10.20.11
Why not?
Oh well, I’ve already been subject to this shoulder-stiffening, non-ergonomic computer setup for a few hours, so why not a few minutes more? And never mind that it’s 12:19 and I have to be up around 7:00—you can sleep when you’re dead.
I’m waxing all sentimental after revisiting a few pictures of little William, who turned two on the fifteenth of October. Life really is a great gift and we shouldn’t take it for granted. Well, I’ll qualify that statement. If you’re in good health and are lucky enough to live under decent conditions, then life can be great. But if you’re a quadriplegic or you’re a young woman living in the honor-killing-prone hinterlands of Pakistan, then I don’t think life would be all that great for you.
Mickey and Milo have started attending elementary school; they are now in Grade 1. They seem to enjoy school quite a bit. They just started school last Thursday and already seem pretty well adjusted. There’s still show-and-tell in Grade 1, which I think is uber-cool. Tomorrow is their first show-and-tell session. Mickey will bring a preserved bee to class. This is a bee that I must have found about 20-odd years ago, which I had kept on a bed of surgical cotton in a small plastic case. Mickey accidentally tore the bee in two tonight, which was OK because Shiho was able to mend it with school glue. But how gruesome, eh? Milo is going to bring a bunch of peelings from a young birch tree. That was my suggestion because it’s pretty cool how birch bark can double as writing paper. I also suggested Milo hand out a little bit of birch paper to each class member, so that they can write down their names on the papers and bring them home as souvenirs.
As the twins get bigger, I can’t help but notice their increasing tendency for independence and individuation, their growing challenges to our authority, and the gradual decay of their innocence. Regarding this last item, sometimes I can only watch and sigh. At one school we visited when we were registering the kids into the provincial education system, recess was starting just as we were entering the building. The twins saw one kid who, upon exiting the building, unceremoniously tossed his perfect, uneaten banana into the trash can.
The twins were somewhat taken aback by this tragic incident, as was I. For one, I got from it that this was something that the kid did on a daily basis: A kid’s capacity to fool his parents would seem to know no ends, and Mom’s efforts to ensure proper nutrition might simply end up being fruitless. However, more to the point is that not only was the banana-tossing a needless, unfruitful waste of food, but to me that little event seemed to be a microcosm of all that is wrong with the human condition in particular and the universe in general. Finally, after coming from food-revering Japan, such an act is simply unthinkable. Which shows you how much I have changed after my forays into East Asia. Twenty years ago, I would have laughed to see a food fight in the high school cafeteria. Now, even watching a food fight in a movie would repulse me. There is much that is unacceptably wanton about our culture; not only will I have a hard time readjusting to it, but I really wish my kids would not have to be exposed to such gratuitousness.
Oh well, you just can’t shelter ’em forever.
In closing, I know that I do tend to fetishize parsimony. And I definitely abhor waste of all kinds. But I think that these are pretty healthy, life-affirming convictions. The challenge is not to let your convictions become compulsions or obsessions.
