Writing Stories Together

Tonight my son’s homework assignment is to write the first draft of a mystery story. It’s to include dialogue, six of this week’s spelling words, and he’s to define character and setting. We’ve been going back and forth at the kitchen table for longer than you’d think it would take to write a page. My son stops writing mid-sentence to tell a joke with no punch line:

“What’s got four wheels and spins?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Me neither,” he said, breaking into uncontrollable laughter.

He just looked over my shoulder and OK’d my punctuation for the dialogue.

It’s been dark since 4 pm. Our holiday lights are up in the window. My husband is in the kitchen making a lentil/lamb sausage soup, my son and I are sharing a cup of tea, and there’s a lovely winter candle with blue and white snowflakes on the table, in the midst of binders and papers and pencils and composition books and my laptop and holiday cards from friends and the withering colors of a fall floral bouquet my husband brought home over the weekend. The days are getting shorter and shorter, it’s cold outside, but this is a great moment of warmth.