Excuses, Excuses

I have been taking the boys to soccer for weeks and asked the girls if they want to come watch sometime. The teams were mixed, so it seemed like a great opportunity for the girls to get some outdoor exercise. Me-yem, Mu-wi and Malati all came with me a couple of weeks ago to watch. We go to the main park in the center of City Heights, where kids of all ages and adults play on one field in different chalked-off sections. Tomtom, Noah and their friend Cho have been playing since January and I can see that they have improved their skills a lot. Going to soccer is an important part of their lives.

After watching, Malati was excited to join. Her older sisters were a little more hesitant. I think it is the puberty thing: they are much more conscious of their bodies and what others might think. Malati is nine years old and less self-conscious, or so I thought.

She was sure she wanted me to sign her up, so I picked her and her older sisters up one Saturday afternoon and took them to Big 5 to get her the equipment she needs. I asked her to bring a pair of socks with her to try on the shoes. When the salesman came out with the shoes in her size, Malati pulled out the socks from her pocket. They were so big that the heel went half way up her ankle. She had grabbed her dad’s socks. We bought hot pink soccer shoes, shin guards, pink soccer socks and a soccer ball. She was very excited with all the purchases, especially because the socks matched the shoes and pink is her favorite color. I think that having the whole shopping experience focused on her also added to her excitement. Being one of five girls and one of six siblings, it isn't often that one of them gets singled out for special attention. We stopped at a Marshall’s on the way home and picked up a pair of shorts because she didn't own any. The girls are very modest compared to American standards. Even though it was 85 degrees out when I picked them up, they all put on jackets. The shorts had to be long enough.

I told Malati that I needed her to be all ready to go when I came on Monday afternoon to pick her up. Unfortunately, I hit a lot of traffic going from work to their house and arrived a little late. The boys and Malati were ready to go and climbed into my car. I parked near the soccer field. Tomtom, Noah and Cho ran ahead and joined their group. It’s really satisfying to see how confident they now are with their coach, fellow teammates and new soccer skills. As we walked up to the coach, I remembered the first time I took the boys to the field, and that they were almost as shy as Malati was now. As we approached the coach, he was in the middle of dictating a drill to the kids, so we stood on the side line waiting for a break where I could introduce him to Malati. This was exactly why I didn’t want to come late. I didn’t want Malati to have to start after the practice session had begun. Malati joined in, but having absolutely no knowledge of the drills or the game, it was challenging. I told her that I was leaving to get her sisters, who wanted to come watch. My car can only hold four passengers, so it means making an extra trip to get the sisters. The field is a mile or so from their house, so it isn’t too much effort to drive back and forth. Mu-wi, Me-yem and I stood on the sidelines and watched Malati try her best, with her pink spiked shoes, hot pink knee socks and lime green shorts. She very slowly went through the drills, trying to do everything right but was holding up the line by being so careful.

When it was over, the younger two boys, Noah and Cho, stayed to watch Tomtom and the older kids practice and play as his practice goes longer. That gave me the opportunity to drive the girls home. I asked Malati how it was and she quietly replied that it was okay. I asked her if she was planning on coming back next week and she said she wasn't sure. I was thinking that I had spend a lot of money on all the gear for her to give up so easily, so I said she had to come five times before she could quit. Her older sisters thought that was very reasonable, because they didn't want me to waste my money, as they put it.

The next week, I left work earlier to make sure that I could get the kids to soccer on time. Tomtom had sprained his ankle, so he wasn’t coming and the older sisters were not home, so I packed Noah, Cho and Malati in my car and was secretly thankful I only had to make one trip. I told Malati that it was really important to me that she gets there on time so she feels more comfortable. We walked up to the group of kids and the coach. It was the older kids’ coach, who I know is a little harder on the kids. For some reason they had mixed up the age groups, maybe because not that many kids had shown up.

As soon as we got up to the group, Malati said she had to go to the bathroom. It was across the park, so I knew that it meant she would be late again, but I had to take her. By the time we got back, the kids were deep in their dribbling drills. It didn’t look too hard, and I knew Malati could do it. I stood with her on the edge of the circle of kids and showed her how to do it. The coach invited her to join in. She just stood there with her ball in her hands. I made a big mistake, I think, by saying to the coach that she was new and a little shy. It’s probably not good to announce in front of a group of kids that a child is new and shy. At that point she started crying.

Her older sister, Mu-wi,  was supposedly at the Payless Shoe Store with her mom down the block. My plan was to walk over to the store and get her so she could watch with me, since she was expressing an interest in joining soccer, too. When Malati started to cry, I knew she wasn't playing soccer that day. I asked her if she wanted to walk with me to get Mo. She nodded her head yes. I took her ball and she followed me off the field. She cried almost all the way to Payless. I felt bad for her. As we walked, I told her that she was very brave. I asked her if she knew what brave meant and she said she didn't. I asked her if she had seen the movie Frozen. She had. (Of course! What girl in this country hasn't?)  I explained that being brave is like the younger sister in Frozen, that she tries things even though they might be scary or uncomfortable. I told her that I thought she was the bravest of all her sisters, because she tried soccer first.

By the time we got to Payless, Malati had stopped crying. Mu-wi and her mom were not there, so we walked back to the field to watch the boys and the other kids. One of the moms that I know whose daughter is in soccer, ran by to get a drink of water. She said she couldn't talk, because she had joined some of the other adults and was playing a pick-up soccer game, and that next time I should play, too. Malati asked if I was going to play. I explained that I was WAY older than that mother and that I was too old. That mother was in her 30s and I am much, much older. When I told her my age, her eyes got really big as if she was looking at the oldest person on earth.

When the practice was over, the mom that I know came and talked to me. The manager of the whole field was nearby, and asked her how she liked playing. She said she really enjoyed it. The manager turned to me and asked if I wanted to play next time. I smiled and brushed it off. When they walked away, Malati asked why I didn't try. I realized then, that I was asking more of Malati then I was of myself; that it was okay for me to use the too-shy excuse couched in the too-old excuse, but Malati can’t use an excuse. Do I need to play to get Malati to be more comfortable? If I don’t try it, am I making up poor excuses? Should I set an example? The thought of running around trying to play a sport I have never played makes me feel a little nauseous. Is this how Malati felt?

Since Mu-wi has decided to try soccer, Malati feels she would be able to play if her sister Mu-wi plays with her. Who will play with me? Anyone?

Light and Dark

It was the usual Monday afternoon gathering on the woven mat, with the kids and me sitting around the low, peeling veneer coffee table. Tomtom is in fifth grade, but this year he has no homework. He says he gets it done in school. Noah, who is repeating second grade, has a couple of worksheets that he whips through with my help. They’d be easy if he knew what a moat was, or if he had ever experienced mowing a lawn, or if the drawing of a tree trunk floating in water was clearer. With that picture he said, “Tree” which was a good guess. The word he had to circle was “float.” Once his homework is shoved back in his backpack, he pulls out a drawing book and pencil. Several weeks ago told him to let me know whenever he runs out of drawing paper so I can get him some more. He loves to draw and is very good at it. Lately his drawings are all about Christmas. He draws snowmen, Christmas trees and candy canes.

Sonny, the high school kid, likes to draw, too. His drawings are always of the camp that they used to live in. From his drawings, I know that the school was a cluster of small buildings near a river. There are trees in his camp. The church is on a hill. The Karen flag is proudly displayed. His drawings depict a beautiful landscape.

Malati, a close neighbor friend of the boys, has been coming over regularly to get help on her homework. She is also in fifth grade, but in a different class than Tomtom, and is assigned pages and pages of homework a week. Tonight she had ten pages of homework that included editing paragraphs, math problems, grammar worksheets and science essays to read and answer questions. Most of it is irrelevant to her. Today the paragraphs she had to read were all about Mark McGwire hitting his record-breaking 70th homerun, beating out Sammy Sosa that season. Baseball is very American, and therefore a familiar subject to most kids. Not so in the neighborhood that the Phans live in. It is a refugee/immigrant neighborhood with over 30 languages and countless dialects spoken. The elementary kids may play baseball as part of P.E. but most likely don’t know anything about home run records, the Baseball Hall of Fame or the importance of stats in baseball. It may be hard to capture a common interest and familiarity of such a diverse student body, but I think that giving them homework that they can relate to would not only make it easier, but would make it more relevant and therefore would actually teach them. You may think that new information is challenging and rigorous. That is true, but if there is no context, then it is irrelevant and foreign. There are no hooks in the brain for the information to attach to, so it goes nowhere.

Right now it is much easier for me to supply the answers than to try to explain everything to Malati. She had essays on weather, with terms like barometric pressure, high and low fronts, condensation, evaporation and temperate climates. It really is impossible for me explain any of it to her. I distilled the essay down to simple terms: Weather is about temperature like hot or cold; it includes rain, wind, sun and snow. There. That was as much light as I was going to shine on the meaning and definitions of weather. From that point, I just told her the answers on questions like “What does a barometer measure?” or “If it is 85 degrees out and the relative barometric pressure is 85 percent, what does the barometric pressure tell you?”

One question really seemed off base even for native American children. It was an analogy that went like this: Horses : Quadrupled, Humans : ________. This is fifth grade homework. And yes, the word Quadrupled is in the past tense. Can you get it? Leave a comment if you think you have the answer.

It gets dark early now, and especially in the Phans’ apartment. There are no ceiling lights and the only lights in the living room are the strand of Christmas lights taped around the wall and a flimsy floor lamp that they bring out and plug in near the coffee table. Malati’s homework was taking a long time and the boys were getting rowdy. Kay Lee joined in. She and Noah were throwing a tennis ball at each other. Pluto through it pretty hard the time it bounced off the table and hit me in the neck. He said, “Sorry” and came over and fell into my lap. I could tell he felt bad about the ball hitting me. His leaning on me and trying to fit into my lap was his way of making sure I was all right.

I was helping Malati with a page of homework and switching off with Tomtom. Tomtom read a page of a Babar the Elephant book for each page of Malati’s homework. As the three of us were working away, Kaylee and Noah were ganging up on Sonny. One of them accidentally collided into the floor lamp and knocked it over. Somehow it shorted out the living room, kitchen and bathroom. May, the mother, was in the windowless bathroom washing clothes in the tub. She came out furious at Sonny, even though it wasn’t his fault. They had a yelling match and May raised her arm to strike him. I am not sure if she did because I had gotten up to look for a fuse box or breaker switches. Luckily, I had downloaded a flashlight app onto my phone. I turned it on and immediately went into the bedroom to look for a breaker box. It was in the closet. I called Sonny over to show him what I was doing, and also to diffuse the situation with his mom. I showed him how there were many switches and some were labeled kitchen, bathroom, etc. All of them needed to be in the “on” position, I explained. Once I switched the triggered lever, the lights came back on. I returned to the living room and helped May change the bulb. The cheap lamp was bent where the bulb screwed in and when we plugged it back in, the lights went out again. This time I showed May the breaker box and which switch was off. A desk lamp was brought out and placed on the coffee table, since the floor lamp, with its twig-like trunk, was broken and irreparable.

The sudden outburst of May’s anger was a darkness I had not witnessed. To me, she is sweet and shy and laughs a lot at her mistakes when trying to speak English. She is hard-working, keeping the family fed, clothed, and clean. Sonny was very upset and left the house. It was dark out and I worried about him walking around in that neighborhood.

I tried to finish up Malati’s homework and Tomtom’s reading without making a big deal about what had just happened. I had seen May blame Sonny even though it wasn’t his fault. I knew she threatened to hit him. Sonny came back a few minutes later and we all carried on as if nothing had happened. Malati and I finished her homework. Tomtom finished reading his book. I gathered my things to leave. The goodbye hugs were a little tighter tonight.

Hugs and Hits

When I leave the Phans, they all give me a hug good-bye, except the dad, who shakes my hand. Hugging May, the mom, is like hugging a 10 year-old girl who has not yet hit puberty. I feel huge when I hug her. Sonny gives me a hug like any 15 year-old boy, quick and not too intimate. Kay Lee wraps her arms around my knees and squeezes hard. Noah and Tomtom give me warm, tight hugs. When it is time to leave, the younger kids grab my bags, purse, games, or jacket, anything I have brought, and run down the stairs in whatever flip flops their feet happen to land in as they fly out the door. By the time I put my shoes on and hug those who are not walking me to my car, the two or three who have my purse and keys have opened my car doors and plopped my things on the front seat. Pushing the button on the key remote is a thrill and goes to whoever happens to grab my purse first.

Noah, a teddy bear-like ten year old, is affectionate in a lean-to way. When we are doing homework or playing games on the floor, he leans onto me and plops his head on my lap. It always seems like hidden determination, or more like a planned accident. He falls into my lap; he doesn’t deliberately sit there. He roughhouses with his little sister and ends up with his arms around me from behind. I love it. In his kind of clumsy way, it feels like pure affection. When he is working on a drawing or hurrying through homework, I tousle his black hair, or rub his back. He has given me permission to do so with the unspoken language of physical contact.

Kay Lee owns my lap. I always sit on the floor when I visit, because it gives us all plenty of room to spread out to do homework, play games, or just talk. Kay Lee plops in my lap like I’m her personal throne, especially when there are neighbor kids around. From my lap, she can have some control of what is going on. If we are playing bingo, she can pull the bingo cards. When we play twister, she can spin the dial. If everyone is doing homework, she can talk to me easier, and distract me from helping the kids. When she is in her throne, I can hug her.

The kids compete to get my attention. They are all full of something to tell me that is more urgent than what anyone else has to say. I’m not very good at making them take turns; I usually listen to the loudest first. I try to listen to them with my full attention, but it gets raucous. Last Monday they didn’t have school because it was the beginning of the Thanksgiving break. When I asked them what they did that day, they said, “Watch TV.” so when I came over, it not only was raucous, but rambunctious. Their apartment building is not conducive to playing outside. So when I come over, it is a big distraction from the monotonous TV.

As with presumably all siblings, there are fights over pencils, toys, or attention. One boy has something and the other tries to grab it. My brothers and I fought over things, and so did my children. Yet I never was hit for fighting, nor did I hit my kids. I have seen May hit her boys hard for small things, like grabbing a pencil from someone else. When she hits, it is not a gentle slap on the thigh, it is a closed-fisted punch on the back, arm or chest. Sonny told me one time that his mother hit him every day in the camp. She hit him for coming home late, or swimming in the river, which was forbidden. She laughed when he told me, and confirmed what he said. I’m sure there were no pop parenting theory books in the camp. Being a pacifist and one that abhors violence of any kind, it makes me very uncomfortable to see Noah or Tomtom or Sonny get hit for something that can be solved through discussion. One time Sonny, who is not much bigger than his two younger brothers, but is the oldest child in the household, hit Noah so hard that the force of it stopped everyone from doing what they were doing, either because of the sound of it or the sound of Noah’s reaction. It happened when there were a number of neighborhood children visiting, getting homework help from me. Sonny’s mom was there and didn’t say anything. Noah pouted, but did not cry. He rubbed his arm for a few minutes and inspected it to see if a bruise started blossoming.

I find myself saying, “Gentle” when I see aggression get out of hand. Kay Lee, the youngest by several years and the only girl, often hits her older brothers. I tell her to be gentle. I doubt she knows the meaning of the word, but it is what I would say to any child acting out aggressively.

Sometimes the dad or Sonny show me YouTube videos of their people, the Karen, fighting the Burmese soldiers. The videos are violent and disturbing. The younger children have seen them many times. I never watch violence on TV or in movies, and to see real soldiers fighting guerrilla soldiers is very upsetting to me. I wonder what they think of my reactions, when I put my hands over my eyes.

Sonny has told me that his friends have been threatened by gang members. A bike has been stolen. An expensive hat was taken. Some of Sonny’s friends have fought the gang members. The Phans moved from Burma to the refugee camp to escape violence. Now they face gang violence in their own neighborhood.

I am glad I get to experience the sweet, warm, affectionate side of the family. Even the Karen neighborhood kids that I’ve gotten to know give me a hug when they leave. Maybe they think it is required here, like a handshake.