For my kids, it is a form of play, of organized and orchestrated jubilation.  But for most of the girls on the floor this is a competitive pursuit, training most nights of the week for Saturday competitions, breaking their bodies until they can command the body to do what they require.  (I will say only that the moms sit upstairs, looking down on the scene, a Panopticon view, chatting about Saturday’s tournament or whether their daughter will ever master the balance beam.  I read books in the corner.)

My kids are not natural gymnasts, at least Z is not and Bean is still young and unfocused. Perhaps if they were I would encourage them to devote themselves to this pursuit.  Oh, but at age 7, I still want her to play, the afternoon stretching before her and the backyard beckoning.

When she was Bean’s age, she did not know her letters, she was not interested in letters, in their symbolism, their relationship to sounds and words and meaning.  Z loved to tell stories, to draw pictures that represented her ideas, to wear costumes and stand on the couch flipping and twisting to demonstrate her meaning.  She memorized the entire retelling of The Little Red Riding Hood as told by Trina Schart Hyman, with its pleases and thank yous and elderberry tea.  But she did not write, she made no attempt to read.

I forced the issue, with flash cards and workbooks.  We were moving around that year due to work, and were living in Queens when kindergarten started.  Homeschooling became a simple choice.  We wanted to enjoy the city in the few months we were passing through, the local school seemed like it would swallow my 5 year old whole, and my husband’s schedule changed every few weeks placing his weekends on Monday/Tuesdays or wherever they might land, making her 5 day school week throw our family time off kilter.  Those are my excuses for keeping her home.

Then we tortured each other.  She would throw a tantrum about dedicated learning time; I would bribe and beg and yell that she had to just try.  Finally, in all that time I was supposed to dedicate to teaching, I read enough to know it would be okay, she might not read until she was 6 or 7 or 8.  But she was smart, and she would learn if I calmed down.

Six months later we left NYC, and landed in a small town.  A small school with just two kindergarten classrooms.  By the end of the first day the teacher (a woman who had taught 32 years in the same corner classroom) determined that Z did not know the alphabet as she was unable to sing it when requested.  And for the rest of the year she worked with a reading specialist twice a day, who drilled her with uppercase and lowercase letter flashcards until she could chant A says ah, B says /b/, c says/k/…ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I worried and knew that I had screwed up, and then determined that I had not.  And kept reading to her, everyday, just reading, her interest in literature not affected by her illiteracy.  The first grade teacher called me in and expressed her concerns about Z’s reading, and I said I would help drill her on sight words.  Which I did for a week or two, but gave up quickly, her frustration mounting as she realized that home was not safe from the drill.

So, this child, this boy, who is not yet afraid of letters, who loves bouncy O’s and X’s that mean kiss, who likes to type and declare loudly that he is writing, I will read to him and nurture each step of his reading/writing journey instead of being terrified that it will never come and adding to the panic of the age.

Last night when Z fretted over writing at her table and needed quiet, I pulled Bean into the kitchen with a piece of paper and a handful of crayons.  I said, “Draw me a story.” And this is what he wrote, drawing a picture as his dialogue rushed out describing the two paths (a good one and a bad one), the bump in the road and the monster.

Perhaps its a reminder of how early civilizations recorded their histories, their fears.  It’s Bean’s writing, his graphic etching on a cave wall.

Time for Rome: straight roads, apartment buildings and gladiators.  Z has not found Roman history to be romantic, even the myths are stolen from the Greeks, names changed to avoid accusation.  Gladiators fight to the death for the enjoyment of others, hoping that the thumbs up sign will be for them and they will win their freedom.  Still they will have been displaced, finding themselves in a new country, their own disassembled.

She is a revolutionary at heart, a slave uprising led by the gladiators would suit her.  Is Spartacus the movie appropriate for an 8 year old?

Here’s what we’re using to explore this week:

The Story of the World: Volume 1: Ancient Times Susan Wise Bauer’s text gives a brief, kid-friendly account of ancient times and places from Mesopatamia through the end of the Roman empire.  This is accompanied by an activity book, that gives suggestions for teaching, as well as maps and books to accompany the time period.

See You Later, Gladiator: Time Warp Trio #9 by Jon Scieszka Three boys time travel throughout history following a magic book.  In this one they land inside a gladiator school and have to get home before they end up fighting in the games at the grand opening of the Colosseum.  Not a literary masterpiece, but more enjoyable to read as an adult than Magic Tree House.  And Z picked up on various Roman history facts because of this book.

I am over at the computer already wanting to see and hear Obama speak with resoluteness on all that is problematic in the Middle East.  His advisers have cautioned us that there is only so much that can be accomplished by a speech, by a trip, by one administration.  But the speech as I begin to take it in sounds different.  I believe in sound, it is not just hot air floating up, some of this is quite cold actually.  The Israelis are already annoyed that US policy seems to be changing, as we insist on no new settlement growth.  

In this speech Obama made clear that the Palestinians are a displaced people, that they have existed in an occupied state for 60 years.  There is squirming in Israel today.  It feels like an actual change .

I’m going to read A Peace to End All Peace this week, and try to gain more understanding of when and how and why.

Question: How do we participate in the soft power process of knowing one another as people and not stereotypes?

When they call us back in from the car, there is no line at the desk.  Apparently everyone else found their room keys as they exited.  

Last night I settled the wee ones back into bed, lulled myself to sleep with the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs, and woke with relatively little panic.  

Curious George plays in the background now as I sift through the morning news of disappearing planes flying west to an airport where my husband sits waiting to fly east and home, and of anger in the West Bank, riots and tires burning and more people being displaced from a land they call home.  

I understand so little about the situation that is Israel/Palestine.  I can name two dates that seem important: 1949, 1973.  I can name a few people whom I have met who claim this land as their own, people with passports from Israel and Lebanon, people whose addresses are in Bethlehem and Gaza and Jerusalem.  I can understand how it might feel to lose one’s home, but not to lose my homeland.  

What I am trying to understand today is what Obama’s insistence on no new settlements/no new settlement expansion really means for the Israelis and for the Palestinians, what it means for us to ask for this.  I know just as I begin to grasp it there will be something new, already today’s conflict between Hamas and Fatah is taking precedence in the news.  And beyond that I know only that Jon and Kate plus 8 will be on tonight (not that I’m watching.)  That is literally a headline in a paper I hold in esteem…

Some books to consider as you encourage the truth of myth in your own house:

We love Changing Woman and Her Sisters: Stories of Goddesses from Around the World by Katrin Hyman Tchana and Trina Schart Hyman.  This mother daughter collaboration features the artwork of the celebrated illustrator Trina Schart Hyman, a Caldecott award winner for her work on St George and the Dragon.  Myths, fables, classics she has revived them all sweetly over the course of her career.  And Katrin’s prose delights to the point that I don’t mind reading and re-reading these stories to a hungry Z.

For a more classical perspective try:

The Adventures of Odysseus put out by Barefoot Books, a little publisher based in Boston that creates lovely works of art.  If you ever get a chance to visit their flagship store in Cambridge, stop by.   With plenty of spaces for the kids to play and read, you will be able to peruse for a good hour before skipping down the street to Toscanini’s, a Bean town ice cream haven! 

Usborne’s Greek Myths for Young Children

Daulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, which also comes as an audio book read by actors such as Matthew Broderick and Kathleen Turner (perfectly kitschy).

We began reading Rick Riordan’s series Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  This is a series of chapter books.  I’ll give a fuller review when we complete book 1.

Such role play leads to mythology, the young mother in our house a symbol of the eternal mother.

This week I’m reading Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.  This handbook of nonfiction kicks off the 2005 series of well-known authors offering modern day twists on classic myths.  (My favorite being Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad, the story of Penelope, wife of Odysseus and her side of the travails as The Iliad unfolds.) 

My brain smarts with goddesses of war.  Images of women devouring their sacrifice, women birthing.  The cycle of death and life.   Pictures of birthing goddesses surrounded by animals denote the fierce sense of a woman’s role, their vital work as mother, while men become front line sacrificial soldiers in the struggle to survive.  

How do I explain the goddess to our young mother?  How do I see the necessity of my nurturing these two as goddess-like?

I’ll post a short list of mythology for the wee ones soon.