My daughter, Vivian, loves words. I know, because she uses a lot of them, some of which I even listen to. When she really wants my attention, she writes notes.
When I came home after a three hour writing session, this was taped to our front door:
Last week, after I vacuumed the shards of a glass bowl she had broken, she left these notes on the stairs:
When she’s not writing words to express her emotions, she saying them. Since she began speaking in full sentences, she’s had the ability to arrange the best words in the best order. She is our resident poet.
One day, she walked up to me in the kitchen, climbed onto the counter and said,
Later, when I told this to my husband, he questioned me. “Did she really say that?”
“Yes,” I answered. “She’s a poet, she really is.”
Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought it fitting to share some of Vivian’s poetic observations. Here are a few of my favorites:
Age 3
On a warm spring day: “Let’s go watch the flowers grow.”
In a park with natural landscaping: “Can we walk through the heavenly grass?”
Age 4
Seeing trees covered in hoar frost: “They look like snowflakes standing up.”
On saying goodbye to me for two nights: “You’re a come-back-er woman.”
After reading a beloved book: “A kissing hand smells like love.”
Age 5
Before bedtime: “When I yawn, my brain sounds like a cloud moving by.”
Waiting for her grandma to arrive: “My heart is filled with bursting love.”
After I left for a conference: “My heart is a little smaller when mommy is away.”
Age 6
Advising me on the best way to swing: “Barefoot is always best.”
Defining big people: “Adults are grown up kids.”
On eating beets for the first time: “They taste like kisses covered in soil.”
Carpe diem, my dear one, and thank you for teaching me to find poetry everywhere and for reminding me how raw and beautiful words are.
*
Any words you love? Any poetry (real or analogous) in your life? Any acerbic comments thrown your way lately?
The guilt post is hilarious. Such a sweet little soul she has.
My daughter is definitely more in touch with her emotions than my boys. She is always writing dreamy stuff in her journal and decorating the margins with drawings of fairies and unicorns. My sons….well…the only things they really care to write are scores, stats, geometric shapes, or numbers.
I think I was the boy child, though: I still love doodling geometric shapes. In ink. In margins.
My DD, however, would be drawing the unicorns like yours did!
I was the geometric doodler, too. Less of a dreamer, more of a realist.
Well put. I think I’m still the realist.
Thanks for posting this. You have a wonderful blog. Spending time sit down and write short stories and poems is something I truly enjoy in life. Feel free to check out our blog sometime.
A Great Day for Spring – Poem
Thanks. I commented on yours. Springtime necessitates poetry, doesn’t it? Still kind of waiting for this season in Calgary, though. Sigh.
“My heart is a little smaller when Mommy is away.”
Wow, Mama. Bet that set your heart close to bursting. Little people have a lovely way of cutting through the crap to get right at the stuff that matters, don’t they?
My fave, from Matthew, listening to “Going Home” a classical piece: “Mummy, this song makes my heart hurt right here!”
The world is a finer place because our tiny poets were born. Let’s remember that when they’re holed up in their painted rooms penning scathing, angst-ridden lyrics and listening to the Cure…
Okay, your last paragraph made me howl. So true.
Here’s to “cutting through the crap to get right to the stuff that matters.”
Out of the mouth of babes! What an insightful child, Vivian is. A real cutie. I love her saying, but I especially love how she’s already showing a knack for laying on the guilt! lol
She’s both insightful and inciting, I think. Yup. Pass the shovel for the guilt.
Ah, the tortured soul of a poet. I actually had just been crafting a note to you earlier this morning. It reads, ahem:
“Dear Ironic Mom, you don’t need me now. You have Tamara being all out loud. Sorry I search bombed you.”
Doesn’t quite have the fluff of a cloud, but I’m rewriting after brunch.
Good luck with the rewrite. I Search Bombed my real reply. Maybe.
It’s official, National Poetry Month was created by 7 year olds, meant to be celebrated with sticky notes while watching flowers grow on heavenly grass. Whatever happens to kids’ natural poetic tendencies when they grow up, anyway?
I think we should launch a Sticky Note Poetry Revolution. Leave random lines in random places. I’m not even kidding.
Is it reality that happens? Fear of hanging on to a single moment? Not sure, but great question. One that needs to be thought about.
No more rhyming now I mean it….
🙂 I often don’t let my students write poems that rhyme. I’m that mean.
…Anybody want a peanut?
Sorry. Had to put that in there.
Leanne, I love this.
Tell Vivian we need her. (And now I want to go watch Dead Poet’s Society. AND Princess Bride. And sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftop of the world. And spell check is telling me yawp isn’t a word. But my friend Walter disagrees…)
I. Love. Poetry.
Walt. Maybe I need to lie down in some Leaves of Grass this afternoon. (Damn that snow).
Peanut comment = funny.
I. Love. People. Who. Love. Poems.
I love the note she left on the door for you. Aren’t kids usually like, “Oh. You were gone?”
It’s so cute that she said human beings are made of love.
To Vivian I’m never just gone, I may be gone for an agonizingly long time.
The notes are priceless. You’ll be glad you hung onto them. You’ve opened up my eyes to the poetry that surrounds us every day. Yes, our kids expressions are pure poetry. I can’t wait to pay more attention to what my kids say.
It is amazing. I was looking through my notebook this morning. A month or so ago, William had used Lego to invent a sucker machine, which “sucks up all the bad things like diseases.” Poetic in its intent.
Oh these were amazing, what a little voice. I can HEAR her.
I also sighed that she is so loved that she sees it everywhere in the world, in favorite books and beets.
a poet for sure. 🙂
Yes, the beets may be my favourite one. Because they do taste like kisses covered in soil.
Wow, Little Miss, wow. That’s the sound of all us ‘grown up kid’ writers retiring. Really, when she’s spouting stuff like that, why should the rest of us bother!?
True. But the rest of us need to bother so that she can live in a child’s world that much longer.
Okay. I need to go back to snarky posts, I think. 😉
AW, Viv is a poet.
Beautiful.
And, awesome that you wrote all those down. Super impressed.
As for the notes…I gotta tell you…I regularly get little notes dropped down from the second floor or shoved under my door by the girl. Usually after she’s been sent to her room for something.
The guilt. Even at a young age, they can spin the words to drive a dagger right into our hearts. Budding writers?
Clearly our daughters are products of their mothers. 🙂
Elena. You are so right. They are products of their mothers. I always say that my kids get their good traits from me and their not-so-good ones from their dad.
I’m. that. mother.
And. that. wife.
Absolutely fantastic! You’ve got great kids. That first note was the stuff of legend.
Legend indeed. The first of more attitude, I suspect.
Oh, bless her little heart. You don’t need me, you’ve got William? Too precious. I can just picture her with the little bunch of belongs tied to a stick as she prepares to sadly depart. Breaks your heart, no?
Unless, of course, she is a consummate emotional maestro? She appears highly intelligent, so that is always possible. In which case, that is hilarious.
“Consummate emotional maestro” = poetic and brilliant and accurate.
Sigh.
She FEELS everything.
Oi, she sounds so, so loverly! Loved this post.
Note: Ironic Mom = hilarious. Ironic Mom on vacation = hilarious AND heartfelt. Watch out, people.
Thanks, Jess.
Soon people are going to tell me to can the soft-side and get back to the snark. Coming, promise.
My can barely talk as he’s only 1.5 but he comes up with some pretty good poop related poetry. If that even counts.
For some strange reason, I decided to take a bath with him last week and he yells,
“Mom. Poop. Oh!”
He frequently says such things so I didn’t really pay attention until I looked up and saw that he really wasn’t kidding this time.
I bet your exit was poetic. Or at least quick!
I am laughing.
Vivian sounds like she inherited some talent from her mom…fun stuff! Girls are experts at guilt…
Wendy
Yes, guilt and glory. That’s my girl.
I suck at poetry. Your daughter was better at 3 than I am now.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised then when my son coins phrases like “poop crumbs” while yours mentions “A kissing hand smells like love.”
Such a beautiful post. I’m glad you wrote down her words at the varying ages – because we forget.
She should have a novel of poetry by her teens. She can sell it and pay for college…. or does Canada “take care” of that?
College still costs here, but $6000 gets you into all of the top schools. Subsidized. So far. Unless we become the 51st state.
Poop is poetic. Maybe. Or the antithesis of poop is definitely not poetic. My logic’s failing me here.
I think you have some poems in you. And many around you. Lurking in corners, under chairs, in sock drawers.
My kids’ poems all have the word “poop” in them.
I hear there’s a huge market for excremental elegies.
Oh – you are SUCH a good mommy to have recorded these jewels. This is clearly a very talented, sensitive child. God bless you as you raise her to explore and value the gifts given her from the very beginning. Remarkable, truly remarkable. Thanks so much for this post.
I’m not sure it makes me a good mommy, or an envious one. One who wishes she were as carefree with words as her daughter.
Thanks, Diana.
It was such a joy to read this post! Vivian and truly a gem. Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks, Shreya. She is a gem. Sometimes.
I love the note ‘I have no mommy.’ When my wife gets really busy and comes home late I tell the kids to greet her with a reminder of their names.
Am I married to you? This sounds exactly like my DH. Except it’s way funnier when it happens to someone else.
Don’t let that one get away. She’s got a gift. As well as being one.
When I yawn, my brain totally sounds like a cloud moving by. I just didn’t know it before.
I know. I am envious at her reckless way with words. Yes, she nailed the yawn. Thanks for commenting.
Kid doesn’t write so much poetry, but he is a whiz at the vaguely sinister throw-away. Such as this:
http://wornragged.blogspot.com/search/label/never%20do%20this%20to%20your%20perins
“Never do this to your perins,” indeed.
I love that. “Never do this to your perins” has so much potential. Hilarious!
My favorite was “They taste like kisses covered in soil.” I feel the exact same way about beets if you take out the ‘kisses’ part and and replace it with ‘dried paste’.
I don’t have any little poets, though some of my students certainly think they are philosophers. Here are a few examples of the profundity:
1. “Life is a grand aspect that every human must attend as they are brought into this world.”
2. “Life is offered to so many people in this world.”
3. “Life is a challenge it shows you how far you can take it beyond life. Just remember, one day you will meet your match you can’t always win.” (I can’t take credit for the outstanding punctuation in that one.)
4. “Life’s head is the basketball and I’m the basket.”
Feel free to tape these up on your wall or fridge when you need a little guidance in your life…
I love these. I’m with number four. But if life’s head is the basketball, what is life’s body? 😉
Laughing. A lot.
That first note could be worse: she could have dragged Jesus into it.
Vivian and Slim would get along smashingly. He’s our resident note writer.
“When I yawn, my brain sounds like a cloud moving by.” That was my favorite. Tell Vivian that I’m going to get that tattooed across my forehead.