It's Summer Time and the Reading's Awesome

Don't really click to look inside....

When I was in Fifth grade, my teacher, the excellent, awesome, and legendary Mrs. Polk, had us complete an exercise in encouragement.
Each child in the class got a sheet of paper and wrote down the name of every other child in the class.  Out beside each name, each child chose one thing about the person that they especially liked or just was generally great.  Mrs. Polk then took a piece of nice paper, wrote our name all big and pretty in the middle, and then wrote our encouragements around it in a cloud, laminated it, and gave it to us as a present.   I still have it.  Somewhere. 
I said she was awesome.

Find the What?

Good night light, and the red balloon.


If I wrote a post about the epic goodness of Goodnight Moon, all you parents, my generation and the couple of generations before, will roll your eyes at my lack of originality.

Though, does it invalidate the uniqueness of my individual experience just because millions of other mothers, fathers and children across America for the last 60 some odd years have been having a nearly identical experience? I think not! But, let us come back from the brink of philosophical humdrumedness.

Quickly, now. Come along!

One of the first books I remember being read by both of my parents is Goodnight Moon. And then I remember reading it to my little brothers, and to babysitting charges, and then to Paul at some point, as though he wasn't read it by his dutiful, reader-parents.


Presently I have, and as far back as I can remember, I have had a very, very irrational and frankly ridiculous fear of all things rodent. I am not scared of much - not snakes, not spiders, not the dark, not bad guys, not giving birth, not traveling alone, not heights, and goodness knows not public speaking. But anything with a pink tail, well, it can make me scream like the girl that I am. I have jumped on tables. In restaurants. I even had an argument once with Paul about whether rats are mammals. How dare they share not only a Kingdom and a Phylum, but a Class with me. I am not in the same (taxonomic or otherwise) Class as a Rat! And done all sorts of other things that made my husband consider taking the next train out of Dodge.

[Here is a side note about the pink-tailed description: The only reason this description is necessary is because people are always challenging this fear. I readily admit that the fear is irrational, but still, people doth protest. "But why?" But then they go further. If I say that I am afraid of rats, they want to know, "What about mice?" and when I say, "As ridiculous as it is, yes, pretty much all rodents," the people invariably say, with smart alec written all over their faces, "Well, what about squirrels?" Well, then I want to slap them upside the head. No, not squirrels, dumbo! But yes, opossums make my adrenaline start pumping. And finally, my dear friend Ragan came into my life. She shares my fear, though I don't know if she'd be quite so difficult as I am. And she remarked one day "it's those pink tails." Aaahh - Thank you, Ragan. Now I know the reason squirrels are cute and mice are evil.]

Back to sweet and wonderful children's literature.

I don't know if I actually remember this, or if I've been told with such vividness and adoration so many times, but when I was a very young child, starting not long after my first birthday and continuing, I imagine, until I was no longer being read Goodnight Moon, I played a game with my parents. On every color page of Goodnight Moon (any decent human raised in North America will remember that it alternates between color pages and black and white pages), there appears a mouse.

And I would crawl up in the as-yet-uncrowded lap of my Daddy (being a first kid and all - that empty lap is heavenly), and he would say "In the great green room..." and then, page by page, I'd get to Find the Mouse.

The mouse moves. He's in a different spot on each page. At times, he's very central to the scene - perched happily in front of the fire - and at other times, he's very peripheral - peering over the edge of an obscure bookcase. And I'd hunt. I'm sure it was developing some sort of awesome brain processing skill (though I never was good at Where's Waldo), but more than that, it was creating a memory. A memory that my Daddy cannot help retelling over and over again (he has a problem we're all fond of, and he's still quite a young man: he tells us things multiple times). But, as much as Daddy repeats himself, I've never tired of hearing of my mouse hunts.

I actually looked for the mouse. Sought out the mouse. Tried so hard to find it.
Wonder what went wrong?

(Actually - I trace my fear of all things rodent to two things: First, another story my Dad tells all the time - a story for another day - that involves a rat running up a broom handle. And secondly, seeing The Princess Bride at too young an age, and no one protecting me from the R.O.U.S. scene. And yes I just googled to put a picture here of a Rodent of Unusual Size, and I couldn't do it because my heart rate went up. Instead, a young, beautiful Carey Ewles, sporting his R.O.U.S.-inflicted injury upon emerging from the Fire Swamp: )


(Yes, I just put that parenthesis there. What would you have had me do? Put it before the picture, when clearly it belonged after? Or worse, leave it off entirely???)

I hate mice. But I used to hunt for one all over an entire book. (Perhaps because his tail does not appear pink, but white, and kind of short).

And I still do hunt for one.

Last night, Collins crawled up in my lap for a bedtime story. He picked Goodnight Moon. We haven't had the hours of Goodnight Moon with Collins that we had with Ada and Eason, or that my parents had with us. Some of that is because he is the neglected third child, but it is mostly because he has gravitated toward other books.

But last night, the little bald-headed dude plopped his as-yet-diapered bum down in my lap and opened up to those three little bears sitting on chairs. And the mouse game came flooding back to me.

I said, "Collins, can you find the mouse?" and he immediately went to looking. Searching for him. He found him in front of the fire:
"Mouse hot."
He couldn't find him by the bowl full of mush, but when I pointed out the little pink tailed demon:
"Mouse eat."

I inherited my father's tendency to repeat the stories that are most important to me. I can already see that my children will know - and know and know and know - about the mouse hunting game their grandparents played with me, and then that I played with them.

Yes, Goodnight Moon is ubiquitous, and I am not quite naïve enough to think we're the only family to play Find the Mouse, and no, Find the Mouse did nothing to inoculate me from terror at the little mammals. But, I treasure it. The book, the game, and the memory.

And so does this guy:


This pensive, mouse-hunting, low-on-hair, adventuring, happy, not-so-neglected-after all, little guy.

fall is on the way

i have been in heaven with these cooler days - not that they are my ideal weather or anything, but they are signs that it is on its way.

paul is still loving teaching, which is a blessing and a curse - a blessing because thank the lord that he has found something he loves - and it is something he can do in any way/under any circumstances, at any time. But, if he sticks with it, it means that he'll never earn a significant income - if we stay in mississippi, that is. he does stay frustrated with the bureaucracy. I am trying to listen without editing what he says, which is a huge weakness of mine. we'll see. it is a constant prayer and meditation that i can be a sounding board and answer questions without offering unsolicited advice, which is almost always taken as criticism.

eason is doing wonderfully -climbing, exploring, learning new words (though not nearly as many as his sister had at his age - but the pediatrician and others keep telling me she was very abnormal...) - just generally being a happy child. he is getting over the separation anxiety stage he was in during july and august, which is good. I thought it was just a stage, and it is always good to have your parenting instincts affirmed.

ada brooks, on the other hand, is worrying me. Not because she is unhappy or unhealthy - but because she doesn't seem made to be part of the system - she came home last spring from her preschool, which is admittedly not rigorous, but i mean, its pre school - she was three - they are sweet, and kind and teaching the children important social skills as well as the beginnings of learning academic things - anyway - she came home and, unsolicited, said "mama, i wish i went to a school where i learned things." - i sort of brushed it off, but obviously didnt forget it. Well, in the past few weeks, i though things would be better - the four year old program at st.lukes is much more structured and has successfully prepared kids, for years, for the most rigorous kindergarten classes in jackson. but she's still not satisfied - very vocally not satisfied - and not pitching a fit - just sort of sad and bored. and I am very concerned that she will require a creative solution - we are working on supplementing, which sounds like the most attractive option to me- so we will see how that goes.

my mama and daddy continue to make me sad, but i do have a peace about them being separate from us - about my responsibility to my children and family.

mine and paul's struggle continues to be career centered - who will go first, what will it be (that one is especially an issue for him), etc.

but the weather is turning cooler, so all is looking up.

side note - book club this month is doing milan kundera's the book of laughter and forgetting - i am about 20 pages from the end and really loving it. his style is not mine - its a little too funky and jumping around, but it is good for me to make myself read something like that - it is still very good and its like food that i refuse to eat - sometimes its awesome and its just my own stubbornness that comes back to bite me in the bum.

life is good.