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Thursday, February 19
storytelling
I haven't written much on the blog lately. For one thing, I've been too busy depleting the earth's supply of facial tissue with a nasty little cold. And for another, each of the current post ideas in my head has the emotional weight of an anvil, ready to smash both readers and unsuspecting coyotes in the face. Which would be especially surprising and cruel after all the video drivel that's been showing up here in the last couple of weeks.
Like all mothers, I also spend most of my time doing lots of crap that is both absolutely necessary and completely unappreciated. This paradox has led me to do bizarre things, such as beg a five-year-old to puke in my hands rather than on the clean sheets, or, as was the case today, to participate in schooling my own children.
The boys attend a kind of co-op school, in which they get three days to experience fresh air and an actual teacher, and two days stabbing blindly at knowledge with me. (For the record, I do win out slightly in popularity, but only because of my proximity to the Wii once class is over.)
Today was a homeschooling day, which found me sitting in the floor, working with Connor on reading. As Mike and I are convinced that he is actually a 37-year-old accountant in the witness protection program, he enjoys this about as much as one would enjoy a good skin rash. But we persevered, and together, we read our assigned book:
The Dog The Hog The Rat The Ram The Hen and The Big Big Din.
It was made up of fun sentences like A fig pot sat in a rut and The mad rat bit the hog on the ham.
The idea is, I guess, that if the words stay small, he'll be able to read them all, and thus feel successful. The reality? THE BOOK WAS STUPID. And Connor knew it. "What's the use of working so hard to read," he said, "if the stories don't make sense?"
And then I saw myself in his eyes, striving to whittle the tale of my days down into manageable bits, dumbing the prose of my world down to one-syllable words that won't overwhelm me. I strain myself to sound out the basic phonics of life, when I could just be writing a better — if harder — story out of things, driven to learn just so that I might discover its twists, turns, and fascinating end.
Like all mothers, I also spend most of my time doing lots of crap that is both absolutely necessary and completely unappreciated. This paradox has led me to do bizarre things, such as beg a five-year-old to puke in my hands rather than on the clean sheets, or, as was the case today, to participate in schooling my own children.
The boys attend a kind of co-op school, in which they get three days to experience fresh air and an actual teacher, and two days stabbing blindly at knowledge with me. (For the record, I do win out slightly in popularity, but only because of my proximity to the Wii once class is over.)
Today was a homeschooling day, which found me sitting in the floor, working with Connor on reading. As Mike and I are convinced that he is actually a 37-year-old accountant in the witness protection program, he enjoys this about as much as one would enjoy a good skin rash. But we persevered, and together, we read our assigned book:
The Dog The Hog The Rat The Ram The Hen and The Big Big Din.
It was made up of fun sentences like A fig pot sat in a rut and The mad rat bit the hog on the ham.
The idea is, I guess, that if the words stay small, he'll be able to read them all, and thus feel successful. The reality? THE BOOK WAS STUPID. And Connor knew it. "What's the use of working so hard to read," he said, "if the stories don't make sense?"
And then I saw myself in his eyes, striving to whittle the tale of my days down into manageable bits, dumbing the prose of my world down to one-syllable words that won't overwhelm me. I strain myself to sound out the basic phonics of life, when I could just be writing a better — if harder — story out of things, driven to learn just so that I might discover its twists, turns, and fascinating end.
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Oh, I am so waiting for your first book.
Just so you know - I agree with Anonymous but I was NOT posting that comment as "Anonymous."
Thanks for clearing that up. I had my suspicions.