High Praise

Last week while the boys and I were sitting in the airport waiting for our flight back to Minnesota, Eli was trying to get his math homework done.  There were a lot of challenging new concepts and he had neither textbook nor teacher handy.  He was getting a little frustrated and testy.  Lucky for him he was trying to figure out how to graph lines and write their equations.  This just happens to be one of my favorite math topics.  I was a math major for the first half of my freshman year of college, after all.  Then I bailed for a major where I could sit around and read books, but I put in the effort for a while there.  And at Avalon I am often called upon to help with algebra and geometry homework.  Kids know not to ask me for help once they hit the imaginary numbers.  I never got that.  Anyway- back to me and Eli and his math.  At first he was a little snippy with my because I was trying to explain the process in a way his teacher had not discussed.  I asked him if he wanted my help or not.  He thought long and hard about that and then conceded that yes, in the end, he would like my help.  So I gave it and I saw the little light bulb go off in his head- which was pretty exciting to see because what he was working on is really the crux of Algebra and if you get that, so much more becomes clear.  After he worked through a couple problems without my help he put his pencil down, looked me in the eye and said, "You know mom, I guess you are pretty proficient in math."  The woman (mom) reading a book in the seat next to me took a pause, looked up, and smiled.  I told her I was going to write that comment down and cherish it as we move through the years ahead.  So here it is.  According to Eli, in the month of October in the year of two thousand and ten, he has proclaimed that his mother is indeed proficient in math.  I will be reminding him of this statement often, I think.