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 Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 3:44 am
There is a letter and a package on the front steps addressed to Caprice.the letter Dear Caprice,
A little birdie told me you liked poetry, so why don't you make some of your own? In the package is a special journal just for you and a few glittery pens fit for a princess. How about you practice your letters a bit and write a poem or two?
Love, Shouko
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Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:32 pm
"Mama, mama, look!" Reese cried as she spotted the package before her mom. The two were on their way to Reese's first real ballet lesson.
Reese immediately scooped up the box and danced around with it. "Can I open it, Mama?"
Lisi bent down to retrieve the note that had fallen to the ground; Reese didn't have any interest for the words that she couldn't decipher. "It is for you, Reesy," she said, a bit surprised at receiving the note from Shouko. How thoughtful of her!
Lisi read the note to Caprice, who promptly squeal/giggled and tore the package open to see the pretty gifts that were just for her. She examined the glittery pens like the were precious and "ohhh" and "awwed." So pretty!
"Mama mama look! Do you see? These are for me!" she kept saying over and over, an awed grin on her face. The dolphin toddler fairly glowed with pride. "I have a book all my own, just like you, mama! Will you help me make my letters good?"
Lisi could barely keep a smile back. Who couldn't love the little tyke? Annoying as she may sometimes be, she had a heart of gold, to be sure. "Of course, sweetie. But we'll have to wait for after your dance class, okay?"
Caprice was simultaneously bummed out and excited. New dance class and glittery pens all in one day! "Can I take 'em with me to class, huh, can I pweeease?"
Lisi nodded, but placed them in her purse for safekeeping as the twosome made their way to dance, Reese skipping all the way.
---
About an hour and a half later...
The crisp, white page was opened up in front of her, full of endless possibilities. Her beautiful new pens were all lined up beside the journal, just waiting to be used.
Her ballet class having taken the edge off her energy, Caprice was finally able to sit down for a length of time without fidgeting herself right off the chair. But before she made a single mark in her journal, she insisted that Lisi help her make her letters look "grown up like Mama's" for almost a half hour. She didn't want to mess up her pretty book with ugly marks, and she didn't want to waste her glittery pens. Reese had learned the alphabet song in preschool, but the shape of the letters was still elusive to her little hands.
To help her out, Lisi had made a list of the letters for her as a guide.
A - a
B - b
C - c
...and so on. But beyond this, and the occasional encouragement, Lisi offered her daughter no physical help. She wouldn't help her little hand form the letters, or offer any advice on what her poem should be about. This was something she had to do on her own, and it was almost as hard on Lis as it was for Reese. The librarian had wanted, since Reese was "born" to help her with everything...but she had to grow up slowly, and Lisi had to let her. It was a challenge for them both.
Eventually Reese had become confident enough to sit on the living room couch with her journal in her lap, ready to put shiny new pen to pristine white paper; now the only thing left to do was put her own words down.
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Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:02 pm
"Mama, how do you spell..." the little girl thought about it. "Miss?"
"M - I - S - S," came Lisi's prompt reply from the kitchen.
Reese painstakingly made each letter just as perfect as she could, using her mama's letter guide when she forgot what was what. She looked at the paper at the word she just wrote, all by herself. Then she stuck the end of her Blueberry Blaze pen in her mouth and chewed on it contemplatively. Her little body wriggled in anticipation.
Always fidgeting, Lisi thought with a smile as she watched her from the adjoining kitchen. "Trying to jump start your brain, sweetness?" Lisi said over a pot of boiling vegetables.
Reese nodded distractedly, kicking her feet against the bottom of the couch and gnawing on her pen.
"How do you spell Mary?" came her next words.
Is she going to ask me how to spell every single word in her poem? Lis thought bemusedly. "Why don't you just write it the way it sounds?" she replied.
Reese sighed dramatically, but let it go at that.
There were a few moments of silence before Reese chimed up again with another question. "Do poems have to rhyme, Mama?"
"No, honey, they don't have to. Remember that one I read you in the library? It didn't rhyme, and people still like it."
"Hokay."
And she was quiet again for a time. The only sound came from her whispered sounding-out of words. "Miss Mair...e. C...cow...nts."
This lasted about ten minutes. "Maamaa?" Reese called again pleadingly. "What rhymes with sky?"
Lisi's eyes were busy trying to read the recipe for stir fried green beans with almonds and tomatoes. "I told you it doesn't have to rhyme," she said without looking up.
"But I want it to!" her daughter whined in return.
Lis sighed. "Alright." She looked around, thinking. "Sigh, bye, tie, try, my...you remember how rhymes work, right? You can think of some more."
"But it's so haarrd." Still, that had sparked her brain and once again her little hand grasped her sparkly blue pen in her fist, scratching slowly away.
Twenty minutes later, dinner is almost done and Lisi is amazed that Caprice has sat still so long. Every five minutes she would ask Lisi how to spell something, or what rhymed with so-and-so. Her multitasking mom was really trying hard to juggle a boiling pot, a frying pan, and explaining how to spell the "th" sound.
But finally Reese jumped to her feet - the only way she knew how to come up from a seated position - and scrambled into the kitchen just as Lis was setting the table.
"Lookitlookitlookit!" she rambled as if on fast-forward. "I did it, Momma, I made the letters all by myself!"
Her mother, full of intellectual pride, beamed just as big as Reese even though she had been startled into spilling a glass of water. "I'm very proud of you, Reese!" she extolled as she cleaned up the spill with a dishrag. "May I see it?"
Suddenly the dolphin girl became quite shy. She clutched the journal up close up against her chest and a look of anxiety crossed her face.
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Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:31 am
Lisi's confused face matched up against Reese's anxious one as Lis bent down to be at eye-level with her daughter. Reese was never shy. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" she asked.
"Dun wanna show you," Reese mumbled into her journal.
Caprice loved showing off - what had come over her? "I would love to read your poem, Reese. I bet it's the most wonderful poem ever."
"No! It's bad. You didn't tell me how to spell words. The words are wrong. You didn't tell me so they're wrong and it's bad." Caprice wouldn't look up.
Lis tilted her chin up gently so that she could speak to her face. Reese looked up at her with sad blue eyes, but didn't interrupt as Lis spoke. "Caprice, honey. I didn't do that to be mean. I wanted you to be able to do something all by yourself, and you did, and you should be proud no matter what your letters are like. If you want, I'll show you more poems by that same man who wrote the one I read to you in the library - he spelled words just the way he wanted, and he was a famous poet. You don't have to do things exactly the same way as other people in order for it to still be good."
Reese didn't say anything, but pressed her lips together as she absorbed the words her mother said. After a few minutes of silence, Reese nodded.
"Do you want to show me your poem now?"
Another nod.
"Okay."
Lis led Reese over to the couch in the living room. "Do you want to read it to me? Would that be better?"
"No, you read first. Then me." Reese sat beside her, solemnly laid the book on her mother's lap, and opened the journal for her. Reese's wobbly, carefully constructed letters were strewn across both pages, filling them.
Lisi adjusted her glasses and started to read aloud. "Miss Mary - "
"No!" Caprice interjected, clapping her hand onto the open book. "Read quiet, don't say the words." It was hard to hear your own work being read back to you - Lisi recognized and understood this.
Lisi held back a smile and nodded seriously. The little girl was very particular about how she wanted things to go.
So finally, the librarian read her daughter's poem to herself.
"Miss Mairee cownts! And won and to and
Step
and
step
and
JUMP!
Then I go FLI!
The wend is in mi har!
My arms reech to theskie!
I tuch the grond
and run arond!
I want them al to trie!"
Lisi had to put a hand to her mouth to keep her smile from showing; she didn't want Caprice to think she was making fun of her. She loved the exclamation points and how Reese wrote the words spaced so far apart - perhaps an accident, but Lis didn't think so. "Reesey, this is wonderful. The words are perfect. Why don't you write another one about -"
Caprice beamed, but wouldn't wait for her mom to finish. "Now I read to you!" All she needed to get over her moment of timidity was a word or two of encouragement. She was back to her old self and back on her feet in the blink of an eye.
The newly-buoyant little girl retrieved her journal from her mom's lap and proceeded to read the words aloud, acting them out as she went. She lept into the air as she cried "JUMP!", swirled her hair around, stretched out her arms, collapsed purposefully onto the ground with a large thump, ran around in circles, threw her arms into the air for the final line, and finally finished with a triumphant bow.
Lisi was too busy laughing to respond. Red-faced, with shinning tears of happiness in her eyes, she stood and swept her daughter up in her arms.
And Lis Larkin the Librarian danced around the living room carrying Caprice the Poet/Dancer in her arms, both of them laughing.
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Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:45 pm
After such an exciting day, Caprice is exhausted by bed time. She sleeps soundly and by morning she has grown into a child! 
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Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 7:01 am
The front door swung open so loudly that Lis could hear it from the kitchen. She smiled wistfully. Ever since Caprice had started going to school, her days had been quite lonely. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays she went straight from school to her dance classes, so sometimes Reese wouldn't be home until dinner time.
Lisi dropped the vegetables she had been chopping into the stew as Caprice came in, thoroughly worn out as she typically was after dance. "How was your day?" her mother asked pleasantly.
Caprice dropped her bags by the doorway and slid into a kitchen chair to take her shoes off. Her hair was damp and her cheeks were red. "Ergh." She folded her arms on the table and dropped her head onto them.
Lisi was concerned, but not surprised. As a toddler, Reese had been a bundle of energy, never slowing down - she was the Energizer bunny. But things changed.
Lis brought over two bowls of stew for herself and Reese, and sat down beside her. "That bad, huh?" She was being patient, letting Reese tell her whatever was bothering her on her own time.
Reese lifted her head at the smell of food. "Salmon?" she asked eagerly, bringing the bowl towards her.
Her mom hid a smile and nodded. Nothing perked Reese up more than her favorite food.
Sure enough, after Reese got a little food in her, she opened up. "Sally is so stuck-up, she kept giving me mean looks the whole time at ballet. She thinks she is just the best ballerina in the whole wide world! She just gets me so so mad. Just because I couldn't keep my back straight the right way....She thinks she's so great cuz her momma was a ballerina.... Hmph. ...And Ms. Jordon gave me a time-out for talking during class again."
The last was said almost as an afterthought, quickly, with a mouthful of food as to disguise it.
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