Today I had a leisurely lunch with my pal Laurie Jeffery, chatting about the usual, web sites, business, Macintoshes, girls, photography, music, art etc. He told me something I just had to blog, and I twisted his arm for some pictures.
His daughter Perran is a cute and bright young thing, who already at three knew more about animals and dinosaurs than I ever have or ever will, including theory and latin names. Precocious is the concept I'm grasping for.
Laurie is a freelance photographer and travels a lot. He showed me a little bag Perran had invented and made for him. It contains a little slip of paper for each day he will be gone. They are marked with the name of the days, and a lipstick kiss on each, so he will never go a day without a kiss.
(Photos by Laurie Jeffery.)
Tis sweet indeed. Endearing charm captured in but a few of its many facets.
ReplyDeleteYou and I already know that Laurie has great taste! That's why he chose you for a friend.
ReplyDeleteThank you Eolake--but thanks also to Laurie for sharing--and most of all, thanks to Perran for being, not only precocious but also such an ingenuous darling with heartfelt love for her father.
ReplyDeleteMaybe my happiest days were when my daughter was a little one and did sweet things like that
ReplyDeletePerran is being home schooled.
ReplyDeleteIf all families in the world had the love and the intelligence of the Jeffery's, I'd have no more complaints.
One word : adorable.
ReplyDeleteA doll such as in the third picture you can buy nowhere : you must be talented (and lucky) enough to make your own. (^_^)
Some day, I will too...
Perran is not the only child to have "invented" this so touching way to express her love from afar, but that story never gets old!
I think she should meet Carl. He's only two, but they DEFINITELY would get along. He can identify a Parabole, a Hexagon, and recite the alphabet and tongue-twisters! :-D
("The archducess's shirts and socks are smooth, super smooth, archi-smotth, hyper smooth".)
Children are not only our future, they are the constant renewal of our fresh youth, the perfumed smile of this world. In a way, the best in us laid before our adoring eyes.
"When you look at the stars after I'm gone, and you know that somewhere, on one of these stars, I am thinking of you and I am happy, to you it'll be as if all the stars were laughing in the sky." -- (The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.)
Too many of my princes and princesses have gone, too many skies to contemplate. I have lived already. And it goes on.
Clicked on the second picture. I hadn't realized it linked to something else than a bigger version.
ReplyDelete"If you are offended by this, get a life!"
Say, Laurie, know where I can get one of these? You know, good merchandise, reasonable prices? ;-)
"Oh, it's not for me, it's for... a friend of mine. Yeah, that's it : a friend of a friend!" I'd love it if I could just hand these around to those in dire need. :-P
Just logged in to say Hello Eolake, and this posting is quite wonderful.
ReplyDeleteSuch a beautiful and imaginative little girl. Truely lovely.
Zep.
Hey Zep, great you're back.
ReplyDeletePascal, the Little Prince has to be the most irritating character and book every written. I think it is pushed upon French students all over the world by a conspiracy to make them hate all French.
Eolake,
ReplyDeleteIt's another one of those books I read spontaneously, like Animal Farm, Romeo and Juliet, Ivanhoe... And I found it quite unique. In a GOOD way!
(Perhaps I'm just weird?)
Still, since my earliest memories of school, I always resented the mandatory reading of books. I feel that if our parents/teachers had been more open-minded, they would have loved to see us read ANYTHING, provided we liked it and did it willingly. I still haven't forgiven, more than 25 years later, that "comics are not reading" bit. ):-P
Or that damn lying tale that "in Japan itself, Grendizer har been banned, because it made the children crazy". Pure anti-Anime propaganda!
Perhaps you're just manifesting one of those catastrophically counter-productive, anti-pedagogic traumas. Or perhaps we simply don't have the same tastes in everything. (Sigh! Aah, Tatya...)
I spontaneously felt The Little Prince was a wonderful ode to the poetry of childhood. The first time I felt it, I had to be around seven... Phooie, grown-ups just don't get us! <:-(
You draw a Boa snake, they see a hat.
You might just be right with your conspiracy thing, here. I also think fundamentalism is a conspiracy to encourage anti-Arab racists worldwide. Or to encourage Arabs into not thinking by themselves, so racism would be justified? Or both...
I warmly recommend you try and read LP in a translated version. It's not about litterature or style, it's just about spirit. Perhaps it is just LP's curse : being written in a simple accessible language, that made it a choice for teaching basic language. Too many excellent books have been ruined for the generations to come by the culturally criminal school system!
True classics should be kept outside the class, so there!
You may have a point.
ReplyDeleteWhat gets me is that comics is given a blanket sub-culture stamp by people who watch Wheel of Fortune and Jerry Springer.
Good morning Eolake
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
My children (4, 7 & 31), have helped make my life much more complete, and with recently becoming a grandpa it’s only getting better.
You may know of the study, in the 70s, with babies needing love and that with out it they lose the will to thrive.
Babies that were abandoned, for one reason or another, if left to their own, and receiving only the basic care would just die.
The study showed that (and this was discovered by accident - imagine being so clinical that you had to do a study to find out love is needed to survive) babies that were held by the nurses for even a short period of time thrived and were healthier than those clinically cared for.
Many assumed that the nurses always held the babies, but prior to the study most babies were only given the basic care. Now it is taught to doctors and nurses that babies and children need to be held and valued in order to grow healthily.
I knew a nurse that cared for these babies and she said that the study only looked at the baby's side of the equation - because as a nurse, holding a baby, she would find that her troubles became meaningless, and she performed her job as a person and health carer much better. She said she could feel the love the babies were giving back.
Maybe the answer to solving the world's problems is to make all those grumpy old politicians take care of babies, instead of bombing them. Lets start a love campaign and have our children send them love notes, too.
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need...
Jerry
Hi Folks,
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your very kind words about our very special daughter. To my wife Vicky and me, Perran is the sun and the moon.
Revlizbeth, I have passed on your thanks to Perran and she said "Your very welcome" and she blew you a kiss as well.
Jerry,
ReplyDeleteI had heard about that study, but thank you for the many enriching details. And comments.
"The love the babies were giving back"... You wouldn't happen to have chatted with Signalroom, per chance? You think alike :-)
Laurie J.,
I saw Perran's incredible photo on your site (among other awesome photos). Silly me, all this time I thought she looked like an angel. I stand corrected : she's a fairy. With angel hair.
I showed her pics to my mom. She said : "I'm counting on you to make me a grand-daughter like this one." All I need now is for the perfect woman to meet me... ;-)
Please, send Perran my admiring love on behalf of the whole world. Her kisses are the prettiest I have ever seen! And tell her little Carl kissed her photo on my screen, I hope she doesn't mind. :-)
P.S.: What's that she's got all over her face in the first pic? I just can't make it out. (Kids are so resourceful, there are just too many possibilities. Apricot jam, maybe?)