Update from Laria (now 12)

Hello. I saw the blog about me you posted on the internet today. By the way, that time I taped feathers on myself and ran around the house I was very disappointed afterward because someone (I forgot if it was Mama or Papa) told me that birds have hollow bones and that I couldn't fly no matter how fast I ran. I knew it would take a couple of years to figure out how to make my bones so that I could fly.

I remember that you wanted to know what I am interested in these days. I like math, science (especially physics) and art. I am in algebra and I like it, but I find more complicated concepts like infinity and imaginary numbers more. Today I said that infinity isn't one number. It's going on forever but not all infinities are the same because if you have 2+2+2 forever the answer will be infinity but if it's 4+4+4 forever it will be a "greater" infinity. It's like a linear equation, that goes on forever in both ways. It really depends on the slope to say how big the infinity is even though they are all infinity. I've actually been trying to say that for most of my life, but I didn't know about graphs and linear equations to explain it.

I am in a nation-wide contest for NASA about making a water-purification system. It is very fun, and my group has created an effective distillation system and filter. Now it's mostly about putting it together and testing the results.

I still keep thinking about some of the things I thought about when i was little, like every moment running away and how everyone thinks they are the only "I". It gets more and more complicated, though, the more I think about it.
Laria

LARIA : The "I's" of Laria are upon us (2 of 2)

Psychology and Dream Interpretation.
    3-27-02 An example of Laria's dreams at the age of 3: "I dreamt that Papa and I went for a walk. He carried a remote control that made all the trees grow so tall, the houses spring colors, and all the weird little creatures living inside (the remote) jump out into reality."
     4-3-02 (Laria would turn four on the 28th.) Sing-yi writes, "Today I told Laria about Freud, dreams, psychoanalysis. About doctors not of the physical body but of the human heart. That's what psychologists are called in Chinese--doctors of the heart. I told her I had studied to be a clinical psychologist. Like Freud. I interpreted one of her dreams, about a tiny bus flying up to the skies to fool around with cassette tapes there: [it was] her little brother Vyron crawling into the living room to mess around with our tapes (this being a daily obsession with him just because he has been forbidden to do so).
   
Biology.
     4-22-02 (Laria was still six days short of her fourth birthday)
     Laria: I don't know if it's because of Papa's DNA or what, or maybe it's just him, but every time he gives me a present he doesn't wrap it first.

Time.

 Laria dancing (4 years, 3 months).
Costume and choreography by Laria.

     Laria: Why does every "now" turn into "just now"? Why does it have to always, always keep becoming "before"?
     Sing-yi: You don't want the present to turn into the past?
     Laria: I don't like it always running away like that.
    
Mathematics.
     8-29-02 (4 years, 4 months) Ted: A couple of days ago Laria and her dolls were holding an extensive birthday party. I asked whose, and Laria said it was her second birthday. I told her that I distinctly remembered already giving her a second birthday party, and she said, "But I get two." She thought about it a moment and added, "And four fourth birthdays, and ten tenth birthdays, and infinity infinitieth birthdays. . ."
     (So, asked her dad, where are the other 63 birthdays I've got coming this year, huh?)

Theology.
     3-4-03 (4 years, 10 months)
     Laria: Mama, God just informed me that yesterdays are today's secrets.
     (When told this, Ted asked Laria how the information arrived, by letter, e-mail, phone--? She said, "Words in my ear." "Did God sound like a man or a woman?" She answered right off, "Like a lion!" NOTE: This was before she knew about Aslan.)

Philosophy: the self.
     4-17-03 (Eleven days before her 5th birthday) The subject heading of Ted's letter is 'The ''I's" of Laria are upon us.'

     Laria: Mama, I've been thinking about something for a very long time. I keep wondering why I am "I," and I'm not you, or somebody else. Why is that? I've really been thinking about that. I don't quite know how to say this right, but I feel that I am the world's "I," even though I know that everybody else feels and thinks that they are "I" too. But my heart tells me that I am the world's only "I."

Today I'm thankful for Laria, designed in the image of her creative Father.  

FAMILY: Laria, scary smart (1 of 2)

Ted, Sing-yi, Laria (about 3-1/2)
and baby brother Vyron.

     My brother Tim calls our niece Laria's intellectual prowess "spooky." I call her "scary smart." I don't mean that in a derogatory way, Laria. I have profound respect for your mind.
     Laria is my brother Ted's daughter, now 12. Ted is the brother who taught himself to read--upside down--when he was two. His wife Sing-yi (Shing-ee) is no intellectual slouch, either.
     Ted started e-mailing me Laria's comments when she was at the age most kids are starting to form a word or two, maybe "Mama" or "blanky."
     Here's what he wrote on 9-14-2000: "The other day she came running to me, bright eyes, big smile, her two thumbs and index fingers touching to make something like a diamondish circle.
     "'Colosseum!'" Laria was then two years old (29 months).
     Even "circle" or "triangle" would have been precocious. But Colosseum!

Chemistry.
     Ted, in same e-mail: "I was thinking of fixing one of her broken toys. She brought her Play-Doh over and told me to use it to stick the pieces together. I said Play-Doh wouldn't work. She replied 'Because their molecules will break easily.'"

     See the thing is, it isn't just that Laria picked up words early and amassed a phenomenal vocabulary. At two, she was grasping concepts of things like time and space, cause and effect, real and imagined--
     --in two languages! Her mother speaks to her in Chinese. Ted wrote me (1-31-01), "Her English is about as far along as her Chinese was a year ago." (i.e., at 1 year, nine months!) "She doesn't use 'I' in either language, but she does use 'Laria' for herself in English. In Chinese she calls herself  'you.' I find this weird but Sing-yi isn't troubled by it."

Numbers.
     Same letter: "(Laria) counts up to forty in Chinese, to twenty in English, adds any number up to a sum of ten, and writes "HAPPY". . . backwards. Is this normal for 32 months?"
     It was obviously normal for her. There is no sense comparing our own children and feeling jealous or inferior. Laria is to other children intellectually as a budding Olympic champion is to them physically. She's in her own category.

Aeronautics.
     On 2-4-02 (3 years, 10 months) Ted wrote, "Two days ago Laria was running wildly through the house for quite a while. "I want to fly," she gasped. "How fast does a plane run before it flies?" Then she vanished to her art table for a long time. When she came back, she resumed running. She had taped dozens of feathers to every part of her clothes. Around and around she sped. Poor kid. She deserved to fly."

Effect of the rotation of the earth on progression of time.
     One day her mother was describing to Laria what bellows were, and what they did. Laria wanted to see some bellows. Sing-yi explained she didn't know where they could see some, even in an antique store, because they hadn't been used in so many years. Laria said quite matter-of-factly, "We should turn the earth the other way."
     "Huh?" (I'm not sure what "Huh" is in Chinese but that's what Ted wrote.)
     "We should make the earth turn the other direction until it's back to the bellows time and get some bellows. And then we should lock it, so it won't change again. And we should lock it in the daytime, so we won't have to ever sleep."
     Some of us adults never reach the point of being able to grasp and play with concepts like that.


Today I am thankful for imagination.