Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
Mensch
Life imitates art.
In my SF novel, the heroine’s mother is notified by the principal of her private religious school that her daughter is “faith impaired” and would be much better served by a nearby secular school. Nothing so drastic with my son today, but he did put them all to task.
In Theology, he was obliged to participate in a Stations of the Cross activity. He was Station 5. (According to Wikipedia, this is the “Simon of Cyrene carries the cross” station.) In this activity, Jake was supposed to read a passage that was written in the first person. He refused on the grounds that it would be hypocritical to imply belief when he had no such belief.
His teacher objected, and insisted he go along with it. But when it came time, he refused again. Unlike Peter, Jake didn’t get the chance to deny her a third time, but was instead sent to Pontius Pilate’s the Dean of Student’s office. She passed Jake along to his counselor, who tried to use the argument that students in biology are all obliged to learn about evolution, even though some might not believe in evolution. Jake countered that the proper comparison is that students in biology must learn evolution just as students in theology must learn various things about the New Testament. But there was a huge difference between learning these things and professing belief. If the biology students were asked to get up in front of class and commit to a belief in evolution, then her comparison would be valid.
The counselor also pointed out that if the teacher allowed one student to abstain from participating in the Stations of the Cross, she would need to allow others to abstain, too. Jake’s response was, “What would be wrong with that?” She also said that most of the students at the school were not Catholic, implying I suppose that others’ lack of principles should allow for Jake, too, to have a “principle-free zone” at school.
Afterward, Jake returned to Theology to get his backpack and binder, and to ask his teacher for her point of view. She told him that she felt there was an expectation that students at a Catholic school would participate in school-related activities, and if they made an exception for Jake, etc. But this breaks down, too. While Jake must attend Mass at school, no one insists that he take communion. Perhaps even his Theology teacher sees the inanity in an atheist taking communion.
I don’t know if she is losing patience with him. Earlier this week, the kids were assigned to write a brief parable involving God in some way. Jake wrote that God was like a blanket used by people for comfort, but sometimes it’s a good idea to get out of bed.
Stay tuned.
D.
Searching for my Chicken George
Eh, not really. I’m second generation American, Jewish Nisei, so if I dig deeper than my grandparents in any direction I draw a blank: surnames of uncertain spellings (Gofman or Goffman? Grobovski, Grobosky, or Grobowski?), doubtful cities of origin, no first names and certainly no birth dates.
But I was futzing around on Ancestry.com today and actually made some progress. I found census records on my dad’s side of the family from 1930 and 1920, and I found the record of my grandmother’s reentry into the country in 1924. My paternal grandparents came over in 1914 and promptly sired my aunt and uncle (both deceased). Something happened to their marriage in the early 20s — my grandmother either got homesick, or perhaps fed up with her husband. I’m not sure anyone knows. Actually, I’ll bet my uncle Hank knew, but stupidly I never asked him about it while he was alive.
Anyway, my grandmother took her two kids back to Asia, and I don’t know if they made it as far as the USSR (they were the USSR by then, I think?) but they did have relatives in Harbin, China. Quite a big Jewish community in Harbin, I understand. She came back by way of Yokohama, to Vancouver BC and then to Seattle. They must have taken the train back to Boston, and based on the dates, I suspect my father was conceived soon after their homecoming.
It is kind of neat to see the census records . . . my grandfather was recorded as a grocer in 1920, and in the 1930 record he was again a grocer, and she was a “shop saleslady”. Since censuses were conducted house to house, their neighbors were recorded on the same page. I haven’t called my dad yet, but I figure he will probably remember some of the names.
I learned a few things which might surprise my father. I have my grandparents’ precise birth dates, or at least the ones they gave out to the Feds. I also have my grandfather’s city of origin — Nerchinsk. I’m dubious about it, though, since it’s like 200 miles east of my grandmother’s city of origin. How could they have met? Yes, I realize they had trains back then. Maybe he had relatives in Chita and he met her at the local hoe-down.
I don’t know how to proceed. Surely there were marriage records back in Siberia? Also, my grandfather’s dad was supposedly a rabbi (which would explain my grandfather’s rejection of the faith — the man kept his grocery store open on Saturdays!) You’d think that would be an important enough person to leave some mark on the records. I would love to track down those relatives in Harbin, too.
And I haven’t even touched my mom’s side of the family.
D.
Curses!
While surfing the cable’s channel guide, Karen paused over Kung Pow Enter the Fist. We both registered the 2.5 stars someone had assigned Kung Pow, and waited with trepidation for our son’s response.
You have to understand that for Jake, Kung Pow is sacred text, quotes from which can be recontextualized to suit any comic circumstance. You wouldn’t believe how many ways he can spin (or — I admit it — how many ways I can spin) “Let me know if you see a Radio Shack,” or “That’s a lot of nuts!” No one fucks with his Kung Pow.
“The guy who gave Kung Pow two and a half stars should die in a fire,” my son declared.
Which cracked me up. My son, whom no one would ever suppose had a Jewish father — I mean, aside from his Yiddishe kopf, what’s Jewish about the kid? Oh. He likes latkes — had just come precariously close to uttering a Jewish curse. Needs a little work, mind you. Like any first attempt, it’s unrefined. Lacks that certain zing.
From this curious site, here are a few good ones that have withstood the test of time.
May they find thousands of new cures for you each year.
May you grow so rich that your widow’s second husband
never has to worry about making a living.
You should be like a chandelier — you should hang and burn.
And the similarly themed
May the sun and the spring breeze warm you and caress you like an apple as you hang from a tree.
Yeah, Jake, dying in a fire can’t hold a candle to growing beets in your stomach and peeing borscht.
D.
He’s our son.
We received a letter last week that our son would receive a Major Award at the all-school assembly today. I joked with him that it would probably be a lamp shaped like a woman’s leg. Suspect it was just a slip of paper, though.
Two slips, as it turned out: he got the academic award for Honors Physics and Honors Spanish from last year. Only kid in each class to get it. And wouldn’t you know it? He’s a little peeved he didn’t get the award for Math Analysis.
In PE yesterday, they played football. “It was more fun than usual,” he told me when I picked him up from school. “More running around and passing, not as much blocking. But it was a funny thing.”
“What was?”
“At one point, they passed it to me. I instinctively ducked.”
He’s our son.
D.
Back to school night
Tonight was Jake’s Back to School Night. We went last year, but I mistakenly brought Jake along with me. When we realized our mistake, we left after The Pitch. Didn’t seem fair to make him be the only kid sitting in a room full of parents.
The Pitch: they start every Back to School Night with a plea . . . with several pleas. Pleas for volunteers. Pleas for more money over and above the tuition (it’s a private Catholic school, for those of you just tuning in). Pleas for recruitment of more students. I don’t mind this, since it’s all about survival. Or at least I wouldn’t mind it if the room weren’t in the 80s.
And that’s with air conditioning. Outside it was well over 110. They had watering stations and ice cream, and they told everyone to go to the library if they got too overheated, since it’s the best air conditioned building on campus. But we still were supposed to crisscross the campus, going from one classroom to the next, following in miniature our child’s typical school day.
My impressions thus far:
I like Jake’s calculus teacher. I’m reserving judgment about the rest.
I’m reminded of the fact that educators must double as entertainers and stand-up comics (am I right, Sis?) Some of Jake’s teachers Have It and some Have It Less but none was so dry as to make me want to claw my eyes out and drink bleach. Which is more than I can say for some of MY high school teachers.
I really, really wanted to ask the English teacher a question. I had questions for the other teachers, too, but each “period” was the same: ten rushed minutes during which the teachers all said “email me, don’t bother calling me,” and speed-talked class expectations yatta yatta yatta.
What I wanted to ask the English teacher: You know these essays you assign wherein our child is supposed to draw from his life experiences? Well, if he hasn’t had an experience like that, can he make shit up? I keep trying to convince Jake that it’s okay to make shit up, but he hates to lie. I don’t call it lying, though. I call it comedy.
The turnout was amazing. I kept thinking, Don’t you people have lives? But then I remembered that I was there, too.
And paying for it. I have to go rehydrate. See ya.
D.
So hard to look cool at a 4-year-old’s birthday party
But we try. Jake almost pulls it off; if only I could get him to wear Levi’s instead of shorts . . .
But I’m just some old bald guy in a denim jacket.
I used to wonder how my parents could handle the fact that their kids were aging. We don’t look a thing like we did back in the 60s and 70s. Well, I don’t. But as Jake gets older, I’ve come to realize that for the parents, it’s easy. For the kids it’s a little harder (it would be easier, I suspect, if I saw my folks more often, so that the changes would not seem quite so saltatory*).
Worst of all is handling how I’ve changed. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. My own self-image always seems to be about 20 years out of whack with the current reality.
Tomorrow: I’ll put together bookshelves. Assembly is always challenging to a person who is offended by the idea that left and right are somehow different.
D.
Back to school
And it starts all over again:
The repeated cattle-prod jolts to get him out of bed in the morning (you have to be cruel to be kind).
The endless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Lunch consists of a piece of fruit, PB&J, yogurt, a protein bar. Sometimes for the sake of variety I’ll substitute cheese and crackers for the sandwich. Jake tells me that his sack lunches are the healthiest ones he sees.
The last minute homework. Props to Jake tonight, though: it’s only 9:30 PM and he’s almost done with his Theology assignment. He had to buy a Bible this year, and his teacher wants the kids to decorate their Bible so that they’ll develop an emotional attachment to it. Jake’s decorating his with pictures of Jupiter’s moons, a portrait of Galileo, and some of Da Vinci’s drawings.
The near-heat stroke every time the PE teacher makes the kids run a mile in supra-100 degree weather.
Last year, there was the hair-pulling (if I had hair) over his insipid honors English class. This year’s curriculum looks a little better, but once again, I did a fine job second-guessing: he’s already done The Odyssey and Macbeth.
But oy, these art project assignments. What special hells do his teachers have in store for us this year?
D.
Vintage TV
We spent the last hour treating Jake to one of our favorite examples of 1960s television: The Outer Limits’ “Controlled Experiment,” featuring Carroll O’Connor and Barry Morse as Martian agents Deimos and Phobos, tasked with understanding the uniquely human art of murder, and Grace Lee Whitney (y’know, Yeoman Rand?) as the would-be murderess. “Controlled Experiment” was probably the best satire of science fiction prior to the advent of Futurama, The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy.
You can watch the full video here, but it’s also available without commercial interruption through NetFlix. Enjoy.
Jake had his sophomore year orientation today; school starts tomorrow. They saw fit to lecture the kids for a solid hour on the evils of sex-texting and e-bullying. My son, so wise in the ways of most things digital, is a backward child when it comes to instant messaging. He’s our kid (neither one of us ever figured out how to use the IM feature of our phones). So of course he tuned it all out, or as much of it as he could.
They also blithered on about relationships. There was some sort of diagram where the inner circles represented closer relationships, the outer circles more distant relationships. Outermost were strangers, second-to-innermost were “soul mates” (how PC of them! I would have expected “husband or wife”). Innermost? God.
My atheist son tuned out that bit, too.
And I had always thought orientations were about giving you your locker combo and berating you about the dress code.
D.
Live anywhere & do well
We lost one of our ophthalmologists today — she’s heading up to the Bay Area to join a private practice. As I left her going away party, I told her that she’ll need to install a dry sauna into her home. She gave me a confused smile, so I added, “To remember us by. But you’ll also have to throw in some cow manure.”
That about sums up my son’s impression of Bako. It’s hot and half the time it smells of cow manure (or, for the sake of variety, garbage). He’s decided he wants to settle eventually in a place more like southwestern Oregon, where he grew up.
“Jake,” I told him, “the sad fact is, you’ll go where the jobs are.” And it is a sad fact. The climate here is miserable, the opposite end of the spectrum from the Pacific Northwest, but I’m happier here because the job is better. Not that I disliked my patients up north — they weren’t the problem. But down here I’m a part of something bigger than myself and it feels good.
And if climate change would bring the Pacific Ocean to our city limits, and also give us an average summer’s day of 70F, I’d really be happy, but I fear climate change ain’t heading in that direction.
I told Jake that the key, the Holy Grail, would be a live-anywhere job that (A) he enjoys, (B) makes him a good living, and (C) cannot be outsourced. The only things that came to mind were “screen doctor” and “bestselling novelist,” but those are things I might enjoy. Jake dislikes writing (though he is good at it). Consultancy jobs satisfy all but (C), unless Jake were to super-specialize in just the right niche topic.
As much as I hate to admit it, medicine satisfies a lot of these requirements (unless you want to live in an in-demand area like San Diego, the Bay Area, or Seattle — but even then the jobs are there, provided you’re willing to make some compromises). I doubt Jake would want to go into medicine, but I must observe that the same thing that attracted me to medicine is still true: he would never be out of work.
It’s a harsh, unpredictable world out there. Just as for my patients I wish I had a crystal ball, I wish I had one for my son, too.
D.
More photos
Now that I’ve figured out how to use our scanner, I’m a scanning fool.
Jake with his grandma
Happy days.
Jake does Avedon
Somewhere around age 5 or 6, Jake lost interest in photography. It’s a shame. I think his Lego infatuation deep-sixed all other interests.
Jake with his favorite food.
He’s in McCarren Airport, by the look of it. Boy mit pizza.
The family . . . shame these aren’t digital photos, you know?
D.