How Do You Write About Grief?

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

We all experience grief and loss. Some of us more than others. There is no escaping its grip.

The longer we live, the more we lose.

The grief of losing a thing, and the fear of losing it,

are equal.”     

        ~Seneca

In trying to comfort others, or share our grief experience, we get stuck in the sphere of emotion and physical sensation. How do we speak about grief?

We turn to metaphor and imagery.

A black hole.  A sinking ship. A shredded heart. Time stands still. Grief eats like acid.

Sometimes, grief can be described in the same way as love.

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming.”      

For is there grief without love?

“All you can do is learn to swim.”

Author Anne Lamott writes, “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

Siesta Keyes Beach, Sarasota, FL. March 2019

Happy Pi Day!

From PiDay.org

In case you’re scratching your head…Pi Day falls on March 14. It’s as a celebration of the first 3 significant numbers of  the math constant represented by the Greek letter π—3.14

Remember calculating the area of a circle? 

Divide any circle’s circumference by its diameter; the answer (whether for a pie plate or a planet) is always approximately 3.14.

Pi has a rich history beginning in the ancient world.  Some attributed magical meaning to  π.  For a few thousand years, mathematicians have been scratching their heads over its properties.

Pi Day is celebrated around the globe with pie eating, math chats, contests, and related activities.  MIT has been known to send out its admission decisions on March 14. San Francisco’s Exploratorium has an entire exhibit devoted to this mysterious number.

Could you compete in a Pi memorization contest? 

This is a particularly impressive feat as there appears to be no repeating pattern in the constant.   

Kids (and grownups, too) are fascinated by the idea that Pi never ends! In other words, if you write it out as a decimal, you’re going to need a ton paper.

3.1415926535897932384626433…

Maybe your children, or grandchildren, are lucky to have a school celebration today for this irrational number.

When my kids were home, I baked a pie on March 14.  We explored circle art and puzzles. 

From 74million.org

As an educator, I’m passionate about helping kids see math as more than arithmetic.  As a private tutor, I’m often dismayed by the dull and relentless worksheets kids get for math homework.

And don’t get me started on the state of math education.

I advise parents not to leave their child’s math learning to school. Supplement and augment. 

Kids need to develop a strong number sense.  Make math a part of your daily life together: cooking, building, measuring, counting, estimating, banking, graphing, calculating, sorting, scoring, and shopping.

Introduce the language of math to little ones. No need to keep negative numbers a secret until sixth grade.  Hey, it’s minus ten degrees in Boston!   

Play with polygons and trapezoids and tessellations.

Audrey’s Geometric Display.

Read your kids and grandkids fun math-related picture books:

Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander

T

The Grapes of Math by Greg Tang

Circle, Square, Moose by Kelly Bingham.

Count the Monkeys by Mack Barnett

Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13 by Helaine Becker

My favorite, for older readers–The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensburger

In my middle-grade novel, One Is Not A Lonely Number, Talia, the 13-year-old narrator, is a math whiz who sees numbers in color with distinct personalities. While the story is about friendship, family, and faith, math plays an important role. I wanted to offer young readers a good story while presenting a girl’s love of numbers in a unique way. Kids write to me saying they enjoyed this aspect of the book.

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How do you feel about math?  What color is your favorite number?