Our granddaughters

by aleks

SJG • 7/23/12 - our granddaughters - the entrance of  the Garden

On Monday Lynnda and I took our granddaughters - 2 y.o. (minus 2 days)  and 7 y.o. (minus 4 weeks)  to Seattle Japanese Garden:  Ellie has been coming here for years, and Sophie is just starting.  There is something really nice in the fact that Lynnda and I have become friends through our work as guides in SJG, and even nicer to be able to pass our love of the Garden to our grandkids.

SJG • 7/23/12 - new young friends walking up the hill together

I don't know what to write in this post, without breaking any confidentiality rules (which is why I chose not up-close pics, too - the face recognition software that both girls will grow up to live with... well, I'm not going to help with that),  but i just wanted to share this.

Maybe only, that I hope the girls will grow up as inspired by the Garden as their grandmothers are. Maybe some day they'll find some laughter here, or peace and consolation, or maybe they'll  dream their dreams here, or find a connection with something that really matters to them.

SJG • 7/23/12 - feeding koi

Ellie is keeping a haiku journal of her summer in seattle and this is what she created that day (I still write most of her compositions down, but not all anymore; she now can write some of it by herself):

•••

Large flat rock

at entrance 

to magic garden

•••

fuzzy, velvet 

leaf 

on yakushima bush

•••

Sophie drops koi-food,

I push it off the deck -

koi are happy

•••

SJG • 7/23/12 - the Garden visit nearly ending....  see you later my childhood friend!

• • • • • • • • • 

A note about  yakushima rhododendron and teaching haiku to children:  I told Ellie that haiku is an easy way to make pictures with words: all you need to do is make up 3 lines about something  you want to remember - the shorter the lines, the better haiku. This year she learned to simplify her haiku by dropping unnecessary verbs and other grammatical 'luggage', and right now is learning the  concept of kigo (hint-words, denoting seasons).

Even though she only heard Lynnda say 'yakushima rhododendron' and wasn't sure if she wanted to even try to repeat it, she asked me to put the correct name in her haiku, because that is what she wanted to remember. She learned that trick last year while we travelled to Poland together: she wanted to remember correct names of places, rivers and castles we visited, so she asked me to spell them for her correctly in her haiku: she thought 'locking'  the names in haiku is a good way to preserve them,  and that when she re-reads her travel journals when she is older it will all make sense that way, because she trapped 'real' words which are on the maps and in dictionaries...