I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I remember once making my morning coffee, I said to my daughter,

I know I had a dream last night, but I can't quite remember it.

And Violet, then only about six years old, said,

Like a hawk circling your head. I'm sure my eyes widened. What a beautiful simile

for that feeling of something just beyond your reach. Another time, my son watching a squirrel hop

from the roof of a house to the limb of a tree to a power line, remarked, like a secret sidewalk in the sky.

And then he looked up at me and asked, Is that a poem?

I laughed. He was only about four years old. I told him it wasn't a poem,

but it was the start of one, one that he could write someday if he wanted to. I wasn't about to steal

his material. I'm not telling you these stories because I think my children are prodigies

or that they have some sort of poetry gene.

They don't.

And I don't either.

What we have is something that everyone has,

the ability to pay attention, to approach the world with

curiosity, and to make connections. That's all a metaphor or simile is, a connection. You see

something, and it reminds you of something else. You build a little bridge in your mind. Children

naturally know how to do this. They're building these bridges all the time, making sense of what they

newly encounter by comparing it to what they already know.

A dandelion looks like the sun.

The top of an acorn is like a little hat.

...