Photo: King College, London
“It’s not hard,” she said. “Here, I’ll show you.”
“You make a circle …” she demonstrated. “Then you make eyes and mouth and little bit of hair and hands and legs. See?”
She held the drawing up to show me. Lines for arms and legs sprouted out of the crooked circle ‘head,’ topped by a few smaller lines of a sparse mohawk.
“Then,” she planted the paper back on the table, “you go to the hospital and the doctor makes magic and it’s a baby.”
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Photo: Amitai Asif
“Can animals be naked?” he asked, his little forehead creased in perplexed concentration.
“Naked how?” I responded. “Animals don’t usually wear clothes. People may dress their dogs with coats or booties if its raining or snowing, but even that only sometimes.”
He waved me off. “I’m not talking about dogs, even.”
I smiled. The kindergartener’s contenance was a smaller version of adolescents’ exasperation at the ‘know-nothing-adults’ they are somehow expected to live with.
“Oh, okay.” I conceded, “I guess I misunderstood. What did you mean, then?”
“Other things. Like, um … snakes.”
“Snakes?!” I repeated.
“Yeah.” He moved his head up and down for emphasis. “Because I think maybe a snake took his clothes off and ran away and now he’s naked.”
Comprehension slithered in to lift my confusion. “Was this when you went to visit your grandma in Arizona?”
He nodded again. “It looked like a snake but it was only snake clothes.”
I grinned. “I think you saw a snake skin shed! How cool! But don’t worry, it still has skin on its body. You see, when a snake’s skin is too small for it, it grows new skin underneath and then it wriggles out of the old skin and sheds it inside out like a sock.”
The little boy narrowed his eyes and inspected my expression to see if I was perhaps pulling his leg. What he saw in my face must’ve reassured him.
“Good,” he said. “Because I didn’t want everyone to see his privates.”
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Photo: Craftgawker.com
“I have a cavity in my mouth!” she announced, elated.
“You do?” I couldn’t suppress a smile. The contrast between the child’s delight and the mom’s anguish was too funny.
“Yeah,” the girl expounded, lisping all the way. “It’s a hole! The dentist has a special magic mirror for my teeth and she looked all over and she said I have a cavity.”
“Wow,” I managed and raised an eyebrow at the mom, who nodded solemnly.
“Next week,” the mother sighed. “I’m not looking forward to it …”
I understood why. This little girl could raise roofs at the mere sight of needles. Just ten days prior the mom had shared with me her mortification at the horrified looks people had given her when she’d emerged with her child from a routine blood draw. “Everyone in that waiting room must have been convinced we were slicing her in pieces,” the mom had vented. “I can’t believe they hadn’t all called Child Protective Services or 911.”
“Laughing gas …” I mouthed.
The mom inhaled and shrugged and nodded all in one. Skeptical and perhaps a little hopeful.
“Not next week,” the child pointed out. “Tonight!”
The mom and I exchanged looks.
“What do you mean, tonight?” the mother asked. “Doc Dee said she’ll see us after lunch next Tuesday.”
“Yeah,” the little girl waved this information away. “But I have a cavity,” she stressed. “So the Tooth Fairy is going to get it first.”
She opened her mouth to give us both a good look before turning to me. “I don’t know why the dentist needed a magic mirror,” she added and her voice rose in puzzlement. “I can see my cavity right away already.”
She held her mouth agape and pointed to a newly lost incisor. “See? It’s right here.”
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Photo: Atara Katz
“How did you learn how to know everything?” she asked.
“I don’t think anyone knows everything,” I responded, only half-attending. A siren from a fire-engine distracted me. The driver leaned on the horn. Someone must have not given the emergency vehicle the right of way.
“But how did you learn how to know everything?” she insisted.
The First Grader’s tone brought me back to full attention. She hung her big brown eyes on me.
“You mean, how do people work on knowing more and more?” I tried.
A shadow of a frown passed over the small visage, then the girl seemed to decide this not-at-all-what-I-asked-about-reframe is as comprehensive as this adult in front of her can probably muster at the moment. She nodded.
“Different people may have different ways of learning,” I replied, “but for me, I like finding out new things. So I observe and try to listen. I read a lot, and I ask plenty of questions …”
“… you do ask a lot of questions,” she interrupted. “But sometimes I think you already know the answers.”
I grinned. “Sometimes I do … And sometimes,” I teased, “I think you know the answers to your questions, too …”
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Photo: Pinterest
“It’s a zoo over there!”
She exclaimed. Out of breath.
Cheeks still red from the stairs
And the cold evening air.
“It’s a zoo in the store.
It’s a zoo in the park.
It’s a zoo … at the zoo,”
Her smile grew.
She cracked up.
Couldn’t stop.
Her delight
Only matched
By the first time she ‘got’
“Slipped my mind” meant forgot.
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Little Roo. Photo: Marnie Russ
The runt of the litter. The smallest of smalls.
A birth’s afterthought. The last of the lot.
She was given some frowns.
She was given less hope.
She was not much to look at.
A long shot, underdog.
Yet inside her she had something fierce
At her core
She was never the winner
But she was something more:
She worked harder than hard
She learned patience from woe
She grew up,
She believed
She perceived and she saw,
She found footholds in smiles
She made steps from each praise
She climbed up rungs of hardship
Found her stride
Found her ways
To amaze.
Click her for more about Little Roo’s story
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The prompt for today was just too on point to ignore, when the paperback became available TODAY (!!!) and when so much of this novel is about what a home is, or what may at any moment become a place one is pushed out of or needs to run away from. The connection felt even more apt with how the holidays bring up for so many the very realities and stories of a home (or lack thereof).
“Apples in Applath” is a work of fiction, yet very real children do fall victim to policies and realities not of their choice or making. Also real is that what makes a home or family is not always immediately obvious; and that hope and wariness, need and conscience, often compete inside one’s soul as one seeks a safe space to call home.
I’m very excited for “Apples in Applath” – my fourth book and third novel. I hope you’ll check it out and share it with others who may find an interest. I hope that it may find a home in yours.
Even more so, my wish for you — and for all who are or once were children — is that you’ll always have a safe nest to call home.
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Photo: Daniel Foy
She is deliberate. She takes her time.
Each line is drawn with distinct goal. Each color chosen with remarkable concentration. Each curve labored on in exact determination.
After all, the letters aren’t ‘just’ a prelude to a word expressed. It is none of it ‘just’ idle practice …
It is her name she’s working on, a profound soul-expression.
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Photo: Atara Katz
Even in the blackest night
There’s hope
In sight,
There’s light.
As addendum to this prompt I want to add news of amazing breakthrough research that is offering tangible hope to people with spinal cord injuries, who till now may have had little light at the end of their dark tunnels. Who knows — soon they may be able to get up again and walk!
Scientists use stem-cells to make paralyzed rats walk again!
(I’m doubly excited for this remarkable news because the co-leader scientist in this research, Professor Shulamit Levenberg, is my sister!)
For The Daily Post
When woodwork calls
Do not fade in.
When worry weighs
And doubt still gleams:
Color yourself a bolder hue.
Be seen.
Be heard.
Be you!
This year marks 100 years to the first time women were allowed to vote in New York. It led the way to the 19th Amendment and women’s constitutional right to vote.
There are still those who try to suppress votes. There were always those who tried to put others down for wanting equal rights and for seeking access to those rights. Do not let others demonize you for having a voice. Speak up for those who can’t. Seriously: if you can, vote!
For more reasons to vote … Here are some (of the LESS graphic) historic caricature images that were used to shame, insult, threaten, and generally dissuade women from voting.
For The Daily Post
For more about Historic Women Suffragists
For more about 100 years to the Women’s Suffrage movement in New York
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