Flutter Bye

December 9, 2008 By 20 Comments

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

~Rabindranath Tagore

Next week our preschool will close its doors.  When they reopen, it will be onto the wide sky of the worldwide web.  With hours of daylight between us, Daisy and I will swiftly build the online school of our dreams.

Back in the final weeks of August, when our exit was certain but time line unclear, we bid farewell to the first of our students.  Little Faye was heading to Kindergarten, just as she and her family were about to welcome a new baby brother into the world.

Baby Ray is now three months and as beautiful as his sister.  We still miss Faye every day, and her mom and dad as well.  In the three years we’ve known them, they have always treated Daisy and I with the utmost consideration and respect.

On the eve of our final farewell, I’d like to go back to the day when we said, “Bye Bye Butterfly.”

Enjoy, it’s worth the click and the minute and a half it takes to read it.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is also a ghostwriter for hire.

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Back to School, Back to You

August 29, 2008 By 47 Comments

Every man’s memory is his private literature. 

~Aldous Huxley

This weekend is the anniversary of two things woven inside one other well enough to tell a story.  

That story is the prologue of how I came to be here, exchanging words with you.

Mia starts first grade next week.  

It’s no less sad than starting Kindergarten, but admittedly less monumental.  Last year at this time, I was sorting a mess of feelings as my tiny peanut, who it seemed was just a bundle in a blanket a few months before, was laying out her uniform and requesting pigtails for the first day of school.

We wondered about Mia’s teacher and what our girl would hear on the playground.  We hoped she’d make friends easy, and crossed our fingers they’d be nice.  

We prepared to release our daughter like a cub on the Savanna, free to find herself as predator or prey.

Anyone with a five year old and a beating heart knows exactly where I’m coming from, but this was last year, so it was still new to me.

How did you deal with it, Writer Dad?

I wrote.

I didn’t Dear Diary, or any such thing.  I kept a journal, but it was just random thought strung together by memory in an ernest attempt to never forget.

Like taking pictures with a pencil.

I’d been doing that for a while, but even Daisy’s best efforts had still not swayed me to sit long enough to spin a yarn.  

Mia moving to Kindergarten… well, that did the trick just fine.

We were reading a lot of chapter books; an even mix of what Mia liked and what we wanted her too.  I thought I’d write something we could all agree on.  So I sat down at the keyboard and started to write.

The story that spilled, was really little more than my own daughter talking for a few thousand words, as if I were rapidly scribbling as she pontificated about her life on the final week before Kindergarten.  When the story was finished, I printed it out and folded it in half, in the worst mockery of a bound book.  

I read the story, Daisy cried.  

Then I read it to Mia.

This is my favorite part…

As Mia was hearing the book for the first time, she started to finish my sentences.  Now that first little booklet could probably never get published, but it captured my baby better than a coffee table full of glossy photographs.

The next week, Mia went to school, and everything started to change.  

In a couple months, I’d be midway through the first draft of a novel, and often assembling my thought in loopy rhythm.

This project is special.  It’s exactly as old as my life as a writer, both sharing their first birthday this weekend.

Little has changed since that first draft.  

I looked at the story with fresh eyes a few weeks back.  I changed the names of people and locations, but otherwise the book is identical to the thirty pages printed (and awkwardly assembled) one year ago.

I hope you enjoy it.  You’ll find an excerpt below:

Writer Dad

If you enjoyed my words, please subscribe.  I’ll be back on Monday.

 

Mia Maria and Two Times the Kindergarten:

Hola! (That means hello in Spanish).   

My name is Mia Maria Robinson.  I am five and a half years old, and in one week my life is going to change forever!   

At least thatʼs what my mom and dad keep saying. 

Next week, Iʼm starting Kindergarten at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School.  My parents have been telling me about Kindergarten since before I was even four, but they just started acting weird like a couple of months ago.   

I think it actually started when we went to buy my new uniforms for school. We went shopping for clothes, just like we do at the end of every Summer, but the whole time we were there, my mom and dad kept looking at each other with these really sad faces, even though they were still saying really happy words. 

Like my mom said: “Youʼre such a big girl, Mia.  I canʼt believe your going to be in Kindergarten,” and my dad said, “I canʼt believe how big you look in your uniform.  Youʼre such a little Kindergirly.”  And then he scooped me up with a great big hug and passed me to my mom like I was a churro.  

Even though they were taking turns hugging me, they both seemed kind of sad… 

Disclaimer: This is not Writer Dad’s voice. It’s Mia’s. Writer Dad just types a lot faster.

 The last three Fridays: “The Truth in our Make-Believe,” “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” and “Bye Bye Butterfly.”

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Bye Bye Butterfly

August 8, 2008 By 46 Comments

Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together?  I guess that wouldn’t work.  Someone would leave.  Someone always leaves.  Then we would have to say good-bye.  I hate good-byes.  I know what I need.  I need more hellos. 

~Charles M. Schulz

Bye Bye Butterfly – A Poem for Children

Our pre-school has two groups:

Tater Tots and Hot Dogs.

The Tater Tots are the tiny ones, Hot Dogs are BIG time.  

The Tater Tots are always yipping on the heels of the Hot Dogs, who themselves are often strutting around like seniors before a Lilliputian Grad Night.

And yesterday, that’s kind of what it was.  We had a Tater Tot turned Hot Dog, now ready for Kindergarten.

Writer Dad… Please stop talking about tater tots and hot dogs.  It is either boring people, or making them hungry.  Besides, there might be some new people on the site today, and you can’t afford to lose their attention.

Got it.

So today Daisy and I have our first graduate, that we didn’t make and bake ourselves.  

We’ll call her Faye.  

In two weeks, Faye’s having a baby brother.  One more after that, and she’ll be in Kindergarten.  She came to our school two and a half years ago, shortly after we opened; a frightened little girl who had never spent more than an hour out of earshot from family.  

You can imagine the difficulty of this transition.  

She was like a cub, pulled from her den by the scruff of her neck, and then suddenly dropped on the other side of the canyon with a new and unfamiliar pack to howl with.  Faye spent her entire first day telling us over and over that she, “Missed her parents very well.”  Fortunately, she quickly adapted, and this once scared little girl blossomed and bloomed into quite the extraordinary child.  

I already miss her, though she isn’t yet gone.  I wrote this poem for her, one of my favorite children, but I hope it can be read as poem for children everywhere.

 

Two years ago, our lives were all shifting.  Warm whispering winds had set things to drifting.  Blowing into our home a sweet little lassie; funny and smart, and a little bit sassy.  

She had never been to a pre-school before, a few weeks from three, and a long ways from four.  With a hard stomping foot, and a forsaken yell, she screamed, “I miss my parents… very well.”  

That hard time for her, well it passed pretty soon, lasting a bit less than a full quarter moon.  And then the frown on her face made a series of flips, and reversed the rotation on both of her lips.  

She then walked around with a smile fixed to her face, unbelievably happy all over the place.  The days, and the weeks, and the months they all melted.  Faye was so special, and each of us felt it.  

With kris-crossing limbs, and two folded hands, she stretched out her thoughts like they were brain rubber bands.  She learned all her letters, and then all her words.  Then she let them all fly like a flock full of birds.  

But it didn’t end there.  She wasn’t just a good reader.  She was also a wonderfully natural leader.  So at this time, I’d like to speak, about some of the things that make Faye so unique:  

All of those ringlets, atop piles of curls (she has a million and one more than most other girls).  Her animated spirit and her resolute soul, both qualities that will help in meeting most every goal.  

Her generous nature when dealing with others, treating her friends like her sisters and brothers.  I’m almost done now, but I’m not finished yet.  Here are just a few things that I’ll never forget.  

Speaking in nonsense and jibber jab sounds, while we sang and we danced and we ran all around.  Hunting for butterflies, then letting them fly, as they flip flapped their wings and they colored our sky.  

Looking in Faye’s eyes as I held both her hands, and she nodded her head with an, “I understand.”  That day that Faye told us, “My mom’s having a baby.”  The yes she so wanted, no longer a maybe.  

Thank you little Faye, for being easy to reach, easy to play with, and easy to teach.  So when we all sigh, “Oh that Faye, how we’ve missed her.”  We’ll know that baby Ray Ray is lucky, that you’re his big sister.

Good luck Faye. Thanks for inspiring a poem for children everywhere.  We will miss you very well.

Writer Dad

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Gracias, Señora

July 18, 2008 By 4 Comments

 

Two years ago, when Daisy and I were first looking for a school for Mia, our main criteria was finding an environment where she wouldn’t be bored.  Fortunately, we found a fantastic public school in our city that had a Dual Immersion program where ninety percent of a Kindergartner’s day is taught in Spanish. 

Surely, that would keep her eyes open.

There aren’t a lot of schools like this, at least in our district.  There was quite the waiting list, and though we collectively wore the armor of optimism, Daisy and I were silently worried that our alternative education wasn’t going to happen.  

Fortune prevailed and Mia was accepted.  Her school year is over, and now we can reflect.  

The school year was so much more than we ever imagined.  Mia grew beyond our expectations, and learned a mass of lessons that we could not have taught her.  

Daisy and I each wrote letters to Mia’s primary teacher, as well as her principal.  In addition, I wrote this little verse for the two of them.  I thought I’d share.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent:

Dear Maestras,

I knew we were lucky, though I had no idea, what a year would be like with Señora Mochila.  As the curtains draw closed on my first year as a dad, with a child at Lincoln, I’m a little bit sad. My children grow older (it seems faster than me) and one day their changes will get harder to see, but the changes this year I can not even count, because they arrived every day in a countless amount.

We’ve watched our girl grow from inquisitive and ready, to just over six, now skillful and steady.  Before, she could not roll the “R” in burrito.  Now she orders in Spanish when we’re at El Torito.  We’ve lost nine pages from the calendar since her first day in dress.  May I have a moment Maestras, so that I may confess?

Daisy and I harbored no second choice.  It was Lincoln we desired to give our girl voice.  We waited and lingered with anticipation for a letter of acceptance to provide us elation.  We received our letter in the post, but the program was filled and a small part of my spirit was a little bit killed.  But it doesn’t come close to stinging my pride to tell you straight up, I actually cried.  

I called on the phone and asked, “What can I do?”  Sra. Reina said, “Be patient Señor; just see it through.”  So I listened to her, swallowed my tears, and allowed encouraging words to flood through my ears. 

Two weeks passed, then on Good Friday it was, we unfolded another letter and read with a buzz.

We stayed unerring, sound in our choice, and now we could finally begin to rejoice.  Not only for Mia, but for our Maxwell as well.  We were so happy, we started to yell.  A wonderful institution had become in our reach where our children would learn things that we could not teach.

The next four months fell like leaves in the Fall, taking Mia that first day we’ll always recall.  Señora was perfect.  She had command of the room, like a pregnant mamí has command of her womb.  We knew without doubt, as we knit hands with our boy, that our next nine months would be brimming with joy.

And they were, mis maestras, es todo verdad.  Nunca en su escuela es una facade.  Mia’s learned how to read and then how to write in a new tongue by doing assignments each night.  She’s learned how to sing with such beautiful grace, I can easily picture my gone grandmother’s face.  She knew how to learn, but now she digests, and she does it all with such flawless finesse.

Lincoln’s a school that’s surpassed expectation by providing a solid, substantial foundation, and that is the bedrock of great education – a group of teachers who offer such deep dedication.  Please believe me when I say: this is no aberration.  You have earned our family’s sincere admiration.  It would be a benefit to the whole of our nation, if such practice were applied to the next generation.

We wanted for our child to be challenged, not bored; a wish which was granted, instead of ignored.  Thank you kindly for all that you do.  Daisy and I are so grateful for you.  From nuestras corazones, quiseramos to say.  Gracias por todo hacen every day.

Writer Dad

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Adios!

June 12, 2008 By 2 Comments

Today, Mia said farewell to school for the summer, and Kindergarden forever.  In six years, I don’t think Daisy or I have ever been more proud.  Mia pulled straight fours on every report card this year, and she did it in another tongue. 

Her school’s farewell program was adorable; a chorus of sixty kinders, half awkward, and half not – the perfect harmony for a Kindergarden performance.  The morning was as predictable as a late eighties sitcom with only one exception:

I certainly didn’t see myself crying.

I am, at the least, a reasonably sensitive guy.  Often thoughtful, and sometimes too tender, but also every bit the thirty something version of the rascal that our little Max is right now.  But I didn’t expect to cry, not like I did anyway.

I teared up a bit on Mia’s first day, of course.  Who wouldn’t?  If there isn’t a bit of salt on your cheek when delivering your first born into the arms of strangers for a nine month eon (no matter how qualified those strangers may be), then I’d have to say you need your ducts checked, if not the valves of your heart. 

So, yes, on the first day of school I got a bit misty, but the tears today were the real deal. 

Mia’s Señora had assembled a portfolio for each child in her class, stuffed with nine months worth of their best effort, and crowned with a handwritten letter home.  I made it through reading the letter to myself just fine; it was reading it out loud to Daisy that did me in.

We’re so grateful for the education that school has given to our family.  Before entering the program, I have to admit, I did’nt have the highest regard for public education, having been a product myself.  

This school shows me the very beginning of what is possible.

Writer Dad

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