I’ve been soaking up a wonderful book that makes me stop right in the middle of just about every page and say, “I wish I had written this!” In the
introduction of What to Read When (Penguin,
2009), Pam Allyn tugs at my teacher heart, my mother heart, and my reader heart with these words:
Everyday as you
pack a lunch, wave good bye to a school bus, tie a shoelace, braid a ponytail, the words you want to say to your child hum
inside:
I love you, be safe,
I love you, be
free.
I love you, I love you, I love you,
let the world treat you kindly, come back to me.
Here
are the values of my life, our family, here is what
I hope for you, here is what
I dream for you.
And yet, for most of us, too many moments slip by and we’re
lucky to get an “I love you” in edgewise.” The good news,
wondrously, is that the world is
full of literature written by people who know you are longing to make connections and are striving to put a voice to them. (Pam Allyn in What to Read When, p. 6)
Over the years I have felt various waves of regret for perhaps not
having done enough, not having told them enough, nor having shown them enough. But do you know what my four grown children did
this year, on December 25th?
They gave my husband and me the most beautiful gift we could ever have
imagined – a “Family Treasure Chest,” they called it. It was a 12 inch by 12 inch, 2 inch thick,
cream colored, bound leather volume, tied with a cream colored ribbon. After
the first golden title page (“Peterson Family Treasure Book 2012”), and a page
of “credits” stating that “Mom gave us
wings to fly… Dad lit the sky to help us find the way…” they filled the
book with pages for the books we read to them and the songs we sang to them
that mattered to them in their lives.
Our oldest daughter is completing a master’s degree at
Georgetown University while working fulltime in that busy metropolitan area as
a single young woman. She listed the
series of Anne of Green Gables by L.
M. Montgomery as her best memory shared, and related how she had been inspired
by Anne’s many philosophical gems, such as,
"Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so
glad I have such a lot.
And there never seems to be any end to them – that’s the
best of it.
Just as soon as you attain to one ambition
you see another one
glittering higher up still."
My second daughter's memory involved all of us piling on the bed for a reading of North to Freedom by
Anne Holm (published in 1963 and later changed to I Am David).
She explained how fascinated she was to listen to a the experience of a 12 year
old boy – older than herself – see and smell and taste an orange for the very
first time, and how it opened her eyes to discovering beautify in a world full
of suffering. She has since become a couples and family therapist, and she has also read North to Freedom to her husband. They plan to read it to their own family someday.
Ella Enchanted by
Gail Carson Levine, Goose Girl by
Shannon Hale, and several of the “Alice” books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor were
all fond memories of my 25-year-old daughter.
She felt lucky to be growing up while I was teaching a children’s
literature course so that she benefitted from my needing to stay on top of some
of the new looks being published at the time! What she didn’t
remember until I reminded her was that I got some of my reading list from
her, such as Running Out of Time by
Margaret Peterson Haddix. I found her
huddled in the corner of her bedroom, having just finished that book, looking
up at me and pleading, “Mom, I have to
find another book like this one!” I read
it myself that very night.
And the last book page in this treasure chest was from my
son, whose read-aloud experience was initiated by him rather than me. He came bringing the Harry Potter books to
me. “Mom, we have to read these. Every one is, and they are so good. Can we, please?” How could I turn that down? After the first four books, however, he
didn’t have the patience to wait for our read-aloud sessions, and forged ahead
on his own, and then on into the Eragon books, and the Lightening Theif, and
the Hobit, and so forth. He’s writing
his own fantasy trilogy now.
So, I’m thinking it may have been enough after all. They said I gave them “wings to fly.” I was one of the lucky ones – to get an “I
love you” in edgewise.
