Author: leehjones57

[Originally published in September of 2020]

Dear Elena,
You are reading this little essay. That seems obvious, of course, but have you ever wondered how you learned to read?

It’s an extraordinary story. I say extraordinary because I’ve never seen anything like it. Recall that I wasn’t around when your dad or your Uncle John learned to read. Maybe every child learning to read is an equally compelling story – now I wonder.

But I know your story and it’s worth telling.

You have been around books since birth, a gift which cannot be overstated. My parents, Hunter and Peggy, got to meet you only once. I think you were three or four months old. They had a long weekend with you and that was your one encounter with them for your life. And yet within those short days, here’s what you did:

I’ll leave some more images at the end of this piece so you can get a sense of the role books have played in your life. But your parents have been reading to you at bedtime since, well, forever. And every adult in your family has sat and read to you. So early on, you were intrigued with the whole process. How did these scribbles become magical stories? Here’s you, age two and a half, studying a shopping list I had prepared. This was at Glacier National Park in Montana. You wanted to understand how this piece of paper could tell me what we needed at the store – you sat and studied on it for quite a while.

Or look at the picture at the top of this piece. There’s you and grandmother Lisa, whom you’ve called “Ana” since you understood that people had names. [1] We had borrowed you from your parents for an overnight in Monterey, and stopped at a taqueria in Seaside on the way home. There you sit, focused on the menu as if you were deciding between fish tacos and a quesadilla.

And now fast forward to 2020. During the 2019-2020 school year, you were in an extraordinary preschool in Berkeley, called Via Nova. I don’t know how much you remember of it, or will ever remember, but I can’t imagine a better place for you. The environment there was positive, creative, and the teachers just constantly loved on the kids. Maybe one day I’ll write an essay about Via Nova. But when Covid hit in March of 2020, Via Nova, like all the schools, shut down. All your daily learning and creative opportunities vanished, almost overnight.

As millions of parents the world around scrambled to find ways to occupy and educate their kids, Lisa decided she was going to teach you to read. She researched online and ultimately found a phonics program called Logic of English. And then she dove into it as she does with anything that has her attention, but this time you were on the trip with her. Four or five days a week, she studied the upcoming lesson, created the necessary training materials, and got the workbook ready. And then she and you put your heads down and got to it. Sometimes you were a dog, and she would bark, to which you’d respond in English (you were always a very clever, special dog).

Suddenly, the alphabet as we knew it vanished. It became “ah-a-ā”, “bә”, “kә-sә”, “dә”, etc. And man, it was slow going. You’d crawl around under the table, but Lisa just wouldn’t give up. Phoneme after phoneme got seared into your brain. Eventually, well, I remember walking past the table and hearing, “pә”. “i”. “gә”. “pә-i-gә.” “Pi…,” “Pig.” “PIG!” And feeling shivers. I was listening to you learn to read your first words.
What I love about phonics is that it is the essence of “Teach somebody to fish…” You can be taught that the symbol “cat” means the four-legged feline critter. But you have no idea what to do with the word “bat.” However, give you the phonemes – the basic building blocks of the language – and you have the tools you need to learn every word.
Once that basic phoneme foundation was created, you became unstoppable. I watched in wonder as you and Lisa had hour-long phonics sessions, you matching words with pictures, scrambling pieces of paper with phonemes on them to form words, and laughing with delight as you worked out another word. Here’s you with a book that you created from the phonics program. You had to identify and sound out each word and then you got to create a book of words you could spell. And thus could read an entire book:

It’s now September of 2020 – six months after you and Ana first sat down at the dinner table at your house with the phonics book. Ana has, indeed, taught you to read. If she stopped teaching you right now, you’d still be well on your way to reading for life. But be very sure that, at this moment, your reading lessons with Ana are far from over. There are another 6-7 lessons in the set that you’re working on now, and then I think you move onto Book 2. I know I’ll be sad when phonics lessons are over – I guess Lisa will be heartbroken.

For now, though, we are experiencing the avalanche of your reading journey. Everywhere you go, everything you look at, becomes an opportunity to sound out a word. Last night was Friday – the regular Sleepover Friday, followed by Pancake Saturday. You looked at my pajama shirt…

“Lllll.” “iiii” [Me: “it’s the long ‘i’ here – like ‘bike.'”] “Eye…” “Fә”. “Llll-eye-fә.” “Life!”
“i” “sә”. “i-sә”. “Is!”
“Gә” “oooooo” [“‘oo’ like ‘book'”] “oo”. “dә”. “Gә-oo-dә”. “Good.”
“Life Is Good! And a guitar!”

Life is, indeed, good, Elena. I am blessed to have gotten to watch you on your first steps to literacy. I know that Ana will be part of you for the rest of your life, but I doubt she’ll ever give you a gift as great as the one she has been giving you the last six months. I hope you’ll remember that as a dark curtain fell across the entire world and everybody had to stay home, your grandmother Lisa/Ana took you under her wing and all but single-handedly taught you to read.

With abiding love, Aby.

[1] When your parents asked us what “grandparent” names we wanted, Lisa immediately chose “Nana.” I was kind of lost until your Uncle John suggested “Abuelito“. So people referred to us as “Nana” and “Abuelito” around you. Of course, as you began to speak, you couldn’t quite say those names. “Nana” came out “Ana” (the first “A” as in “Father”, likely because of your dad and nanny speaking Spanish to you). And “Abuelito” became “Aby” (my spelling, pronounced “Abby”). Grandparents quickly realize that the child truly picks the name, and we’ve been “Ana” and “Aby” ever since. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

[Originally posted in February of 2021]

Dear Elena,

It’s a month after your 6th birthday, and your life is speeding up faster than I can believe. Which is why I’m pausing today to write about this – I wonder if it won’t be gone before too much longer.

Ever since you were little, you’ve craved and sought close physical contact with “your people.” You hold hands, you burrow into laps, you sprawl across us as if to maximize body contact. I present as Exhibit A you and your Uncle John at Glacier National Park, in July of 2017.

You were two and a half… Look at that lean-in. “This is my Uncle John, and he belongs to me.”

Or this one. This is the two of you last month watching a Hanukkah video. For those of us in your “pack,” it’s a sublime experience, made only more so by its purity. You are still at an age where you (mostly) go where your nose and heart lead you. You don’t cuddle or hug somebody because you think you’re supposed to – you do it because that’s what you want, right now, in that moment.

There was that time out at Wildcat Creek where you and I went on a hike/climb in the dry creek bed. We stopped to have our lunch, and picked out two appropriately flat rocks to sit on. You ate for a couple of minutes, and then said, “Can I sit on your lap?” Trick question? So you sat in my lap and we ate our sandwiches. Then I took this picture.

Of course, as you age, you’ll learn to follow the social rules that we all do – it’s a necessity of navigating modern society. But for now, when you clamber onto a lap, we know it’s because at that moment, that’s where you wanted to sit, period. And I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that it is quite a blessing to have one’s lap chosen as where you want to sit.

Which brings me to yesterday. We’ve made a bit of a routine of picking oranges from a neighbor’s tree and taking them to a local food pantry, where they’re gratefully received. Yesterday, we filled two grocery bags. With Lisa/Ana watching, I climbed into the tree on a ladder and tossed down oranges.

You caught them (“¡Lista!”) and put them in the bag. Of course, you demanded to climb into the tree to pick one, so I spotted and you climbed up and got the last orange for the bag. Then we drove over, handed over the oranges, and went for our reward – a doughnut from the nearby shop.

Sitting in the chilly wind we munched on our doughnuts (“I want half of mine and half of yours.” “Cool.”). Then you silently crawled into my lap and leaned into my shoulder. Was it to warm up? Was it just to be close to one of your pack? Do I care? I was looking at this picture yesterday, and thought, “That’s a different little girl. Not the little girl I played with a year or even six months ago.

Oh, I shall miss that little girl awfully. But the one who has replaced her catches oranges thrown to her, does some arithmetic without her fingers, and sometimes says things that reflect an insight for which none of us would have credited her. I am proud and humbled to be her granddad and can’t wait to get to know her better and see where our adventures take us.

I close this with a moment from a couple of weeks ago. I was over at your house helping your dad build your exceptionally cool two-story fort. I was standing near the back deck when you came out of your parents’ room, and across the back deck. You purposefully walked to me, quietly said, “Aby,” and held up your arms in a way that every small child (and grown-up) knows means, “Pick me up.” So I did. You wrapped yourself to me and put your head on my shoulder. Maybe you were there for a full minute? At some point, my brain said, “You know, of course, that it won’t be long before her growth curve and your strength curve cross in opposite directions, and you won’t be able to do this.” Elena, were you thinking this too? I shushed my brain before it could break my heart. And marinated in that exquisite moment of togetherness.

You couldn’t know it, but that was the beginning of our adventures together.

It became clear from the start that you were not a Barbie and Princess little girl. You were jeans and t-shirts from the jump, and the jeans instantly got holes in the knees. And there was nothing you weren’t up for. 

There was that weekend when you were two and a half that Lisa and I “kidnapped” you to Monterey (with your parents’ permission of course) for the first time. We took you down to the beach, and you just lost it – you ran around the beach, you flirted with the surf zone. You were transfixed by the whole thing. This is you digging the whole Breakwater scene. We even got video of it.

Shortly after this picture and video were taken, you completely misjudged the surf zone. You did a face plant in six inches of very cold Monterey water. I was right there and scooped you up. You looked a bit nonplussed, a little shocked, but not upset. Just “What was that all about?” We took you back to our blanket, stripped your clothes off you, and wrapped you up in a blanket between us. All three of us took a glorious 30-minute nap. Then we put dry clothes on you and went back to exploring the beach.

Once you learned to say “Monterey,” it was all over. “When are we going to Monterey?” became your mantra. As you’ve grown, you’ve become more independent and bold about exploring the beaches of Monterey, but your fascination with the place, and its critters, has never wavered.

This is you, in May of 2021 in Pacific Grove, communing with a hermit crab. You were taken with them from the start, and are still intrigued.

Once we moved into our townhouse in San Leandro, our community, and its warren of “secret passages” became a wonderland of adventure an intrigue for you. We even recreated a Wild Kratts episode, documented here.

As you watch the video, note a couple of things: (1) when you fall, you briefly come over for comforting, but then you’re back out on the trail; and (2) at some point we come out of a pathway and you’re not sure where you are. “Which way is the house?” “It’s that way.” You immediately head in the opposite direction.

Let’s talk about your bike. From the moment you got your bike, you immediately sensed it as a means to freedom. Sadly, I don’t have the video any more, but your dad got a short video of you riding the bike (training wheels and all) down a side street in Berkeley, within days of you getting it at REI. You’re rolling down the sidewalk, and as you head into the distance, we hear a clear, “Yee-ha!” 

February 15, 2020, just as the covid curtain was coming down, Lisa, your uncle John, and I took you over to Washington Elementary School (yes, where you’d attend school the next year). You had suggested that maybe you were ready to lose the training wheels. So I got out a wrench, took them off, and we walked you and your bike over to the school. We put you in the grass first for when you fell over. You got on the bike, pedaled 10 feet, and fell over. Then you got on the bike, pedaled 25 feet, and came to a standing stop. We knew that it would be easier for you to pedal on the hard surface, so we took you over there, and gave you a push-off. That was all she wrote.

These days, we routinely go on long bike rides together, sometimes with a doughnut as ostensible purpose of the journey, sometimes just for the joy of being out on the bikes. One of your favorite rides is between your house and our house – about a mile and a half. It goes right through downtown San Leandro, which can be pretty harrowing, even though we’re still at the stage of riding down the sidewalk. We recently did such a ride, and Lisa asked me how it was, “For Elena? Great – piece of cake, lotta fun. For me? Constant hyper-vigilance for 20 minutes.” So be it. It’s a small price to pay for being out on the adventure trail with you. 

P.S. on 9/3/21… I just had to add two things. First: a few weeks ago, we were out on one of our rambles through the secret passages of our townhouse community. You were in full spy mode for whatever reason. You turned to me and held up your hands – “Aby, I have to teach you the hand sniggles.” Then your eyes twinkled, a look I’ve seen before. The look said, “That’s not quite right is it?” It took me a moment, but then my heart melted with joy. “Oh – signals. Hand signals.” “Yeah, signals!” Then you taught me the secret hand signals. But oh, the world would be a very much better place if they really were “hand sniggles.”

And I promised two Things. Here you are:

Dear Elena,

I don’t know when you’ll first read this, so I don’t know how how much Covid-19 will figure into your consciousness. But as I write this, Covid continues to be ever-present in our minds. Particularly in the Bay Area, everybody is wearing masks, we’re socially distancing, and right about now (November of 2021) we’re all getting our vaccination boosters.

More importantly, kids from 5-11 years old just started getting their first vaccinations. And you got your pfirst Pfizer vaccine just a week ago. You hate shots (don’t we all?), but you were so brave about it, because you understood how important it is. Completely coincidentally, you ran into your friends Dani and Ella at Kaiser, were you were all getting your vaccinations. I have never seen three such courageous girls in all my life.

The next day, you came to our house, then you and Ana went to your swimming lesson. When you got back, there was something unexpected in the living room:

A three-foot unicorn, floating up at the ceiling. Near it, battery-powered tea candles were glowing. New age music was playing on the stereo. The “Angel of the Sea,” which has been in our house for over 20 years, was sitting near the base of the unicorn, with a tea candle in her lap. I came in from the back yard, and you said, “Um, Aby – what happened here?”

“You know, sweetie – I’m not sure. I was out back grilling the chicken, and when I came back in, it looked like this.”

You looked at me, looked back at the unicorn. Lisa was still in the garage.

“Ana! There’s something in here you need to see!”

Lisa walked in, and was appropriately shocked. “Whoa, what’s this? And what’s that at the unicorn’s base?”

You looked and saw that the unicorn was tethered down by a purple box, which you’d later discover was full of Halloween-sized candy. There was a scroll stuck in a loop in the ribbon. It was stained and wrinkled with age. You opened it and tried to read it.

“Too many words – Aby, you read it to me.”

We got on the sofa, and I carefully unrolled the scroll. Then in my most measured, dramatic voice, I read…

You listened in silence, motionless. Then you looked back up at the unicorn. You were quiet for a while after that, and we let you just process the whole thing.

Elena, you will turn seven on Christmas Day, and fantasy thinking is already abandoning you. I’m pretty sure you don’t believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Faerie, but you cling to them a little because, honestly, the world is a much better place with a Tooth Faerie, isn’t it? Or maybe you pretend to believe in it just to soothe the grown-ups around you.

But you seemed to treat the Vaccination Unicorn as a bit special. When your mom showed up to pick you up, you immediately dragged her in to see the unicorn, and showed her the scroll. Mary, bless her, was every bit as awed by it as you were.

Then it was time for you to leave with her, and the miracle of November 2021 took place. Six months, a year ago, your first words would have been to ask if you could take the unicorn balloon home. But as you and Mary were leaving, I asked if you didn’t want to take it.

You paused, obviously conflicted. But your sense of mission, which burns bright in you, won the day.

“No… the unicorn needs to go visit some other kid.”

With a brief look back, you went out the door with your mom.