Kiddo has another one of those show-and-tell sessions coming up this Friday. It is to be on a book she read. She has chosen Tolkien’s Hobbit. The props include a sword, a treasure box, and a key. We went shopping last weekend but what do you know – these aren’t everyday shopping items! So we asked around and got a toy sword from Justine (a Hooi’s son), and she put together some jewellery and coins to make up the treasure. I got tasked with making a sword. I don’t have a hammer, don’t have a furnace and certainly don’t have the muscles to whack a piece of metal to shape a sword. So I got a piece of cardboard. It is the one Vicroads used to wrap our new number plates in. After doing a few sketches of how the key should look and got kiddo to agree (it has to look ancient), I drew a shape of the key on the cardboard, cut it out and wrapped the thing in foil. It looked passable for a large key, large enough and looked close enough to one of those to unlock medieval castle dungeons. I thought the job was done but last night she reminded me of the finishing bit – I had to print runes on the key! Those elvan letters which Tolkien dreamt up (and he didn’t do pot) somehow must end up on a foil finished cardboard key, and I’m Mr Smith! Schools in Melbourne can be fun you see, and not just for the kids either!
I guess that has been one of the highlights of our move here – the involvement with our kid’s school work and their lives generally. We have talked so much more, every morning at breakfast, and then again before we left home, when we’d say a quick prayer together. We talked again when we got home from work, when we do the cooking. We’d talk some more during dinner, and we’d talk again as we unwind for the day and watch some tv.
Often it takes effort. We’d be tired both in the morning as well as at night but we make ourselves talk to kiddo, listen to her (and make her talk slower) and try and understand what her day has been. When we make the effort however, it is often good. The talk itself can also be painful, as when we work out some problems, but we are communicating and that’s something we did a lot less in Malaysia. I guess we were just too occupied with too many activities when we were there.
Ante 