‘Aththamma, would you like me to teach you to count to five?’
‘Oh yes, go on Taruki.’
*****
The Little Teachers.
Four steps… stop… four steps… stop.
The sound that I heard was odd.
I quickly looked up from my slumber in my comfortable armchair in the lounge. I saw my granddaughters tiptoeing towards the lounge, holding hands. Then I remembered. Today they were ready to teach their Aththamma. They had wished to be teachers! So they came and sat around my rocking chair.
Taruki started first.
‘Aththamma, would you like me to teach you to count to five?’
‘Oh yes, go on Taruki.’
In her own delightful way of pronouncing, she began to count.
Eins (one), I heard it as ‘eins’
Zwei (Two), I heard it as ‘sine”
Drei (Three), I heard it as’thri’
Vier (Four), I heard it as ‘feeya’
Funf (Five), I heard it as ‘foof’
It was so funny – especially her pronunciation of number five. ‘What sort of counting is this?’ I wondered. Then the truth dawned – She had just started to go to main school and had learnt to count in German.
As a keen learner-grandmother, I wrote down in my note book what I learned from Taruki.
Taruki very proudly informed her Mama that she had taught Aththamma to count and that Aththamma was a good student. She even asked her Mama to give five-star stickers to Aththamma and also a little bit of pink slime from her pink slime ball which she got as one of her Birthday gifts, as a reward!
Mila, my youngest granddaughter, loved showing the things from her nursery. She would run ahead of me to the nursery and would roll on the nursery floor, pointing out all sorts of things. The cot was her favourite where she hid her two favourite soft toys – the tiger and the bear. So I learned the names of many pretty things she had in her nursery. She often made baby noises while pointing to her favourite things, which I think was her way of teaching me.
Nikini was very fond of showing me her dance steps. She would be the leader and would ask her Mama to switch on the music. Then she would guide her Mama, Appachchi, Aththa and me in following her moves in dancing. While we swayed to the music, it was funny to see little Olive who was in her Mama’s arms, swaying and kicking her feet as fast as she could, trying to keep up with the beat!
Nikini enjoyed showing me colouring pictures in her activity book. She would add beautiful black pin dots to decorate flower petals, lifting her art work to a whole new level of creativity for her age. She would then ask me to draw flower petals in the same way.
Nikini and Olive would often join hands to teach aththa and aththamma, dos and don’ts of playing hide and seek indoors. And when they found me – usually behind a chair in the dining room, they would giggle out loud filling our whole house with their giggles. But Olive always remembered to come back and offer me a helping hand to stand up and return to my lounge chair.
Olive loved drawing – straight lines, zigzag lines and circles – all across her sheets of paper. Then she would ask me to draw similar shapes using colours of my choice. One day, she found a picture of a tortoise and exclaimed in delight, ‘Dingy!’ I was surprised and touched that she remembered the name of the baby tortoise who went missing in the children’s picture book, I had written.
They taught me little things, when they became the teachers and I, the student. I cherished these moments being their student, living in their world, yet seeing it through Aththamma’s eyes.
Sometimes Aththa became their student and I became the quiet observer. In both cases, I remained a keen witness to their little world. That magical world!
Diyamanthi Galpoththage – Auckland
Artwork credit: ‘FREEPiK’
