer his questions, but it's fun exploring the world with him, helping him puzzle out the marvellous complexity of the universe. The world inside his head is just as complex as the outside world, and exploring that with him is even more fun. I love seeing his slow smile turn into a triumphant grin as he finally grasps a concept that's eluded him until just that moment.

What a privilege to be the one to help him discover those moments, or at least witness them.