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| brothers telling secrets |
friday on the way to work, the moon hung low in the sky, huge and orange. john was ecstatic to see it, and kept exclaiming, "mommy, look at the big man in the moon!"
i kept listening to his glee, and we talked about the moon for several minutes. eventually he got sort of quiet and pensive. and he said, "mommy, why is the moon at the bottom of the sky?"
of course i explained that the moon rises and goes up high, blah blah blah, but it stuck with me: the bottom of the sky. there's a certain poetry to the way children see the world, i think, a simplicity and beauty that i love to relive through john's eyes.
and his words never cease to amaze me. he has a way with them, i think. and he charms me all the time, but i'm his mom -- i think i am constitutionally required to be charmed.
but it's not just me. this morning when my husband picked john up from sunday school, his teacher told him that they were reading a poem today and john asked, "is that a haiku?"
i couldn't stop laughing when my husband told me that story. a haiku? what does my three-and-a-half year old know from a haiku? he says he learned about it on his iguy, which i suppose means caillou or barney or fireman sam or someone talked about haikus. and i don't really think john's about to start composing 5-7-5 poetry anytime soon.
but i am amazed that he recognized a poem, and recognized that it was related to a haiku, and remembered the word haiku. it's amazing the things kids know even when we are completely unaware of their knowledge.
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meantime, charlie's begun chiming in on our morning drive conversations. as john and i discuss the moon, or the upcoming day, or a dream he had, we are accompanied by a nearly nonstop babble of "ahh ahhh ahhhhhh aha ha hahahh ahhhhhh," punctuated with a laugh here and there.
my boys, the conversationalists.
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