More than one witch in our house

Another 2 hour delay, instead of rising at 5am like I normally do, this week I’ve been sleeping as long as I can. The snow, heavy and gleaming obscenely outside of my window like an overly dramatic Crest commercial, is officially unwelcome. I am a big old bear in hibernation. I want to eat, sleep and growl at people.
So this morning, even though the kids clamored around me before I could make my way to the coffee pot, I managed to pour my coffee, grab my journal and head off to write my morning pages in peace. As I wrote, Josh ironed and listened to NPR in our bedroom while Kai created a city in his room. The fire truck sounded its alarm over and over again on its way to the local bedroom disaster.

I didn’t hear Elizabeth, but assumed she was fine. When I finished writing, I opened the door and yelled, “Okay, who is ready for lemon pancakes?”

“ME!” Elizabeth and Kai yelled flying out of their rooms.

As we all headed back downstairs, Elizabeth said, “Mommy, while you were writing, I started a story about a witch stuck in a snowstorm. You want me to read it to you?”
“Yes!” I answered as she pulled out one of her many half-filled notebooks, adorned with her progressing kindergarten writing.

As she read, I felt so privileged to peer into this tiny window of her mind working through her own story line. She proudly read me her story and then bit the tip of her pencil trying to decide what should happen next. Kai, always wanting to be in on a game, offered some suggestions to help move Elizabeth along, but the ideas weren’t hitting the right note in her head and she brushed them aside. She wanted to discover it on her own, create a melody all her own. Kai’s stories are about witches and horses. He likes the horse to eat me as the “problem” in his story. Then he orders the witch to save me as I yelp, “Oh no! I don’t want to be eaten by a horse!” I’m sure he didn’t understand why Elizabeth’s witch did not have a horse.

After a few more minutes of writing, Elizabeth arrived at her stopping point for the morning, put her pencil down and looked up, her head tilted towards her shoulder.
“I’m going to bring my story to school and read it,” she told me. “Mrs. Smith says she wants to hear all of the stories that we write. So I’ll read it to the class.”
Not a bad morning after all.




Once upon a time, there was a witch, a very mean witch in a spooky haunted house. One day,she got stuck in a snow storm. She did not know what to do, but she cackled, "I know just what to do!" She saw a little cottage near by. She said to herself, "I will get in that cottage and sneak their car!"
The End
By Elizabeth Kneifel age 6