HelpX in Blackheath

After our 3 days of camping we stayed with a family in Blackheath for around 10 days as part of help-exchange--a program where you do some informal work in exchange for a room and meals. The family has 4 boys, aged 5 to 13, who helped me understand the loving tumult of living in a large family. Here's a shot of Jen and Archer, the youngest.

Archer regularly surprised us. The kids all make themselves breakfast (sometimes quite elaborate ones), and one day when we were in charge of the kids, I caught Archer cutting all the fat off the raw bacon in the refrigerator and putting it onto his plate. This seemed a poor idea to Jen and I, but he swore up and down it's what he always ate. We called his grandmother, who laughed, and said we should let him try and if he got sick, then he would have learned his lesson.

On a different day, we were all playing scrabble together, and Archer was sitting on Jen's lap. He quietly excused himself at one point, and returned with a cup of ice water which he proceeded to carefully and repeatedly dip his bangs into. Around 10 minutes later he started to look upset and get a bit sniffily. On the verge of tears, he kept saying "I'm cold! ...... My face is so cold!" and indeed, it looked to be well coated with the ice water.

On a normal day, I would wake up around 8 and find all the boys asleep, except for Archer who would be sitting quietly on top of the counter, eating raw bacon fat or a banana by himself. He usually ate 3 or 4 bananas a day. The rest of the boys would wake up, turn on the tv or the computer, and quietly occupy themselves and make themselves eggs, toast, bacon, braised tomatoes, and pancakes. (They were also wonderful about offering to make Jen and I Cappuccinos (!). The family has a full espresso machine exactly as you would find in a cafe, and the kids are expert).

As the morning progressed, the boys' interactions would grow gradually more vigorous until around noon, when one could expect some yelling or crying. Then Jen and I or their parents would suggest an outdoor activity to tire them out, in the hopes they'd come back and once again interact peaceably (and, I think their parents hoped, quietly). This plan backfired the first time Jen and I took them to the park, because I played imaginary gun fights on the structure and kicked the soccer ball around with them, and became so tired that I had to nap immediately upon returning home, thereby altering the critical adult-kid balance of the household.

Like Jane Goodall, I was often able to sit unnoticed and observe the daily interactions of the boys. Two of my tentative conclusions are: (1) boys will often do things they themselves know are probably a bad idea just because they're bored and it's more interesting than nothing, and (2) it's hard to be the youngest.

On this second point, I present the following drama:
Older brother sits at the place setting with the only wine glass at the table and picks it up to move it closer to himself. Younger brother declares that he wants to have the wine glass. Older brother makes younger brother ask nicely. And ask nicely attaching the proper heroic epithets to his name ("the smartest", "the best", and so forth). And then promise to do the older brother's after-dinner chores. Finally, younger brother beams as he is handed the wine glass. Mother appears. Younger brother, still beaming, proudly announces that this will be his glass for dinner. Mother, oblivious to his hard-won fight, briskly picks up the glass, saying "This is my glass. It's a wine glass, honey, it's for adults." Younger brother starts to cry. This is just one example. This kind of thing happened pretty frequently.

Though there was much wrestling, pillow fighting, and general mayham, the boys were also very sweet to each other. When a younger boy got hurt in a wrestling match that got out of hand, his older brother said "Here, Jarv....give us a snug," and held his brother on his lap, asking where it hurt, and hugging him until he felt better. The boys' favorite way to go to sleep every night was (literally) in a big sprawling pile on the large leather sofa in the living room.

In addition to some of the child-care, our work for the help-exchange involved moving several large piles of wood into their wood shed. I'm sad I didn't take a picture of it, because we used some of the pieces to build frames that would keep it all square, and organized it into neatly stacked piles according to the length and width of the pieces. We were a little disappointed to find out that it was really just fire wood and our excellent innovations weren't, in the end, that useful. The family was duly impressed nonetheless.