Family Weekend Stuff

This weekend is a long weekend in Ontario (and a couple of other provinces) because Monday is "Family Day." A couple of years ago the government realized there's a really long space between Christmas and March Break (or, for people who aren't teachers, Easter) where there are no holidays in between, so they created Family Day in February. Today is a PA Day, so I took the day off to spend it with my daughter. So in light of Family Weekend, I decided to do a family post. (Especially since y'all have caught a glimpse of my family here...) That was just a taste of my husband's guitar playing. A friend of mine found this earlier this week... a track from a CD my husband's long-defunct band put out in the mid-90s, when everyone I knew was in a band. I was a groupie for a while, joining the band on tour and hopping across the province selling merch for them. I did see everything (when they headed out to Halifax to tour with Sloan I had to stay put in Ontario because I had my stupid school). But it was a bit of a blast from the past to hear this track again! Check out the BritPop influence. ;) The band was actually pretty brilliant, but there were personality clashes, and they broke up.

My Facebook status earlier in the week actually made it onto David Lavery's blog, which made me laugh. (Go here to see what he said.) As I explained in it, I tell my daughter a bedtime story I make up every night, usually involving this elaborate land underground that we've both constructed over many years (it's become quite the place) and this boy above the ground who can go into that world and move around in it, and has become their protector. But I was tired, so I began telling her the story of Romeo and Juliet, complete with the deadly ending. She was saddened and delighted all at once, and she loved it. Ever since, she's wanted a new one every night. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner!! Not only is she discovering Shakespeare for the first time, but it's making me skim through the plays after she goes to sleep so I'll be ready for the next night, and I'm remembering them all over again (remember, it's been a decade since I've read most of them... with the exception of The Tempest, which I reread for one of the Lost books).

Romeo and Juliet probably still remains her favourite. She was shocked when they both died, and at one point I began humming "What Is a Youth" from the Zeffirelli version of the play (one of my favourite versions... Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey have got to be two of the most beautiful creatures who ever walked this earth...) and now she wants me to sing that to her every night as she falls asleep.



The night after Romeo and Juliet she asked for another story "like that one." I said, "You mean, one written by the same person?" And she said yes. So I told her Twelfth Night. I had to go and check a quick synopsis in one of my books first (to get all the Violas and Olivias straight) and she found that one a little confusing, but was laughing when I was adding in my own facial expressions and "Wait... what?!" asides when one twin kept getting mistaken for the other one. She liked that one a lot, too, and was happy that it actually ended on an up note. I told her they were written by the same man, 500 years ago, and his name was Shakespeare. The next night was King Lear (complete with a gruesome retelling of Gloucester getting his eyes gouged out... one of my favourite moments in English literature), and by the end of that one she first said, "Wow, that Shakespeare guy was a pretty good writer!" But then added, "But can't he come up with more happy endings??"

Next up: The Tempest. I have the Waterhouse picture of Miranda standing on the shore of the island watching the shipwreck, and it hangs above my bed, so my daughter's used to seeing it. I used that to point out what Miranda looked like, and the tempest the Prospero whips up. At the end of the story I told her it was probably my favourite (although that changes by the minute) and she said she wasn't sure she liked it as much. I told her I felt bad for Caliban and that many scholars debate him more than anything else in the play. She asked why; after all, wasn't he a bad person? I said no, he lived on that island, along came Prospero and he enslaved both him and Ariel, and it's not Caliban's fault that his mother wasn't a nice person. So that sparked a discussion about native rights and I think I might have slipped some Lost/Others talk in there.

Last night was Midsummer Night's Dream. She laughed out loud in many parts, especially when I was braying like Bottom and pretending to be Titania, professing my undying love to an ass. At the end she said, "I think that one was a little silly, Mummy." She also thought it was short, and wanted something else. So I shook things up and told her the story of Mill on the Floss, as best I could remember it. FINALLY... a use for that English education!

Tonight was Hamlet. Whew. THAT was a doozy. First, I have to admit that I didn't read Hamlet until I took my Masters. Seriously... I had a Renaissance course and a Shakespeare course in my undergrad and my prof didn't teach Hamlet in either one of them (same guy). So it wasn't until I took Shakespeare at U of T that I finally read the damn thing. So it hasn't been as ingrained in my psyche as the other books. So I skimmed through it last night and remembered a lot of it, settled in on her bed and began the story. I made sure to really jazz up Ophelia's madness, and at one point was attempting a reenactment of it, walking around the room while gazing at the ceiling and saying loopy things, pretending to weave flowers in her hair. She giggled and I laughed but explained that poor Ophelia had lost her mind from grief and confusion. My daughter didn't quite know what that meant, but then I walked Ophelia outside and pretended to drop flowers into a stream, and then decided I'd like to float in the stream just like the flowers. But Ophelia couldn't swim, and floated down the stream and under the water... my daughter's eyes widened and then her lip began to quiver. "Is she dead?" "Yes... she's dead." "Is anyone else going to die in this one, Mummy?" "Um..."

By the end of it I'd pretended to die by poisoning as Gertrude, I thrust my sword into Laertes as Hamlet and then pretended to be Laertes and begged forgiveness and then gakked my way into death, then I poured poison down Claudius's throat, then had him die, then almost died as Hamlet, then almost drank poison as Horatio, then stopped Horatio from doing it and finally died as Hamlet, flopped onto the end of her bed. She applauded... AND... scene.

"Wait... that's IT?" she said. Sigh.

Then she asked me if Ophelia killed herself and why? I said I'm not sure if she killed herself on purpose, or if she got into the stream driven by her madness and died accidentally. I told her that's a big question that surrounds the book, to be honest, and I felt like I was having a proper little literary discussion with her. She said she believes it was an accident, and I agreed with her.

I'm really enjoying this! And she'll be well versed in Shakespeare before she's out of grade 1. This morning I was in the kitchen and said, "Howl! Howl! Howl!" and then looked at her and said, "What's that from?" "King Lear," she said without pause. ;)

Tomorrow is Macbeth. If anyone knows of a good "Shakespeare for Kids" book, please let me know!

My son isn't as interested in this. He's more interested in discovering music at this point, so tonight was a Beatles night. I was washing dishes and began singing "Helter Skelter" and he looked at me and said, "WHAT are you singing?" I stared back and said, "Oh COME ON" and rushed over and popped in the White Album. Next thing it was a crazed dance-a-thon in our living room.

Oh, and earlier today I gave him a cinnamon heart. He'd never had one before. This was pretty much his exact reaction:



Have a great weekend, everyone!