Of a Beachball, Barbells, and the Trojan Horse; or, I Wish I Could Think More Like Odysseus

Sunday night and I am: washing grapes for Charlie’s lunchbox—-emailing the students in my summer school course about their presentations on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (they decided that they want to make videos of 3 different scenes with accompanying PowerPoints and I have been given the task of editing the videos)—-folding laundry—-reminding myself to send some photos of Charlie to my dad for his birthday—-trying to figure out what kind of cable I need to transfer the video from a camcorder to my Mac (might this be it?)—-et alia.

Crash!

Something heavy fell, or was dropped, on the floor above. Jim looks up from his computer, where he is typing final, final edits on the manuscript of his eight-years-in-the-making book on the Irish waterfront. Our expressions say the same thing, what was that it couldn’t be…..

Since it is silent, another sound comes through, a tinkling clanking.

“He’s rolling around my weights,” says Jim, and goes back to the waterfront.

“He can pick them up,” I say.

“They’re 15 pounds each,” says Jim.

“He can also pick up the 20 pound ones……with two hands, just for a short while,” I note. I admire one of the slides in a student’s PowerPoint, in which she has cut-and-pasted a picture of Odysseus and another of his great invention—the Trojan Horse—in a thought bubble. I hear the sound of Charlie running and he stands in front of me, holding onto an as yet uninflated beachball.

“Mom, ball, give.”

“Mom, blow up the ball,” I prompt.

“Mom, blow up ball, says Charlie; Jim volunteers and Charlie, very excited, runs to sit on the couch and toys with his headphones.

Jim tries to blow up the ball, then says to me, “There’s this plastic piece or something that needs to be gotten out of the way.” I take the ball, look through the nozzle, and sure enough, there is a thick piece of plastic blocking an air flow. And so in the next several plus minutes, one task consumes me, finding a sharp enough, small enough object, to fit down the tube and puncture the plastic. I open and close kitchen drawers, try out a chopstick (too big), unbend a paper clip (too dull), open a safety pin (too small).

“Beachball,” says Charlie. “Mom’s working on it, pal,” says Jim. I see a paring knife and scheme, but it is too wide and may make an unnecessary cut in the ball’s flimsy plastic. I used to have a cake tester; what did I do with it? Maybe if I held a pair of scissors just so, I strategize—it is a tight spot.

I open a drawer I have already looked through; the metal kitchen tools—tongs and a lemon zester and a pastry mixer, all acquired in long-ago fits of domesticity—clang. At the back right of the drawer I see something narrow and pointed at the end and pull it out; it fits easily into the beachball’s nozzle, I hand Jim the ball, and Jim is soon giving a slightly sagging beachball to a delighted Charlie.

“I didn’t blow it up all the way,” says Jim. “He’s going to lie on it,” I say and sure enough, Charlie is lying atop the beachball with his stomach on the plastic. “Proprioceptive input,” I add. Charlie lies on the ball grinning, then flops down onto a big blue pillow and places the ball atop the back of his knees and bends them.

“What did you use?” asks Jim.

“A meat thermometer,” I reply. The two 15-pound barbells are in front of Charlie, and he rolls them together, and they gently clank.

Odysseus had the Greeks build a huge wooden horse so they could make their way into Troy. I am sure that, if he had had Charlie asking him to blow up a beachball, he would have found the equivalent of my meat thermometer most speedily. In figuring out ways around the tough “now what do we do?” moments, I do sometimes think that, at such times, it would be nice not only to have the cunning of the wily Greek, but also an appearance from no one less than Athena (goddess of wisdom) in full armor, to offer help and advice and (as she does in Book 6, when he meets the young princess, Nausicaä) to make one appear taller and godlike. A parent has also to be polytropos, “many turning, many sided, versatile,” like Odysseus on his ten years of adventures to get back home to Ithaca and to Penelope, to his family.

And what a prize (geras) when we do the right thing: Charlie peaceful-easy balancing himself on his newly-blown-up beach ball, clanking, and occasionally semi-hoisting, Jim’s silver-painted weights in all their bearable heaviness; Charlie just being.

Beachball photo courtesy of mag3737.