diplomacy, Vietnam, the U.N. and a life of calm

You surely know that this week marks the start of Ken Burns' documentary on the war in Vietnam. And perhaps you know, too, that today, President Trump addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. If you're not foused on the UN, then perhaps you don't know that the world leaders gather each year in early fall in New York and foreign ministers, prime ministers and presidents, including the U.S. president, address them all.

Me, I am a UN brat. My father was there at the birth of the United Nations and he spent a great chunk of his career working within that organization. He was the head of the Polish Delegation to the UN when I was just a child (and this is why I spent six years of my young life in New York) and he returned to serve the UN in a leadership capacity toward the end of his professional life.





I was proud to be a UN kid. My father, I am told, was a superb diplomat. Not at home, mind you. His attentions were elsewhere. But man oh man, could he work a room and get an audience to pay attention! I heard him once, when he came to speak to the older kids at my UN School in New York. I didn't understand a great deal of what he said (I was in the primary grades), but I could feel the buzz of his words! Was I good -- he asked later. You were great! -- I told him.

(Snowdrop, being great in her school playground...)





Still, at home, he and I rarely spoke. Lost in his thoughts, in his affairs -- he was not curious about the ins and outs of a kid's life. On the rare occasion that I would ask him about something that I'd heard on the news, I'd get a lecture that was too long and without regard to my age or my own comments or questions.

But something happened in 1965 that made me swallow my dislike of these exchanges. I was twelve and we were in our last year in New York. I was neither meek nor quiet at school and I had some feisty exchanges with a friend at recess over the US involvement in Vietnam. It was like the best brawl you'd see on a playground: classmates would gather and my friend and I would go at each other on this issue. She said the war was justified. I said (shouted?) that it was not.

In those days (these days?) no one knew much about the war. Me included. I spoke out because I had lived for half a dozen years with American hatred toward communists. And in my heart, I was convinced that they, the Americans, had gotten it all wrong about, say, Polish communism. So why should they be right about the ambitions of communists in southeast Asia?

After one of those spectacular shouting matches during recess between my pro-war friend and myself, the teacher came in and demanded an explanation as to what the hell was going on. The kids had no problem in pointing fingers: they're fighting about Vietnam!

This was the UN School and the teacher did what a UN School teacher was going to do. She suggested that we engage in a reasonable discussion on the merits of our positions. In other words, we will have a debate. Two reps for each position. Yes, the two shouters will speak in the first round. Arguments to be presented tomorrow, in class.

Shit.

What do I really know about specifics? I turned to my father.

Dad, I have to argue the no war position in class tomorrow. Can you talk to me about Vietnam so that I can make some good points?

I hated to ask. I knew I was in for an hour long monologue, but I had no choice. And he gave me his very long version of the conflict in Vietnam and I jotted down a few kid-friendly points and then he ended with a statement about how the war could not ever be won by the U.S. because America did not have the people of Vietnam on their side. I didn't fully understand, but I wrote it down. It was as good an ending to my speech as any.

The next day we had the debate. My team won on a near unanimous vote, though honestly, it had little to do with my presentation. My opponent's partner in the debate was a total loser and when the teacher told the class to vote for the stronger presentation, only the boy's mother could possibly have cast a vote for a team with him on it. And so, as is often the case in life, I won, but for all the wrong reasons.


(Breakfast on the porch, with one of the calmest people I know...)






Over the decades, even as my father and I drifted ever greater distances away from each other, I nonetheless retained my respect for the UN. I was convinced (and still am convinced) that the proper question is not what the UN had done to secure a better world for us all, but where would the world be without a UN. And if you respond "better off and with more cash to spend at home," then you're simply not paying attention to all that the UN does on a daily basis and especially in the developing regions of this planet, but not only.

The UN hasn't prevented conflict. It holds no magic wand over the words and actions of world leaders, including despots, demagogues and dictators. But so long as you believe in diplomacy and in the grunt work of providing aid to those in the most dire circumstances, the UN offers hope for creating a forum for both.


(looking at a polka video together...)





And here's a thought: what if diplomacy was a skill we all honored? My father kept his diplomatic brilliance narrowly focused on his work. But the word diplomacy isn't just about international relations. Diplomacy (acc. to the dictionary) is "the art of dealing with people in a sensitive and effective way."

(Why are you laughing, grandma?
I like to laugh...
No, I like to laugh!
We both like to laugh, Snowdrop...)






Everything you say matters, whether you're speaking to a sales clerk, to your grandchild, to your child. My greatest failures in my 64 years of life happened, I think, when I abandoned diplomatic discourse and let my emotions run wild.


(A hot September afternoon...)







In my mind, the starting position for any diplomatic dialogue is calm. Writing here, on Ocean forces a calm reflection on a day. Maybe it allows for a better transition to the next day? What good came of this day (like of the UN) is a far better question to ask than what was off-putting and unfair, don't you think?

coasting

I have a post in my head. I lay awake at night thinking of it. I marched through the day confident that I would type up my script come evening.

But when I cleared the last dish and nibbled on the last piece of evening nibble food, I decided to let it rest for a day. I must sleep on it some more.

In the meantime, I offer you photos of a beautiful day. I mean, weather-wise, farmette-wise, Snowdrop-wise -- it was  a rare blend of loveliness.

We'll start with breakfast. On a self timer today!






The rest of the morning a little bit got away from me. Here's why (I promise, you, it is one boring story...): I wanted to move the crib upstairs. That lovely full size crib that Snowdrop never uses. (She doesn't use it because it sits downstairs -- where Ed and I hang out.) That requires a disassembly and a search for the part that would allow us to transform it into a toddler bed. You know the deal (if you've had a kid): a crib side comes off, a partial bar goes up to keep the child from falling out and voila! You have a toddler bed.

This project took FOREVER and I knew it would. Which is why we haven't done it for months and months.


Time to pick up the little girl. She did not nap in school today (Snowdrop! get with it!) and so I expect a tired mood.

Not so. She wants to play.

And so we go to the playground and play.
















And then she and I walk back to the school, where I had left the car. (Fall is here!)






Two interesting adventures in the short set of blocks of our walk: first, we come across a lemonade stand, womaned by two little girls.
How much? -- I ask, worrying only a little abut the hygiene of the enterprise... After all, a parent is hovering.
50 cents a glass.
Five zero? I ask, just to be sure. They don't get that, so the hovering dad clarifies. Yes, 50.
I have a deal for you: what it you poured me just this much (I point to about a quarter inch) -- can I pay 25 cents? 
The little girls look totally bewildered. Some entrepreneurs! They say yes! -- the father jumps in.

And that's how Snowdrop has her first ever lemonade.
And yes, given the sugar content, she liked it just fine.





The second memorable event happened just one block later. Snowdrop was leading the way. I followed with the stroller. Suddenly, a squirrel jumps from a high fence to the left of her, over to a tree just to Snowdrop's right. I swear, the dumb squirrel came to within an inch of Snowdrop's nose.

The girl is completely mortified. She never ever ever wants to walk on that strip of sidewalk again!

Oh, eventually I give her some squirrel story about gathering nuts for the winter, about nests up in the tree, about the squirrel being just a wee little animal that is trying to make a place for herself and her family in this big scary world, but just so you know, if Snowdrop ever displays a fear of squirrels and no one can understand why, let me tell you that it dates back to this day!



At the farmhouse, she plunged into play in the enlarged playroom (remember -- the crib is there no more). And then she dons her snowshoes (she's a two year old!) and asks to play with bubbles outside and yes, it is a fine way to end a magnificent Snowdrop afternoon!





Tomorrow, I will write the post that I had wanted to write today.

bouncing around

The weather gods are showing me who's boss! If I thought the night would cool off the bedrooms of the farmhouse -- I was wrong. As Snowdrop's room registered 83 and she followed her routine of snuggling in long sleeved pj's under a quilt, I could see that a brief spell of air conditioning would help her and therefore me and everyone else in the house sleep.

Fine. But this morning, the cool-off finally came. So much so that Ed commented -- my, but it's cold in here!

I was tempted to turn on the heat.

Except that looking ahead, I see another heat spell inching toward us, so that my the end of the week, I may be wishing for air conditioning again.

Do I have weather on my mind? Yep -- that and granddaughter and in this post, you get a little of both. (With more photos of her, because she is sunny by nature, even on a cloudy and cool morning.)

Wake up with a grin. She comes down and nibbles on breakfast number one.







Bathe, then chomp on fruits at breakfast number two. Finally grandma brings out the pancakes. Yay grandma! Yay pancakes! Super yay bacon!






More maple syrup please! (Bacon nearly all gone by the time I sit down to eat.)






Later in the morning, I tell her it's time to go home.
But I am going grocery shopping with my babies, grandma!
Ed comments -- I hear more and more of "grandma" and less of "gaga"...







Either calling name is okay by me. Snowdrop has four biological and two relational grandparents (for a total of six) and each has a unique nickname. Gaga, of course, wasn't really a nickname -- it was a one year old, grappling with the impossibly difficult "grandma" word.

In Poland, a grandma is a babcia, or baba for the very young. I very much remember transitioning from calling out "babu!" to "babciu!" Perhaps Snowdrop is doing the same?


In my restful moments this afternoon, I think about how pleasant it is to do nothing. Ed quickly points out that if I went to Europe less frequently, then I could do nothing much more often.
I scoff at that: it's only pleasant to do nothing when on most days I'm doing a lot.
I disagree, he comments and goes back to his reading. In a reclining position. On the couch.

Is playing with Snowdrop tiring? There is an inverse relation: as she gets older, she places fewer physical demands on me, at the same time, I am getting incrementally older. My grandma was 50 when her first granddaughter was born and she turned 52 the day before I was born. My mother was approaching her mid-fifties when her first grandchildren came onto the scene. The year Snowdrop was born I turned 63. If I ever have more grandkids, I will be well into my upper sixties.

And yet, there are days when age seems irrelevant. I pick up the shovel and attack the spring garden, or I carry a tired little girl after play because I forgot the stroller and I never notice that she is heavy or that the shovel is creating big blisters on the palms of my hands.

But today is a restful day, that's for sure. No yard work at all. Just an occasional glance, with a smile, at the lingering monarchs outside...





... and with thoughts about how quickly and beautifully Snowdrop is soaking up the world around her.

A child takes it in. All of it. Before she leaves to return home this morning, she enters her play tent and finds her black cat there. Oh! your long forgotten cat - I comment. He is my leopard, grandma. He is very fast, you see?  She is remembering something from a nature show Ed was watching last night.





It is one of many times when she astonishes me with her memory. As I drive her home, we pass the Arboretum and I point out how beautifully the leaves are changing in the forest there.
That's where you took my mommy when she was little... Snowdrop pipes in.
This just blows my mind! I noted that little fact the last time I took Snowdrop to the Arboretum -- now nearly a year ago! Don't ever think a young child isn't listening and learning...

(Another lily...)





(The colorful sweep of annuals...)






In the evening, the young family is at the farmhouse for dinner. I almost move the whole project indoors, but I reconsider. How many more meals can we enjoy outside before it becomes just too cold to linger there to the sound of birds and yes, cicadas?






The last of this year's corn is celebrated by what appears to be a standing ovation. Not good decorum perhaps, but at the farmhouse, we tend to be relaxed. (The trout, on the other hand, is only modestly appreciated by the little one.)






(The yogurt on a stick? Perfect ending.)





A weekend comes to a close. The farmhouse is clean, the family well fed, the garden -- in its autumnal quiet.

To a good week ahead!

Saturday

Hot. The kind of hot that makes you not mind the coming of winter. At least it wont be so sticky and steamy in December! (Will it?)

There is, however, the upside: luxuriously long breakfasts on the porch...






The rebloom of flowers I had given up on for the year...





Too, it is splendid to ride Rosie to the Farmers Market on the Capitol Square! I meet up with older daughter and grandgirl there.

Though it is a toasty 86F (30C), there is enough of a breeze that Snowdrop is not convinced that her sweater should come off. So be it. Somewhere along the way she learned to love croissants and sweaters. I'm confident both are a passing phase.






(On the Capitol steps...)






(A quick stop at a shop that, unfortunately, is in the habit of dispensing balloons -- delighting kids, frustrating the parent/grandparent who then has to deal with a kid holding on to said balloon...)






In the afternoon, I tie up farmette loose ends. House keeping, garden keeping -- all the things that pile onto a weekend day for nearly all of us. I admit it -- I am a person who loves order and so a weekend clean up is a boost. When all is tucked in and put away, I am at peace.

[Separately, I love day-to-day order. Perhaps you read the article in the NYTimes suggesting that at the very least, you should make your bed to begin the day right? Indeed! I cannot imagine not making the bed (though Ed has taken over this task, as he is up nearly always after me). If I were never to see the bedroom again until nightfall, I would nonetheless tuck in every corner and fluff up the pillows just so. Order! Bliss...]


We haven't had rain for a while and though most perennials will weather a short drought, I do want to help along those that are just this year establishing themselves. And so I spend some meditative moments watering.

(A delicate and not unpretty autumnal  front garden...)






(Looking toward the porch...)






And when evening rolls around, it's not hot anymore. And I do not expect it to be so hot again for a good nine months.






Ed and I play tennis in the secret courtyard among the pines and the breeze is lovely and comforting, buffering any harshness to the day, the week, the year.

It's a beautiful day after all.


On this Saturday, Snowdrop is at the farmhouse for an overnight. It's been a while since we've made pizza here for her!






As the pie bakes, Ed goes out to put away tools he's been using to bring down a partly fallen tree. Snowdrop finds him there and bums a ride...






... then follows him to the garage, to make sure he does everything just so...






She is bedecked in her mother's best necklaces tonight. A funny combination: the strands of beads, the wild ride...






It's getting late... A snuggle with a yogurt bar...






One last wild run in her p.j.s...






And then it really is time to wind down.
Do you want to go out on the porch and watch the bats swoop down?
No....
They wont swoop onto the porch. They're just gathering bugs in the night sky for their little ones in the barn.
This definitely gets her attention. One bat, another... It's a beautiful show!
What's that? -- she asks.
The sound? It's the song of the cicadas.
What are those?
Night bugs that call out to each other. Their buzz is their way of saying "I love you! I love you!"
I love you, I love you! -- she repeats it, satisfied.

Frogs, cicadas, bats -- they all come out to wish her, you, all of us a good and restful night!

Friday

Everyone tells me how hot it is outside. At the eye glass store, wine store, grocery store: man oh man it's hot!

Don't I know it. It's only because I have faith in the cooling properties of a September night that I don't bother with air conditioning. But let me repeat for emphasis -- Madison is one hot town tonday!

(Spot peek at my garden: a lily here and there, but mostly we're hitting the dormant phase of perennial life.)






The eye glass store visit set off the morning on a low note: I bring my glasses in,  pointing out that the protective coating (hang in there -- this gets intense!) is splotchy and murky and that I can't see anything out of the glasses anymore. Yes, I know I had purchased them years ago. Many years ago. But aren't they under some lifetime (at the very least!) warranty? No? Well then, hrumph. But say, I have this spare pair. True, I didn't purchase them in your shop but they are too tight so might you fix them anyway because otherwise I just can't see and they say it's a beautiful world out there today, if somewhat on the hot side.

By the time I leave the store, I decide that the whole eyeglass project is a big headache, not worth pursuing on this steamy and potentially lovely (if I could just focus on it) day. I need new glasses, but when I look at the tab, all I can think is that the total is nearly as much as a trip to Poland (and if I were to go hog wild with the best possible lens, it would exceed the cost of a trip to Poland) and so I let it go.

Oh, wasn't there a breakfast? Yes, of course, but rather hurried, as Ed had work appointments and I had, well, at the very least, eye glass stuff to look into.






In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. She is (I can tell) a child that has had a full week. True, she has finally succumbed to The Nap at school, but nonetheless, Friday is Friday. You have to tred more carefully on a Friday with a young school kid than, say, on a Monday.

She shows me some favorite spots at her school playground...






This includes the vegetable patch...





And as we play and walk and munch on snacks she tells stories. And if you listen carefully to the make believe, you'll detect that she is a happy girl, but nonetheless, ready to call it a week and head back home.

(Here she is playing one of our favorite games: we're in the car about to head back to the farmhouse. But before she slides into her car seat, she climbs to some elevated spot and gives directions. She is a "music teacher," I am an obedient passenger.)






And so the afternoon progresses, until her parents drive up and whisk their child away to her safe haven, her yellow house which, she reminds me nearly every day, matches the yellow of the farmhouse.


In the evening, Ed and I drive out to his friends' place out in Lake Mills (a town some 20 miles east of Madison). These good people host periodic reunions for their college pals (Ed is one of them). Between the dozen or so friends there is much to discuss, recall and reflect on. It is, of course, their reunion. I wasn't there, didn't live through those times in the way that they did. Indeed, while Ed was organizing coop life, instructing college kids on the fine art of sailing and fixing ancient motorcycles, I was in Poland, going to Chopin competitions in my free time between university classes and hiking the mountains to visit the highlanders in Rynias.

In other words, we lived in very very different worlds.

Still, as I watch Ed in this mix of people who are as familiar to him as my Warsaw friends are to me, I have to say that it feels good to see this ancient slice of his life.

Too, the view from these people's back yard is magnificent.

Especially as the sun goes down on this unusually warm September day.

yeah, summer.

If you detect a sigh and a shrug there in the title of this post --- yeah, like it or not, it's summer -- well yes, a small part of me has had it with the heat. A week ago I turned on the furnace. Now I'm wondering if I'll be tempted to switch back to air conditioning. I noticed today as I picked up Snowdrop at school that they were running cool air in her classroom. We live in confusing meteorological times.

But not at breakfast: it's clear as anything that this meal is going to be in the pleasant warmth of the outdoors. On the porch.






Pristine blue skies! (Fields to the east of us...)





I pick up Snowdrop and we go to the playground. That's routine. Other kids come and go and Snowdrop always watches carefully before determining if she is comfortable with staying in their midst, or if the tumult is such that leaving is a better option.





A larger group of older kids storms the playground. We leave.

Snowdrop, will you go with me to the farmers market? I need a bagful of tomatoes (in addition to the two bagfuls we picked out a week ago).
Can I carry the bag?






Up she goes onto the high step of the truck. I tell her to weed out the damaged tomatoes. She is amazingly good at this. She is indeed my bestest helper.






And now we're back at the farmhouse.






Our play is also routine. I have a list of things I want to introduce her to, but we never get to it. She is in charge. She knows what brings joy. She is rarely misfires.





It is true though, that we're all still adjusting to the new school year. After days of not sleeping during school nap time, Snowdrop crashed today and slept through 40% of her school day. Me, I'm still trying to figure out when to write a post, given that my charge no longer sleeps here and so I have no down time in my hours with her.

It's all a pleasant muddle.

And that's not such a bad thing. Life is a pleasant muddle. I can live with that.