Spring Bee Hiving Moon
An unusual time with my Latin tutor, Greg, this morning. I started translating, that is, I read the Latin which I had annotated, pronouncing the Latin words in the order in which I would translate them, then gave my translation into English. Nothing. I went a little further, still nothing. The silence unnerved me. “Greg,” I said, “Are you there?” Oh, yes. Just listening. Usually, Greg would say something like, well, let’s look at this, what about here? That would signal, in his gentle way, that I had gone astray somewhere.
Today I read through over ten verses in a row, translating as I went and he said nothing. When we were finished, after he had explained the one place I faltered, a tricky part of Latin grammar and only at the very end, he said, “The best yet. You’ve really got it.”
His silence meant assent. I was doing fine and just needed to keep going.
Wow. That felt good.