what it is

i think that
what it is
that i've been
living through

is several other
people's nightmares
mixed in
with my own...

LPK
11.24.2011 (a)

Forgettable

And I've just finished watching Kate Beckinsale, Natascha McElhone, and Francis McDormand in Laurel Canyon. Funny how I can remember all of the female but none of the male principals in it. In fact, about the only male thing that I remember is Ian's accent.

The other funny thing is how long I've been wanting to see it from beginning to end. And how, now that I've done that, I'll probably forget it because, except for the place the movie is named after, it's mostly forgettable. The only other thing that I might remember is that I had to learn how to spell forgettable in order to write this...

Necessary Things

The livingroom floor is nearly cleared of its habitual clutter. The futon has finally been folded away and the TV no longer blares the incessant re-runs of SpongeBob and ICarly. Finally, after almost nine years, my life, my house, my time are once again my own.

There's now an emerging order to things which, in those years between, I confess I had craved. Soon, it will be possible to vacuum carpets and wash countertops and clean floors and do all the necessary things to the satisfaction of that more orderly, more solitary self which had been, in those more crowded times, held down, pushed aside, hidden away.

For now, and at least until the end of the school year, the grandson who liked being told that he was "my favorite person in the whole world," will be dropped off here on weekday mornings, for me to take to the school which he's attended since Kindergarten. After that, on certain mornings, I'll be with him for another hour in his classroom where I've been asked to volunteer, as I had the previous school year.

In the afternoon, we'll have a couple of hours at home to check that day's classwork and the next day's homework and to hurry through some of the reading we’d been accustomed to doing at our leisure, in the evenings after dinner. Then, around five-thirty, his dad will pick him up for the twenty-five minute drive to the small town where he's been gradually moving his life, and that of our grandson, to be with the latest girlfriend.

Today happens to be Thanksgiving and my son and grandson and the new girlfriend are here at the house. But there’s no dinner and no celebration, only the perfunctory exchange of “Happy Thanksgiving” as they walk in and the empty drum of feet moving up and down the stairs as they continue the moving out.

They’re here to “pick up a few things” before driving out to her father’s house for dinner. I ask my grandson if he’d like to sit down and read with me since we’ll be missing several days of this over the Thanksgiving recess.

He looks bored as he idly flips and turns and rolls his Tech Decks, those mini-skateboards that I’m convinced The Devil has created for just these idle hands. They’re noisy and a distraction to anyone trying to focus on a necessary task or on the transient glimmer of a fledgling thought.

Even so, he resists as if there were still an outside chance that the tiny rolling, clattering wheels might somehow yield a necessary secret to this sometimes painful business of growing up or, perhaps, insulate him from it.

His reluctance, on this occasion, is not unusual. He’s not, as some have called it, a “natural reader,” and in the past he’s offered every sort of resistance to routinely sitting down without the Tech Decks, without the video games, without the TV.

Still, we’ve made considerable progress over the past few months. On the recommendation of his 2^ND grade teacher, we’ve read eighteen of the Magic Tree House books and, over the summer vacation, completed a substantial reading and writing packet put together by the teachers he now has for the 3^rd grade.

Among his milestones, in this process of becoming a reader, was the day when he actually found himself so engaged by Jack and Annie’s latest adventure that he asked if we could continue on to the next chapter. (This from a child who often irritates his grandfather by carefully counting the pages to be read, thereby making it clear that this business of reading is an obligation, not a pleasure.)

On another occasion, while reading the MTH book Monday With a Mad Genius, which references the life and work of Leonardo DaVinci, he stated his preference, as a reader, for the nonfiction as opposed to the fiction elements of the story.

As a result of our efforts, he’s been placed in the highest reading group for his grade level and now thinks of himself as someone who might attend college after high school. Additionally, he has achieved perfect attendance, 100% homework completion, and has exceeded his outside reading target for the first two months of the present school year.

In spite of this, I know there are times when he still has to be pushed a bit, times when his eight-year-old mind still gravitates toward the instantaneous and effortless reality of those digitally-created worlds. But today his casual rejection of my offer to read with him hits with an unexpected sting, and I react angrily.

“You know,” I tell him, “we may not always be able to do this. I’m trying very hard to help you now so that, when that time comes, you’re able to do it on your own. Do you think you understand that?”

He shakes his head, unable to speak, and although his eyes are now filled with vulnerability and hurt, I’m far too angry to sit down and read with him. Instead, I say to him what no adult should ever say to a child in his situation.

“Maybe you can just go home and ask your dad to read with you. Good luck with that.”

Turning away, because I don’t want to see his face or have him see mine, I have a sense of what I’ve done but at the moment feel both unwilling and unable to confront the reason for it. So I leave the room and head down to the basement where the cool and porous walls seem to absorb some of the heat from my anger.

Glancing around, I notice a football atop a bucket of sports gear. I pick it up and walk back upstairs to where my grandson is once again playing with his Tech Decks.

“Want to go outside and throw the ball a bit?” I ask him.

“OK,” he says quietly and, still holding the Tech Deck, walks toward the door.

“You won’t need that,” I tell him. He looks at me absently, then places it on a table near the door.

Outside, we throw the ball back and forth a few times and then I catch and hold it as our eyes meet.

“Look,” I tell him, “I don’t know why I got so angry. I guess I’m just afraid that after a while you might forget these things. About reading and staying focused and being successful in school. Because I really want you to be successful in life and to have choices in the things that you do.”

He shakes his head affirmatively and I put my arm around him as we walk back into the house to wait for his dad to finish what he‘s doing. As we wait, I think about how it was for me at his age. I think of my grandparents’ house, the way it looked to me when we went there for Christmas and Easter and the occasional Sunday dinner.

Then I think about this place, the house he’s grown up in, and wonder if it may someday look to him the way that my grandparents’ looked to me. Like a place where I had once belonged but which, over time, had acquired an order of which I was no longer a part.

Like him, I had been their first grandchild, my grandmother's favorite, and had lived with them the first two years of my life while my father was away in Europe during the Second World War.

I'd heard that it was hard on her when my parents had left, to live in a nearby city where they'd bought a house, and I'd been through this myself when our son had moved out with a previous girlfriend. And I guess I’d thought, because we’d done it before, that this time it would be different.

But as the car pulls away, and I wave at the opaque windows, unable to see if anyone is waving back, I feel the sudden tightness that I’d remembered in my chest. And, as I turn to go inside, I find I cannot breathe and cannot close the door.

LPK
LiveJournal
11.24.11 (a)