You know, since E was born, we have been taking him with us all over the continent for vacations, adventures and visits with his family. In fact, when he was a mere 8 weeks old, I took him (solo) to visit my family for the holidays. Many a winter holiday has been spent in SoCal. We have driven hundreds of miles from Columbia, MO to STL or KC to fly thousands of miles to SoCal. My parents and relatives have spoiled him rotten out there, with presents, annual ornaments on the tree, bikes to ride, parks to play at, excursions to museums. It's possible that in E's six years on this planet, we haven't missed a winter break out in the wacky west. During the rest of M's holiday breaks, we did other fun stuff. In Columbia, I filled spray bottles with colors and the kids (with Dad) built colorful snow critters. We let them slide down our ridiculously steep street. We celebrated with festive meals at friends' homes. Here in Mobile, we take them to see the 2 million Christmas lights at Bellingrath Gardens. We even stop and get Starbucks hot cocoa for the walk. We have taken them on not one, but TWO holiday cruises since we've moved here. Plus, I am sure that M can think of even more things we've done with them over the winter-y holidays. But, you get the idea.
You find yourself asking why I'm telling you this. Right before the holidays THIS year, E and some of his friends went to a kids' class at an meal-assembly place called Bayside Dinners (that prop is gonna cost!) It was a bit pricey, but promised to be very fun for them. The kids even got to draw pictures and write a brief story. The prompt for the picture and story was to "draw a picture and tell about your
favorite holiday memory."
E drew a picture of a snowman and our old dog, Madison. I thought, this is promising. Below the cute, but somewhat rushed drawing, he wrote:
One time in the winter, Daddy pushed me into the snow. I cried to the top
of my lungs. But, I got over it
Favorite Holiday Memory. Allrighty then.
To be fair, I did push him into the snow. And to be fair, he did cry his lungs off. Finally, he did get over it. So the memory, while lacking in the traditions of Aristotelian story- arc and Freitag triangle, is at least accurate. Considering the state of nonfiction these days, that is worth something.
ReplyDeleteOkay, you're looking at this all wrong. Think about it this way: from now on, considering the memory storage capacity in his brain, and the fact that maybe all the elaborate details won't make it into his recall, ALL you REALLY have to do for the holidays to create a wonderful memory for E is to not scare the crap out of him....that's it! Maybe children aren't capable of remembering the details and we can just keep it simple. My E did something similar: before we moved, his teacher had the kids draw a pic of the Mayflower along with some written description at the bottom. My son drew a very large boat, filled with people who appeared to be screaming, who were blowing sideways (I guess it was windy), falling into the sea...lots of detail. At the bottom, he simply wrote (all mispelled and cute and such): On the Mayflower there was a man. A shark bit him.
ReplyDeleteOh you forgot to mention his first response to the craft project. I asked "What is your favorite holiday memory"? E responded, "Uh, I'm Jewish so we do not have any holiday memories". So you could have gotten a blank page. You are lucky he had a snow memory. He was going to put nothing.
ReplyDelete