Sozlet stories

How else does anyone say "pile"?? (Pie-el.) (Her "ol" is more towards "el" in pronunciation, don't ask me how I know this but I do.)

I think we say human the same way as you describe except maybe more "min" or "men" than "man" at the end.

Oh, her spelling was perfectly clear. Here in the south, though, they say "pahl". If you're an elderly gentile (gen-teel) lady, you draw it out extra long.

Are you sure you don't pronounce it with a stronger diphtong on the 'u' than other Americans? Great, now you're busting my bubble. I like that much better when I do it to other people.

I don't think so...

In Texas, "fork" has two syllables.

foe-werk.

So does lamp.

(lay-ump)

Hi, Sozobe. I've been running on my head for the past couple months. Happy to relax and do some A2K again.

Love Sozlet's spelling, she's a smarty. Totally get your preference for Sozlet-spelling, rather than the dictionary one. My M speaks startlingly clearly now, all her cute cute cute baby-skewed words are rapidly disappearing. Wish they weren't!

And pen (peyun)

Random bits of sozlet-ness from the last 10 minutes.

[Sozlet, after folding some of E.G.'s boxers when we were folding laundry together] "Would you please pass me some more undergarments?" [In a tony accent.]

A bit later, she disappeared to the bathroom and I checked on her to see if she needed anything. She cut me a look (overdramatized, not serious) and said, "Kindly give me some privacy, madame!" [Same accent -- she's been doing that on and off lately.)

Just now, as I sat down to check email, she showed up with a wooly blanket draped around her and intoned, "I've come to warm you." Warn me? "No, warm you." Warm me??? "Yes, WARM you!!" [giggle fit]

Then she repeated that line ("I've come to warm you" about 25,000 times, and it got funnier... to her... each time.)

She's weird.

One more thing I'd meant to note, totally different tone but I thought it was interesting:

She was talking to E.G. about a kid she doesn't like, and why. Evidently he's called her "bad names" that really hurt her feelings. E.G. asked her what the bad names were, and she said she didn't want to talk about it. When he pressed a bit, she said that if she thought about it, she started feeling like she wanted to get revenge, and she didn't like feeling that way. So she preferred not to talk about it.

We reiterated with her (E.G. at the time, me after he told me about the exchange) that if anything happens that she thinks is not right, she can tell a nearby adult. She said "Even [name of lunch monitor]?" and I said yes, and she said "Oh...," like that was new info. Presumably it happened at lunch. (He was in kindergarten with her last year and now is in a different class, but all of the first graders eat together.)

A physicist's girl who likes puns. Whodathunk?

Kid's gone native.

I got some address stickers in the mail from the University of Minnesota (one of my two alma maters... mati... whatever) as part of a donation push. Sozlet was looking over my shoulder as I was dealing with mail and when she saw the stickers and my name/ address, said in a stricken way, "Mom... why... do you... have... an... M... by... your... name...?????" I explained that it was from the university where I got my graduate degree, but she retained her horrified expression. Suddenly the light dawned, and I started laughing and said, "It's MINNESOTA, not MICHIGAN!!!" She nearly fainted with relief.

A small lecture about how people in Michigan are actually quite nice followed.

(The day before the OSU-Michigan game this year, a school activity was coloring in Anti-signs [ya know, red circles with a line through them] with a Michigan "M" inside. And sozlet got all kinds of grief for failing to wear scarlet and gray that day. Oops.)

She must be getting into that tribalism phase that kids go through....

This whole city is heavy into tribalism, regardless of age! Did I tell you about the brouhaha in an Obama group I belong to when some students from Michigan wanted to come to the rally here and were looking for a place to stay? "They can sleep in the gutter where they belong!" said an OSU macho guy, and then we were off. Oy.

Anyway... So I just compiled this year's Sozlet Stories (24 pages!) and that made sozlet want to read the first 6 years' worth (a couple of years ago I put everything -- starting with the "updates" I wrote to grandparents as pregnancy wrapped up -- together into a nice binder for E.G., and since then I've just added that years' stories to the back of it). That's becoming a holiday tradition -- compile, and then read stories from when she was littler.

Anyway, she likes the art, and so set out to draw something to add to this years'. She asked me to post it here.



It came in handy for Christmas presents, too -- I cropped the duck, the lilypad frog, and the swimming frog (with fish) into their own images and made notecards out of them (Shutterfly, $10/dozen). Like:



Then will mix 'em up (3 each of 4 images) and give to grandparents.

That's one very relaxed frog.

It's nice to see her drawings get more precise. My favorite, though, remains the "very realistic" dead squirrel.

These are really good drawings--expressive and full of joy and color. So many of the animals are smiling, quite probably the sign of a happy artist. As you may know, children tend automatically to enter their pictures emotionally, so if a frog is grinning, this suggests a relaxed (as noted above) and positive world-view. The artist's parents are clearly doing something very right.
Does S tell stories about her pictures as she draws? When I draw with my granddaughter (age 3 and 1/2), she often tells me in great and enthusiastic detail about the relationships between the figures--and what they are doing. Some of her drawing is silent, too! If, when I draw for her, I involve my characters in a story, she typically gets right into my page and embellishes my story, sometimes changing its direction entirely, so that it's hers. But it's not permanently appropriated by her, as I can draw some more figures and weave the story in yet another direction. BIG paper is useful!
In a really good book I read recently--Kathryn Montgomery's HOW DOCTORS THINK (the Groopman book with the same title is also very good, but he dwells more in case histories, while Montgomery looks at the larger picture)--I found, once again, the observation that humans are wired to communicate best through narrative, and least well via logic. The reason for this is that everything important we think about is passed through our limbic system; our emotions are connected to almost all our thoughts--and to our most important memories. And the easiest way for us to express them--which is, of course, good for us--is by telling stories, whether in words or symbols or both.
Again, what a fun picture, full of happy feeling!

Hi Miklos!! Long time no see...!

Her drawing is more independent now, but we definitely did things that way when she was smaller. Now we do shared stories without drawings, though (or add drawings later). I really should write some of those down here. (They're floating here and there and so hard to lose track of them.) Basically, one of us gets started on the story, and then pauses and does the "your turn" sign (actual ASL sign) and the other person takes over. The tricky part is when you have a general idea of where the story is going and then the other person sends it in a TOTALLY different direction (that's what you were referring to a bit, too). Some of her curveballs have led the stories in really cool directions, though.

OK, I found one -- not one of the better ones but an example.

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived by the ocean. Her name was Zelda. She loved to sit on the rocks at the water's edge and look out at the waves. But what she had always dreamed of was to be one of those beautiful, graceful whales. Then one day she was watching the waves, and she saw a teeny little sparkle, that seemed to be heading right for her! She was a little bit scared, because as it got closer, the teeny little sparkle got bigger and bigger and bigger until it was almost as big as her hand. When it arrived, it said to her, "I have heard that you have always loved the whales, and so I am inviting you to play with them. But you must turn into a whale yourself -- just for a little while, half a day." Zelda was amazed. First she smiled, then she laughed, then she said, "Really?? Me, a whale? Will I be a person again before dinnertime?" The sparkle said, "Yes..." Zelda said, "Then I would love to be a whale!" Then the sparkle came closer and closer, and went right up her nose!! It felt funny and tickled, like when a wave caught her and saltwater went up her nose. Then her whole self started to feel like it was floating. And she looked down to see that the rock she had been sitting on was far below her. Then the surface of the water came closer and closer and then SPLASH! She was in the water! She looked down and saw lots of fish swimming around. She looked for a whale to ride on but there wasn't one. Then she looked behind her and she saw a whale tail. She realized it was her own tail! She tried to swim forward. She moved her tail but it made her go down! She tried to swim up, but she went forward instead! She tried to go backwards, but she went up! But that was a good thing because she realized that she needed a breath. When her back broke the surface she took a nice long breath of air. Ahhhh. That's more like it. Once she learned how to control her tail, she swam around and then she saw a whale tail -- but it wasn't hers! She swam as fast as she could and caught up to the whale. It was so beautiful. She felt a funny tickle in her throat and made some noises. She realized she was speaking whale language. She was saying, "Hi, I'm new. Do you want to play?" The whale said back to her, "Hi, yes let's play!" and then he swam off very quickly. She chased him and then all of a sudden he shot to the surface. He made a big jump and then splashed an ENORMOUS splash when he landed. Zelda said, "Wow, how did you learn to do that?" "My mom taught me." They jumped and played for hours. Then, all of a sudden, Zelda had that floating feeling again. She called out to her friend, "Goodbye! It was nice to play with you!" And then she floated right out of the water and saw the same rocks she had been sitting on. Then she had a funny feeling in her nose and poof the sparkle came back out of her nose. It hovered in front of her and said, "Anytime you want to see your friend again just blow on this and he will show up." Then the sparkle landed on the rock and turned into a beautiful shiny whistle. The end.

I don't completely remember who was who -- it was roughly by paragraphs. Sozlet did the ending, I'm pretty sure. It's shorter than most and more stilted because I was desperately trying to transcribe -- my writing is incredibly messy! But we'd done a few that we didn't write down and we both forgot, and they were really cool ones, so I wanted to try to grab one as it happened. (One of the lost ones was about a princess who had to do all of these trials for some reason... they were cool trials. Make a society of people who had no sense of humor laugh was one I remember.)

Wow, she is a great artist and a gifted story teller!

As "the end"s go, this one sounds a lot as if it belongs to some TV series' pilot. This whistle virtually cries out to be blown. Do your sessions sometimes yield episodes or sequels?

Good morning, Sozobe! This story is really wonderful. Besides its obvious gracefulness and its sense of positive adventure, what immediately struck me is the narrative's connection to a powerful psychological (Jung notes it) and literary archetype. If you were to take a look at William Blake's poem "To My Friend Butts," written in 1800 to a friend who was a clergyman [available in the Modern Library edition of Blake--and, quite possibly, on-line], the connections might astonish you!

Here are some short excerpts from the Blake that might pique your interest:

To my friend Butts I write
My first vision of light.
On the yellow sands sitting
The sun was emitting
His glorious beams... SPARKLE

I stood in the streams
Of heaven's bright beams
And saw Felpham [village] sweet
Beneath my bright feet... FLOAT

My eyes more and more
Like a sea without shore
Continue expanding,
The heavens commanding,
Till the jewells of light,
Heavenly men beaming bright,
Appeared as one man;
Who complacent began
My limbs to enfold
In his beams of bright gold. FLOAT; BECOMING THE WHALE

Blake saw this experience as religious, but what he describes is also the archetype for a secular, small-e ephiphany, experienced, at some time in their lives, by about 70% of the U.S. population (according to a NYT Magazine article of a few years ago). Basically, the pattern is this: we perceive the daylight brighten (sometimes becoming golden, like late afternoon sunshine--occasionally, accompanied by a hum or a musical tone); we float; we sense that all the relationships among our ideas and visions are completely understandable and fully realized; after a short time, the light returns to its usual cast, and we return to our starting place; our thinking becomes normal again, but a sense of the float and the inner connectedness of life remains.

I know NOTHING about the inner workings of children's narrative, but I do know that, when I write, or tell a story, certain patterns of connection tend to appear without my looking for them. You and your daughter happened into a major-league archetype. Really cool--and even cooler for its evolving spontaneously!

Of course, this is just intellectual gravy--totally unnecessary--on top of a story that's very good without any analysis! But I thought you might be amused. Keep the stories going; you two are clearly a magical team!