It’s NinjaGirl’s birthday today. She is nine. Nine!
The lucky girl shares a birthday with Joe Flacco, Baltimore Ravens QB. She could care less. The rest of Baltimore (including her sports-radio addicted mother) is "Wacko for Flacco" as we battle Sunday with the Pittsburgh Steelers for a Superbowl spot.
Her birthday has me thinking about relationships, siblings in particular. I was fussing about in the kitchen one day a few years ago and looked up to see our son (3 years older) and daughter playing in the next room. Something about their play stopped me.
I stepped into the room and said, “Do you realize that you’re best friends?”
Their response: “Uh, Mom, we know that.” Laughter about Mom’s “duh” moment. Back to playing.
I’ve fictionalized their friendship in a free-verse picture book, The Waiting Flower. It’s been at a small publisher, Flashlight Press, for one year! Any minute now, I’ll hear my phone ringing (my year-long mantra).
While I’m waiting, a poem about friendship:
The Arrow and the Song
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
I love how the stiff arrow is found unchanged. Our locked-in views and ways of thinking leave no room for conversation. The more fluid song is welcoming. Once it’s in the friend’s heart the song becomes something new.
I’m tired of the media – TV and children’s books – going for the easy stereotype of embattled siblings. Love the Arthur series on PBS, hate the way they portray Arthur and DW’s relationship. Loved Meg Cabot’s first Allie Finkle book (read a Q&A about the book with Meg Cabot), but Allie and her younger bros never get beyond annoying one another.
I’m tired of the media – TV and children’s books – going for the easy stereotype of embattled siblings. Love the Arthur series on PBS, hate the way they portray Arthur and DW’s relationship. Loved Meg Cabot’s first Allie Finkle book (read a Q&A about the book with Meg Cabot), but Allie and her younger bros never get beyond annoying one another.The truth about siblings is much more complicated and often more positive. Anyone know of some books where the sibs actually get along? Why not show kids the behavior we aim for, rather than go for the easy stereotype?
FYI – One of my favorite parenting books, tops on raising sibs, is Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.
Come back for a writing exercise on siblings tomorrow…
Meanwhile, check at Big A, Little A for this week's Poetry Friday host.
