A hula celebration

Maia's hula school had a May Day performance today. May Day has always been very big in Hawaii--there was a kind of natural affinity from the beginnning between Hawaiian culture and the underpinnings of May Day celebrations. That's a pic of Maia and some of her class.

Three generations of women performed--young girls of Maia's age; tweeners and teenagers--"big girls," in Maia speak; and kupuna or elders. Here are some pics of some of the elders.







And here are some pics of the "little girls":





In addition to being a May Day celebration, the performance was a fund raiser for the hula school and a graduation celebration for eight young women. These eight had been at the hula school for varying lengths of time--up to 20 years. The celebration was not of their graduation from the hula school--though it was clear that they would probably not have much of a presence at the school any longer--but of other events in their lives. Graduation from high school and going on to college for seven of the young women and graduation from medical school for the eighth.

There are few things more affecting than watching a group of young women dancing hula. Sometimes, there's something so sweet and pure and good about it that it touches the soul.

Here are some pics of them. Some of the pics include one of their teachers:

















The performance done by the young women today was simply magical. They did three songs. At the end of the final one, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

What a privilege it is to raise a daughter. And what a sacred trust.



John, May 21, 2006

Learning to Read

For the last month or so, we've been concentrating on teaching Maia to read. She's a very bright little girl, but she's behind her classmates in language. No wonder. She spent her first two years learning Kazakh, a hugely different language, with limited direct instruction.

Still, I think it's a mystery to her as to why she can't speak as well as her classmates. She knows she's smart, and I imagine she must wonder why there's that difference.


The other night, she wanted to know how "kitty" is spelled. So I spelled it out for her on this dry erase board I had picked up.

"Too many Ts," she said.

"No, Maia," I explained. "There are two Ts." And I showed her how one T was the end of the first sound, and the next T was the start of the next sound. Drew little brackets underneath the syllables and everything.

She listened to me patiently, and then very deliberately erased the offending T.

That's a pic of her handiwork at the top.

While I'm at it, I'll post another pic, one that shows her imagination.

This is from last year, at our old house. She was just a little past 3.

She had been drawing--it was this great efflorescence of color on the page.

"What's that," I had wanted to know.

"A fire," she said. "Where fire truck?" she said, and she ran off to look for it. But she couldn't find it.

So she came back and said, "Draw one."

"Draw a fire truck?"

"Yes," she said.

"To put out the fire?"

"Yes," she said.

So I drew one to put out the fire.







John, 5/16/2006

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was a good day. Kristina had been having trouble again. She bears the heaviest load of the responsibility of parenting and has given up much more than I have.

At breakfast, I gave Kristina a box of chocolates and a gecko pin. When Maia was little, she had been trying to communicate something to us about the window in the kitchen, but neither Kristina nor I had been able to figure out what she was saying. Then she put one hand in the air, posed the other one lower, and cocked a leg--we knew at once she was imitating a gecko, and we both burst out laughing.

We took Maia to the park after breakfast. Kristina went shopping at Goodwill while Maia and I played. Maia found a little boy she has played with before. This time, though, it didn't work out. It started well enough, but after they had been playing for a while, he cried when he came down the slide and she was in his way at the bottom. They've played this game before, a kind of pile up on each other game, so I really didn't understand it. Here's a pic from an earlier day at the park when they were having playing this game:



Maia didn't mean anything by it. She just likes to have fun. The pic at the top is of them playing before the little boy had his meltdown. Here is another:



I hope they get to be friends again.

After the park, we went to Micky D's. We stopped at the men's bathroom on the way, where Maia once again observed that it's very dirty as compared to the women's bathroom. :)

At some point during the day, I told Maia that our job was to drive Mommy nuts. I was only half teasing about that. Maia adds an unpredictability factor to our lives that makes us think about what's important.

Here is a pic of Kristina and Maia at Micky D's. I don't think I've ever seen Kristina so relaxed with Maia.



And of me and Maia.



Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. We really don't know what you go through, but we do appreciate it.

John, May 15, 2006