If you ask Ali what she’s going to be when she grows up, she’ll tell you that she’s going to own a bakery (and that she’s an artist). The bakery is a big deal to her, and we have many urgent conversations as to the particulars of running the business, as she’s deeply consumed with the looming responsibilities.
They happen randomly, in a moment of silence in the car, right before bed, or during dinner.
“Mom, how do I know how much to pay my employees?”
“Well, you research the market, you see what other people are paying bakery employees, and you decide if you want to save money and pay people less but have less loyal employees, or spend more money and pay people more and have more loyal employees.”
“I think I definitely want to pay people more.”
Another day,
“Hey Mom, when are we going to Gramamma and Pop’s house?”
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“Well, I need to talk to Pop about building some of the things I’ll need for my bakery. Like the cases for the cakes and the tables and chairs.”
She’s lucky to have an accountant for a mother, as she’s started discussions about profit and loss, variable and fixed expenses, whether or not she’ll need her Fireman-Aspiring-Brother’s services (hopefully not), what we should name the restaurant (She wanted to go with “Ali’s”, but there’s a bar downtown that we pass regularly that is called “Al’s”, and with the apostrophe it looks a lot like “Alis” and she doesn’t want to copycat so she might go with “Alana’s” instead), how she can incorporate her role as an artist into her bakery, and the fact that she definitely wants to work the cash register and hire people to do the actual baking.
Chris is all in on the bakery plans. We were running down Morris Avenue a couple of weeks ago and he pointed out a beautiful vintage two-story building for sale.
“We could go ahead and buy this for Ali, live in the upstairs, and rent out the downstairs until she’s ready to open her bakery. Morris Avenue is going to be THE place to be in Birmingham in 15 years. Mark my words.”
He’s also trying to convince me that if she keeps on this path, we should sign the kid up for some college business classes in high school (the perks of homeschooling) and then use her college fund to launch her bakery career.
That’s all good and wonderful but I think they’ve both got it wrong.
She’s a writer.
Greatly inspired by reading the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid, her own personal diary, stuffed with illustrations and great emotion, is truly a work of art. I adore getting caught up on it to see how she decided to portray the events of our lives.
(That scribbly pile of crap is definitely an accurate portrayal of “before” in her room.)
Also, she gets really excited when our English book gives tips on story creation, such as when we learned how to make a word web, she insisted on me giving her a new notebook just so she could create word webs every day before composing her version of family happenings in her beloved diary.
Writing is a lovely and flexible thing, though, and can often be done alongside or even about one’s main career. Ask me how I know. So maybe she will own that bakery and maybe she’ll write the stories of interactions with the public, since she’ll be running the cash register. But I am confident that somehow, she’s going to be writing voluminously.
Which is why, when we got to the section in her English book about the process of writing, I told her that I used this very process every day. Then I, for the first time ever, read aloud a blog post to my daughter.
It was so strange since the post was partially about her, and she wasn’t portrayed completely innocently (it was The Runaway Incident, and I didn’t sugarcoat nor did she deny her tattle-taleing tendencies.)
She was, for the first time in a while, really excited by something I had done. She forgot that she was supposed to have an air of unimpressedness when it came to her mother’s ideas, and begged me to start reading her more stories that I’ve written about her.
I agreed – as soon as we finish reading The Last Battle, our next read-aloud “book” will be…my blog.
She was thrilled.
And now I find myself, as if I’m about to read to The Queen of England, under a lot of pressure.
I mean, I knew she would eventually read my blog – I always have. But I unreasonably assumed that it would be after she had kids of her own and therefore could read through the context of motherhood. Instead, I guess she’s going to get a crash-course in motherhood-reality from me.
Then there were other issues.
How many stories should I skip? What am I going to read to her that I don’t even remember writing? Will I have to censor myself to read myself to my daughter? Is there anything I’ve written that she’s going to get mad or embarrassed about the fact that I published it? Will she understand my sarcastic style or hear it as complaining about motherhood?
Should I start in 2008, when my writing was crappy and my stories were poorly thought-out and edited, but I had adorable toddler-Ali stories that she will love? My orderly brain really wants to start at the beginning, but this is an exercise in teaching Ali how to write well.
But the most pressing question is: will she like how I’ve portrayed her childhood?
One positive, though, is that I’m really excited about the opportunity to read my blog aloud with the inflections and tone in which I wrote it. Because who knows what tone you guys are reading it in – maybe you think I’m a motherhood-whiner. And who knows what tone Ali would read it in if I left her to discover it on her own in her angsty tween years when she’s already convinced that I’m the enemy.
It will be an experiment. And it will be interesting to see how long it takes her to get bored with me…and therefore, herself.
One way or the other, we’re going to learn a lot about each other…and ourselves.
Nathaniel’s been reading mine for years … unbeknownst to me, he started reading it during his “computer time” at school in 2nd grade. Two full years before he TOLD me he was doing that. Good luck to you and Ali! I think you’ll have a great time. :-)
That’s impressive – Ali is in second grade and would have no idea how to get to a website. But she can run any app on an iPad….
Clearly I’m failing her during “Computer Time”.
As a mother of 4 and a grandmother of 10′, I love your stories. Not only do they bring back a lot of memories, I also am in awe of your sunset pictures not to mention your running. I don’t really have a way with words but I’ve been working on making our stories more entertaining for the grandkids.
Thank you so much! I’m sure your grandchildren will treasure your stories!
Ok – my son wants to be flat Stanley to eat pancakes in anti gravity… Or a good Captain Underpants. I remind him he is currently rather like George and Harold.
Ok – what English book do you use? None that I find show a good clear writing process. It’s about the fun, poofy activities. Fun, not substantive. Or dry and so boring there is no scaffolded learning!
I’m using BJU English, and we’re really loving it. I’m actually using mostly BJU this year and all of it has been great.
I think I would just show her your favorites – she’ll find the rest on her own soon enough. I loved the one where Noah killed a bug and Ali wrote about it afterwards. She sounds so smart and excited about the future. Makes me excited too! Hope she gets that bakery.
Better now than when she is a teenager!
I think starting at the beginning would be a great way to teach Ali about improving writing skills and finding your voice, which can be really difficult. (Not that I think your early posts were terrible or anything! They were great, but pretty different from your current style.) Plus, wouldn’t you love to be able to read what you and your mom did day-to-day when you were a toddler? I would love that!
I agree with starting at the beginning. Another plus is that Ali can hear what life was like before Noah arrived. I imagine she would enjoy that.
One curious question – why would she name her bakery “Alana’s”?
Alana is her whole name. She just only goes by Ali. :-)
I never knew that! Neat!
That’s so great that she writes so much! K is JUST NOW starting to enjoy writing and play with it on her own. I love how focused Ali is. That’s awesome that she has her bakery business planned out. She’s probably given it more thought than some adults in the same situation! Does she want to be called Alana when she grows up?
And I totally know how you feel about the blog reading. K has been reading mine for a while and it’s interesting. I feel like I have to be extra careful about what I write because she embarrasses easily and has been embarrassed by some of the things I’ve posted. Some of it surprising…like when she says, “take a video of me!” I take that to mean she’s fine for me to post it, but just the other day she said, “why did you post that?? I didn’t want you to!”
Sometimes she says she wants to be called Alana when she gets older, but I doubt it will stick.
I think it will be a really fun and special time to go through your blog together. Hopefully she’s still young enough that she will think the stories about her are funny and not get to embarrassed. We were all kids once so we don’t judge while reading :)
Whatever you do, skip the Tooth Fairy posts until she has lost all her teeth. Lol.
HA!! Very good point. There are some Santa ones I’ll have to watch out for as well.
My son was 6 or 7 when he started asking me to read him my posts. I haven’t read him all of them–because I write about some topics that are not appropriate for him and have nothing to do with him–but I have read him most of the ones that are about him. Sometimes he gets upset that I have been “rude” by describing his behavior honestly from my perspective, but it’s a good starting point for discussion. Example:
http://articles.earthlingshandbook.org/2008/10/08/what-right-have-you-to-be-angry/
I know exactly what you mean about wanting to read the posts in your own voice! I enjoy that too.