The Canadas
|
|
Summer 2002
Features Updated August 18, 2002 |
The Magic of SummerSummer has long been a magical time for me. Growing up in Indianapolis, I spent many of my summer days watching NBC’s baseball “Game of the Week” or rounding up and playing games of my own with my friends. Summer was also a time to ride my bicycle, to write, or just to relax in the sun. If fall, winter, and spring were the times for me to do what others—namely my teachers—wanted me to do, then summer was the time to follow my own interests and desires. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work. A dutiful student, I did plenty of work—too much work—during the school year, and I worked in my part-time job all year long. Rather, it was that I wanted to choose my work, as well as my play. It’s for this reason that I shudder at the thought of year-round school. I believe students—the students like me, at least—need summer to explore—something I suspect they don’t the opportunity to do nearly enough the rest of the year. Now that I am an adult, not much has changed. Being a college professor, I still have my summers to myself, and I still use them to follow my own stars. Three of those stars are the members of my family: Lisa, Esprit, and Will. We play a lot—especially this summer when, for the first time since I became a full-fledged professor, I didn’t teach summer school. Baseball is still a big part of the summer, though now it’s the Fox “Game of the Week,” and my primary baseball buddy out in the yard or the carport is only four feet tall. There are other games, as well: badminton, tag, follow the leader, hide and seek, Chutes and Ladders, and Uno, to name a few. Not everything we do is particularly structured, of course. A thespian in the making, Essie loves what we have come to call “shows,” little dramas featuring ourselves or her little animals and people as the actors. Also, every day during Lisa’s exercise time, Essie, Will, and I also go on a “play date” to places such as the park or the library. Finally, summer has left us free to take a three-week trip to Indiana, where we visited family and played some more at events and places such as the Three Rivers Festival in Fort Wayne and the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis. While we were in Indiana, we celebrated Will’s birthday, and he took his first steps. Along with all of this play, I also work a lot, but I do work that I choose, not work given to me by my bosses or my students. For example, having received a grant from my university’s Teaching and Learning Center, I spent a chunk of my summer exploring the world of distance education and preparing a presentation on the subject for my colleagues. My favorite work, however, is the “homework” I do with Essie and Will. Having decided to home-school our children, Lisa and I have begun working with them on reading, math, the arts, and other subjects, even though Essie won’t be eligible for kindergarten until next year and Will is only a toddler. For Will, in fact, the globe is still just a ball, but he is learning, as well. In fact, while we were in Indiana, he experienced a breakthrough. For weeks, he and I had been doing a kind of homework in which I toss a ball in the air and say “up” and “down.” During one of these activities, he began saying “uh” and “dah,” even using the rising and falling intonation that I use when I say the words. The work we do with Essie is somewhat more sophisticated and involves exploration and practice in addition, geography, poetry, nature, French, physical education, and more. This summer, for example, she has learned to buckle her seat belt, recite the months of the year, and excuse herself from the dinner table. Her reading and writing abilities are advancing, as well, so that now she often types her journal with little or no help from Lisa and me. A couple of her August entries include “dad and I dind somn homnwoga” (“Dad and I did some homework.”) and “essie ad dad ad will wit to the pik” (“Essie and Dad and Will went to the park.”). Finally, Essie also has branched off into some literary endeavors, including a story entitled The Cat. Using a little book that Mommy made out of lined paper, Essie wrote “THe-CAT-BY-ESSIe” on the title page, drew a picture of a cat on the inside cover, and then began with her striking introduction: “A-CAT-WAS-IN-THE-SKY.” Apparently exhausted by the mental energy required to compose those powerful and provocative words, the author has abruptly ceased work on her project, though her editors hope she will resume it when her muse returns. |
Indiana
Going
to Indiana to visit our families has become something of a summer ritual for
us. This year, the four of us
spent about three weeks there, splitting our time between my parents’ home in
Indianapolis and the home of Lisa’s parents in Fort Wayne. As usual, Essie and Will were the stars
of the show—and what a show it was.
For starters, we celebrated Will’s first birthday with parties in both
places. Children’s activities,
furthermore, dominated our agenda for much of the trip. In Indianapolis, for example, my
parents took Essie, Will, and me to a PBS Kids festival downtown. Despite a large turnout that resulted
in unbelievable lines for some activities, Essie got to perform on stage, jump
in a giant moonwalk, play dressup, and see the Cookie Monster—albeit from a
distance. The next day, we all
went to the Children’s Museum, a marvelous place featuring dozens of activities
spread over several floors. Over
the period of several hours, Essie built and sailed boats with Papa, play in a
construction area, rode a carousel, went through a funhouse, made crafts, and,
perhaps best of all, performed in two shows. Will also had lots of fun. Granny and I took him to an infant area, where he had the
time of his life crawling over some soft cushions, up and down a ramp, and over
a little wooden bridge. He also
enjoyed a puppet show put on by Essie and Granny. While in Indy, we also went swimming at a huge public pool,
made bookmarks, and paid a visit to Chuck E. Cheese’s. The highlight—at least for
Essie—though, was catching lightning bugs with Papa.
We
spent the Fourth of July in Fort Wayne, where Essie joined her grandma, Aunt
Jessica, and Aunt Melanie for a fireworks show. While were in the area, Lisa and I also took Es and Will to
their first drive-in, where we watched the animated film Spirit about a
wild horse that is captured.
Essie’s literary sensibilities emerged in the critique of the film,
whose plot she found unconvincing:
Essie: “We watched a movie. It was about Spirit. He was a little guy. Then he got bigger and bigger, almost
bigger than me and bigger than Daddy and bigger than everybody . . .”
Dad: “What happened in the movie?”
Essie: “He got tangled up three times, and
that was a silly movie . . .”
Dad: “What was silly about it?”
Essie: “He just got tied three times, and I
just think it’s silly . . .”
It should be noted that Essie was less critical of the drive-in’s playground and popcorn. The highlights of our time in Fort Wayne were the Henry-Degitz reunion and the Three Rivers Festival. At the reunion, Essie twice fell in love—once with a giant inflatable slide and once with a strolling musician, or rather his accordion. She later told her dad that she wished the accordionist could come home with us so that he could entertain us. Alas, that was not possible, but she did enjoy whiling away part of the afternoon sitting in a lawn chair and watching her idol perform old songs with two singers about 20 times her age. The Three Rivers Festival featured numerous activities for children, including a parade, an exhibit of children’s art, a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the Allen County Library, and Family Fun Day at the Botanical Conservatory. Essie enjoyed all of these events, especially the trip to the conservatory, where she saw a magician, played in a make-believe supermarket, potted a plant, and learned about deserts, carnivorous plants, and other subjects.
|
|
|
In between the children’s activities, Lisa and I got to enjoy some time together
and alone. I went for several bike
rides on the River Greenway in Fort Wayne and the Monon Trail in Indianapolis,
for example, and Lisa took in a cake-decorating exhibit in Fort Wayne. The highlight for the two of us was a three-day getaway in Bloomington, Indiana, home
of our alma mater, Indiana University.
While my parents took care of the kids back in Indianapolis, Lisa and I
browsed at the IU Bookstore, went for walks in Indiana’s giant student union
and elsewhere, attended an IU Band Concert, ate at some favorite restaurants,
relaxed at the Grant Street Inn, and remembered our wonderful time at IU, where
we met 15 years ago.
Will’s First Birthday
Because
Will’s birthday conveniently comes on June 28, we were able to do something for
him that we have not been able to do for Essie—that is, celebrate his special
day with our families in Indiana.
Will actually got to enjoy two parties, one at my parents’ home in
Indianapolis and another at the home of Lisa’s parents in Fort Wayne. Two parties, of course, means two
cakes, two performances of “Happy Birthday,” two sets of party favors, and two
hundred gifts from aunts and grandparents who do not need to concern themselves
with packing our van to drive 700 miles back to North Carolina. Although he had only a vague idea of
what was going on, Will soaked up all of this fun, especially the cake. Among his gifts was a Fisher-Price
cement mixer and boulders, which he adored, as well as many outfits.
Will’s First Steps
Having seen Essie begin walking when she was about 10 months old, we may have been a little apprehensive when Will was content with using all fours for all his transportational needs. On July 2, just a few days after his first birthday, however, Will began walking. Over the previous few days, he had taken a step or two now and then, but this time he really took off. We had been in Indiana for a week or so, and Will, Essie, and I were staying with Granny and Papa in Indianapolis while Lisa was in Fort Wayne for a few days. The big moment occurred in Granny and Papa’s living room. I was in the kitchen trying to check the messages on our home answering machine when I heard an uproar. I rushed into the living room and found Will, dressed in his blue Curious George outfit, taking little steps toward me. Altogether, he walked about a foot. By the end of the month, he was walking several feet at a time, and in August he was clearly a toddler, regularly going for strolls through the house and in the back yard. Indeed, he has been known to scale the living room coffee table, from which he claims to enjoy a spectacular view.
Canadas’ Most Wanted |
|
Summer 2002
Name: Esprit Canada
Name: Will Canada
Criminal History: 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | Winter 2002 |
“Pork and Bean” on the move
“He’s double trouble now,” one official said. “Now that he is walking, he not only can move freely around the country, but also can do a lot more damage.” Fortunately, the bulk of this damage has occurred at one residence in Laurinburg. The owners have reported that the tiny outlaw ransacks their home regularly, sometimes as often as four or five times a day. Strangely, however, he rarely takes anything. “We enter a room and find books or papers or toys strewn all over the floor, but nothing is missing,” one resident said. “It’s as though he just enjoys making a mess.” The resident did admit, however, that their grocery bill has skyrocketed and suspects that the Bean may be to blame. Meanwhile, police are combing the country in search of the criminals, who have been spotted in recent months in such diverse places as Williamsburg, Virginia; Wilmington, North Carolina; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Complicating matters is the fact that both Esprit and Will are masters of disguise, as seen in the photographs at the left. |
Laurinburg,
NC: The hunt for the notorious criminals Esprit “Piglet” Canada and
Will “Bean” Canada—sometimes known together as “Pork and the Bean”—took a new
and frightening turn this summer when authorities learned that the Bean is
now fully mobile.
A Word from Essie . . . |
- On her mother while she was away: “I miss your beautiful face.”
- On her playroom: “This place is a mess.”
- On the mess in the playroom: "Let’s roll in it."
- On a successful visit to the bathroom: “Now don’t feel so tinklish.”