Sunday Haiku: I call the best one

"I call the blue one!"

"Hey! You had blue the last time.

I never get blue."

As You Like It As You've Never Seen It

Charlie had a very cool opportunity this fall to perform in the Creative Dramatics program at the Pittsburgh Public Theater.  His school and a suburban school got together, did a home-and-home series of practices ("Their school is so big, and it's just all on one level; there are no stairs at all.") and practiced at the Public's O'Reilly Theater downtown.  Last Saturday, they finally performed.  

The show was an adapted script of As You Like It. The Public will perform that later in their season.  Each kid had a brief speaking part.  Charlie's was among the first.  The video below is too long for the Internet, but if you're chairbound and can't do anything else, you might enjoy watching the whole thing.  The suburban school only had one boy in their group.  I'm proud of our urban arts magnet that so many boys - including some of Charlie's best pals - participated.  Early on, before I knew much about this program, I asked Charlie if he liked it, and he said "Well, yes, because it's basically all girls."  Oh, we're going there already in fourth grade?  Actually, looking back, that sounds right on time.

With his introduction to the story through this program, we've decided to take Charlie to the big, real production of As You Like It when it happens.  He's excited about that.

Unexpected Emotions at the School Holiday Concert

Our fourth-grader played in his first holiday band concert at school tonight. When I tell you that I felt certain emotions at an elementary school band concert, you might think that I mean nostalgia or joy.  You might also ask if boredom is an emotion; the concert was a mercifully-brief 83 minutes.

Unfortunately, I felt grief and preemptive worry for Charlie's black male classmates.  The concert kicked off with the school's locally-famous drumming group playing together.  Each player drumming his or her beat contributes to an impressively complex and polished cadence.  These kids know what they're doing; they drum every morning at morning assembly.  Front and center, a group of fourth and fifth grade boys anchored the drumming group.  All but one of them were African American.  Their faces looked beautiful.  They exuded such competence and confidence, especially the one leader who took cues from the music teacher and artist-in-residence and communicated changes to the rest of the drummers.  They laughed and smiled and focused and exhibited showmanship.  They looked innocent and sweet.

While I watched, them, though, I worried for them.  I know they come from all different backgrounds and that some of them will be better positioned to succeed in life than my sons.  I also know, however, that more than likely, the road to accomplishment in life for any one of them will be much harder than it is for my two little white boys.  They will have to overcome prejudice and assumptions.  They'll be less likely to get second chances and even first chances at certain things.  The likelihood that any one of them might end up in jail is way higher than the likelihood that one of my sons will.


I try to take solace in the fact that they attend an integrated school (about 2/3 African American, most of 1/3 White and a sprinkling of Asians and Latinos) with a dynamic African American principal with a Ph.D.  I try to take solace in the fact that being young and male and black in this country in 2011 should afford more safety and opportunity in life than being young and male and black 60 years ago.  My solace falters, though, through everything I know about where things still stand in our society.  I pray that the potential I saw in Charlie's classmates tonight can overcome the many barriers they will confront.

Sunday Haiku: Self-pics

When your arm is in
the picture, it looks like you
don't have any friends.

Grace

We just added a new grace to our rotation before dinners.  We got it from a Dennis the Menace cartoon quoting a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem.  Of course.  Where do you get your graces?

Families say grace all different kinds of ways.  I grew up on the evangelical, theoretically free-form grace.  I say theoretically free-form because liturgy creeps in whether we choose it or not.  Individuals and groups establish rhythms and repeat phrases.  So, although we didn't have prescribed prayers, as each person prayed, they tended to thank for and ask for the same things habitually.

Now that we have kids, we pray a short rotation of regular graces.  The greatest hit, of course, is God is Great.  There are others, including an express grace.  More on that later. 

The new grace is:
For each new morning with its light
For rest and shelter of the night
For health and peace
For love and friends
For everything thy goodness sends
Father in heaven
We thank thee


Ol' Emerson stopped after the list.  The Church of the Brethren added the Father in heaven part, and we think it gives the whole enterprise the appropriate meaning.  And yes, as you know (admit it!), this was the Dennis the Menace cartoon on the Sunday before Thanksgiving this year, showing scenes of family and Thanksgiving goodness.

We also pray the full God is Great:

God is great, God is good
And we thank Him for our food
By His hands, we all are fed
Give us Lord our daily bread.

I include that one here because, as I said, it's the greatest hit of family graces.  Also, though, two people have said to us this fall that they'd never heard the second two lines.  I thought that was the international standard.  What do you know?  My brother and his wife are raising their kids to say "Thank you Lord for daily bread", which sounds a lot more grateful and trusting than our demand.  Oh well.  God is Great has a way of just being there, but it's actually a very solid, theological prayer.  We start by talking about God, not us and acknowledging his nature as both powerful and good.  We show gratitude, understanding that He provides for us.  We don't ask for too much - as in the Lord's Prayer - just bread for today.

Until Emerson, our most elegant grace came to us source unknown but probably Episcopal in nature:
For food and homes and loving care
For all that makes the world so fair
We thank thee, Heavenly Father.

That's a good one, and people who haven't heard it before ask about it and try to remember it.

Perhaps our longest grace, I learned at a Salvation Army boys' home in Malaysia where I did a short-term mission in college.  It was chanted quick-time in 6-17-year-old Malay accented English with a very specific rhythm:
Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you Lord for everything.  Amen.

It doesn't look that long written out.  In Malaysia, the prayer gathered speed as it went, so "Amen" sounded like the fourth and fifth syllables of "everything'.

Finally, our "express grace" when dinner prep has taken too long, or we need to go somewhere right after dinner is this:
For every cup and plateful,
Lord, make us truly grateful.

Amen.

Trevor, you have to at least taste these Lucky Charms...

Flickr: Laffy4K

"Trevor, you have to at least take a bite of these Lucky Charms," said my sister-in-law to her then pre-school son in one of the most surreal parenting moments I've ever witnessed.  Born in Hong Kong and visiting his great-grandparents' house in Cincinnati for a holiday, my nephew had never tasted the magically delicious cereal that was a Cincinnati family tradition.  Children can be oddly picky, and my nephew put his mother in the very strange position of forcing him to try a sugary cereal in the same manner she might use in the case of brussels sprouts.

I thought about that moment earlier this week when I forced my five-year-old to taste Cool Whip(TM).  He's rounding the corner from being extremely picky to cleaning his plate at dinner occasionally.  Horizons beyond beige food are opening up.  When he told me that he didn't like Cool Whip, i thought "Pish posh!  This child doesn't even know what Cool Whip is!"  It's rarely in our house, actually.  We usually only acquire it when we're planning to make a jello mold (yum!).  I just knew that he would like it.  What does scripture say about people, though we are evil, knowing how to give good gifts to our children?  He tasted it and made a face like it was mayonnaise that had been left in a car on the fourth of July.  I laughed my way through the shock and let him spit it out on a plate.  I have to think that in other circumstances in which he had not already made up his mind that he wasn't going to like it, he would have enjoyed artificial whipped cream.  Call me crazy.


Just a few days before, however, I'd been in the exact same position.  When a family friend came by to take the kids to see the new Muppet movie, Teddy protested that he hated Muppets and didn't want to go.  Our friend, a professional counselor of children, said "if he doesn't want to go, he doesn't have to".  After asking her to give us a minute, I delivered a surreal speech about how I'd lived a lot longer than him and knew for a fact that he would enjoy himself at that movie.  The rousing conclusion can be paraphrased "You are going; put your shoes on."   Long story short there: He went.  He loved it.  He made no move to acknowledge my sagacity.


What do you do when your child resists something you know he/she will find awesome if he/she gives it a chance?

The Onion gets it

This Onion article drips with the Competent Parent ethos.   



Tip of the quill to Wooter for pointing it out.