Louvre

Heading off to the Louvre, I imagined my younger teacher-self leading my class (aka L & P) through the galleries of the ancient Mesopotamia wing and watching my girls cling to every word I had to share about The Book of the Dead and various Egyptian hieroglyphs. Recreating my years teaching ancient history in the galleries of The Met in NYC.

Instead, it was sighs of exhaustion, complaints of the heat, and a certain younger daughter begging for piggy-back rides. Everyone was tired and hungry (note to self: feed all small people before all museum visits). I was ready to throw the towel in and find the first exit out of there.

And then I turned around to find L & P listening with rapt interest as Dan described the scene depicted in The Intervention of the Sabine Women by Jacques-Louis David. Suddenly, the girls were engaged — not because they had magically developed an appreciation for 18th-century French history, but because they recognized a name: Romulus. Their aunt's dog is named Romulus, and here he was, right there in the painting (well, his namesake, anyway), woven into a story they were beginning to understand. It was a small connection, but it made all the difference. Sometimes, all it takes to turn “this is boring” into “wait, tell me more” is finding the tiny thread that connects something unfamiliar to the world you already know.
Thank you, Dan, for bringing the museum to life for the girls today.