Of interest to rainwolf

Not that he ever checks his lj these days, but still. I may be of interest to some of you, too.

Back in October, rainwolf came into my class in his really cool gnoll costume, played the part of the wolf in the class production of Les Trois Petits Cochons, and then came back out of costume to talk about his career in science. The class discussion ended up centering around what the students wanted to do for a living. rainwolf found it very sad that one girl said she would probably go back to her country (Kurdistan) and work in an office.

This girl has blossomed this term. She did an excellent speech on Saddam Hussein, which, while it did not win the competition, was nevertheless a very good speech. She wrote a short story that was the best in my class. She took our Readers' Theatre production of Beauty and the Beast and got right into it, adding actions and one or two lines that were not in the script but had her audience in stitches. (That's not easy when they're waiting their turn to present the same play. They were bored until she started reading.)

This past week, she and a few others in my class started asking me about my book. They were very interested to know the kind of details kids always want to know: how long it was, how much time it took to read it, whether it was finished, how much more I intended to write, etc, etc. She was just about the only one to be interested in the process of writing: things like, putting in a note in bold type reminding myself to come back and finish a scene, or putting a blank line reminding myself to come back and name a place or character later, how I decided what came next, what I was going to do after the climax scene to tie it all up.

She asked me today what it would take to become an author as a career. Without dashing her hopes, I told her most authors had to hold down other jobs while writing at least the first few books, as I was doing. I also told her to read and write as much as she possibly could, and to take every opportunity to try new things. Her writing journal has been filling up at about twice the rate of the other kids' journals already.

It's nice to think I really am making a difference in this girl's life. The light has gone on for her. I hope life doesn't snuff it, but even if it does, having felt like this about writing once, she'll recognize it when it happens again. She has a dream now, and I was a part of it.

Parental fun is. . .

Having an apparently perfectly happy toddler decide to scream and throw up within five minutes of being put to bed, necessitating a complete change of toddler, bed, and parent. (She waited until the parent went in to comfort her before letting loose.) Also necessitating an immediate quick bath for said child, as a result of unmentionable stuff in her hair which arrived there via her sleeve when I told her to put her hands up to have her shirt removed. The quick bath happened while the parent in the scenario was still in her underwear, having chucked her soiled clothing into the pile of baby linen on its way to the washing machine.

We warmed up by blow-drying her hair. Usually I'd let it air-dry, but there was no way I was waiting half an hour for that to happen when it was already nine thirty.

And with all that, she was still only half an hour late going to bed.

She sang along with the second lullaby, as she had with the first. I love it when she does that.

I have trouble remembering sometimes that I wasn't always a mother, that there was a time in my life when there was no Elizabeth. It seems so incredible to me that I had a hand (and some other parts) in creating this wonderful little girl. And yet I looked at her expression as she was getting her hair dried, and I saw pictures of her father as a child. I looked at the hair and saw myself as a little girl. She's ours, and she's fully herself. I keep thinking I couldn't possibly love her more, and every day proves me wrong.

This started as a rant. Non-parents simply will not understand how a story about baby vomit could turn into a prayer of thankfulness. The parents among you, or some with good imaginations and parental instinct, are all smiling and nodding right now.

God bless our children.