Ponies

I have two aunts that have greatly influenced my life. Without them, I would not have had the education I have, the knowledge that an independent and unattached woman can have a very full life, or walls filled with oil paintings and a china cabinet full of ceramics. My Aunt R was quite the stereotypical oldest child. She liked to tell everyone how they should be living their lives (from me to the pastor at her church), but she did it in the nicest way possible. She always made you believe that you could be something extraordinary (but there was nothing wrong with being ordinary). She would frequently try to enrich our lives in whatever way she could think of - from penny blackjack at Christmas parties to a set of oil paints (which I'm sure my mother loved). When I was 12 or 13, she tried to interest my sister and me in poetry...through bribery. She offered to pay us to learn poems - the amount was based on the length and difficulty of the poem. My sister wasn't interested at all, and I only learned one poem...but it was a good one. Resume, by Dorothy Parker...just the thing an already cynical teenager needs to know. And, I earned a whole 60 cents!

Today, while giving my daughter a bath, I was reminded of Aunt R, and I thought of how proud she would already be of my daughter...

When I got tired of reading Curious George goes to the Zoo for the millionth time, I started reading poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends by Silverstein instead of bedtime stories. I just pick a few different ones to read each night, and my daughter will stop me if a page catches her attention. Since I don't want her to tear up the book, I keep it on a shelf in her room. So, she will now ask for 'ponies from the shelf' because poems has been too difficult to pronounce. Every day, I have to read some poems, and while it entertains me, I didn't know if she was getting anything out of it. However, during bath time tonight, my daughter said "upstairs, upstairs, upstairs," which is part of the poem Upstairs - about a family of wrens who live in a guy's hat/hair. I think she's on her way to appreciating poetry - for which I can thank Aunt R.