It all started with a movie.
Lilah and I were scanning HBO Go for something new to watch. I saw the movie Ramona and Beezus. My mind flashed back 17 years.
There was a kindergarten open house at Pansophia in Coldwater. My brother Zachary was talking to the teacher, along with my parents. I don't remember where Nicholas was. I just remember feeling mentally weary. I can't remember why. Weary down to my bones at the ripe old age of 8. There'd been a fight of some sort in the car on the way over. Maybe I was weary of the fights.
I was wandering around a classroom when I spotted several cardboard boxes full of chapter books. There must have been a sign or something indicating they were free. I remember falling to my knees and going through every single one of them. Touching. Smelling (nothing smells better than a worn book). Reading dust jackets and backs. I lit up like a firefly and the rest of the room melted away while I lost myself in choosing as many new books as I could carry. For whatever reason, we weren't a library family and there weren't a lot of books in the house aside from those meant for small children. That night would be the start of me building a sizable personal library. I left feeling alive again, reading something magical and sympathetic to the woes of childhood by Beverly Cleary. That library was very tragically lost to me when I moved out at 17. In the dorms in Ohio I didn't have room for any books or the time to read them, and when I moved to my own apartment in Nashville I wasn't allowed to take anything my parents bought me. While this did not include most of my books, there had been so much fighting over the subject I didn't take them. I painfully regret that choice now. The magic, beauty, and escape my eyes had been opened to that night when I was 8 changed my life forever. What began with Ramona and Beezus evolved into Great Expectations and Robinson Crusoe into The Lord of the Rings and The Scarlet Letter into 1984 and The Song of Ice and Fire.
Fast forward to 2012 and movie night with my 3 year old daughter. I looked at the title Ramona and Beezus with doubt. Should I take the risk of letting any film with Selena Gomez ruin a precious childhood memory? As my offspring wriggled and fussed next to me ("Moooovie Mamaaaaaa!") I resigned myself to disappointment and called out, "Play Ramona and Beezus." The Kinect did my bidding and we settled in to watch.
After the credits rolled, Lilah clapped in my arms and I hastily swiped away about 45 tears that had sneaked out of my eyes like jerks. The movie was the perfect portrayal of a precocious, imaginative, often-misunderstood child in a world without facebook or cell phones. Lilah Rose asked to watch Ramona and Beezus literally every day (this request was not always granted) until HBO took it down. She and I went to the Ferndale Library and I took her to the fiction section. I have to admit, when I handed her a well-loved copy of Ramona to check out, a few more sneaky tears escaped my eyes when her beautiful face gleamed and she hugged it to her chest.
I was astonished that a 3 year old was even interested in a chapter book with hardly any pictures. Almost every week night, we've spent 30-60 minutes snuggled on the couch reading 30+ pages of Ramona's life. I can ask her questions after we finish or even the next day, and she'll answer me. I know she's comprehending it. The only reason we stop each night is bedtime's insidious approach. We were at a garage sale today and I found another Ramona book in a bin. She squealed, "Ramona!" with bright eyes. She clutched it tightly in one hand and held a dollar in the other, handing it to the girl selling the books. When they couldn't make change, they handed the dollar back to her and said the book was hers to enjoy. You'd have thought she'd won the lottery. Or whatever the preschool equivalent of winning the lottery happens to be.
When Lilah Rose was having a bad night a few days ago, she put her head in her hands (dramatically of course), sighed, and looked up. "I'm frustrated. I just want to feel happy, Mama."
Don't we all, little one, I thought. "What makes you feel happy, pumpkin?" She considered carefully.
"Daddy does. And you do. You make me feel happy." We've spent the 2.5 years since this child started talking trying to get one point across to her - we can meet her needs better and faster if she uses words to tell us how she's feeling in lieu of shrieks and wails. And 9 out of 10 times, she does a truly spectacular job for a 3 year old. We are lucky parents to have so little guesswork involved when it comes to what she wants. I told Dano just the other night, "Even when we have terrible nights, the fact that she answers 'Daddy and Mama' when we ask what would make her happy says we're doing something right. Not toys or candy. Her family makes her happy, and going to the park and reading her books. She's great." Nothing brings me greater happiness than reading Ramona to Lilah for an hour and having her sad to go to sleep because she's caught up in a story. She could have grown up wanting to play sports or video games, and she still might choose to try those things. If she does, she'll be amazing at them. But the fact that she chooses to lose herself on Klickitat Street at such a young age brings me nothing but pure joy.
