22 DecHe Says He Hates You

We speak another language when we are children. I sometimes had to ask another child for a translation. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t asked. 🙂

October 26, 2003

Dear Autumn,

            The other morningI was sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal with you. Jory walked by. I asked him for a hug. He waved me off rather brusquely. As he walkied away he turned his head and said something in his three year old dialect. I didn’t quite understand him. I turned to you, my four year old daughter, for translation help.

“What did he say?” I asked.

You put your spoon down, finished chewing (very ladylike I might add), looked at me and calmly translated, “He says he hates you.”

With your translation job done you picked up your spoon and began eating again, paying no mind to the alarming news you had just relayed to me.

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As I searched for ways to capture the wonderful trivial moments of my children’s lives I found a simple, easy method: once a week I take a few moments to write some brief observations on a child’s life. I’ve done this for all eight of my children. There is nothing special about what I’ve done. I simply sit down and take a few minutes to dump a few details and feelings about a child and what’s been going on in our lives. If it was any harder I wouldn’t have done it (scrap booking anyone?). What I have now is a montage of our lives mostly of things that have long been lost to my memory. I say “our” lives because even though these blurbs are about one of my children, it inevitably catches a picture of me in the reflection. Each Sunday I send my kids one entry from their “journals” and we are reliving our lives together. Anyone can do this. You will find it worth it when your children are gone.

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