See Jane Read. See Jane Jump.

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I identified myself as a reader at the same time I understood I was a self. I was at day camp which seemed quite far away from my home in the city,  though of course it was not. Underneath a dense triangle of pine trees, I remember holding a book open before me as I walked the  path.  Suddenly the words made sense. I saw pictures where I had seen dark code. 

My own daughter struggles when she reads. She is not the first with her hand up in class, eager to share her thoughts about the characters or images inside her. After years of waiting for her quick mind to catch fire, I realize that reading is “not her thing.” Not that she can’t, or won’t read. But not at any moment, any pause. The sheer delight of dipping into a a book does not beckon her. The libraries that were my home away from home do not call her. Annabelle generously commands the playground, the snowball fight and the dance studio where she shepherds younger girls with subtle grace. They flock around her asking for their hair to be brushed into buns, smooth as glass.

I watch the laborious unnatural training of her mind to read and it strikes me as surprising. She observes my inability to get a package back in its wrapping and laughs at me. I find myself rethinking my lifelong companion, my addiction, the pure peaceful pleasure of reading.

My daughter does not always want me to read to her though I want to open the world of my childhood. I want to introduce her to the families I knew. The words unfurl as I read to her, stored in the place age has not decayed. I cannot remember most of this morning but I can remember what comes next in the Rush’s first Saturday or how the All of A Kind Family slept in chocolate cracker crumbs traded in the dark.  The Brown family that harbored Paddington and his marmalade sandwich wait to entertain her.

The hunger to read has been, for me, like other people describe the hunger to practice medicine or be in nature. Only in the books of childhood was I free from the romance tale. Girls are thinking and talking and feeling; they are using all their senses to become known in the world and explore history, cities, fields, mysteries. Books have the power to stop the passage of time,

Before ‘happily ever after’ arrived, before the princess and prince eclipsed my stories, I ran free. Childrens’ books remind me of a time when my deepest being was absorbed in an enterprise of pure imagination. As I read I was an orphan in India,  sister with a rare phoenix bird, a British child entering a wardrobe with rustling furs that led to Narnia.

When I wait online at her school, Annabelle bursts out of the line with excitement. When I ask her about her day, she shakes with excitement. I wonder how long it will be before she peppers her definite needs with the word  ‘like’, before she asks friends if she looks ‘fat’ in her clothes, before she finds her anger terrifying?  Books which guide girls quickly turn into a romance plot- each one ending with love like The Holy Grail.

If there were one thing I wish she could grasp- It is that she is already complete. Everything which comes next is misunderstanding. Books may deepen and enrich us.  They can mirror and extend our understanding of ourselves. But books also distort glaze over our goals and change our sense of an ending. Curiously, like my own mother, Annabelle favors detective stories: the mastery of right over wrong. The sense of justice, The role of the detective.  She reads in an investigative manner, methodically and for purpose. Perhaps her body and dextrous hands will give her more pleasure than my imaginings did.

Perhaps she will be freer than I was. I could not imagine having a book and choosing to ride a bike or play outside instead. Her own extroverted nature may force her away from the distortions of introspection. She has so many friends she does not hide behind a book. Perhaps her joy in investigating will serve her well as she pushes off from the land of childhood, waving.  This week she was still confident she could be a french teacher, a orthopedic surgeon or choreograph the dance of a shooting star .

3 Comments

  1. Reply
    Char February 16, 2015

    It can be hard to witness our children’s different ways of being. On some subconscious level we wish they could mirror our interests and passions as they mirrored our facial expressions from their earliest days of life. This can be more profoundly true of a child who is not your gender, although one might think that would be easier. Well, of course he’s different, he is male. I wanted him to love the books and poetry I loved but that was not to be. I had to learn to enjoy baseball and soccer and all sorts of things I’d never dreamed I’d do…and sometimes it was a stretch!

  2. Reply
    Nancy Fisher February 7, 2015

    Oh Katie…so beautifully written…the last sentence is magic….as I’m sure your daughter also is.
    Reading haS ALSO BEEN MY SECOND ADDICTION….helped me deal with my first…P.doesn’t need to escape as much as you and I did and that’s a good thing…and you have given her the freedom to be who she is..and I guess now she is being that person in her own way…on her own time..and not on someone elses dime

    • Reply
      Katy Aisenberg February 10, 2015

      Dear Nancy-
      It has been the one most constant companion.
      Thanks for you lovely words. XO KT

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