Writing

Not This Way!

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

She doesn’t want the blue dress. She wants the red one, with the sparkles. Yes, from the laundry. Even dirty. Not wait for tomorrow. Today.

She doesn’t want socks. Her feet won’t be cold. Not even if its snowing. No socks. She doesn’t even like socks. Ever. Never. Not even the Minnie Mouse ones from Granny … well … she likes those “a little” … “sometimes” … but not today. She doesn’t like any socks today.

She doesn’t want a ponytail. Or pigtails. Pigtails are “stupid.” She wants braids. Four of them. No, not this way! She wants one big one “like Elsa” and three “baby ones.” Because.

She doesn’t want milk in her cereal. She wants chocolate milk. In a cup. With a straw. Not the green straw. The pink one. And three strawberries. Not four. Three. “Not that one. These ones.”

Her momma sighs.

“You are being difficult today.”

The girl gives a shrug, then a side glance. A giggle escapes.

The mom raises an eyebrow. She is not amused.

The child smiles enigmatically, twirls her four braids (one big like Elsa’s and three baby ones).

“So what’s this all about?” Mom asks, eyes narrowed but curious.

“It’s Ben’s fault.”

“Ben!?” The mother shakes her head. The older brother is ten-going-on-fifteen and goodness knows these two don’t always get along, but Ben had left for school before Miss Au Contraire here as much as opened an eye. “How can it be Ben’s fault?”

“Remember yesterday?” little eyebrow mirrors the parent’s, challenging. “Ben said I ‘such a terrible critic.’ So I’m practicing. To get better.”

 

stubborn

pinterest.com/pin/339810734368459869/

 

For The Daily Post

Can You Hear?

Na'ama Yehuda Current events, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Can you hear the hearts that beat

across the mountains, deserts, oceans

hoping for safe harbor,

an anchor

home?

Can you see small fingers gripping

other little hands

bereft of parents,

lost,

alone?

Can you hear the soft breaths

of babies

sleeping

in tired arms

weighted by

desperation,

violence, hate, war?

Can you hear the calls

in dreams

in prayer

for safe passage

for a welcome

to belong?

Can you —

how can you not —

hear,

the urgency

of hope

that hardship snuffed

and yet

still

yearns to grow?

 

refugees-express-co-uk

Photo by express.co.uk

 

 

For the Daily Post

 

Do It Anyway

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Quotes, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

He has stage fright. The real deal.

Social phobia with all the trimmings.

Speaking in front of anyone renders him paralyzed with irrational but no less numbing terror.

Talking to a store clerk makes him sweat.

Let alone giving a speech in front of assembly.

The whole school. Faculty, too.

He trembles at the thought.

“You don’t have to do this.” His mother. She is distressed by his distress. Protective.

“But I do,” he says.

He’s scared.

Determined, too.

He asks me to teach him how “to speak even when my throat gets stuck.”

We work on it. On breath, on visualizing, on rhythm and on parsing and on tone and pitch and breath again. He practices. With me, at the mirror, with family, with a good friend.

He knows the words by heart. He wrote them. A speech about things that oh-so-matter and are so very needing-to-be-said.

“The words come into my dreams,” he tells me. “Is that weird?”

I shrug. I don’t think so. “What do you think?”

He smiles shyly. “I think they want me not to be afraid. The words. Like we are friends now, words and me.”

 

The day comes.

He calls me in the evening.

“I threw up twice and I trembled like crazy,” he says, but his voice is giddy. “Then I thought about the words. My words … like friends. The beads on the necklace like we practiced … and I could breathe … I was still scared but I did it anyway!”

 

learn-how-vvg

Life’s Craft

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Meditations, Reflections, Writing Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments
spacornerjan12no1

Photo Credit: E.F.

May your life be your craft.

Well defined.

Aged and fine.

May your life be your craft.

Practiced, shared

Worked and honed.

May your life be your craft.

Filled with heart

Buoyed by joy

Lit with hope

Let to grow.

May your life be your craft.

Skilled,

Perfected,

Helpful,

Whole.

 

I Know You!

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Quotes, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As told to me by Mom-of-Three-Under-Six:

“So there we were, on our way to what feels to me like the 100th birthday party of the school year, and possibly the real cause for childhood obesity driven by absolute overload of pizza, cupcakes, sweets and other junk food … (I’m almost — almost — considering serving celery sticks, kale-chips, and wheatgrass juice in my son’s upcoming birthday. What stops me is knowing he’ll need about a decade in therapy to deal with the untimely exodus of little feet and the almost guaranteed desert of future RSVPs to his parties …).

In any event, there we  were, cranky baby squirmy in the carrier and the hand of a squirmy already-hyper-on-the-thought-of-sugar preschooler slipping in and out of mine. When we finally arrive, the door is opened by the somewhat stooped and Old-Country dressed grandma (or great-great-grand …) of the birthday boy.

My boy takes one look at her and announces, full lungs: ‘I know you! You are Nanny McPhee!!’

…

I think I need about a decade of therapy.”

 

nanny-mcphee

 

For The Daily Post

In reverse

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

“I don’t like cleaning up,” she complained. The floor was strewn with blocks, mini-figurines, doll’s clothing, crayons, plastic tea-set, make up kits, paper bits, and other detritus of a long afternoon.

Her brother frowned. He’s been occupied with his tablet instead of playing with her and while it was nice to have the chatterbox quiet for a change, he did not relish the prospect of doing the work or facing the dressing down he’d get if his parents returned to see the living room drowned under mountains of little-girl paraphernalia.

She glowered back, lower lip already quivering in preparation for what he knew all too well will be a battle he would lose.

“It’s not cleaning up,” he started.

“What?” she squinted, suspicious.

“You see,” he enticed, “it’s like magic …”

“Magic …? ” She still wasn’t buying it.

“Yes, magic! You’ll be making a mess in reverse!”

 

For The Daily Post

The Scent of Home

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
syrianrefugee-unicef-photo

Child Refugee – Photo by UNICEF

The scent of home that she no longer has.

The spices, baking, the aromas

Of togetherness

And family

And love.

The scent of grandma,

Gone,

Killed by bombs.

The scent of ugliness

And war.

The scent of mornings

Blurred by smoke.

The scent of sea, now tainted

With the stink of gasoline

And sick

And worry.

The scent of tent

And mud

Hunger

Cold.

The scent of hope

Faint but held

In Baba’s handkerchief —

He said he’ll find them

One day

In Wherever Land.

The scent of fear

In mother’s arms

Trying to filter comfort through her own terror

Devastation. Loss.

The scent of home that she no longer has

Wafting away

In search

Of someone

Who will help

Her

Make a new one.

Speak up, Live Truth.

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Reflections, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

no wounding

Replace your fretting with a voice.

Speak up

About your truth.

Resist the wish to curl up under pillows

To avoid

Unpleasantness

Conflict

Misunderstanding.

Push against the wish to look the other way

When humans

Someplace ‘other’ than your home

Flee injustice.

Replace apathy or indifference

With empathy.

Replace a narrow vision

With expansion of your heart:

There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ unless you choose to emulate

Those who seek to divide and control

Instead of heal.

Replace your fear of the unknown

Your terror of the ‘stranger’

Whose lives, religion, culture

You don’t understand …

With the wisdom that we are

And never stopped to be

First and foremost human

And our children are as

Precious

As those born in other lands.

Replace the need to marginalize,

With the understanding that the only margins are those

We choose to accept

Or follow.

Replace the lumping of the ‘other’

Into warring words and baleful messages,

With actually seeing the individuals:

They are no different than you,

No less in need of help in times of crisis

They are no more inherently capable of hate

Than you.

Reject rhetoric that equates your safety

With the deprivation

Of another.

Replace it

With the facts:

We are stronger together

Than we ever can be

In division.

We are better together

Than we ever can be

In isolation.

We are safer in compassion

Than we ever can be

In prejudice or xenophobia.

We are all that we will nourish.

Speak up.

Let us help those who do not yet know truth,

See it

Hear it

Understand.

 

Pause

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Reflections, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

pause_-_chocolat

 

Before you lash out in righteousness to put down someone else,

Pause.

Before you cling-wrap your views against dissent or protest,

Pause.

Before you rush to justify hurtful decisions others’ made,

Pause.

Before you call ‘your’ God the only ‘right one,’

Pause.

Before you claim your nationality inherently superior,

Pause.

Before you blind yourself to others’ pain in a show of pseudo-legality,

Pause.

Before you seek to follow those who leave others behind,

Pause.

Before you point out others’ hate as ‘causing’ yours toward them,

Pause.

Before you rate some lives more worthy of respecting or protecting,

Pause.

Before you stand behind those who object injustice by inflicting it,

Pause.

Before you turn your back on instability you’d contributed to but now blame on others,

Pause.

Before you shrug off bullying, rudeness, disrespect, as “saying like it is,”

Pause.

Before you pack away the sway of facts, veracity, science, reality,

Pause.

Remember,

None of the above need be automatic.

None are the only way,

To live with some decisions you have made

Yet elect to look away from

Now that push has come to shove.

You are better than that.

Your soul will recall compassion.

It still remembers how,

If you just pause.