Eileen Maksym's Blog, page 30
March 20, 2014
March 19, 2014
Emergent
One of the great joys of parenthood is watching your children emerge as people. It starts very early, of course, witnessing the little things that babies do when they’re responding to the world, getting to know their favorite toy or food or song, the things they master and the things they struggle with, what makes them laugh and what makes them cry.
Right now, I am watching my kids’ talents emerge, and I am amazed all over again how very individual they are.
I am constantly impressed by my nine-year-old son Kolbe. I don’t think I’ve talked about it on this blog before, but Kolbe is autistic. His biggest challenge is language, and if you were to speak with him, you’d doubtless notice his atypical speech. He’s come a very long way, but still struggles with both expressive and receptive language. It can be very frustrating for him, when he doesn’t understand directions or can’t quite say what he means. He also reads below grade level, and hasn’t quite gotten to the point where reading is much more than a chore.
But, as is true of anyone, if you were to define Kolbe by his disabilities, you would be doing him, and yourself, a grave disservice.
Kolbe is very good at math, grasping concepts that are above his grade level with ease. He is also incredibly talented at music. We didn’t really realize exactly how talented before he started taking piano lessons this past fall. Despite never having played piano before, he’s sailed through the introductory pieces. He might not read for fun, but he plays piano for fun. He might have trouble expressing himself with words, but his music is full of nuance and emotion. It’s amazing watching him blossom like this.
My daughter Josie is seven, and also started piano this past fall. She works hard and has progressed well for her age and experience, but she obviously doesn’t have the same talent for it that Kolbe has. This upsets her sometimes, and Pete and I explain to her that she’s not in a competition with her brother, and that not everybody has the same talents. That she succeeds when she works hard and continues to improve.
Josie excels at reading. She reads well above her grade level, constantly “accidentally” checks books out of the library that are even above the advanced level she’s pegged at. (“Mom, this book has a lime-green dot…honestly, I thought it was yellow!” Once, maybe, twice, okay, but several times a week? I don’t think so.) She writes stories, which pleases me in particular.
But she is an amazing artist.
We’ve known this for a while. As soon as she could hold a crayon, she’s been drawing. And not always just scribbles. She would draw a lot of faces. One time we asked her what one of her drawings was. She said it was “a ghost on wheels.” And by god, that’s exactly what it was. Her drawings have developed along with her. Her first grade teacher eagerly showed us her illustrations for the stories they wrote in class. Every time I see one of her drawings, I’m amazed anew by how she has a marked ability to convey emotion on the faces of the people (and animals) she draws.
A couple days ago, she showed me a drawing of our dog, saying “Look! I based it off of reality!”
Holy cow. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but she had been drawing entirely from her imagination. She had never actually looked at something and drawn it until she drew our dog. I was amazed. I couldn’t draw that well when I was seven!
When my husband came home from his conference yesterday, I went through Josie’s sketchbook with him, showing him the dragons she’s drawn, the unicorns, the unicorn seahorses, the fancy princesses. Then we came upon this drawing:
Holy cow, man.
I’m going to work hard to make sure Kolbe and Josie have the resources they need to continue to develop their talents. I hope to do right by them and by the amazing gifts they’ve been given.
March 18, 2014
March 17, 2014
Movies and TV That You Only Want To See Once
[Note: I refer to the episode of The Walking Dead that aired this past Sunday. Other than indications of the general impact of the episode, there are no spoilers below.]
My husband is in Switzerland right now, visiting with one of his collaborators after a conference in Germany. He’s missed the last two episodes of The Walking Dead, and he’ll doubtless want to watch them once he gets home. And he totally should: the last two episodes were great. I’ll gladly watch the first with him.
But there’s no way in hell I’m rewatching the second.
There are a number of movies in this category of “glad I saw it, never watching it again.” Schindler’s List is a big one. Requiem For A Dream and Trainspotting are in the category for basically the same reasons. (I won’t even rewatch Trainspotting to pay attention to the performance of a young Jonny Lee Miller. Sorry, Jonny.) There are some movies that are right on the cusp of rewatchability. E.T. for instance. Great movie, but good god, does it tear your heart out and stomp all over it!
Before last night’s Walking Dead, I don’t think there’s ever been an episode of television in that category. The closest was, interestingly enough, probably the season two episode of the show where they open the barn door (No spoilers: if you’ve seen the show, you know exactly what I mean). It had a similar punch to the gut, and left me literally gasping for air.
But last night? Last night had me crying. And not the silent, tears rolling down my face kind of crying. I mean actual noisy sobbing. I’m glad the kids were asleep, because they probably would have been upset by seeing mommy cry like that. Of course, they would never, ever be in the living room while The Walking Dead was on, but that’s beside the point.
I’m glad I saw it. It’s a very powerful, very raw and honest, very well done episode.
But I am never watching it again.
March 16, 2014
March 14, 2014
It doesn’t matter who wins or loses, it’s how you play the game.
My daughter had her first soccer game yesterday. She’s the one in the middle, in the really long orange jersey (her team is The Fire) and really high soccer socks. And that’s probably my shadow down there in the lower right hand corner, memorializing the moment. I don’t have any pictures of her with the ball, because whenever she had it I was clapping my hands and yelling “GO! GO! GO!”
It’s been a long time since I watched a game with kids this young (Josie is seven). Most of the kids are new to the sport, so the game was a stripped down, simple version. They played on a half field with small goals (you can see one off to the left there). There were four kids on the field per team, no goalies, and the coaches were the refs.
It was wonderful.
At one point both Josie and a girl from the other time went for the ball and collided. Josie came down hard, and there was a collective gasp from the parents. Both of the girls came off the field crying. I checked Josie out and made sure she wasn’t seriously hurt, then held her for a while as she cried, first saying that it hurt SO BAD (Josie can be very dramatic. Wonder where she gets that from…) then saying she was embarrassed. After a little bit her coach came over to make sure she was okay, and to ask her if she wanted to play. She was a little reluctant until he said “We need you!” Then she got up, he gave her an enthusiastic high ten, and she was back in the game.
I don’t remember the score, and neither does Josie. I know the other team got more goals. It didn’t matter. There were no winners or losers, just a bunch of kids running around and having fun, with their parents cheering them on from the sidelines. Josie fell down, and she got back up and kept playing, which is her own victory. We left the field with Josie singing at the top of her lungs.
“So light ‘em up up up
Light ‘em up up up
Light ‘em up up up
I’M ON FIRE!”
Yes she is.
March 13, 2014
TwitterView!
Today starting at 3:30pm, I will be on Twitter answering questions from Orangeberry and YOU! Come join in the fun, ask anything you’re curious about, and check out the rest of my Twitter at @eileenmaksym
March 12, 2014
Gravedigger, when you dig my grave…
I’ve always been fascinated by memorial art. One purpose of art is to encapsulate and express human experience and emotion. What is more common to the human experience than death and loss? And who can look at the beauty of a memorial like the one above and not feel the grief? I’ve viewed the memorials in many famous cemeteries around the world. During my brief stint as a family service counsellor for a funeral home, my office was in Chicago’s historic Rosehill Cemetery, and I spent a fair amount of time exploring.
There’s been a fairly recent trend amongst cemeteries that the only memorials allowed are the metal plates placed flush with the ground. They’re easier for the cemeteries to maintain: just run a mower right over the plates rather than take the care and time to cut the grass around a headstone. I refuse to go along with it. When I die, I want to be buried in a cemetery that allows headstones, obelisks, mausoleums, statuary.
I don’t expect that my family will be able to afford more than a simple headstone, mind. But a cemetery is a business. They make their money by selling plots. And if people refuse to support cemeteries that are phasing out art in the name of convenience, then cemeteries will have a financial incentive to continue to support memorials that might take time to maintain, but are ultimately timeless.
March 10, 2014
The kids are finally in bed
I don’t know how single parents do it.
My husband is away at an astrophysical conference in Germany until next Tuesday, so I’m on my own with the kids and the dog. He’s only been gone a little over 24 hours, and I’m already exhausted. How do people do this? How do people who have full time jobs do this?
