‘Papa Ken, I want you to read this book at me.” Bryce’s facility with prepositions is still evolving.
“What do you say?” I ask. Ditto his use of “please” and “thank you.”
“I said, ‘Papa Ken, I want you to read this book at me.”
“No, not ‘What did you say?’ I said ‘What do you say?'” No wonder kids find adults confusing.
“Oh. … Papa Ken, read this book at me … please.”
Thus begins reading time. Tyler and Bryce, my twin grandsons, love books, but reading serves other purposes too. I read to them when they’re worn out or wound up — or when they’ve worn me out. We’re currently in a hide-and-seek phase, a paint-and-chalk phase, also a water-balloon phase. And everywhere we go, they prefer to run. It can be taxing.
I read to them when we go to the Maze Branch, the E.E. Roberts-designed library (which itself belongs in a children’s book) where I grew up learning to love books and where I took my son, their dad. So we have a three-generation affair with this “storybook” institution. Adele Maze would have been pleased.
We also read to them near the end of our day together when Grandma and Daddy and I don’t want to pull out the Play-doh again (which results in myriad colored dough bits scattered and ground into my “sacrificial” living room rug). When Mama arrives after working at the dentist office up the street, the boys use books as their stalling tactic because they don’t like abrupt transitions or goodbyes, so we indulge them, each of us reading them “just one more” book.
Call it “constructive leniency.”
It can also be a useful diversion. If I want to distract them, I start reading a book aloud. Pretty soon they’re sitting on either side of me with my arms around them — or on my lap, straddling each thigh, and I have to make out the words through the limited space between their heads, which is easier said than read.
Mostly, reading serves as cuddle time. They’re getting bigger and my arms are not, so it’s becoming a challenge. But reading is comfort time, which kids, parents and grandparents all need. Some of my favorite memories from my son’s childhood are reading Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (Mary Anne), over and over and over, day and night.
Reading, in fact, is so comforting I often fall asleep, so the more books they want to read in succession, the greater the chance my speech will begin to slur as I nod off into dreamland. My son used to swat me across the chest to wake me up. When my words stopped making sense, he knew I needed a “love swat.” He looked forward to it.
Fortunately, when Daddy and Grandma are around, we can take turns. I love watching them being read to almost as much as reading to them. Their eyes dart around the page, hungrily taking in the illustrations. Sometimes they gaze out the window as they listen, their faces taking on that beatific look of relaxed concentration.
They’re partial to books about work trucks and trains, of course, and anything involving fire trucks or police cars (their dad is a cop though they both, currently, want to be firefighters when they grow up).
But we also read plenty of books in which animals and dinosaurs act like humans. The other day, we read about dinosaurs flying a very large cargo plane. Then we read about how parents get their dinosaurs to go to bed at night. Their favorite at the moment is But No Elephants by Jerry Smath, a copy of which I picked up at the Friends of the Library Book Sale last August. It formerly belonged to Kahe Kusiak, just for the record.
Most libraries are midway through summer reading programs, and Kristen has signed them up in their hometown. The boys are just over three-quarters of the way to their goal of 120 books. They love repeat readings, so the tally rises with each visit. And since they have excellent memories, they sometimes narrate the books to me in their own fashion.
Last week, they were excited about receiving two books in the mail, which Kristen had ordered. When she asked them to guess what was inside the flat cardboard mailer, Bryce brightly replied, “A fire truck!” Nope, something even better. Sneetches by Dr. Seuss, is about tolerance. Rainbow Fish is about sharing (another skill they’re still in the process of mastering, especially with each other).
Every morning when they wake up, Kristen gives them a little time to play in their room before the official fun festival of their day begins. One morning she poked her head in and they were reading together in the rocking chair. She managed to take this picture before they knew what was happening. It captures all that is idyllic about childhood and all we wish for our kids and grandkids, nephews and nieces when we read to them.
They will grow up in a very different world from the one you and I grew up in, but there are constants. Children love reading and being read to, and they love being cuddled.
May it ever be so.