Third Grade

Tom started his new school year today, going into third grade. I hope that this year he finds ways to enjoy learning a little more. I hope also that amongst the adequate teaching, he gets some inspired teaching.

He has a lot to learn about life and about what is important in life. At the moment he has many opinions and is sometimes lead by currents that are not really in his best interests.

I will do my best to be a better dad this year. We need to do more hands on stuff together. And less screen time.

He is at heart a good boy and I wish him many blessings.

As I said in an earlier post, I have taken Tom to a few movies over the holidays. More recently, we went with a friend to a Lego show at Castle Towers in Castle Hill.

Castle Hill is one of those places full of evocative moments for me. I taught at the local high school from the mid-1980's and it remains (apart from Japan) my favourite teaching post. It was there that I cut my teeth as a drama teacher, developed my first specific teaching space and embarked on all sorts of interesting enterprises. It wasn't without controversy. I was still learning how to teach and maybe trying to grow up. Teaching was always a tough ask for someone who, at the deepest level, wasn't really sure of himself. Well, that was then, as they say.

Castle Towers is much larger than I remember it. Tom and his friend Reilly perused the models at the Lego display for maybe 15 minutes and then headed purposefully for the shop. For kids these days, it's all about buying stuff. Something new, something quickly discarded. There were some great models there too, including a Gowings store. And genuflections abounded to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Here is a photo of Tom in front of a large city scape, replete with trains, town centre and super hero miniatures.

A little late now but Tom and I had Christmas over at my mum's apartment in Dee Why. Every year the assembled seem to shrink in number, as marriages fail and family leave town. I can't talk really, since I spent three Christmas's in Japan.

But it was a pleasant day nevertheless, with my brother Peter doing a roast and my mother enjoying the day as best she can. These days she has many ailments and is noticeably frailer.

It is a far cry from those salad days at Killarney Heights, when Christmas pulsed with noise and discarded wrapping paper. Visits to neighbours for drinks began early, people imbibed too much and too soon. All this was followed by an enormous and traditional lunch. Somehow, the apparent mayhem of the kitchen always made it it's way in perfect order onto the dining table. White table cloths, my grandmother's best silver and strange porcelain objects that were designated for gravy and mint sauce, and zillions of bright, joke-infested bon-bons. These sat amidst the steaming turkey, supremely crisp potatoes and cool slices of leg ham.

Tom enjoyed himself and was especially keen on pulling bon-bons, or Christmas crackers. (See previous posting) What boy doesn't like an explosion?

I have seen quite a few children's movies over the last few years. I admit that I am starting to like them better than adult ones. Today Tom and I saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and last week we saw Frozen.

There is a lot to admire about both. Like pretty much all kids movies, the audience appeal is broad and there are built in laughs for the adults. Film makers are perfectly aware of who is shelling out the readies.

But there are also nuances in plot and character which suggest greater complexity. Characters are not uniformly good or evil. Stereotypes are sometimes inverted (as in Frozen)so that strong, able female leads emerge, who are not saved by heroic chaps. The happy endings are still in place but they are not without the pain of the journey or the emergence of self-awareness.

Which is to say that, while still being entirely in the realm of fantasy, they more closely mimick reality.

I don't think it's the child within me that craves these kinds of movies. There is simply enough brutality, sadness and tragedy in the real world for me to want to watch it again and again on the screen.

Perhaps I was a little harsh on the apparent shallowness of Western celebrations. It's fine to have fun, let your hair down, to have a laugh, without the need to experience something profound. There is a time and a place under the sun. But I do wish that there were more public occasions, other than war commemorations, when we might have the chance to reflect upon our lives. Or convey meaning.

Tom comes home from a camping trip with his mum very soon. We are in the midst of the summer holidays and whenever Tom is away from me, I feel rather lonely. When he is here with me he can be very loud and demanding. Silence is a quality that does not co-exist readily with his presence here.

Tom is going into Grade 3 this year. He is a little on the young side of his cohort and so he is not an academic world-beater, at least not yet. There is plenty of time for that. He is good at dance and drama (which are extra-curricular) and likes school moderately well. I think that Tom would be happier though is the breaks could somehow swap with the class time. I tell him that it is to his advantage to have shorter breaks, juxtaposed as they are with the longer teaching times. It makes those times that much more delicious. I think he remains unconvinced.

We spent Christmas Day together at my mum's place in Dee Why. Tom and I pulled a cracker or two and I include one shot. Of course, he will win the pull, score the hat, the novelty and the lame joke.

Happy New Year

Yesterday's news was full of revellers. Tuning in to the ABC, it was hard to get any actual news through the desperate noise of what revellers were planning to do, where revellers were planning to be and how the police were going to deal with the most high spirited amongst them. By which I mean hooligans.

Lacking any substantial rites of passage and having stripped our major festivals of their meaning, we now attend to vapid shows of confected joy. Of course there is nothing wrong with sitting by the harbour and watching fireworks. I have done so myself. There may even be an attempt at papering over the obvious emptiness of the event with a slogan (such as eternity) aflame a giant landmark. Points for trying, I guess.

I was talking to a friend at my local pool yesterday morning. We reflected on how anti-climactic New Year's Eve was. The rituals that define the evening - alcohol, countdowns and fireworks - that's pretty much it, allow little or no opportunity to explore where we are and where we might be going. I guess I am talking about meaning. Festivals should surely in some way strive to have us think about the worthiness of our lives, or where we fall short. Perhaps the desire to make resolutions once filled this space, though now they are little more than a joke.

But Happy New Year regardless. There were some dark clouds in 2013 but also some great stories of human achievement, endurance and love.

You know, you can be serious and also have a good time.