TJ's English is really coming along. Though it's true that acquiring what is known as academic English will surely be a struggle, slang words and idiomatic expressions have begun to stud his speech. The other night when the soap slipped into the sink, he said "Oops-a-daisy!" And this week he came home with a coupon book from school, took a deep breath and explained very carefully that if we wanted the book we had to send in $25 and that it was to help the school, that's what the teacher said. He has been guarding it carefully.
This week he started an after-school class in magic. He came home with a small brown paper bag that he carried around secretively. Later, after a little tussle over homework, he became more militant about not showing me the contents. "How you spell 'don't look, Mama,'" he asked. "You know those words," I told him. He ran to his school drawer and found his box of flashcards. He pored over them until he found the words he wanted. "No look Mama," is what he wrote on the bag, with a circle around the words and a slash going through them.
It turns out TJ knows "If I Had a Hammer," too. We were singing the song and talking about it when Jiejie said, "Mom, is Pete Seeger still alive?"
"I know Pete Seeger," said Meimei, to my extreme surprise. I assured the kids that he was very much alive, and told them about the time I met the great man, when I was very young and very stupid and writing a newspaper story about the anniversary of Freedom Summer. They told me they were learning about him in music class. And that is a great thing about having three kids in the same school: seeing the information filtered through three different minds and delivered at home for our delectation.
Jiejie made me proud with her processing today. We have been struggling over extra-credit assignments. There is a lot of optional work in her class, and I want her to do it. Schoolwork comes easily to her, and she needs to meet the challenges that are presented if she is to grow and to develop good study habits. She disagrees. I told her it was not negotiable. The night before the latest optional assignment was due, she saw me filling out a form. "What's that?" she said.
"Something for school," i said busily blackening circles without looking up. "Refuses to do extra-credit work. Check. Doesn't listen to Mom. Check."
"Wait!" she said. "Is that about me?"
"It's just something for the teacher," I said.
"I'll do it, Mom!" she said, stricken but not quite believing me.
I started to laugh and told her I was just pretending.
Tonight she did the work, a poster about a European country. She did Greece, but scrupulously avoided any mention of any Greek heritage in the family. Then, she started to get interested in copying the Greek words. We listened to some Greek hiphop. She wrote a little text based on what we had printed out. Then, to my surprise, she wrote: "Don't forget the yummy triangles!" She was thinking of her Yiayia's spanakopita. She asked me how to say and write the word in Greek, then carefully copied the word and drew a delectable piece of spanakopita. I'm so proud of my Greek-Chinese-American-Jewish girl.
