This weekend I took Finn to the pool twice. Once on Saturday, preceded by crying and pleading and tears; the second time on Sunday by happy giggles. She’s been traumatized, I think, by Mrs. J, her swim teacher, who comes from the throw-em-in-the-pool-and-let-Darwin-sort-it-out school, and who has little time for Finn’s method of learning things: slow, steady increments of progress. I forsee that trying to teach Finn something she doesn’t like will be a long, slow process and teaching her something she does like will be impossible to tear her away from—in short, she’s her father’s child. I just hope she takes to math better than I did.
Once I’d gotten her in the pool (after a car ride marked by nonstop reassurances) and on a float, she was a giggling, happy tadpole with crazy legs that didn’t stop moving. She was having so much fun, in fact, that when we bumped up against our time limit, I had to promise her I’d bring her back to get her out of the pool.
Sunday was much easier. She vibrated with excitement as we put her swimsuit on, and skipped as we walked through the parking lot. And then, as we opened the door to the pool, she saw Mrs. J, who was leading a completely unrelated class for older handicapped adults, and she shrieked in terror. I held her close and explained that we were going to swim by ourselves, that I would be with her, and that calmed her down. Once we were in the pool, she was the same tadpole I swam with on Saturday. I spent about thirty seconds holding her hand, and the rest of the time she paddled and kicked around the shallow end by herself, making friends and having a great time. She even stuck her head in the water and blew bubbles.
Sunday evening, after dinner, we walked down the street for some ice cream to celebrate. Returning home, we walked out back to put our lawn tools away, and when that was done Jen and I sat under the big maple tree to watch her catch fireflies as dusk fell, past her bedtime.
Early this morning, while I was buried deep in REM sleep, Jen nudged me awake to face Finn, who was standing next to the bed complaining of a nightmare. I followed her back into her room and brushed aside the fog enough to understand she wasn’t going to go back to sleep easily, so I grabbed my pillow and smushed in next to her. In no time we were both out cold.
This morning, as we both stirred, I opened my eyes to find her looking at me. She broke into a big smile and whispered, “I love you, daddy!” and gave me a hug. That made the rest of the day very easy.
This is an interesting curation of home science experiments and projects, as seen through a Geocities filter circa 1998: Science Hobbyist.
So my friend Will and I did some exploring around the East Side of the city this Saturday. He posted a picture of an independent junkyard and told me we should check it out; a date was quickly made. I picked him up in Peer Pressure, we packed some tools, and headed out for some adventure.
The yard itself looked promising from the road; out in front sat several original Beetles, an SS Monte Carlo, a Manx dune buggy (with optional Subaru Brat jumpseats), a couple of Karmann Ghias, and a mid-70’s shit brown Nova that looked like Grandma had just parked it in front of the pharmacy.
Behind the gate, however, things were a little more sparse. It looked like they were actually winding operations down, because it was about 1/2 full and the back section by the crusher was pretty much empty. The selection was slim, so we headed over to the local Crazy Ray’s and wandered the lot. I find that the city yards are generally missing any interesting older stock because of the turnover; 90’s era imports and domestics of all shapes and sizes rule the day. We found a couple of picked-over Beetles and 2nd-generation Camaros but nothing worth writing about.
