It's somewhat hectic here. We have children's activities, paperwork, house maintenance projects, broken mobiles, travels, birthday parties and attempts at reviving our personal archives and histories. Everyday life has kept us on our toes and it is not a bad thing. This week I asked my six year old daughter what she is grateful for. Appreciation strengthens children's minds as much as it strengthens ours. She eagerly listed several things. She mentioned dinner time and that she is thankful for Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. She also appreciates PE and a friend who makes her laugh.
She elaborated that she is grateful for Wednesdays because a funny lady comes to her class. She makes them laugh. They do pretend play and practice dancing with YouTube at school. She likes Thursdays because there is a drama club. She can move and sing a lot. For Saturdays, because there is a Polish school. She plays with her friend there and she likes her a lot. She is happy about Sundays because there is a mass for children at the church. There is tea and coffee afterwards. She can run around and play with many different children. In short, she is happy with her childhood and enjoys acting and friends.
It had always been my dream to start a multilingual theater. I even started making small attempts at it. But lockdown happened and plans and preoccupations changed. That said, every so often, I captured our attempts at pretend play and we had a lot of fun. The children were delighted. I am so happy I captured some of those moments.
Back to the drama, isn't it satisfying to express yourself by playing a person with a different culture or character, to go a little beyond the comfort of your own psyche? To live many lives using different languages, accents and body movements? To understand problems that do not belong to us and to feel the joy of the achievements for which other people have trained?
And then to love our Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturday and Sundays... and be grateful for them just a bit more than for our Mondays. What could we do to repair their reputation? Surely, a lot of good happens on those days too.
And Fridays, she kept quiet about them. I wonder why?
What's in your busy schedule that you are grateful for right now?
Text and Photography: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, 2025.
Copying or reproducing the material without the explicit permission from the author is prohibited.
Polish Translation
Witaj Drogi Czytelniku,
Jak się ostatnio miewasz?
U nas jest trochę gorączkowo. Mamy zajęcia dla dzieci, papierkową robotę, projekty związane z utrzymaniem domu, podróże, urodziny, zepsute telefony komórkowe i próby ożywienia naszych osobistych archiwów i historii. Codzienność trzyma nas w napięciu, co nie jest wcale takie złe. W tym tygodniu zapytałam moją sześcioletnią córkę za co jest wdzięczna. Docenianie wzmacnia umysły dzieci tak samo, jak nasze. Skwapliwie wymieniła kilka rzeczy. Wspomniała o porze obiadowej i o tym, że jest wdzięczna za środy, czwartki, soboty i niedziele. Ceni sobie też WF i przyjaciela, który ją rozśmiesza.
Wyjaśniła, że jest wdzięczna za środy, ponieważ do jej klasy przychodzi zabawna pani. Rozśmiesza ich. Udają, bawią się i ćwiczą taniec z YouTube w szkole. Lubi czwartki, bo ma kółko teatralne. Potrafi się dużo ruszać i śpiewać. Za soboty, bo jest polska szkoła. Bawi się tam ze swoją koleżanką i bardzo ją lubi. Cieszy się z niedziel, bo w kościele jest msza dla dzieci. Potem jest herbata i kawa. Potrafi biegać i bawić się z wieloma różnymi dziećmi. W skrócie, cieszy się dzieciństwem, a najbardziej wszelkimi próbami teatralnymi i przyjaciółmi.
Zawsze marzyłam o założeniu wielojęzycznego teatru i zaczęłam nawet podejmować małe próby, ale nastąpił lockdown i mi również plany i zainteresowania się zmieniły. Bawiła się z dziećmi czasem w teatr w domu, kiedy były mniejsze i podczas lockdownu. Dzieci były zachwycone. Tak się cieszę, gdy myślę o tych momentach, że ich kilka złapałam.
Wracając do dramatu, czyż nie jest satysfakcjonujące móc wyrazić siebie grając osobę o innej kulturze lub innym charakterze, troszeczkę wyjść poza komfort własnej psychiki? Przeżyć wiele żyć, posługując się różnymi językami, akcentami i ruchami ciała? Zrozumieć problemy, które do nas nie należą, i poczuć radość z osiągnięć, do których trenowali inni ludzie. A potem pokochać nasze środy, czwartki, soboty i niedziele... i być za nie wdzięcznym trochę bardziej niż za poniedziałki. A tak swoją drogą, to co możemy zrobić, aby poprawić im reputację? Z pewnością w tych dniach też dzieje się wiele dobrego.
Co dzieje się w Twoim napiętym harmonogramie, za co jesteś teraz wdzięczny?
Irrespective if you are someone flamboyant about your gratitudes or modest in expressing them, Tuesdays seem to be the right day to create a list of blessings and positive experiences. To ward off the anxieties that might be resurfacing midweek and to keep our mind calm and to make our heart palpitate gladly.
The Life with The Crew started The Thankful Tuesdays. I want to cultivate this blogging custom. I believe it serves us all well. Do you want to join in?
Here I go with mine. Today I am grateful for:
– the snow, the snow, the snow… that did not melt too quickly and the fox that appeared in our garden just after midday
– my friend’s successful knee operation and his quick recovery and our chat over a cup of coffee and his sharing of insights and wisdom from life
– for a very considerate friend who dropped Castor oil at my doorstep to improve blood circulation in the shoulders
– a husband who made a lovely Mediterranean style lentil dish with leek and green pumpkin and parsley (on the blog soon)
– translators who translate children’s stories and allow us to move between languages but within the same storytelling sphere: Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, La Strega Rosella – translated by the incredbly skilled Laura Pelaschiar, and the Polish version entitled ‘Miejsce na Miotle’ by translated by the excellent Michał Rusinek
– Jodie Wilson from Practising Simplicity for encouraging Yoga as a gentle exercise for busy lives, very useful for frozen shoulders too and any problems with posture that result from attached monkeys to our hips (be it kids or cameras) and also for her indirect encouragement to contact blog readers
– for Adam Phillips’ book On Getting Betterand his ability to put into words what we tend to hide from ourselves, i.e. that our transferences and regressions intensify with our resistance :)
– for our daughter who said today that she wants to do her homework on her own and allowed me to load the dishwasher in the meantime
– for the recent Outdoor Photography Magazine and the glorious portfolio review by Massimo Leotardi and their reminder that we are soon going into a National Tree Week that is uniting all the tree lovers in the UK (see treecouncil.org.uk). This is one of our favourite magazines at home and we like to have a conversation over the photographs in the morning either by exiling tensions over the landscape photographs or by giggling and wowing over aquatic creatures or mice hiding in a hollow apple
– our morning routine that has just greatly improved due to a managerial trick, i.e. a checklist with all that needs to be taken to schools. Seriously, we need it. Our working memory is only capable of remembering six items at once. Everything else is an excess. We also use a simple linguistic change of words. Instead of saying ‘Speed up’, we say ‘Focus on buttoning up your shirt’, etc. So we focus on the actual activity that we want the children to complete and use the verb ‘focus on’. In that way, the morning routine is smoother for all of us and we have nicer starts to the day.
– for a glorious Journey Through Time and Light event at Crich Tramway Village that has put us in a festive mood and brought a huge anticipation of joy for the coming Christmas season
– for finding ways of preparing our son for his weekly Polish dictation tests at his Saturday School.. gosh this was a hard nut to crack..
What would you put on your list?
At Crich Tramway Village, A Journey Through Time and Light, Derbyshire, 2024
It was mid-October and my tomato vine was still producing its pearls. My toddler loved to grab this little coconut shell and move from one tomato pot to another to see if something was still lurking on the slowly drying vines. He was usually lucky.
I’ve been thinking a lot about talents and creativity lately. About how little I understand how creativity works but equally about how limited our lives are when we do not find time and courage to answer inspiration and to hear our enthusiasm speaking to us.
I once read an interview with a famous Polish singer in which she admitted that she relies on her audience to cheer her before she appears on the stage, that she almost needs their permission to sing although she’s been singing for over thirty years and has been having a very successful and fulfilling career. I think this feeling is quite a common one – we all need a cheer every so often, but the ironic thing is that until we don’t show what we can and want to do, those around us would not know what to cheer for. That is why having a go (or multiple goes) at doing something and then sharing it with others is important. Trepidation never disappears but it subsides and turns into a strong feeling of joy related to having something completed.
Maybe ideas are a bit like children, we need to help them grow, help them mature but then we need to let them go so that they meet suitable partners for themselves.
I am happy that I did not need a cheer to plant the cherry tomatoes.
“I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium… a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
Postcards Without Stamps 