Moment

They sit at the kitchen table, my husband and my only daughter, going over spelling words on a Sunday evening. “Spell it, Julianna. Spell ‘we.'”

“Dubba, yew.” It always reminds me of those “double mint gum” ads from my childhood.

“‘W’-what?”

“Dubba, yew, ee.”

It’s a rare quiet evening in our house…well, quiet is a relative term. In this case it means the noise went downstairs, where the boys are chasing each other around with a new light saber brought home from the parish festival.

“Spell ‘we’,” Christian says again.

“Dubba, yew, ee.”

“Very good! Take a bit of ice cream.”

She doesn’t have to be asked twice for that one.

“Now spell ‘with’.”

Th is a hard one for her. She’s a simple gal; one letter should equal one sound, by golly. They spell that one about six times.

There is thundering on the stairs as the epic light saber battle moves onto the main floor. Julianna looks around; Christian redirects her, and the boys turn the living room into a war zone.

As the spelling lesson goes on, her ice-cream coated spoon wanders, and she pulls it through her hair Little Mermaid-style, thus ensuring yet another night of fun brushing her hair at bedtime. But she looks up at her daddy with such adoration, hanging on his every word, that I let it go, and the homework continues as the boys make NASCAR laps around the main floor with light sabers in hand.