I had some amusing conversations with my eldest son in the past weeks. I'm sharing them here in my blog today to help me document and remember those moments when God allowed me to enjoy his unique traits as a gifted child.
I'm currently writing children's stories as an author. My eldest son likes to observe (and disturb) me whenever I work. He is so curious to find out what I'm doing in my laptop and what I am typing in it. He has actually asked me to read my manuscript drafts to him a number of times in the past month that I had been working on my first children's story in English.
One night, he requested that I read it to him (for the nth time). Unfortunately, I have already turned off my laptop and I was ready to sleep. So, I told him that I will just tell him the story from memory.
I'm glad he agreed and waited for me to start as he looked straight into my eyes.
I started telling the story to my son. Then, he began interrupting me every now and then to "correct" me as I recounted the story. He would recite some parts exactly as I wrote it in my manuscript. Sometimes, he would ask, "Isn't it that it should be..." And he would tell a part of the story verbatim. Actually, I didn't think of reciting the story verbatim to tell it to him. I paraphrased most of the time. Thus, the many "corrections" from my son. That night, I discovered that my son has memorized a great deal of my manuscript.
I was amused and pleasantly surprised that he has memorized my work ahead of me! I shared that thought with my husband who was listening to our mother and child storytelling session. My husband laughed and comforted me by saying that I'm still polishing my manuscript anyway that's why I have not yet memorized my own story. That was partly true. :) To acknowledge another truth, I told my eldest son, "You really have a very good memory! You can easily memorize stories or books that you read!" His reply made me and my husband laugh harder. He said, "Mommy, when I ask Ate (our helper) to show me the pictures in her cellphone and she tries to open the gallery, her phone would always display, not enough memory. Maybe, I should share my memory with Ate."
In between laughs, I told him, "I wished it was that easy to share our memory with others. Also, if it's possible to share your excellent memory with others, you will have a profitable business! You will have many customers!" And we all laughed. I'm not sure if he really understood my joke but it was a fun family bonding moment I will remember for a long time.
Here's another incident.
One afternoon, while trying to write, my eldest son who just woke up from his nap came up to me and requested that we read my children's story again. So I opened the file in my laptop and read it to him. In the course of reading it to him, he asked some questions. He asked why some lines were changed since he already memorized lots of them. He was surprised that I used new words to tell the story. I explained to him that the way I'm telling the story is still a work in progress. What we are reading in my laptop is one of my manuscript drafts. It's not yet the final version.
Then a thought occured to me. I thought that maybe I should bring him along if in the future I need to be interviewed or I will have a press conference. Or if one day I was interviewed and asked to recite a few lines from my story but suddenly experienced mental block, I thought that having my eldest son with me would save me from embarrassment. I would simply ask the reporter to interview my son instead or ask my son to recite a few lines for me. I shared this funny thought to my husband and he said that maybe it would be good for me to practice my talks or presentations with my eldest son as audience. He joked that our eldest son could be my prompter in case I'd forget.
Seriously though, I thank God for those moments. I thank Him for allowing me to enjoy my son's company and just marvel at how God has wonderfully made him. I thank God that I am able to share about my work to him as an author or writer and somehow it has become part of our homeschool activity. He actually loves reading my story aloud and I'm delighted when he is able to read it with much feelings as if he's an expert storyteller.
I think it was yesterday or the other day when he said that he will write his own story, too. He asked permission if he can borrow my laptop to type his story. I happily agreed.
Earlier, he asked me to read my story again. Since he understood by now that it's possible that there will be changes in my manuscript, he even suggested some changes in how I will tell the story. In truth, I changed a line because he asked me to change it and I edited that line based on his suggestion. Now, I do not only have an author in the making but an editor in the making!
One of the things we plan to do this weekend (before this day ends actually) is to record a video of our eldest son reading my story. We have not taken a video of him yet while reading a book since he started reading at two years old. I hope that everyone and everything will cooperate later when we choose to execute our plan. :) (He started memorizing the books that we regularly read to him before he turned two years old. After that, I noticed that he can read some words from his books in other places.)
My husband told me during the Holy Week that it's a good lesson for our eldest son to see that I'm still changing how I tell and write my story. He said that somehow we are sharing with him that a lot of things in our lives are not yet in its final form or version. We can still improve on a lot of things in our lives. I agreed. So now, it's not just a lesson on how to write a story or a book or how to edit a story but we are talking about life lessons like improving our lives or improving ourselves.
I'm so glad that we are homeschooling our kids. Our daily activities become learning opportunities in themselves and they help me and my husband become more aware of how we are living our lives or how our activities are impacting our children.
