January

 Everyone knows what you're talking about when you describe "high summer." The days are long, the grass is sweet, the sunlight is glorious, and all of our tanned legs are bare.

Is the corresponding time in winter "high winter" or "low winter?" Whichever is the correct term, this week was the zenith of high winter. It wasn't a particularly bad week, but every morning started in darkness, and I didn't get home until long after the sun had set and the cold seeped back into the house. 

The driveway and walk are both permanently frozen in dirty ice, shoveled out enough to get your car in and out but not safe to walk across easily. No matter how careful you are, you will always get snow into your dress shoes. 

The temperatures have been in the single digits whenever I start my car, and the windshield is covered in salt-rime. (I'm listening to an audio book of the Norse myths, and driving in a cold and dirty automobile feels like a closer experience to Jotunheim than anything else in the modern experience.

Not everything is unpleasant about High Winter, though. There is a magic in a shot of espresso cascading down that just isn't the same in the middle of august, and the whistle of the tea kettle is friendly. There's also something lovely about having social permission to be a little miserable. I am at Wegmans with an enormous stack of books right now, and I even have my earbuds in (with no music playing) just in case someone I know walks by and is tempted to start a conversation.

The Bills are out of the playoffs again, which makes the cold feel colder. I also started the spring semester of teaching. In both of my studios I have a tall window with a spectacular view. I've decided this semester to spend more of my teaching time admiring the view out of my window and less of the time getting frustrated at college students for not having practiced. 

Another tell-tale sign that we have reached the days of High Winter is that the kinder are all going crazy. They want to go outside every day, even when the wind chill is below zero. They need help getting bundled into their snow things (still damp and cold from the day before) and then they need help taking it all off again when they realize that they actually do need to go to the bathroom. (This involves tracking in a lot of snow, no matter how careful you are.)

They play outside for a bit, and you periodically shout at them to stay in the backyard. Then they realize how cold they are and start screaming, and you have to put your own boots on to pull them out of a snowbank. And then they are upset at your for not giving them hot chocolate, even though you told them that we aren't having hot chocolate today, because they are so cold that they will never be warm again. And they get you all wet and cold as you take their snow things off, and your hands inevitably smell like wet socks.

But the alternative to letting them go outside is keeping them in, and when you do that Felix will repeatedly fill up a sippy cup and dump it out on his floor for no reason at all. (With Owen in the room and being fully aware of what's going on, but not telling any adults about it.)

I think Low Winter is the right term.

Owenisms

 Owen: "Do you know why Mom wanted to have lots of boys?"

Me: "Who told you she wanted to have lots of boys?"

Owen: "Well, she has three sons."

Me: "Right, but that isn't exactly the sort of thing that you get to decide."

Owen: "Yes, but she HAD three boys. And do you know why she wanted them?"

Me: "Why is that?"

Owen: "It's so when--and I'm not saying that I WANT this to happen--I'm just saying that when you die, we can remind her of you."

-------------------------------------

Owen lost another tooth, and the tooth fairy didn't come the first night. Sometimes the tooth fairy just wants to go to bed at 7:45 once the kids are in bed and listening to the Amerks game on their radio. That being said, it isn't unusual to wake up at 1:30 in the morning and find that the kids all fell asleep with the radio on. 

The tooth fairy didn't come the second night, either. Owen grew concerned. We told him that maybe the tooth fairy doesn't work weekends.

I snuck two quarters into the pocket of my pajamas and crept into their room at 10:30 PM on the third night. Half of the problem with this tooth fairy business is finding where the old tooth is. We give them a plastic baggie and tell them to put it under their pillow, they usually don't sleep in traditional arrangements. (Under blankets with their heads on a pillow.) We find them on the floor, or in each other's beds, tucked into the pillowcase like it's a sleeping bag. Or without any blankets but under a few dozen stuffed animals. Or on top of three pillows from the couch that they aren't supposed to take upstairs.

I started with Owen's bed pillow. It was abandoned at the edge of the bed, and the pillowcase had been plucked off. Nothing underneath. Then I crept to the other end of the bed. One of Felix's pillows was there, but it also had no tooth underneath. I could tell Owen was in the middle of the bunk, so I crept over to where he was. Was his head on a pillow?

I tried to find his which end of the blanket his head was sticking out of. I found his head, and his eyes were wide open. Without blinking or moving he remarked to me, "I was thinking about Spanish. Especially the word 'interesante!

Owen the Entrepreneur

 

Page One
January 13th, 2022
To Whom it May Concern:
Hello, my name is Owen Smith. I'm 7 years old. Would it be okay if I make some color-by-number sheets of the NFL logos and sell them for 50 cents each? We are going to Hershey Park this summer and I need to raise money. I've also always wanted a business of my own. (Next page)

(2nd page)
I've also seen many people do color-by-numbers and love them. Sincerely, Owen Smith
(address)

National Football League
345 Park Avenue, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10154
Attn: Copyright Permission

James and Owen at the Bank

 When I was six years old my parents opened a Junior Savings account for me at the M&T Bank in Oakfield that was next door to my Dad's new photography studio. Not the studio that they built, but the old redbrick storefront on the other side of town. The studio and the bank shared a parking lot, and my Mom took me over one morning to deposit my savings. I kept about $3 in that account for most of my childhood and it was still active when we applied for our mortgage back in 2014.

All three of the boys did very well for themselves with Christmas cash this year (they have generous great grandparents) and I decided it was time for them to open their own accounts, mostly because I couldn't stand to help them keep track of the cash in the house any longer. James immediately put his cash in his Eagles wallet, the location of which he intelligently keeps a secret from Owen. 

Owen kept his money in a ziploc bag and counted it daily. Owen has had several piggy banks, including a T-Rex piggy, but it's hard for anything to survive very long in his room. Owen talked about his money often, making big plans about how he was going to spend it at Hershey Park, or perhaps on a LEGO set, and then definitely on a set of plastic football guys like the ones James has, and then definitely on 20 boxes of tic-tacs. 

Owen also tried to make a number of dubious "trades" with Felix, who doesn't understand that the different denominations of bills are different dollar amounts. We made them nullify the trade where Owen gave Felix 9 $1 bills in exchange for Felix's $20, $10, and $5. (Felix, of course, thought that he had given Owen "three dollars.")

But perhaps the biggest driver for getting the money deposited was Felix, who regularly carried his bills around downstairs (perhaps, understandably, to keep them away from Owen) and then left them lying around on the library floor under stacks of half cut-up art projects and toddler detritus. He would forget where they were, freak out until we found them, carry them around again, set them down, and the process would repeat itself. We needed to get the money out of the house.

J was having coffee with a mom friend that morning and had brought Felix along. I came to a good stopping point in school with the older two and got them into their coats and masks.

"Now boys," I said "this is your first time riding in my new car. It's going to be fun. But I'm going to ask you please, PLEASE do not smudge up the windows or put muddy feet all over the seats. I know that all of these things are going to happen eventually, and that's fine. But just for a little bit can we try to keep the car clean so that we can enjoy having it new?"

"Yup!"

"Owen, I'm looking at you."

"I SAID yes."

"You also said yes when I asked you about the same thing with the rental car."

"Right."

"And do you remember how you wiped your muddy feet all over the seats, and how you opened up the car door really hard into the side of the house, and how you scratched the car because you were trying to eat ice off of the side of it."

"Right. I won't get muddy feet on the seats."

SIDE NOTE: I have a new car. The Corolla is gone, and I'm now driving at 2017 Honda Fit. I can't bring myself to write about it yet, but let's just say that as a result of an accident in which all parties (police, insurance, other driver) all agree I was 0% at fault I've still somehow ended up buying or paying for major repairs on 4 separate automobiles in the last month.)

We stepped outside, and Owen immediately ran to the muddy patch in the yard to step in it and crunch snow into it.

"Owen, is that the best idea if you're going to try to not get muddy footprints on the car?"

"Right! Okay, I'll remember not to put my feet on the seats."

We drove to the bank down the road. Owen asked whether we thought he ought to have a motto or not. He also complained to me that James was telling him Canada was a make-believe country. James denies this.

We arrived at the bank and headed in, then headed right back out because Owen had somehow lost his mask between the car and the bank door. (It was in the car.)

We met with a kind man named Justin to open the boy's accounts. 

Justin: So...do you boys have the day off of school today? (It was a Thursday at 11 in the morning)

James: (not making eye contact and mumbling unintelligibly into his mask) We're homeschooled.

Owen: Excuse me, can I ask some questions?

Justin: Uh, sure. What are your questions?

Owen: Can you count my money?

Me: Owen, we can count your money here before we deposit it.

Justin: No, it's fine. Let me show you how I count it. (He organizes the bills from largest to smallest and rapidly counts them out.) You have $72.47.

Owen: I think you're wrong. Count it again.

Me: Owen, you'll need to ask more politely. And he's not wrong, I watched him count it.

Justin: It's fine. Here, watch me count it again. (Counts out $72.47 again.) Yup, it's $72.47. How much did you think you had?

Owen: I had $74. Probably somebody stole some. But my target is to get $100.

Justin: Well, maybe you can get to $100 if you can earn money?

Owen: Yeah, I'll need 26 more dollars. Hey Dad, are there any jobs I can do for money? Like cleaning my room?

Me: I'm not going to pay you to clean your room.

Owen: What if I do the dishes?

Me: Those are the sorts of jobs you have to do for free just because you're in our family.

Owen: Yeah, I'll probably just go ask Ms. Nicole for $26. (to Justin) Hey, are you going to put my money in a box?

Justin: We'll deposit your money in a special big box we have called a bank vault.

James: (mumbling inaudibly) I don't want to surrender my money.

Owen: Cool! Can I go into the vault?

Justin: No, we can't just let anyone into the vault.

Owen: Are you going to pay me money to keep it in the vault?

Justin: I wish it was more, but you will get a few pennies of interest every year for keeping your money in the bank.

Owen: I was thinking that it should be more like ten dollars. Can you do that?

We wrapped up shortly thereafter and said thanks to Justin (Owen effusively, James awkwardly and looking away), and then went back to my new car, with Owen stopping to step in snow along the way.

About a block down the road:

"Hey Dad, don't be angry, but I forgot about not putting my feet on the seats. Don't worry, though. There's not TOO much mud!"

Bonus Felix story:

Felix received a bounty of art supplies for Christmas...a crafting kit, pencils, crayons, scissors, and a whole ream of his own blank printer paper. (We're trying to stop him from stealing the paper out of our printer.) The other night he was sitting at the table drawing with his pencil. He put his left hand down on the paper and painstakingly traced it out. "I drew my hand!" He switched the pencil to his left hand, shifted the paper, and awkwardly traced his right hand on the other side of the paper. "I drew my other hand." He then sat up a bit in his chair, looked down, and shifted down again. He moved the pencil from one hand to the other, tried to scooch closer to the table, then looked up. "How am I going to be able to draw my penis?"

Bonus Owen story:

"Hey, who's this guy on my $10 bill?" 

"That's Alexander Hamilton. Do you know who that is?"

"Hey, yeah, I do! He's the guy who wanted everyone to be counted when Jesus was born!"