I Had a Mother (or a Father) Who Read to Me

Richer than I you can never be.
I had a mother who read to me.

Dad was actually the one who read the books to us in the family. Even after Jim Carrey came on the scene, my dad is still the best at playing the Grinch. He'd twist up his eyebrows and drum his fingers together describing the horrific mess he'd make for the Whos down in Whoville.

And then he'd read softly, slowly the story of the rotten, selfish boy and the tree that gave and gave and gave.

Those books began a life of loving books and I want my kids to have the same love, the same desire for learning that I was given.

I am a sucker (even after kids are in bed and it's late) for hearing, "Mom, would you read me a story?"

How can I turn that down? No, kid, stories are stupid. Stories aren't important. Stories won't help you understand the world better. Stories won't increase your vocabulary, your sense of wonder and imagination, your sense of self. Stories won't help you travel in and outside of the world. They won't give you hope and joy. You won't know where to turn when you need to learn something. Stories won't help us feel closer together. You won't know how much you mean to me becasue I am willing to take a minute to stop running around and doing dishes to read to you. No, kid, stories and you just aren't worth it.

How can I say that to my child, when everything I believe is exactly the opposite? So, as bugged as Cam might be on some nights, I spend too long reading with the kids, but it is my passion.

The other day we went to the NEA's Read Across America Campaign at the Children's museum in Salt Lake. Cal's class went for a field trip so I pulled Cy and Coleman out of school and followed them up there. Miraculously, they let us in for free and and we got sucked in to Seussland. It was an amazing sea of Cat in the Hat hats with songs and stories and snacks and adventures. At one point, a guest librarian was reading Dr. Seuss's The Thinks you can Think and I started thinking about Calvin.

He is a thinker and sometimes it causes him stress and frustration because he doesn't know how to make all of his ideas and inventions materialize. And, sadly, some teachers may misunderstand him during his school years. His teacher is always telling me about stuff he says in class that blow her mind--as if she's never seen a creative individual before. They were told to make mobiles with their 3-D shapes but he wanted to take the shapes and connect them together so the last piece could be inserted like a key--the missing crystal of kryptonite.

The NEA volunteers tried to convince the kids at the conference to go and get a library card so they could check out books. How sad I felt for the kids whose parents didn't take them there already to check out books about the ark of the covenant that they saw on a movie or about wolves becasue some guy visisted their school with a wild animal. How sad that so many children don't know where to turn to get knowledge, to find out about Anne Frank, or to help them figure something out. How sad that there are so many children that don't wonder, don't imagine, don't want to do anything but play their video game.

And sitting there I grew more certain that reading to my children was one of the most important things I coud do. That may make them more "different," as their teachers both told me at Parent Teacher Conference, but I think Dr. Seuss would think that was OK.

Cy stuffed his bears in his hat to be the "cats" that are in the hat, like in the book "Cat in the Hat Comes Back"

Coleman (at the children's museum afterwards) pretending to be in the City of Ember and finding out that the generator is giving out.