ever-fixed mark

On Sunday afternoon, watching Aitch’s t-ball game, I experienced a profound sense of deja vu. One might think it could be explained away by the fact that it was my fourth game that week, but no — it was something else. The easy grounders sailing through the Colossus stances of multiple kids; the entire infield pursuing an errant ball into the outfield; the one skilled kid on the team leaving his position at second base to catch a pop fly headed toward the inattentive first baseman: I had seen it all before, but where? As the strains of “March of the Toreadors” played in my head, it hit me: The Bad News Bears!

As a child, I was no baseball fan, but like the rest of America I was intrigued by the foul-mouthed kids in the trailers, so I saw the movie in the theater, and I loved it. I was exactly the same age as Tatum O’Neal’s character and absolutely coveted her hair, her clothes, and her ride on Kelly Leak’s motorcycle. Husband also had fond memories of the film, so on Sunday night we rented it to see if it stood the test of time. It did, but I found my perception of it had really changed.

First, I had remembered the rivalry between the Bears and the other teams in the league as a kind of class warfare; the Bears, I had thought, came from the other side of the tracks. That wasn’t strictly the case; as a kid, I had missed references to a lawsuit filed by a city councilman as a reaction to the league’s cutting of the poorest athletes. The Bears were so bad, initially, because the team was made up of the worst athletes in the league.

Having missed that, I didn’t really appreciate the change in Walter Matthau’s character: at first he cares too little about winning, then too much. By the end he achieves some kind of equilibrium, but the movie makes you think about where that point is, which is an interesting mental tug-of-war if you’re a parent of a little athlete. If you make your kid practice and attend every game, if you enforce discipline even if your child would rather be picking daisies in the outfield, are you enabling his fullest potential or just being kind of an asshole?

On this viewing, I also appreciated the subtlety of the final playoff between the Bears and the Yankees. (All the teams in the league had mascots; the teams in Aitch’s league are just called by their sponsors’ names, making cheers difficult.) Each team made good plays and errors; each team played dirty; each team showed hustle and had bad luck. Vic Morrow was clearly the bad guy, but even when he lost his temper and beat up his own son (the kid from “Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” another chlldhood favorite of mine — now that I’ve raised that see if you can get the theme song out of your head), it was largely because his kid had intentionally beaned a batter (although it might have been because he gave up a walk with the bases loaded).

As an eleven-year-old, I had been shocked by the racial and ethnic slurs slung by one of the thirty-five tow-headed kids on the team, and by Jackie Earle Haley smoking cigarettes on his Harley. As an adult, I was most horrified by the team riding around town perched on the trunk of Walter Matthau’s convertible. Seven kids and no seatbelts! They could never get that movie greenlighted today.

I’m already behind schedule. Where was I? Skiing!

So, sometime after Christmas I decided that I wasn’t going to let another winter pass without getting the whole family on skis. Husband and I like to ski — we met in a ski club in Chicago, in fact — and we’ve missed it. Sadly, neither of the boys was very enthusiastic about skiing, and Aitch outright refused to take lessons. I decided to concentrate my efforts on Minor, who was a bit more tractable. Reader, I bribed him. Over the course of five ski lessons the kid ate so many nacho cheese Doritos that his sclera turned orange. Finally, weary of standing in the rental line, I bought Minor his own skis, and as soon as Aitch saw them he decided he wanted to ski, too.

Well, once Aitch twigged to the concept — speed! bumps! Teenage ski instructors, like Gods walking among us! — this huge self-satisfied smile appeared, as if he were thinking, “I have found my métier, and it is SNOW.” Oh, he was a total diva, and refused to take direction from anyone, and threw a fit when the ski school wanted to move him up a level, because he wanted to stay with the hot instructor, but the kid could ski. He basically taught himself; he fooled around— first pizza, then french fries, then crouching at full speed; now edging, now flat-footed, now skiing backward down the hill, now leaning back his butt perched on his skis— until he found what worked. He distinguished not between downhill and freestyle; it was all kif-kif to him. Within a few weeks he was carving parallel turns (wide-set, but real parallel turns with edges) down black diamonds and doing tricks in the terrain park. At one point he went off a jump and over the side of the slope into a ravine; his skis came off and none of the adults noticed he was missing until he had climbed out of the ditch and walked down the mountain. His ski name was “Hot Dog.”

Minor’s progress was more stately. His ski name was “Ketchup.” At one point Husband begged me to ski with him, because “no human can ski that slowly.” Minor, in fact, skis a lot like me, making numerous, slow, cautious turns, resorting to snowplow in hairy terrain. (My ski name is “Escargot.”) At first, he rarely experimented with anything he hadn’t learned in class; as Shakespeare might have said, he skied by th’ book. He was a surprisingly good sport, though. Minor is doughy, uncoordinated, and overly sensitive to changes in temperature, spatial orientation, and atmospheric pressure, but he was wonderfully game. When Aitch was intimidated by the chairlift, he begged to go first (”I want to go on the snow rollercoaster!”). A few times we ventured beyond his abilities, taking him on longer or harder runs than he could handle, and he frequently fell and ended up crying on the mountain. Yet the next time we said, “Hey, you want to try that slope again?” he was up for it, as long as we threw in a package of Doritos. He may be the only child who ever gained weight skiing.

On our last weekend, we had the two boys ski a few green runs together, and as Minor followed Aitch he started imitating his movements. Something clicked, and he started skiing better and faster. We took him to the top of the mountain, and after a few runs I was suddenly the slowest skier in the family.

The northeast got a huge dumping of snow mid-season, which was fortunate because the snowpack lasted through the subsequent monsoon and heatwave:

If there’s anything better than spring skiing in a t-shirt with the scent of sunscreen in the air, I don’t want to know what it is.

I certainly have taken a long hiatus from this here blog thingy. What’s my excuse? A hint: it’s one of the developments below, each of which I’ll treat at length during my first week back-to-blog. In no particular order:

• I’ve lost twenty-five pounds. As it happens, lots of things taste better than being thin feels. More on Monday.
• I took on a new role at work. What happens when an erstwhile “individual contributor” becomes a “people manager”? Not much that’s bloggable, if you’re at all ethical, but I’ll attempt some general musings on Tuesday.
• I got both boys skiing. It sounds like an afternoon’s amusement but was actually a months-long campaign against their apathy, bizarre weather, and my better instincts. Details on Wednesday.
• I got a Kindle. On Thursday: the good, the bad, and why I won’t be trading it in for an iPad.
• I got cancer. That will have to wait until Friday, but no worries; I’ll still be around.

Husband took the boys on a whale watch this weekend, so I planned a solo lunch and kayak trip for myself. I have many friends who would do anything to avoid eating alone in public, but it’s one of my favorite things to do, as long as I have something to read. So I gathered up the Sunday paper and went down to the diner. It was crowded, so I sat at the counter, at the end. I gave my order and settled down with the paper.

The cashier approached me and handed me a business card. “This isn’t mine,” I said.

“The gentleman up by the register told me to give it to you.”

The card had a man’s name and the profession “antiques dealer” in Boston and southern Maine. I didn’t recognize the name. “I think you’ve got the wrong person,” I said. She looked irritated and tossed the card on the counter. I figured it was a lame marketing ploy. I ate my lunch and left, leaving the card on the table.

As I was waiting for the kayak tour to start, my curiosity got the better of me, and I Googled the name to see just what he was peddling. The first hit that came up was on a site called dontdatehimgirl.com. It’s a site where women can go to complain about their ex-boyfriends, ostensibly for the benefit of other women. The post said that “John Doe” had been verbally abusive and had conned the complainant out of cash, and that she didn’t know he was married until he appeared at the hearing where she obtained a restraining order against him. “Ladies of Massachusetts and Maine, beware!”

I would normally not give credence to an anonymous tale like this. Still, the man had sent the waitress over to me with his card, like some randy conventioneer at a Marriott bar. Was it an indication that he was looking for his next meal ticket? And that he thought I, une femme pushing un certain age, looked lonely, desperate, and solvent enough to be a likely candidate? YUCK.

I’m not sure I approve of dontdatehimgirl.com. The whole concept of ratting out your ex seems rife for abuse. And even if the information is accurate, don’t you already have friends who can tell you whether or not your new boyfriend is a jerk?

A lovely little coda to this experience occurred just as I was telling Husband the story over dinner that evening. We were dining at yet another Port City bistro. A young woman was sitting across the room from us, dining solo. I noticed her because, as I said above, I know that many women don’t like to eat out alone, and it’s fairly rare to see someone eating alone at 9:30 at night at what passes for an upscale restaurant in Port City. We passed her on the way out; she looked up from the paper she was writing on and made some remark about being the last to leave.

“What are you writing?” Husband asked. “A letter?”

“To my boyfriend,” she said.

“Is he in the military?” I asked, thinking that was one of the few situations that would require a hand-written letter.

“No, he’s incarcerated,” she said.

“What’s he in for?” burst out Husband. I imagine Emily Post would consider that a rude question but, hey, I say she opened the door to that line of inquiry.

“Assault and battery,” she said.

Here is a woman whose friends were not doing their job. Let me try:

Oh, honey. Unless he is a prisoner of conscience, and Amnesty International is launching a letter-writing campaign on his behalf, an incarcerated beau is probably a really bad bet. There are so many fish in the sea; why tie yourself down to one in an aquarium?

I took Minor to the children’s museum in Dover this weekend, and at lunch I amused myself with this copy of the Rochester, NH Times:

Happy Ramadhan, Seacoast Muslims! Have some bacon.

The editor’s ham-fistedness (get it?) was more than offset, though, by the flair evidenced elsewhere in the paper. Prepare to admire the narrative stylings of the Police Blotter:

Monday, Aug. 10

11:02 a.m. Rite Aid on Wakefield Street reports getting a false Oxycodone presciption.

7:38 p.m. On Chamberlain Street, one neighbor is in another neighbor’s face. A cat is thrown from a second-floor window, and obscenities are also in the air.

7:49 p.m. At Rite Aid, a man tries to pick up his forged prescription. No cruisers are available.

8:25 p.m. On Chestnut, a boy would like to show his mother a cat in the road, but is slapped by a woman. This is followed by half a dozen calls describing people yelling and flipping.

8:36 p.m. Music blasts on Chestnut Street, possibly to drown out the yelling and flipping.

10:12 p.m. Choice words are used after a quartet of drinkers is nudged off Congress Street steps.

Tuesday, Aug. 11

3:56 On Crown Point Road a “rooster problem” is reported.

6:11 p.m. A Copper Lane citizen has had his e-mail account hacked. E-mails have been sent out asking everyone on his address book to send money to England.

7:22 p.m. A dirt biker, “whipping along Autumn Street” is counseled.

10:04 p.m. A Moores Court door is egged and the “N” word is also hurled around.

Wednesday, Dec. [sic] 12

3:54 p.m. Near the Salvation Army, a lady is on the ground appealing for help, while a gentleman punches her in the face.

8:05 p.m. A Washington Street woman has found a very pornographic photo of a juvenile on her lawn.

Thursday, Dec. [sic] 13

3:27 p.m. At the station, a man reports the theft of a jewelry box “within the last year” and knows who did it.

7:22 p.m. With the prospect of a yelling match, a large crowd gathers on Congress Street.

Friday, Dec. [sic] 14

11:50 a.m. The District Court bathroom has been toilet-papered, but officials are flushed with success — they have a handle on the culprits.

7:48 p.m. At McDuffee Brook Place six people are reportedly arguing, including a gentleman with his new girlfriend and an annoyed old girlfriend.

10:00 p.m. Several people are battling at the end of Congress. Police have to guess which end.

Aitch is very impressed with the fact that he is now Six, and he expects you to be impressed, too. He is continually buttonholing (took me a few minutes to light on that, after rejecting pigeon-holing? Punch-holing?Corn-holing?) people with the information: “Did you know, I’m Six now?” Happily for him, they tend to respond with the required shock and awe: “What? No way! You’re Six? That’s wonderful!” etc.

Sometimes, though, there is no one of Aitch’s acquaintance in the vicinity, and he resorts to impressing strangers. His modus operandi is to sidle up to a random person on the street; turn to me, all faux-casual, remarking loudly, “You know, now that I’m SIX…”; and then look for the stranger’s gobsmacked reaction, as if he had said, “My Super Bowl ring is pinching me today,” or “This is the exact shade of blue my helicopter is painted.”

This has only worked once, on a teenage girl who was disposed to look kindly on small children. The rest of the time, sadly, he has been ignored. They say that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful, though. I expect he’ll continue to try until he’s Seven.

My office was relocated to a different building even closer to the Moroccan cafe where I was getting my morning and afternoon coffee, so now I’m visiting up to three times a day. Ramadhan started recently, and I feel terrible coming in and ordering food and drink when all the staff are starving. Yesterday afternoon when I got my coffee I struck up a conversation with two of the workers, asking if they were fasting. I mentioned that when I lived in Tunisia, restaurant workers weren’t put in the position of serving non-fasting patrons, because most of the cafes were closd during the day.

One of the guys asked how long I had lived in Tunisia, and I told him. The other guy said, “I’m from the country right next door to Tunisia.”

“Are you Algerian or Libyan?” I asked.

“Moroccan,” he answered.

“I don’t think Morocco and Tunisia share a border,” I said.

He insisted, and even drew me a map. I contradicted him, but then one of the other patrons (not a North African) said to me, “You know, he’s right. Morocco is next to Tunisia.”

“I don’t THINK so,” I said, but I was starting to doubt myself. On one hand, I was sure that Morocco wasn’t next to Tunisia, because if it had been, I would have gone there. It was the fact that Tunisia was landlocked between of war-torn Algeria on one side and death-to-America Libya on the other that prevented me from taking any train journeys out of the country for three years. On the other hand, I’d persisted in idées fixes in the past only to have my worldview crumble when proven wrong. There was the time my mother-in-law told me that the word “restaurateur” was properly spelled without an N, and the time that my friend P. proved that Neil Young had never been in the group America. Could I have been laboring under a geographical delusion all these years?

No.

I can’t believe I backed down.

Aitch has always been wary of the kayak, but since we got back from vacation at the Tyler Place (gah! we left the day that Julie and Julia arrived! Am still imagining the Vermont Mommy Blogging summit that might have been) he has been talking about trying to paddle the kayak on his own. His counselors took his group kayaking one day and let some of the kids paddle their own boats. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to do the same with six-year-olds, but I saw this as a great opportunity to get Aitch more interested in kayaking.

So last weekend, I loaded up two kayaks on the car, but I determined I would leave one on top of the car until I was certain Aitch was enjoying himself. I put one boat in the water, put Aitch in his PFD, and handled him the paddle. I had envisioned myself wading alongside him whilst coaching him on the finer points of paddle management. I certainly did not envision him striking out confidently for the middle of the pond, leaving me open-jawed on the shore.

He was in a big, wide kayak, using a big, heavy paddle, and he quickly got tired and sloppy. I held my breath as I wondered if he’d be able to turn the boat around and come back. The other boat, you’ll remember (foreshadowing!) was still on top of the car, and the only way to rescue him would be to swim for it.

Now, before you go calling DSS, I need to make this clear: Aitch was in a perfectly stable boat, he was wearing his life jacket, and he is very confident in the water. At no time was he more than a fifteen-second swim away from me, and I was perfectly capable of swimming out and towing him back. I wasn’t afraid for his safety; I was afraid that he would end up with a tantrum and I would end up with leeches. It was not the cleanest pond.

Meanwhile, he wasn’t panicking, so I told him how to paddle on one side to turn the boat around. Amazingly, he did, and he made it back to shore. Then he went out and back again, out and back again, at which time I decided not to push my luck any further, and I beached him while I put the second boat in the water.

Then I had a brainwave, also stimulated by something I saw at the Tyler Place. I got one of the tie-down straps from the car and hooked the stern of my boat to the bow of Aitch’s. Then I towed him through the water. He practiced paddling when he felt like it, occasionally bumping my boat, and cruised the rest of the time. We followed Dog around the pond, looking for frogs and spying on a big blue heron. It was really fun and surprisingly easy to tow another boat. Aitch got to have his own space, and I didn’t have to worry about him getting too tired. As a bonus, I remained leech-free.

Me (reading e-mail): Hey, it’s Occupation Week at Minor’s pre-school this week.

Husband: Darn, I forgot to pack his little Nazi uniform.

Me: Funny, that’s exactly what I was picturing.

This summer, we’ve benefited from some non-toxic pest control methods taught to us by others. (What can I say? Minor loves fruit, and the universe is his trash receptacle.) Forthwith, the only Hints from Heloise you’re ever likely to get from me:

Ants: My housekeeper kills ants with kosher salt. Works like a charm and seems to deter further infestations.

Fruit flies: My friend K, who has a winery and three children who also love fruit but shun trash cans, showed me this. Put some apple cider vinegar, dish soap, and hot water in a cup, filling it to the brim. The little devils are attracted by the vinegar, but the soap bubbles trap their little feet. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

If you use this in your wine tasting room, though, warn the patrons so they don’t dip their bread into it, thinking it’s olive oil.