Real life big enough for small-talk fodder
Each Monday in Didi’s class, the students make a weekend report that goes onto a flip chart. It’s a form of sharing, to get over their shyness, to practice public speaking, and to learn how to make small talk. The entries are also a window into what goes on during a family’s weekend, or rather — as I’ve learned — a window into what a kid remembers.
Whenever I go by the classroom to volunteer or to meet with Didi’s teacher, I always check the chart, learning about how classmates camped in the backyard, visited their grandparents or participated in sports.
Sometimes when I see Didi’s contributions, I cringe, just a bit: “Visited Apple store and played on iPad” or “played game on iPad.”
He gets a half hour of screen time every day, and it’s undeniably a highlight for him. One could argue that if he had screen time for hours on end, he wouldn’t bother mentioning it; it remains a treat. Even still, I feel guilty.
“Do you ever take him to museums?” his teacher inquired.
Yes, I said. Art galleries, Maker Faires, hikes, the library, the neighborhood pool, trips to the beach and other excursions that have us barnstorming the nine counties of the Bay Area and beyond.
His teacher suggested that I practice with him on what to say.
“You want me to him?” I asked. “To help him make conversation, with his classmates, if they ask questions,” she explained.
Small talk for first-graders? It’s a skill — or is it art? — that opens many kinds of relationships, personal and professional. And so, I started coaching Didi and Gege not only in the car on the way to school, but also at the moment we completed any activity that might be suitable for conversation fodder. There are times, however, when the activity captivates the boys so much that they immediately ask if and when we could return.
Over the long weekend, we visited the new Magritte exhibit at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, filing in just after the museum opened, along with scores of parents and their children. It was like happy hour for families. We hustled through and played around on the interactive panels, but for Gege, Jim Campbell’s “Tilted Plane” was the most mesmerizing installation. Picture a grid of light bulbs strung at different heights. While your eyes adjust, it’s as if you’re traveling through hyperspace.
“Wait until you get to the end and turn around,” a man called out to us.
After our perspective shifted, our minds seemed to expand into infinity. Then we lay on our backs, taking in the view into another dimension.
As for Didi, cherry picking stirred him most. After breakfast, we’d rushed out of the house to beat the heat and the crowds. A couple of the Brentwood orchards we considered visiting had to shut down temporarily, to wait for more cherries to ripen. I imagined branches picked clean, as if locusts had come through.
At the gate, workers issued us a plastic bucket and inside, Didi and Gege ran at full speed between the rows, where the cherries hung low and heavy. The temperatures were already rising and we looked for patches of shade where we might harvest cherries.
The boys plucked with glee, with a satisfying tug and snap of the stem, and the weight of the cherries felt good in the palms of our hands. They filled up the bucket so quickly that we told them to slow down, to search for the plumpest, reddest cherries. It was like an Easter egg hunt, made vertical, made healthy, and I wanted the boys to understand that their food came from somewhere, not always packaged in plastic and loaded into a market bag.
Though we’d been told that the cherries were tart, and would be sweeter after the upcoming spell of warm weather, they were juicy and delicious eaten straight off the tree. At least that’s what my husband and I concurred. When the boys sampled cherries for the first time, they tightened their lips and rejected them.
Maybe we could try making a cherry pie, or jam, I said, which thrilled them. We gathered about 3½ pounds, and we decided to stop while the picking still seemed novel, rather than laborious. Later though, my mother, hoping for more, asked, “That’s all?”
As we left the farm, more families arrived, speaking in Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, English and probably others, too. We had a common joy and excitement, clear in any language, that Didi couldn’t wait to share, too.
His teacher suggested that I practice with him on what to say.