Genius in the Making

My younger daughter came home from all her travels yesterday. I was so happy to see her - I'd planned cookie making as a way of bonding when she got home, and the two of us made Thumbprint Cookies out of the wind eggs our chickens laid and homemade blackberry jam from the blackberries in our yard. The cookies are fabulously shortbread-y, not too sweet, so that the jam is a lovely counterpart to the pastry-like cookie part. We don't use nuts because of the Badb's orthodonture.

We were sitting on the couch enjoying cookies and milk when Badb announced "I'm writing a book!" She pulled a tablet from her suitcase and handed it to me. Her irregular printing covered two thirds of a single page and told the story of a little girl named "Lean," (pronounced "Lee Ann") who went first to Phoenix, then Washington D.C., then New York where she was obligated to walk everywhere or take the "sobway." Sometimes, she had to both walk and take the sobway. Then she went to camp, and then to South Carolina. Lean bemoaned the fact that she was never in one place long enough to feel settled, and as a result she was "egsosted."

I read the story, and as I was drying my cheeks, the Pirate read it. Both of us made that "Awwwww!" face at each other.

I was impressed both that my daughter had felt the need to journal at all, and then that she went right for the heart of the matter. Not a dry recounting of the facts and sights - anyone can write that kind of list. My daughter at the age of eight has already stripped away the actual events and gotten right to the place where the writer's value lies. She pulls her own hopes and miseries out of her viscera, pokes through them, and then smears them on paper so that we can all look at it and say "Yes. Inside, I'm like this too."

It's easy to entice children of any age into cookie making. They immediately see the value of it and will participate just for the promise of being able to eat cookies. Writing is a little different. How do you convince your child that her efforts, while not the classic third-grade "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" fare, are more fabulous, more noteworthy? Less chocolate chip with toffee bits and cream cheese frosting, more subtlely sweet shortbread with occasional tart blackberry nuggets? All I can do is continue to consume them with great relish and let her know that, even if nobody else likes them, they'll always be my favorite.