Skylar was full of vim and voom tonight. Although she woke up early to accompany her mother to the airport, she wasn't lagging when I showed up at school to help her put on her martial arts attire. Then, when I told her upon picking her up that her grandfather had come home from the care facility a day earlier than expected, she practically burst through the roof.

The rest of her evening was a swirl of bliss and rebellion, as she demonstrated some of her martial arts defense strategies to him, teased her grandmother, refused to do any of the things I told her to do and exuded so much happiness that it was hard to find the motivation to make her eat her dinner, stop shouting, lay off her nana etc.

I had almost given up on the idea of insisting that she do her homework, which was to make another entry in the "moon journal" that all the kids in her class have been keeping. Seeing the extraordinarily bright disc in the sky on our walk home, however, inspired her enough that she immediately switched gears from her I-want-to-push-buttons mode to her I-want-to-push-my-pencil mode. Fifteen minutes later, her entry was finished:

Skylar is often shy about showing even her parents the work that she does. But she wanted to read me tonight's composition. Her teacher tries to cultivate an appreciation for creative writing by getting students to look for "golden lines." It's a great approach, because it's flexible, yet encourages them to focus on detail. After she'd read me this entry, Skylar announced that it was "full of golden lines," noting that she hadn't spent much time on the image because this time the words mattered more. I'm delighted to see her learning to take pleasure in crafting prose and poetry. I'm delighted to see her delighted.

Tags: daughter, everyday, family, poetry
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