Coming Home

I have returned from Raton. The circumstances are very strange, and it has created a hardship for us. That story I'll save for another time and place. Meanwhile, an update from home is long overdue and I don't want to go any longer without one.

Fall is coming. The balloons are in the air this week. The mornings are cold but the days are mild and sunny. The cottonwood is not changing color yet but it won't be long. Ariel is in town for a story and a visit and maybe some games this weekend. Jackson began school at the Academy and is playing soccer. Rylee is in third grade at Dennis Chavez and is playing baseball.

Jack enjoys his new school. At first, he was a bit overwhelmed but he seems to have found a rhythm now that he has his supplies and books and understands the system. There's no set daily schedule for the entire semester; rather, a weekly schedule is posted ahead on a board in the common area and online. The sixth graders are divided into pods, families, and clusters. There are two pods of sixth graders, each with half the class. Each pod has its own group of teachers, for the most  part, so the kids in that pod share the same teachers and the same subject matter, though not necessarily the same classes, and share assignments and common group projects, such as the "experiential education" hike Jack's pod is taking this week, a kind of outward bound program, which will include an overnight later in the year. The smallest unit is a cluster, and these are combined in a variety of ways to make up the classes. The family is the group of kids that went through orientation together, have lockers near each other, meet daily, I think, for a kind of "home room", and eat together every day with the same teacher in the dining hall.

Bunty is his companion in his bedroom. Bunty is what he calls Limes, the rabbit, who chews through all the charging cords she can find. Exactly, it's Ry's pet but Cyndi and Jack are in love with her. Often it roams freely around the room, and even though Jackson is concentrating on his computer, the two of them must enjoy each other's company.

Jackson still spends much of his time after school on his computer, but he's also pretty diligent about getting his homework done. It may take some prompting from Cyndi and me, but there's little complaint from him as he eventually settles down somewhere and opens his notebooks. At night he comes into my room to practice his flute. His tone is improving. He still does not know enough notes to complete a scale, but his class has a repertoire of tunes using a limited number of notes. He is breezing through math and last I heard he had looked into joining the math club. Once in a while, he mentions something he learned in science (the metric system and lab safety) or history (the electoral college and the Constitution). In English, they are reading Greek myths. He first came home practicing the Spanish he learned by walking up to me one evening, shaking my hand, and saying, "mucho gusto," with a confident pronunciation. His Spanish teacher uses only Spanish in class. He's also been going to a drama club, and talked about an exercise they first did, a dialogue of sorts, comprised only of improvised questions. I have not heard much about P.E. He has talked about the drawing projects he's been doing in his art class. There's also a music class, in addition to the requirement to take a performing art--he's in the cadet band--and a "tech app" class, I think, rounds out the curriculum this year.

Jack's first soccer game was this past Saturday. He plays on the Chelsea team, and they played his team from last year, Germany. Jack's coach has taught the kids many basic skills and plays, and Jack seems to have caught on, exhibiting some great footwork and passing. He looks to be a good tackler. While he never exhibits the exuberance for sports as Ry does, still, it's astonishing to see how good he is when he does play and how much fun he has. It's great to see him running, his head in the game, with his teammates, both boys and girls, his age and a bit older. Jack is really shooting up in height, very lean, and it's fun to see him whenever he's energized.

Jackson has been determined to build a computer, and while he has set his birthday money aside for parts, we must wait a bit more for our contribution to all the parts he needs. He's told everyone at school, however, that he is going to build one. So when the school needed a student to represent it in a new online admissions "brochure" for prospective applicants, they thought of Jackson and his motivation to build his computer. Last week, some people from Baltimore came to our house, after shooting other scenes and other children, to film and photograph Jackson in his room, doing computer stuff.

Rylee, meanwhile, has a new teacher he likes. His friend from preschool and church, Eddy, is in his class. Ry's class was studying the Constitution a few weeks back. His teacher said anyone who memorized the preamble would get a special surprise.

We the People of the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,

establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility,

provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare,

 and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.

Ry came home and said he wanted to do it. He and I worked on it that night until he had it. I told him when I dropped him off to be sure to volunteer to say it. He did. He was the only one prepared to do it. I don't think his teacher thought anyone would do it the next day. He said he was very nervous, but when he went to gifted and told his teacher there, he wasn't nervous because the class was smaller, and said it perfectly when the teacher asked. The next day he told the original teacher he wanted to do it again and he did it perfectly. Eventually, over the week, most of the other kids did it, too.

Ry is scoring high on math and spelling. He just campaigned for class president with his running mate, Enrique, Eddy's neighbor. He is already starting projects ahead of time for his gifted class, and he's already started his book report due at the end of  the month. He's always eager for school.

Rylee is crazy about baseball. He's playing minors fall ball. He's amazingly good. Since fall ball is a training season, the coach is very good about rotating positions. Everyone gets outfield at some point; everyone has an inning on the bench. Rylee still manages to get some key positions. He's certain to play first, as he is such an outstanding fielder. He has a glove just for first base. Last game, two pop-ups came his way in the same inning, one fair and the other foul, and he just gets under them or chases them down and makes the catch look matter-of-fact. And for the first 5-3 out of the season, the third baseman fielded a good grounder, fired it to Ry on first, Rylee had to stretch, the throw was in the dirt, but the catch was made just before the batter reached the bag. Some real baseball.

The boys on his team range from about his age to a couple years older. Ry's probably the second youngest and second shortest, so that makes it even more fun to see him hold more than his own. (The youngest and shortest, by the way, is equally fun to watch.) I asked Ry how he felt after catching the pop-ups. He said his heart was beating fast. Ry has pitched several innings. Like Jackson, his pitches are right over the plate. After a while, however, he looks like he's tiring. He gets anxious when he's pitching, concentrating to get the throw over the plate, but he doesn't show it. Last game, he also brought his catching gear and played catcher for an inning. He also line-drived one over the shortstop's head. (He had the no. 4 position in the batting order that day.) He rounded first, deciding to go for two. The ball wasn't too far from second, however, and he had to dive headfirst, his right hand touching the bag just as the second baseman caught the ball but before the tag.

Ry studies the game. He reads the rule book. He's learning how to score a game. He watches videos on pitching grips. He's studied the cutter of his favorite pitcher, Mariano Rivera, who happens to play for Ry's favorite team (until he retired at the end of this season). He looks up stats and histories in a baseball almanac and at his school's book fair he bought a book of the "50 best" current MLB  players. He studies their rosters; he follows the standings; he even follows the minor leagues. He's following the playoffs, even though his favorite team didn't make the cut. He wears their cap everywhere, including school. He collects, and even trades, baseball cards. He must have thousands now, past and present; he reads the cards; he knows the player's names, their position, the teams they played on. Sometimes, even their stats. He collects cards in binders. Right now, he's working on a binder of the teams and players who will spring train in Arizona: The Cactus League. He's determined to go next Spring, watch them play and get autographs. Every day after school, he's playing a ball game in our yard with the boys around the neighborhood. We have some  rubber plates and bases. The lawn around home plate has worn to bare dirt. The mums, which are blooming now, are sadly trampled, too. If the ball reaches the street, that's an out-of-park homerun. This Sunday was the third game of a neighborhood World Series, comprised of two-person teams and played with a tennis ball. His team finally won a game. He came in at dark, ate some dinner Cyndi had made, and then came upstairs to watch some Disney show on Netflix with a bowl of apple crisp Cyndi also had made, while figuring out his team's batting averages, and said he wished every day was like today. It was a perfect day.

By the way, he even has a book that will tell him the market value of the baseball cards. He loves reminding me that a Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $2.1 million.

While he has other aspirations, one goal he has is to play high school baseball for the Albuquerque Academy Chargers, college ball with the UNM Lobos, then minors with the Vermont Lake Monsters and the Albuquerque Isotopes, then move up to the majors and get traded to his favorite team.