It has been a hiatus of teaching first grade. I am no sure is that counts as a hiatus, but that is what I did. Learned a lot in first grade again, but missed my kids, husband, dogs and ...writing.
This is what happened while I was gone.
My first story to be published was picked up by Skipping Stones, a children's cultural magazine. Disappearing Language ran on the April - June 2014 issue. I wrote it because of the Native Americans that are losing their language. Not all are losing their language, but some are. On the White Mountain Apache reservation it is being lost. The kids can understand it, but they can not speak it. The schools try to study the language but it is not helping. That is like taking Spanish in High School, who ever learned to speak Spanish from that. You can understand some of it, but you do not speak it.
The little boy in the story asking his dad how to say words in Apache as they are driving to the rez. The boy writes words down, but does not know how to speak it. His grandma and grandpa speak Apache to him.... "words flowed out of their mouths so naturally like a wave rolling on the ocean, crashing when they hit my ignorance, my anger at the fact that I couldn't understand them." He learns a story from them about their dowry. They were the last generation to follow the dowry. The boy concedes to being okay with not knowing the language of his forefathers. He will hang on to the stories.
My own children are getting to an age where they wish they knew their own language, but their dad didn't see much use for Apache language. It is not that it is useful, it gives an inner peace, that is what it does. Now they have to be okay with not knowing their language and must remember the stories.
This is what happened while I was gone.
My first story to be published was picked up by Skipping Stones, a children's cultural magazine. Disappearing Language ran on the April - June 2014 issue. I wrote it because of the Native Americans that are losing their language. Not all are losing their language, but some are. On the White Mountain Apache reservation it is being lost. The kids can understand it, but they can not speak it. The schools try to study the language but it is not helping. That is like taking Spanish in High School, who ever learned to speak Spanish from that. You can understand some of it, but you do not speak it.
The little boy in the story asking his dad how to say words in Apache as they are driving to the rez. The boy writes words down, but does not know how to speak it. His grandma and grandpa speak Apache to him.... "words flowed out of their mouths so naturally like a wave rolling on the ocean, crashing when they hit my ignorance, my anger at the fact that I couldn't understand them." He learns a story from them about their dowry. They were the last generation to follow the dowry. The boy concedes to being okay with not knowing the language of his forefathers. He will hang on to the stories.
My own children are getting to an age where they wish they knew their own language, but their dad didn't see much use for Apache language. It is not that it is useful, it gives an inner peace, that is what it does. Now they have to be okay with not knowing their language and must remember the stories.
