Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
The child is father to the teen
Slow vacation-Monday morning, although I am on call, so anything could happen . . .
I’m cleaning our spare room, and found a few photos to share. These are scans from print photos, hence the cruddy quality. First, Jake at 16 months:
How dare you dress me in so many primary colors?
And at six years (no telling what Karen’s doing inside the Miata):
Bwaahaahaha! I locked Mommy in the car!
And finally, Jake at age 8, already perfecting the look which would be his stock and trade as a teenager (Karen says, “Proof that he was never a child.”)
Jake with his cousin Katie
D.
Vampires
Our gym sits right next to a pizza parlor, no doubt for the convenience of putting the fat back on after you’ve worked so hard to get it off. My son and I pulled into the parking lot a few minutes after nine, and the pizza parlor was dark. Plenty of cars in the parking lot — ours is a busy gym, and stays busy well past ten — and yet the restaurant had already closed.
One thing about going to Berkeley: you become accustomed to a city that never sleeps. If I remember correctly, I could (if I was so inclined) get a slice of Blondie’s pizza right up until midnight. Was Top Dog open that late? I don’t remember. Even back then, I wasn’t insane enough to eat a Polish sausage at midnight. But the coffee shops stayed open and so did the used book stores and record stores. That city is alive.
Not all college towns are this enlightened. I remember our shock when, one Sunday morning, Karen and I tried to find an open coffee shop in Palo Alto. This was not one of those, “I wonder if anything is open” adventures. We knew there would be an open coffee place probably one to every city block. And we were wrong. Or rather, we were right, but we were in the wrong city.
Berkeley is a town for vampires. (As I think I might have mentioned at one point, the grad student who had Karen’s tiny studio apartment before she did must have been a vampire. He had quite carefully covered every last window with foil. Needn’t have bothered, though, since the windows overlooked the apartment building’s hollow central space — sorry, there must be a word for that, but I don’t know it — and no, ATRIUM is all wrong because that implies something kinda nice, and this wasn’t. Anyway, precious little light penetrated down that far, even at noon.) It’s a town for vampires and insomniacs and students whose midnight oil miraculously burns Hanukkah-style until 3 or 4 in the morning. I walked or ran or skipped those streets because often they were quieter than the dorm. And often less depressing.
And so I’ve decided my son ought to go to his parents’ alma mater. Jake goes to bed after 2, sometimes well after 2. And while he’s not into eating Polish sausage at midnight now, I can’t help but think, Not yet.
Other kids go to college and experiment with drugs and alcohol. My prediction for Jake: he won’t do the drugs and he won’t do the alcohol. No, he’ll go the full vampire, completely inverting his schedule.
How he’ll manage to make it to his classes is a mystery to me, but fortunately, that’ll be his problem and not mine.
D.
Where I grew up
The two homes I lived in as a kid still stand, although one is unrecognizable. The unrecognizable one is our first home, the one which the new owners uglified soon after my dad sold it. In the old days, we had a porch and a Dutch Elm (if I remember correctly) and some nice ferns and various other shrubbery that gave the place curb appeal. The remodeled home looks like a pastel box.
When I’m down in Southern California, assuming I’m in the neighborhood, I’ll drive by one house or the other. It can be depressing driving by that first house — disconcerting is perhaps a better word — because more often than not, I drive right past it. I shouldn’t have to check the street address to know, “This is the home where I pooped and peed a couple thousand diapers.”
The weekend thus far
How’s everyone’s three-day weekend going? Except you Canadians, you don’t get a three-day weekend, do you? Nyah-nyah. And where IS everyone? I realize I never get comments on my game-related posts, but you folks have been quiet for several days now.
Yesterday, we took a drive down to LA to go on an eating binge. This is what we do for entertainment. If LA had the equivalent of a Roman vomitorium, we’d be there. Instead, we’ll indulge in anything from tasty holes-in-the-wall to snooty upscale eateries. Last night was more the latter than the former. Folks with long memories will recall that I’ve been jonesing for Ipswich clams, and Jar looked like a decent place to wallow in clamminess, so that’s what we did.
The group was: my wife and son, my sister, and my friend Mike. My family all liked Mike, which was great, since it’s never a given that your family will think your friend is as cool as you think he is. But he’s basically one of us (same age, not too dissimilar upbringing) which helps.
The food: yes, we had the clams. Two orders. Sadly, they didn’t bring enough; even two orders left us unsatisfied. My sister and I (the resident Ipswich clam experts) agreed that these were superior to every other west coast fried clam you might encounter, but still not up to 7E’s standards (a fried clam joint in New England). No bellies.
Karen and I had the soft shell crab special. Karen liked hers, but I thought it was a little disappointing. Soft shell crab is tricky; if they’re a little too old, the shell isn’t quite soft enough to crisp up in the deep fryer. We had some tasty French fries with it and some pea greens that were also very good.
My sister had sole, and while I thought it was excellent, I think it was a little undercooked for her taste. Jake had coq au vin (really, really good . . . in fact, I’m wishing we had taken home his leftovers) and Mike had a leg of lamb dish that also looked great. And we all did dessert. And we all lived to tell about it.
Come on, folks, chime in. You can’t ALL be doing fun stuff with families this weekend. I know some of you are on the ‘net.
D.
Either they love him or they hate him
We were TP’d last night. Not a bad job, but hardly professional. No toilet paper on the roof . . . no mostly dried-up egg yolk on the driveway or windows. The tree is well festooned, as are some of our bulb plants, but that seems to be the limit of our TP’ers creativity.
What follows is pure guesswork and supposition. For all I know, my partner and his wife had a few too many and decided to flashback to their youth. But given that most TP attacks are directed at the school-age child of the household, I wondered who would target my son.
I didn’t have to wonder long, since only a few of his classmates know where he lives. Specifically, his co-stars in this creation. The better question is this: should we take this as sign of affection, or act of revenge?
See, they didn’t get a great grade on the project. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe. They made a video, for the love of all things unholy. But the terms of the assignment specified that certain information regarding drug use had to be in the song’s lyrics, and my son and his fellow filmmakers included the info in a number of captions. The teacher judged this sinful enough to warrant a B rather than an A.
Why blame Jake? Because he insisted that if they make him (and me) do the bulk of the filming and editing, they would need to do the writing. And when he didn’t answer his text-message on the day they wanted his help with the writing (because, tech savvy though he may be, he’s never mastered the art of IM), perhaps they figured he was being good to his word.
In other words (as Karen put it this morning), your basic fight between the writer and the cinematographer.
Or, on the other hand, perhaps one of ’em has a mean crush on my boy.
D.
Nine scary (and clueless) old (and not so old) men (and women)
Our Supreme Court Justices are living in the 1950s.
“What’s the difference between email and a pager?”
Read the article — this was not the only question indicating a mind-vacuum. Scalia and Kennedy tripped over each other’s boners*, and of course Thomas never asks questions.
I could understand if it was one or two of the older Justices who were ignorant, but no — Chief Justice Roberts asked the email v. pager question. And he’s only 55!
It’s frightening that the highest court in the land is making decisions on matters they understand as well as I understand quantum chromodynamics. I told Karen they should recuse themselves from the case; Karen thinks they should recuse themselves from the human race.
D.
*Obligatory apology for that image.
Your typical seder
Passover approaches. No one invited me to a seder, and I doubt I’d go if I were invited. I haven’t been to a seder since the 1970s, back when both my grandparents were still alive.
Is your name Eliahu? Funny, you LOOK like a Peter to me.
It’s traditional to set out a plate of food for Eliahu (who might be the same as Elijah, I can never remember), and my crazy uncle would invariably eat that food as well as his own. This would always lead to a screaming fight between my grandparents and my uncle. We never had a seder without screaming. I’m not sure what it would look like.
There were certain things I liked and looked forward to with every seder. I liked the taste of matzoh dipped in saltwater, and I liked matzoh with red beet horseradish. Celery dipped in saltwater, that was good, too. Did my grandmother make tzimmes for Passover? If she did, I don’t remember it. And I suppose she made lamb, too, since that’s traditional. But I don’t recall the lamb, either.
My grandfather always hid the afikomen (a bit of matzoh — if you found it, you got a dollar) under the same cushion every year. Once I had been debriefed by my siblings, I had no trouble finding it.
And then there was my grandfather’s continual state of exasperation. He was only trying to work his way through the ritual, trying to read through the Haggadah like you’re supposed to, yet he was subjected to one interruption after another from my grandmother or my uncle. I think the whole thing made him very sad, or perhaps disgusted.
My grandmother never sat down to eat. She spent 90% of the seder in the kitchen, reserving the remaining 10% for serving food and screaming at my uncle. Considering that most of the food can be prepared well in advance, I have no idea what she was doing in the kitchen. Watering down the RC Cola, I suspect.
All in all, not a happy holiday. But then, I’ve never liked Passover, ever since I came to understand the story itself. No one (and that includes at least one rabbi and one orthodox Jew) has been able to explain to me why it’s okay for God to kill all the firstborn. They can’t all deserve to die. There are children, infants in that group, no? And after the first few plagues, God doesn’t even give Pharoah a chance to relent. God “hardened his heart.” As if God had a desired outcome in mind, and damned if Pharoah was going to screw it up by developing a conscience.
Maybe I’ll make a kugel, just for old time’s sake. And I’ll make it using butter, just so I can get some juicy hate mail.
Hey, Sis, anything to add?
D.
That’s just out there
My son’s latest assignment for Theology:
“Write about a dying-and-rising experience you had in the last year. In other words, a time when you had to go through struggles or suffering to grow as a person.”
I told him he should write, “Unlike Jesus, who only died and resurrected once, I die and resurrect on a regular basis. It’s called videogaming. Jesus saves early, saves often!” And sometimes autosaves (that, from Karen).
And if you find that at all amusing, there’s this, from Lyvvie. (Not for folks who, you know, have reverential feelings toward religion.)
Seriously, though, a dying-and-rising experience? How many kids have had a dying-and-rising experience?
“Tell her about the time you swigged a can of Drano, thinking it was Dr. Pepper, and then you had to get that stomach transplant.”
I’m no help at all.
D.
Then and now
September, 2006, I posted Boy mit Bagels:
Three and a half years later?
Jake had doubts that the head-to-head comparison would show much change. I guess he hasn’t noticed himself outgrowing all of his clothes.
My boy is growing up!
D.
What I wish I could say
I worry about my son. A lot. Such is the prerogative of the parent. I worry that his world is so small: a room with a computer (albeit a computer that is a window to the world), the inside of a car, a school. We don’t travel much anymore. We never did travel much, but we travel even less than we used to. I don’t get to expose Jake to so many things I was exposed to: places, people. Different kinds of entertainment. I worry that with such a small world, he won’t dream big. And I wonder if that’s such a bad thing. We cone down our dreams as we get older, not without a measure of frustration and sadness. Perhaps he’ll be spared the angst. But is it right for him to have such a restricted view as a 14-year-old?
He’s brilliant, my son, but sometimes I worry that he lacks passion. He just never seems to get excited about much. And then I wonder, is that such a bad thing? Great passions make for great sorrows. If he were an unhappy teenager, perhaps my anxieties about his equanimity would be more justifiable. It could be taken as a sign of depression, for example. But he’s not unhappy. His mother and I often wonder how two such as us could have such a happy kid.
You’re probably thinking, Sounds like he’s doing just fine. Or if you’re having problems with your own teenagers, perhaps you’re getting pissed off at me for wringing my hands over such petty issues. We’re not searching his clothing for drugs. We’re not bailing him out of jail. We’re not paying huge bills for psychological counseling. He’s a good kid.
I’m perplexed, is what it is. Confused and not a little dismayed that someone so close to us, so similar to us in so many ways, can at the same time be so unfamiliar.
And I guess I share with so many parents the fruitless desire of wanting to know the future.
D.