Tag Archives: childhood

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Books

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“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

I want to tell you the story of my eldest child, whom I’ve watched adore books longer than anyone else I know. Forty years ago, when Susan was an infant not more than 6 months old, we’d put her in the playpen to entertain herself with toys and cloth books. She would literally chew the pages. Then we gave her board books with stiff pages that she quickly learned to turn, one by one, as she’d seen us do when we read to her. For her second Christmas, my husband bought her a phonics cassette tape with a workbook. Before she turned three years old, she was sounding out words. By the time she was four, she was reading chapter books like James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. I’m not joking – we have it on video. When she was older and I found her getting behind in her chores, I tried to take away her reading privileges by turning her bookshelf toward the wall. That was not very effective, as there were things to read all over the house. And someone was always reading.

Susan was an excellent student and competed in Spelling Bees and Scholastic Bowls throughout her schooling. She eventually got a Master’s degree in Linguistics. When she was planning her wedding, she decided to make all of the flowers for the tables at the reception out of old paperback books.

Her best friend since grade school is an elementary school music teacher. Susan is a favorite Auntie to her friend’s children; I caught her one Christmas sharing one of her favorite picture books.

When she visited me in Oregon during the pandemic, we had to visit Powell’s bookstore in Portland. I love to watch her get enthusiastic over almost every title she sees.

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am continually amazed at the person my baby has become. I am sure that my late husband and I played some part in that, but I have to acknowledge that what she’s read may have played an even bigger part. I admire her thoroughly for her wealth of knowledge and her empathy, and I’m sure that her reading has informed that tremendously. And she has always been able to keep herself entertained and engaged – the world is her playpen now, and she will always have a good book to keep her company.

Thanks, Ritva, for this inspiring challenge and your beautiful images!

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Going Back

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“There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better;
Some have gone but some remain.”
~ ‘In My Life’ by The Beatles

During this time of staying “Safer At Home”, I have begun a photo project converting snapshots in my family albums to digital files so that I can share them online with my loved ones, most of whom live on the West Coast while I live in Wisconsin. Scanning these precious images, I keep returning to a very special vacation spot that has been in the family for four generations.

We call it simply The Cottage. It’s a beach house built on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan some time in the 1940s by my father’s parents. My father first brought my mother there when they were courting as college students at Harvard/Radcliffe in the mid 1950s. I spent long weekends and extended weeks there in the summers while I was growing up. Here are some images from the party we had for my third birthday.

I last visited The Cottage with my mother, my sister and brother, my husband, and my four children in 2007, following my oldest daughter’s college graduation. 

To me, The Cottage will always be about the feeling of summer freedom. Walking right out the front door onto the beach at any time, free to explore the sand, the water, the endless horizon, the numerous bits of driftwood and stone, I felt that my life was my own to create. We built sand castles, buried each other up to our chins in sand, jumped waves, collected “glassies”, scared seagulls, threw balls and Frisbees, and lit campfires. I wanted my children to have that same freedom.

We also challenged ourselves to bigger adventures, like canoeing down the White River and riding over the huge dunes, and treated ourselves to local summer pleasures, like root beer and ice cream. 

Freedom and fun are the summer hopes of many children. In the present climate, these are threatened. But these are not frivolous dreams, these are the experiences that demand and build real growth. The ability to make choices and the motivation to make choices for joy must be modeled for the next generations. Limiting choices to staying insular, to keeping things as they are out of fear, is a dangerous example to give our children.

I fervently wish for this global pandemic to teach us the moral lessons we need to learn about continuing exploration and adaptation while treating all living things with compassion and wisdom. May each of you be safe and healthy while you look forward to freedom and fun.

Thank you, John, for hosting this week’s challenge and inviting us to go back into our travels, to remember fondly and to learn.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Between

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The Weekly Photo Challenge prompt invites us to interpret the theme “Between”.  This response is dedicated to my oldest, Susan.  When she was a little girl in Kindergarten, she memorized a poem by A. A. Milne (the author of the Winnie the Pooh stories) and performed it for the K-3rd grade Speech and Oratorical Contest of her elementary school.  Here is the poem:

Before Tea by A. A. Milne

Emmeline
Has not been seen
For more than week. She slipped between
The two tall trees at the end of the green…
We all went after her. “Emmeline!”

“Emmeline,
I didn’t mean —
I only said that your hands weren’t clean.”
We went to the trees at the end of the green…
But Emmeline
Was not to be seen.

Emmeline
Came slipping between
The two tall trees at the end of the green.
We all ran up to her. “Emmeline!
Where have you been?
Where have you been?
Why, it’s more than week!” And Emmeline
Said, “Sillies, I went and saw the Queen.
She says my hands are purfickly clean!”

 

Susan did not perform this poem ‘purfickly’.  As I recall, she left rather a long pause between the second and third stanzas, perhaps for dramatic effect, perhaps to indicate that some time goes by in that part.  The audience began to applaud too early.  Nevertheless, her memory was perfect, and she finished in her own time, in her little 5-year old lisp, “Thillieth…”, and I was, of course, inordinately proud of her. I still am.  I visited her this past Sunday, and we went for a stroll in the UW Madison Arboretum, where she slipped between the branches of trees — like this:

between

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Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

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The mouth-watering prompt of this week’s photo challenge depicts a plate of cheeses from Italy with a pool of honey in the center.  “Why aren’t we living in Italy?” Steve asked me just a few weeks ago.  Good question.  No good answer.  But this post is not about cheese, or Italy, or even honey, but about angle and perspective.  “Share a photo of a subject which you shot from directly above.”  I have a new batch of shots from our hike along the Ice Age trail, so I looked through to find one which would be up to this challenge.  Aha!  Here it is:

from above

I remember how any bridge on a trail hike would be an opportunity to play “Pooh sticks” when I was a kid.  Just like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, my sisters and I would choose a likely twig to toss into the water on the upstream side of the bridge.  Then we’d wheel around to see whose stick came out first on the downstream side.  This log wasn’t about to budge from its place, but I thought of those childhood adventures with my sisters and my dad nevertheless — tromping the woods in the early spring, greeting the season of Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Mayapples and violets, and playing ‘bridge’ games.  Here’s another one: you pretend you are the troll under the bridge and the passersby overhead are the Billy Goats Gruff.  Believe it or not, I played that one on my first date with Steve.  We were hiking…and there was a bridge…and I just couldn’t help myself.  “Who’s that trip-tropping over my bridge!!!” I bellowed.  Yeah.  I guess he found it endearing in some way, because we’re still together 4 and a half years later.  Good thing. 

Sunshine comes From Above, and for that I am always grateful.  Stay playful, stay young at heart, and enjoy Spring!   

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Oh, You Kid!

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I spent a lovely afternoon with my daughter yesterday.  Despite being in grad school and already a real adult, she still has a wonderfully childlike nature.  I was waiting for her in the park on the square, and she managed to park her car and sneak from tree to tree without me noticing her, in order to come up from behind and grab me in an ambush hug.  Needless to say, she makes me smile and feel like a kid myself.  We wandered over to Aztalan State Park, where the wide open spaces were calling to me.  When I was a child, my dad used to take me to the Morton Arboretum.  I’d see fields of dandelions and expanses of grass that made me break out into a run, or a gallop, or a skip.  I just had to propel myself into the middle of that lush landscape, wishing I were a wild bird so that I could skim over the entire scene.  What happened to that energy, that joyous surge?  I still feel it in my brain, although the rest of me is greatly slowed down.  I invite you to step into this place as if you were 7 years old again….how does it feel to you?

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Seize The Day!

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It’s Here!

 

National Poetry Writing Month

Fun for the whole family!  My sister intends to match me, poem for poem, in the comments section of each of my posts.  Mind you, this is NOT a competition.  I have to be very clear about that and remind myself that this is about playing with words, creative collaboration, cleaning my windshield of mud and fear and stuff that gets in the way of my recognition of the wonderful ideas that I, even I, have shining on the horizon.  I remind myself of this several times a day because my older sister is brilliant and has always been better than me at everything.  Of course, that’s entirely my own hangup.  I admit it, and I’m old enough now to face it head on. Right? Right!

I am using a very inclusive definition of “poetry” here.  In other words, I’ve never been a student of poetry, I don’t know form and rules, but as a singer, I like words and rhythm.  As a visual person, I like icons and imagery.  Any formation of symbols that produce an experience can be called poetry in my definition.  Also, it’s understood that any poetry posted here is copyrighted.  If it’s not original, I will site the source. 

I am tickled that this event is starting on a Sunday.  Such creative connotations!  And on April Fool’s Day, just so that we don’t take our creativity too seriously.  I self-published a book of Poems and Parables back in 1997.   This was the first one:

God is a poem

Infinite in meaning

Economical in expression

Clothed in symbol and harmony

A breathing Word

Engaging all perception

Today’s prompt is “Carpe Diem”, with a reference to Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.  I have to admit that my brain first translated that Latin phrase as something like “Fish Gods”.  You know, Carp Deities.  ‘Fish gods’ sounds like ‘fish guts’.  I was going down that path for a while.  But then, I remembered a conversation I had at breakfast with Steve about childhood development.  We have often referred to ourselves as 3 and 4 year olds.  He’s 3, and I’m 4.  I got a chart of early childhood characteristics at my last teacher training session, and we talked about how the descriptions fit us.  I often feel like we’re trying to get back to those authentic ideas of ourselves and that maybe, eventually, we’ll become infants again and live as though we were not separate at all from the environment.

So all that musing is background.  I began composing my first lines in the bathtub.  Here’s what I penciled in my notebook when I dried off:

My three-year-old comes out to play

With ne’er a thought about the day,

For what is ‘think’ or ‘time’ or ‘how’?

The only thing is ‘this right now’.

 

My three-year-old, with eye and ear

Stays open’d wide to what is here.

Experience is all, you see.

That three-year-old’s inside of me.

Sniffing a Ponderosa pine in New Mexico. Steve told me it smells like vanilla. I had to find out. I agreed. (photo credit: Steve)