Posts

Posted on

Don’t Read Shakespeare

It started about here.

Our son was less than a month old when I read Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days to him. Okay, he slept through most of it and failed the quiz, but I was too excited to withhold my love for literature. Bonus: Mary never got tired of giggling at my pronunciation of “Passepartout.”

Eight years later we reread the same cheap translation (sorry, Jules), mapped Phileas Fogg’s circumnavigation of the globe, and that little boy was on stage in a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

I dreaded reading at the primary level and I wanted to spare my children the years of easy readers and dumbed-down everything. But you can’t go from ABCs to Robert Louis Stevenson overnight, right?

Why not? Stevenson’s Treasure Island was my first experiment. We had seen the N.C. Wyeth paintings at Brandywine River Museum of Art many times and what boy doesn’t love a pirate adventure? We picked up the Scribner Storybook Classic edition at our library (Wyeth galore), and trucked through the skeleton of the story directly. Next, we got the audio book, grabbed the unabridged edition, and alternated between reading at home and listening to the story in the car. We’ve gone through Wells’s “The Time Machine” and Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” in much the same manner. Graphic novels are another great tool we employ.

I was going to work my way back in time towards Shakespeare and Chaucer, but a hitch arose. Delaware Shakespeare was bringing “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” to the people, for free! Sure, our elder son had seen “Twelfth Night” when he was three months old and had delivered a line at the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing. Even his younger brother knew that Shakespeare was not just a really cool Lego figure. But Pericles! I’d hardly heard of it and had little time to prep them. I went to Wikipedia and Sparknotes and had small hope of relating this convoluted story line to the boys. Fortunately, Edith Nesbit came to the rescue with her Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (audio available for free at Librivox). We sat in the parking lot of the senior center and finished up listening to and discussing Nesbit’s retelling and I prayed that these 5- and 7-year-old boys could stay engaged for the full production.

I wasn’t as quick to come to tears then as I am now, but it was the kind of home education win that seemed to be years away. It was nothing short of beautiful as they sat front row and disappeared into the Prince of Tyre’s tumultuous world.

Reading Shakespeare isn’t for everyone. In fact, no child needs to read it in the original (controversies over that word aside). Watching Shakespeare? Experiencing it? Those are for everyone. Delaware Shakespeare’s Community Tours have reached out to the uninitiated in the elderly, imprisoned, homeless, mentally ill, and under-served populations of Delaware and Philadelphia in meaningful ways. We’ve witnessed the magic of Shakespeare touch people who never thought they could penetrate the language. A good production will move you and you may not even know why.

You don’t have a personal passion for literature, or any subject, to encourage appreciation and *gasp* teach it! I look to children as mentors when it comes to curiosity. I try to model my approach to knowledge with the same creative and naive perspective that they naturally embody. We were all that way once, when did we lose it?

God bless,

Jason

p.s. – Maybe we’ll see you at Lantern Theater’s production of The Tempest.

Posted on

Adventures Expected and Unexpected

This is a picture from our penultimate adventure as a family of four.

My two boys and I met my wife, Mary, for a home education field trip to Delaware Humane Association as arranged through Brandywine Hundred Library’s Book Club for Homeschoolers. It was a lunch time excursion to a local organization to explore, enjoy, and learn about our world. It exemplified how we lived and approached the education of our boys. Set up by a dear children’s librarian and attended by friends; we toured the facility, met rescued cats and dogs, and learned about the adoption process and dog safety.

Mary didn’t feel so well later that Tuesday. She worked from home the following day, but didn’t feel any better after lots of water and rest. On Thursday, she saw her primary care doctor who diagnosed a nasty cold virus and prescribed medicine to relieve the symptoms. Friday was better, Saturday worse. Super Bowl morning we ended up at an urgent care clinic and they diagnosed flu, influenza B was confirmed at the emergency department. It was too late for anything but more drugs to combat symptoms. We got home to watch the Eagles finish the game and I thought I just had to keep Mary comfortable enough to get over the worst of it and start to heal.

She didn’t get any useful rest and just after midnight on Monday night we were back to the emergency room. Mary’s condition over those few hours worsened quickly. The hospital diagnosed a bacterial infection alongside the influenza. She couldn’t regulate her own breathing. She had practiced yoga and mindfulness and I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t take deep breaths. After multiple approaches and efforts the doctors sedated her and employed a breathing tube to get her the oxygen she needed.

I thought this was the turn around. She had finally stopped coughing and was now getting the rest and therapy her body needed. The doctor relieved me of that notion directly, “There is a high probability of death in this case.” No, I didn’t believe it and I shared that news with too few people. I thank God that Mary didn’t overhear that conversation as I came to observe over the next few days that she was very aware of what was happening around her, even under heavy sedation.

She fought an amazingly quiet fight. She believed she could win, she probably believed she had to win. She fought and stayed alive long enough for dozens of friends and families to have a chance to see her one last time. She fought and stayed alive long enough for her boys to be there and tell her that they loved her. She fought and stayed alive long enough for me to come to some type of peace, to give me the strength and love to be a better father and to take care of our boys. That peace has been shaken in the last month, but it came back to me in my lowest hour, saved me again, just like she saved me 13 years ago, and innumerable times since.

We didn’t plan this final adventure as a family of four, but the real adventures refuse to be planned.

I’m going to use this space to honor Mary Kathryn Zerbey for the rest of my days. Not just to share stories of the past, but to document our adventures as the Zerbey Three. Mary has left this Earth, but not our hearts. She’ll be with us every step of the way.