A Monday (Hamilton v. Haydn).

10-year old helping his little brother on a rope swing in the forest

Risen (the sun has not yet rose).

“I woke up so late!”
he said in anguish, so sad.
“It’s 6,” I smiled.

Mandate.

The boy, hungry for schoolwork, for homework,
Three; hungry for the opportunity to be ordered to formally learn.

It is exhausting sometimes. The exhaustion of providing assignments and oversight and encouragement and the appropriate level of challenge and difficult to a three-year old. Of bouncing from ordering a three-year old to illustrate a plate of food you could eat with a spoon,

to discussing with a 13-year year old the impact that migration patterns of the Bantu people had on the current culture of central Africa.

But it is a manageable exhaustion.

The one-year old wanting the same thing, and leaving lids off markers everywhere?

That is manageable too, mostly, sometimes.

And sometimes not.

The Battle.

We listen to classical in the mornings. Classical, defined as music composed in one of three primary eras of music from 1600 - 1920 (Baroque, Classical, Romantic). Sometimes I relent and allow some Erik Satie or Duke Ellington before noon. But I am committed to immersing our ears and bodies in the joy of learning to appreciate and perhaps love music that can be overwhelming and challenging to connect with.

Don’t get me wrong: we switch up in the afternoons and load up on all kinds of Beatles, ABBA, Killers, Moby, Mates of State, Radiohead, Kings of Leon, Chemical Brothers, and so on. I’m a geek.

But the morning is for Classical. Thus I have decreed. And thus have battled the children. Or rather: one of the children. A see-saw back and forth as I go from Haydn’s Symphony in G Minor and five minutes later, I hear the opening track to Hamilton kicking off. Let me tell you: it takes fortitude and a little mean streak to put the ixnay on a three-year old belting along to a musical narrative about the first Secretary of the Treasury. It takes a mean man to say: ya gotta wait til after lunch.

But fortunately I can hold my ground at being mean.

I expect no support on this. Thanks everyone.

Lunch.

Would you rather?
my daughter asked calmly at the table, as her three brothers wolfed down kidney beans on toast,
wake up to find a dead mouse, or a live slug in your bed?

Well,
responded the oldest boy calmly,
how big is the mouse?

Swingers.

I built some swings a few years ago. They’re not super cool swings. They do not put my engineering or design or innovative skills on display.

I hung some long ropes from some tall trees, and the kids,

they swing. They have swung lots, and do many feats of interest on these swings. Feats that are not always wise, but are dreadful deadly fun,

and the smiles are big as they roughhouse and kick and aerofly through the air, avoiding branches and sharp roots.

The swings, they’re just ropes, and sometimes that is a good beginning to a dream.

Six

He was not interested in taking a walk, until I reminded him he could take a camera along, an old DSLR he likes to shoot a few hundred frames on occasionally.

“That’s a good idea!” He said with unfeigned exuberance. “It’s a great idea for me to take photographs while we walk, because that makes walking fun for me!”

So we walked, and he shot inimitable frames of gravel and leaves, pausing every four feet to capture another magical piece of plant through his lens.