Sunday tale of K and C

T is off to Jakarta, so I dine at home with the kiddies solo. Since M is not home from "off" yet, I take out the leftover spaghetti and throw together a Greek salad with baby spinach, feta cheese cubes and olives. K is a voracious salad eater, and C loves feta cheese enough that he accepts the deal of eating four leaves per cube. We then gorge on HG ice cream bars which I never buy - except that C begged me to earlier that day.

Due to the busy-ness of this past weekend - friends from out of town, a visit to the lawyer, an eye appointment, a soccer tournament and not just one but two kiddie birthday parties, there was a bit of neglected homework to do.

C gamely attacks his English work - write an 80-word essay based on a sequence of illustrations while making use of as many idioms from another list. I am impressed as I read his first sentence in rather neat-for-him penmanship: "This is a cock and bull story." Cock and bull being #8 in the list of idioms. He writes diligently for about ten minutes, even though sometimes his letters grow and shrink in size. Meanwhile, K delivers an extemporaneous storytelling - writing in her head out loud - telling me the essay she would have wanted to write, if she had C's homework. And her first sentence is, "It was your typical Wednesday afternoon..." and her oral recitation has a beginning, middle, climax and denoument.

Oh my goodness my children are writers! I proudly tell them that. At age 9 and 8 respectively, they are writing what I was writing as a teenager. I praise them to high heaven, but am conscientious about issuing my caveat. "OK," I tell them, "You can always be writers - but make sure you're something else as well." K says she wants to be an architect. Great, I tell her. C says he wants to be a director. OK, I say.

Anything, anything, anything. Just don't be just a writer. Because there are lots of wonderful things to be, as well.