Geography Lessons

Tonight while I was making dinner, Sam came into the kitchen with her backpack on. She explained that she was going on a trip.

Me: “Where are you going?”
Sam: “To the United States.”
Me: “Oh, I’m from the United States.”
Sam: “This is a different United States.”
Me: “Oh?”
Sam: “Yeah, it has an east coast. It’s called London.”

East coast. West coast. London. Brighton. France. Sam knows these and others as places, but she doesn’t really understand them as fixed points in relation to one another. She definitely doesn’t get the notions of distance and time as they relate to geography. The first week we were here she asked several time to go to Shorebird park, or some other Bay Area haunt, only to hear the parents say over and over again, “That’s all the way in California. It’s too far…”

Earlier today Sam and I were hanging out at one of our Brighton haunts–Queen’s Park. Because this week is “half-term,” the park rangers were conducting some activities for kids. We went to an area where kids were making leaf hats– leaves stapled to a circle of poster board worn round the head like a crown–and Sam was reluctant to participate. One of the park rangers noticed that she was carrying a little plush cat inside her jacket and he initiated conversation with her. One way to get shy Sammy to talk is to ask about her animal friends.

Park Ranger: “What’s the name of your cat?”
Sam (softly) “Snips.”
PR: “Wha’s that?”
Sam: “SNIPS!”
PR: Ah, Snips. Now, where do you come from?”
Sam (looks at me and I encourage her to answer): “From our flat.”
Mom: “Where do we live usually?”
Sam: “We live in England.”
Mom: “But where did we come from?”
Sam: (quiet)
PR: “What country do you come from?
Sam (eyes alight b/c she finally gets it): “We come from California!”

Laughter all around. California does seem like its own country at times.

The park ranger and I get quite chatty at this point. He tells me that he’s going to the States next summer to spend three weeks riding a Harley with his mates through the Midwest.

Just before we left, he asked Sam how old she was. When she held up three fingers and said “Three!” he replied, “You’re very well-spoken for three years old.”

I prompted Sam to thank him for the compliment, and then he added, “And the accent is just so cute!

We ended our conversation by talking about how foreign children sound so precocious merely speaking their own native tongue. That made me think of the little grandson of my Grenoble host family who once knocked my socks off by using what at the time seemed like an intense use of the subjunctive for a 5 year old: “Il va falloir que j’y aille. [very literal translation– It will be necessary that I go there.]

And of course many of the English toddlers running around the playground sound like tiny librarians to me. “Mummy, are we going home for tea now?”

I doubt that Sam will pick up the accent while we’re here, though she is already picking up the vocabulary. And maybe she’ll start to put some of this geography together. After the park visit today she spent some time staring out at the sea from our living room window. Suddenly, she cried, “I can see Pennsylvania! And Oakland!”