I had a voracious appetite for books as a child. My mother paraded me and my 3 siblings to the library every week in the summer, and while my siblings grabbed a book or 2 off of the shelves (that they may or may not open up throughout the week), I loaded up my arms with more books than I could carry. Seven, eight, maybe nine books that I intended to read over the next several days until we made the pilgrimage back to the building that housed these windows into worlds outside of mine. Curled up in my bed back at home, I dove into pages that sparked my imagination and gave me zest for a life outside of the four walls of my very pink bedroom.
I had my first child when I was practically a child myself. Relatively clueless about babies and their lack of attention span, I started buying and collecting children’s books, anxious to read him Dr. Seuss and Goodnight Moon. Finally in the midst of toddlerhood, he learned the wonder and excitement of cozying up and hearing a story, watching it come to life on the pages before him. We rarely watched tv in our house those first few years of his life, but instead surrounded ourselves with a stack of books to be read aloud.
Eventually bedtime routines were put into place, and reading aloud was the step that we all enjoyed the most. Lined up 3 across on the couch, my husband, my son, and I dove into a mountain of picture books before we put him to sleep each night. Nothing trumped this step in the nightly routine. If we were out of town, or home late after a hectic day, we still found a way to keep this tradition of reading aloud before bed. Life rarely stays sweet and simple, and before long we added three daughters to the mix and the kind of crazy that comes with four young kids. We found ourselves juggling school, sports, church, and family. But still, every night they fought over who got to pick the stories to read aloud, whining loudly if they disliked another’s choice, but eventually settling in to hear it, enthralled even if it wasn’t their personal favorite. The older ones were just as eager to snuggle up for this nightly ritual, not to be left out even if they had heard that Berenstain Bears story dozens of times before.
Times of transition call us back to those regular practices that establish a sense of normalcy in a time of chaos. This first week of school has left us all weary from that early morning alarm, and anxious about new schedules and schools. My kids are older now, and instead of flying through a book with simple rhymes on a handful of pages, I’m reading multiple chapters of a book each night. It would be easy to discontinue this antiquated practice, but my daughter, eager for a piece of normalcy after a chaotic day of finding new classrooms and adopting new school routines reminds me, “Mom, we have to be in bed by 8:30pm so that we have time to read.” Even as she nears 13, she yearns for the steady cadence of my voice after a wild day of running around. What sustains us during seasons of change and upheaval are the intentional practices that ground us and remind us of our core values.
I could have never known as a kid that reading would hold such a sacred place in my life, but my mom probably did. In a world of technology and a hurried pace that few can keep up with, I hope that I’ve instilled a love of reading in my kids that they also will be able to pass down. But even if they don’t carry on this tradition into their own families, I’ll forever have memories of teens and littles sprawled out on beds and floors, eager to plunge into a story that will transport them into a world of imagination.
*** If I was reading this post, my first question would be what are you reading right now?! The chapter book we're reading right now is Restart by Gordon Korman and they have really enjoyed it so far. Before that one, we read No Fixed Address by Susin Nielsen and that particular read really opened their eyes to the reality of homelessness among teens and families.
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