Day 20 of our 31 Letters Literacy Project is about “Lovely Dreams”.

Today’s letter is inspired by Day 20 of 365 Days of Literacy for Kids… in the poem Cradle Song:

CRADLE SONG by Sarojini Naidu

From groves of spice,
O’er fields of rice,
Athwart the lotus-stream,
I bring for you,
Aglint with dew
A little lovely dream.

Sweet, shut your eyes,
The wild fire-flies
Dance through the fairy neem;
From the poppy-bole
For you I stole
A little lovely dream.

Dear eyes, good-night,
In golden light
The stars around you gleam;
On you I press
With soft caress
A little lovely dream.

——————————

In the poem, children know the beauty and safety of the night as a DREAM is brought to them by someone who loves them.

Think back to when you were a child.  Do you remember a real DREAM?  Or do you remember an experience that was so wonderful that you still remember it as DREAM-like?

Capture that DREAM or experience in a letter to your kids/grandkids/special kids in your life.  Remember that you are composing your 31 Letters to not only bring a piece of your past to them, but to get them reading.  Your words are magic.  Let the magic continue…

——————————-

This is my letter to my grandkids today:

March 20, 2011

Hi, my little darlings!  Today’s letter is about night-time.  Snuggle-time.  Dream-time.   A time when “stars around you gleam.”

I still dream every night, and I often remember my dreams very vividly.  But sometimes we have experiences that are so very special that we think of them as dreams.  One of my dreams like this as a child was to be Miss America some day.

Oh, yes.  I said Miss America!

The Miss America Pageant began a long time before I was born… I think it originated in the 1920’s.  But my dream as a little girl was to become Miss America.  My Mom and Dad were very certain, too, that I could be Miss America.  The night of the Miss America Pageant, which happened once a year and was televised, was my most special night of all nights…

My Mom and Dad would put my brothers and me to bed, but the secret was that they would wake me up when the pageant came on.  I’m not sure now if the pageant began at 8:00 or 9:00 or maybe even later… but I would sit in-between my Mom and Dad on our couch and watch the entire show.  I remember our black & white television in our small living room in California.  I remember the contestants in their bathing suits (very different from the bathing suits we see today!).  I remember the beautiful gowns.  I remember the song There She Is, Miss America, and I can still hear Bert Parks, the man who made this song famous, singing it to the Miss America winner each year.  My Dad would sing this song to me!  I even remember some of the words from the song:

There she is, Miss America,
There she is, your ideal…

There she is
Walking on air…
There she is
Miss America.

I remember the grand bouquet of flowers and the sparkly crown.  I remember my Dad saying, “I wonder if you’ll be Miss California or Miss Michigan or Miss Massachusetts or Miss Maine or Miss Illinois…”  because we had already lived in all of those places!

But mostly, I remember the night of the pageant each year with my Mom and Dad.   It was like a wonderful dream to me.  It was like walking on air!  There is something so simple and so beautiful about parents bringing lovely dreams to their children, isn’t there?!

What is one of your LOVELY DREAMS?

Love forever and ever,

Grandma Couto

P.S.  I never became the real Miss America.  But that’s OK.  It was a lovely dream while it lasted!

——————————-

MAIL TIDBIT of the DAY: The first female figure to appear on a United States postage stamp was a portrayal of the Statue of Liberty in 1873.