We live in a world that rightly so encourages us to read a lot to our children but research confirms that it’s best for our children when we read books with our own experiences in mind and we continuously make connections between the world on the page and the world around us. So slow down when you read, don’t rush with simple ‘What’s this?’, ‘What’s that?’ but have a conversation with your child, smile, make eye contact and ask open questions such as ‘What did you like most about going to the beach?’, ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t had your wellingtons on your feet?, ‘What was daddy doing over there? And what was grandpa doing?’. For language development ‘the doing’ is as crucial as naming objects. When you talk to your child make sure that you use many verbs (for some reason we like to focus on nouns only) as they help your child build sentences and aid storytelling. This book below is brilliant and I wish we had read it and talked around it (with verbs) when my son was smaller. It is a great introduction to various themes and topics and a great memory trigger. I strongly recommend it for those of you who speak Italian at home.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I recommend the book out of my sheer appreciation for it.
“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson
“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors…disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
There is a very old poem written by a Polish author Julian Tuwim called ‘Dyzio Marzyciel’ – ‘Dyzio, the dreamer’. It is about a boy who imagines that clouds are different types of sweets and that he is able to reach for them while lying down on the grass. While I was reading it to my son the other day, he enthusistically exclaimed: ‘Mummy, I want to get inside this book!’ I laughed and I agreed with him that this would indeed be a pleasant state of affairs. I then forgot about this little conversation until I came across this thought put together by Barbara Kingsolver:
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
I really like this idea of ‘living inside our hope… under its roof’, about being surrounded with it. Perhaps, just like Dyzio was dreaming of clouds of sweets, we could imagine the clouds of hope that we could reach to just when the going gets a bit too hard. I know that clouds tend to signify oncoming gloom, but maybe they shouldn’t? Maybe next time when we look outside the window, when it will get darker, and cloudier, we could say ‘hope is coming.’
I have never been dead in a bathroom at an airport / Non ero mai morto in bagno in aeroporto. These words were reassuringly sung by Tiziano Ferro as we were on our way to Bergamo airport in northern Italy. Neither have I, I thought to myself. Happy that I found a connection with Tiziano Ferro. I like leaving Italy with a CD of Italian pop music. Not so much for the music itself but for the simple language that comes with the tunes. When we were saying goodbye to Italy, I promised myself that I will make a greater effort this year to learn the language a bit better and I am keeping my word. My Italian lesson will start in 30 minutes… which means that I have just a little bit more time to tell you more about our stay in Italy.
In short, these were very odd holidays. We didn’t have the accommodation that we initially hoped for and the luxuries that we looked forward to. Neither were we pampered by the breeze of the mountain air normally granted with staying at high altitude. Instead, we were frequently scorched by the Italian sun. It’s the price that you pay when you forget to check if your reservation was all in order. We had to quickly look for alternative accommodation and take what was available at the last minute. We didn’t die however in the bathroom at the airport and that makes up for the unexpected inconveniences quite well, I think.
One of the tourist places that we looked forward to seeing was the little island of San Giulio, situated on the lake Orta in the Piemonte region in northern Italy. Since we were staying in the tiny mountainous region of Aosta it took us a while to drive and reach the lake. We drove, and drove, and drove, and there was a curve, and another curve, and yet another curve, and there seemed to be no end to those curves until of course there was an end to them and what a beautiful one too. Worth of all the curves put together. A very deserving place. I had been terribly impatient with the slow mountain road that we had taken and regretful that we avoided the swift motorway. Sour about the lost time. And then when we reached our destination I was rewarded with the beautiful corners of the island and gorgeous buildings of an old town. And I had to become remorseful about my childish impatience and firmly reproached myself for being such a grump. The routes to great destinations are frequently like that. Full of stops, curves and turnings. But apparently it is the tourist that mainly focuses on the arrival point, the real traveller keeps her eyes open to it all.
I definitely need more practise in travelling.
“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Postcards Without Stamps 