What a week it was! Liam's first National Spelling Bee was a week of excitement, anticipation, nerves, laughs, and exhaustion--and that was just me! I can't imagine all the emotions Liam must have felt as he sat a test with spelling words such as rhythmically, collateral, jibboom, capsaicin, perruche, and tarsorrhaphy. Then he faced vocabulary words such as comestible, gazetteer, lenitive, expatiate, lilliputian, vulpine, and otiose.
The 283 kids left the test without knowing their scores, and the next day they spelled words on stage, before a live audience and a streaming television audience . I could hear in Liam's voice how nervous he was: his voice came from somewhere deep inside, and it was a little croak.
My one wish was for Liam to spell his words correctly on stage so that he felt good about being in front of an audience. I knew he would be crushed if he misspelled a word before the audience and had to leave the stage. The 65 kids who did misspell were incredibly brave.
By this time, I had seen Liam's score on the written test and knew that he hadn't qualified for the semifinals. I had to tell him in such a way that he stayed excited about working hard to return next year; bring on the Mom diplomat skills! We talked, he was bummed, but by the time we finished, he realized the things Paige Kimble had said were true: The spellers who qualified for the National Spelling Bee came from an initial estimate of 11 million kids in classroom and school spelling bees. The 285 who qualified represented the top 0.000026 percent of spelling ability in the nation. The skills that he practiced in addition to spelling were invaluable life skills.
After Wednesday, we got to be supporters of the kids in the semifinals, scouts for next year, and tourists in Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. We had already visited Mount Vernon, George Washington's home, Tuesday, and the Pavilions at Turkey Run in Virginia for the Memorial Day picnic Monday. And we were able to play in the biggest hotel pool I think I've ever seen.