Everyone who generously sent gifts for Wee E’s Xmas, thank you. The reason I haven’t mentioned them yet is because we haven’t opened them yet. Ethan finally got home from his paternal holiday and is firmly entrenched here in the matriarchal homebase with Spiderman target practice and The Boxcar Children. As is our tradition he got to open a present or two tonight, preceding the “real” “Christmas.”* I also had a preliminary talk with him about the Chefly engagement, at which time he declared, “You mean Merle gets to live here forever?!”
After much hugging and revelry we got down to the real business, opening Ethan’s new rock tumbler. To understand how perfect a gift this is, you have to know my boy. E checked out one science book every week all semester from his public school library, and most of them didn’t get more than a skim, minus this and the planet books. Ethan’s interest in the book on rocks, gems, and minerals was something to behold — every night he slowly turned the pages, stopping only to explain the merits of pressure on different kinds of matter to his geologically-challenged mother. He’d explain and re-explain how my amber ring came to be, and commit the birthstone of each member of our family to memory, doing his best to also remember how these gems were made. Thus, other than how goddamned noisy this thing is, it’s a great gift.
The rock tumbler comes with all sorts of common minerals, from rose quartz to tiger eye, and with some water, grinding powder and a little patience we should have a handful of kickass stones in a few weeks. Ethan is planning a few pieces of jewelry for me — another ring, he says, and a necklace.
I love this inclination in him to catalogue information about rocks and planets and store it away for a future date. A song lyric or conversation will remind him of something he learned in one of these books and a fact will break the surface. Mom, Mammoth Cave is located in Kentucky. Mom, Jupiter has more than 60 moons. Mom, you were born in the year of the cock.
I’m a fact collector, too, hoarding bizarre information on pop culture and literary ephemera, word definitions and strange names. Science was always out of bounds. I loved the bigger stories about the births of stars and the evolution of the planet, the political stories about Galileo’s persecution and Galen’s horrific miscalculated theories on sex and anatomy. But the details? Shit. I failed biology, physics, chemistry, and earth science in high school, nearly failed entomology and atmospheric science in college, and the sole reason I’m not a nurse today is that I couldn’t pass an anatomy class. For all my fact-hoarding I couldn’t perform the memorization necessary to complete the courses well.
Like the asshole dad who forces his kid into baseball to soothe his own painful memories of championships lost, I urge Ethan toward science.
Thus, after our foray into jewelry-making we participated in our Friday night routine: pizza and science movies. We watched a National Geographic video on Super Dangerous Deadly Planets and munched happily away at cheese pizza while we learned about the acidic atmosphere of Venus. Mom, Venus is covered with volcanoes, Ethan says between bites just before the narrator confirms this fact. Later the narrator reveals that some scientists believe that before the planet’s extreme global warming effects dried up the oceans, some of the simple organisms that may have lived in Venusian oceans could have figured out how to live in the cooler upper atmosphere.
“But they couldn’t breathe!” Ethan exclaims, throwing down his pizza in disgust.
“Maybe they evolved,” I suggest, realizing that this could be an opportune teaching moment if only I could get my three puny scientific brain cells in a row. “Evolution happens when living things have to adapt to the places in which they live. So they can live better.” And stuff like that.
“Nobody could breathe sulfuric acid. That’s ridiculous, Ma.” **
“What if they started out differently and migrated to the upper atmosphere because they had to? Since they don’t live on Earth they don’t have to breathe oxygen.” This is assuming that these simple organisms breathe like we do, which, if they exist, they probably don’t, but I’m so not going there. “How much do you know about evolution?”
“Yeah, evolution is like when we have two legs and monkeys have four legs.”
“Not quite. So, where do monkeys live?” I pause the movie, in which the narrator goes on about Venusian commonalities with Earth.
“Africa.”
“Not just Africa, they also live in India, Asia, and South America. Where in these places do monkeys live?”
“In the jungle!”
“Yes, but where in the jungle?”
“Wherever they can find food. Like bananas.”
“Right! So the monkeys learned how to live in trees so they could get the food they liked and escape mean predators, while humans figured out how to walk upright and gather food from other kinds of sources.” Opposable thumbs escape me. So does the fact that the monkeys and bananas thing is only part of the story.
“So what about dinosaurs?” E asks, his doe eyes narrowing at me while I wonder if he’s figured out my scientific deficiency.
“Some scientists think animals like birds are closer to dinosaurs than any other. Then we have reptiles like crocodiles and alligators.”
“Pterodactyls could be like birds.”
“Yes, they certainly could.”
“They both fly,” Ethan says.
He suddenly grabs my hand, noticing the ring Chef gave me during the proposal, a locally handmade piece with a twisted band in white gold and a rather large hunk of amethyst in a raised setting. He studies the ring for a moment, turning my hand to better look at the stone. It’s a clear gem, the kind of stone Ethan is drawn to, his last semester of autodidactic gem study clearly informing his thoughts. “Mom, your birthstone is amethyst. I like your ring.”
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* Children Of Atheist Parents Get Presents, Too Day
** Yes, I am aware I have the coolest kid ever.
He needs his own book about rocks, minerals, etc. Tomorrow, tomorrow…
You’re welc–ah, shit. I knew I forgot something.
Have you thought about Three Kings Day? That’s like the Hispanic Christmas here in New York, and it involves camels.
Whew. Ethan excited. About engagement. Whew. Weight lifted. More concerned with cat/human relationship. That’s ok. Whew. Still relieved.
Post Script: Rock tumblers are frickin’ loud.
I suddenly hope I get the chance to be a (good) father someday. Hold on, I need a tissue..
Aw c’mon Chef. You know Ethan digs you. I’ve never met either of you and *I* know it.
I had a rock tumbler when I was a kid…we kept it in the basement. In the closet. They *are* loud…it’s worth it, though.
Maybe a large cardboard box lined with foam or egg cartons or something - in the basement or farthest corner of your house? (Just remember to check on it!)
Lauren, can you please publish a book–or at least a pamphlet–on How to Raise A Kick-Ass Kid? This is information that is clearly lacking from modern child-rearing books.
Hell, I dig Chef too. And Ethan. His passion for geology and science is very cool. I’m old enough now to see those initial passions have sometimes remained with my younger relatives.
Dad had one of those tumblers when we were kids. It kept us busy for a while looking for pretty rocks. And it was loud! We kept it behind a door in the basement and could hear it on the second floor.
Poke around on Freecycle and/or Craigslist, and look for an old dot matrix printer muffling box. Back In The Day ™, when dot matrix printers were all there were, the high-end fast printers were incredibly noisy - like 140 dB noisy - and people built foam-lined noise suppression chambers for them. Those boxes have little value today, and if you can find someone who has one clogging up their hall closet, you can probably get it for nothing. You can even seal up the slots the boxes had for paper feeding and get even less noise.
Rock tumblers are worth the noise. Put it out on the back porch and make a rule that he can only run it during the day.
I grew up in one of the world’s foremost geologist-attracting areas, so I love driving people through it and pointing out the giant mountains and cliffs and saying, “Did you know the Southwest used to be under the ocean and all these mountains were laid down by the shifting waters of the ocean?” And then they look again and see the Giant Fucking Sedimentary Rocks where they just saw mountains before and you can see the knowledge dawning of how old the earth is, its age jutting up around you as you drive along. It’s humbling.
So to say “the Southwest used to be under the ocean” is just a fact gathered on one hand. On the other, it is one of those small but relevant keys that can really open up the mind to the large world outside.
I’m totally psyched you see that minds that work like that are good for the sciences. If more parents saw that in their children….
I grew up in New Jersey, and was always told that during the Ice Age, North Jersey was covered in glacier, while South Jersey wasn’t. This apparently has something to do with why Jersey tomatoes are so good and why it’s the Garden State.
Plus, it’s apparently also a reason why there are so many stone walls in New England.
I dig Chef. Especially his sweet, sweet ass. Oh, were we talking about geology?
If you want to throw something interesting back, tell him that here on earth, there are bacteria that eat sulfur and excrete sulfuric acid. They live in hot springs…
Here’s a link to Bacterial Snots.
Some of us are still awaiting a picture of this ring. Ahem.
Hi,
I received a rock tumbler a few years ago (not as kick-ass as yours, but still!), and LOVED it until my electric bill showed up. I nearly fainted. I pledge $50 towards your next electric bill.
Cheers,
L