Motherhood, By the Book

I have been reading children’s books daily, nightly, round-the-clockly for over twenty years now.

Night after night, I have goodnighted the moon, counted the apples up on top, asked if there’d chicka chicka boom boom be enough room.

My oldest just turned twenty, and yes, I said I’d been reading for over twenty years because I read to her in utero. Of course I did. They said she’d turn out better if I did, and I wasn’t about to risk her being something short of incredible. I wasn’t about to go and disappoint Them.

As the governing body of parenting, They know everything.

So I read my daughter-who-I-didn’t-even-know-was-a-daughter-yet picture books, she with her obstructed view and floating about with little developed sense for character, plot or much else; I with my hopeful bump and best-mom-ever aspirations.

Sometimes, per They, I’d also play classical music for the rise of my stomach that was her — which is probably why she took piano lessons for a meaningful stretch of months when she was nine.

By the time my daughter was living on the other side of my stomach, she was a practiced, voracious listener. And now she could finally see the pictures and hear ungarbled words. We’d worm our way through book after book, Very Hungry Caterpillars who were never full. Always “one more” or “again” — that “The End” on the last page really only ever meant “The End for Now.”

There was always another book, always another day.

And then there was always another kid. As a reader, I had solid job security for years. Every time one kid outgrew board books, I had another in the pipeline ready to listen and gnaw on the delicious, rigid pages of Good Night Gorilla. When Easy-to-Reads got too easy for one, they proved just the right challenge for the next — which is why my older son knew more than he wanted to about Fancy Nancy’s proclivity for opulence, and why my younger daughter could tell you which Hot Wheel would emerge victorious from the secret tunnel [the yellow one].

There was a thud factor to the reading in those early years. So many books, with a small-print guarantee that the most annoying of the lot — basically anything adapted from a Nick Jr. show — would end up in heaviest rotation.

So I’ll admit it here and now: I wasn’t always the most engaged reader. The bedtime book often felt like the last hurdle before the day’s finish line — keep your form and clear the last barrier between you and the exquisite combination of your couch and TV. I was in a 100 meter dash, going for time. Must. Break. Tape. I brought an urgency to the reading, like I was considering a side hustle as someone who reads disclaimer boilerplate on radio ads.

My husband, on the other, nicer hand, seemed an entrant in a decathlon. He didn’t consider any of this night time production a sprint. He’d been away all day, these were his minutes with his sweet and clean and sleepy children — so he read books slowly, deliberately, as if he actually wanted to know what the story was about. There was a soothing, monotonous quality to it, like he might someday be hired by the then twinkle-in-a-developer’s-eye Calm app.

He sat on one bed or another, each kid barnacled to one limb or another, along for the ride of whatever tale this whale was telling.

I’d pop into the room to take in the scene, the four of them floating along on the nightly tide. I’d watch my three oldest’s eyes defocus, each staring in a different direction, glazed, entranced, as they let the words wash over them. I knew they were each art-directing their own scenes in their heads. I knew they were each hearing the same words but were each painting it very differently — just like they process our parenting and everything else in the world, despite a bounty of shared nature and nurture.

And then I’d leave the room, using the opportunity while my husband was on shift to run around and gather up laundry and otherwise clean because while They want you to sit and absorb beautiful moments with your children, Motherhood demands you keep moving — like one of those sharks that will drown if it stops swimming.

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My husband traveled a fair amount so not every bedtime was so floaty. One early evening when he was out of town, pregnant with my third, I was reading a book to my first two in a bona fide book store, a book store our town sadly no longer has, now the site of a franchised skin care place.

I was blazing through the book, seriously positioned for a personal best time. I had a need for this speed because while my daughter was invested in the story and reaching its end, my son was squirming and threatening escape to the toy store next door (also RIP).

I spoke every word on the page, but those words were thoroughly unrelated to what was going through my mind:

We still have to walk home.

We still have to eat whatever dinner I have to make.

We still have to take baths.

We still have to brush teeth.

And we still have to read more books once we’ve done all that other stuff.

Hurdle, hurdle, hurdle.

“Sloooowww down,” I heard a voice to my left and turned, realizing it was meant for me. “You are reading sooooooo fast. There’s no way they can understand you.”

The woman who had shared this was standing, peering down at us, looking sympathetically at my children, the poor victims of a rushy mom.

It’s a forever curiosity that society thinks young moms are doing anything out in the world but waiting for unsolicited stranger feedback. Other professions don’t get so many pennies of two cents thrown their way. No one walks by a construction site offering constructive criticism to the supers. Hey, sir! You might want to angle that joist a bit differently!

Do mothers look less authoritative because we don’t wear hard hats?

Also, should we?

I don’t remember saying much back to that woman. I might’ve said “They’re fine” —both because that was true and because it would only be days later that I’d craft the most perfect output for her unwanted input.

Meanwhile, it rankled me while I pushed a loaded double stroller home, my body the sole locomotion for three other people. How dare she? How dare she judge me on mere minutes when I was putting in mighty hours? I was trying — I felt unnecessarily crushed that that wasn’t obvious. And didn’t I deserve some points for having my kids in a bookstore to begin with? They could have been home watching a show! I thought indignantly. And then I also thought about what show they would watch when we got home, so I could cook undistracted.

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At some point our children’s book river dammed up, the handing down strong-armed by the end of the line. Of course, my youngest didn’t have a sibling behind him to pass books on to — he was the youngest. But he also wasn’t progressing through our library like our other kids had. He wasn’t moving past the board books and the easy readers. We were stuck in them, parked on their pages.

For years, being read to on a soft couch was one of my youngest’s best and few activities. He’d lean, slumped and puzzle-piece-fitted into the side of any one of his readers.

We’d ask him questions because of course They say to:

What color is the balloon?

How many little bears are sitting on chairs?

Can you point to the bowl full of mush?

He’d answer or not, depending on the drug and seizure toll of the day.

I wondered if these stories sounded to him like he was back in utero — words and voices floating around trying to reach underwater ears. A child trying hard to listen while waiting for real life to begin.

I started to read slower. I needed to so he could understand me. And where was I going anyway? I realized I didn’t usually have a good answer for that. Target probably? Because sometimes getting snacks and pull-ups and other stuff equipping me to be a mom felt easier than staying home and being one.

I channeled my husband and started to understand what I was reading, falling into the stories more. I wondered at Curious George’s motives and safety. I puzzled at the pervasive Christianity of Berenstain Bears stories, and yet the mean-spiritedness coursing through character portrayals — Mama a bit of a martyr, Papa more than a bit of an out-of-touch fool. I drew comfort from the deep bond between Mater and Lightning McQueen. I fell hard for Little Bear.

I considered that I might be approaching the Guinness World Record for number of Froggy books read, and if that wasn’t an existing category, how I might go about establishing it as one and proving I deserved top honors.

I read my son books inscribed by my mom in the early two thousands to my other babies, kids who now did confounding math homework alone or on Facetimes in their rooms.

And at some, nothing-short-of-miraculous moment, my youngest started reading these same books to me — a glory worthy of another newsletter. Or a whole big fat book.

As I became the listener, my mind started to drift away from the stories again. But now I wasn’t thinking about what I had to do. I was thinking about what he was doing — the exquisiteness of sounding out, the navigation of written English’s trickery, the art of his brain. Bearing witness to all his mind gears in spinning motion, cracking a previously impenetrable code. Real life really beginning.

And I floated to all the stories before this particular bedtime. How many times had I read this one to that one and that one to this one? An exact count exists — of the nights and the books and the words. A true statistician could break it all down, even a side by side comparison of those I’ve read for speed vs those I’ve read for content.

None of it had felt quantifiable — that false infinity of parenthood, the tasks and rituals that seem and feel endless at the time, but are actually numbered.

And actually do end.

To sloooowww reads,

Jen.

Thank you for reading — especially after this incredibly heavy and sad week. I wrote this before the murders in Uvalde, and now false infinity feels different, more stark. I don’t know how it is that we live in a country where a nightly bedtime book feels like a luxury good if you dare to do something as standard as send your kids to school.

I do know I want to live in a country where I hug my kids extra hard at night just because I want to, not because another hideous thing has happened.

A few quick ideas below, actions for the heart and gut sick (all of us). Please add others in comments:

Michael Bloomberg is triple-matching donations to Everytown and Moms Demand Action through 5/31. Give here.

Support Beto O’Rourke’s campaign to win the gubernatorial race in TX and defeat the incumbecile.

Join/support March for Our Lives — marches planned in DC and other locations on 6/11.

Sign Sandy Hook Promise’s petition to Congress to stop assault weapon and high capacity magazine sales.

Urge elected officials to pass gun safety legislation. Everytown’s easy form here.

Vote.

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Bonus: What is it about Goodnight Moon?

I went to a bookstore to buy a book for a three year old recently. The offerings are light for three year olds who aren’t yet fully self-actualized. So many of the stories seemed abstract or weighty or complicated in a way that felt far beyond the way a three year old would seem to think??

I was in the market for something more…straightforward. I’d just read about Margaret Wise Brown, and as a result, I knew definitively what three year olds look for in their literature: bowls of mush.

When Brown was emerging as a writer, in the nineteen-thirties, most books for young children drew on classic fables and folktales, providing moral instruction on each page. She rejected this orthodoxy in favor of stories that better reflected the preoccupations of young children, from sensual pleasures (the shape of an apple) to visceral emotions (fear of the dark). When boys and girls are first exposed to reading, Brown argued, they are most engaged by stories about “tables and chairs, plates and telephones, animals they know.”

I hadn’t realized Wise’s stunning simplicity was breakthrough at the time. Or that it is probably what best explains this book’s incredible staying power.

And now I’m thinking about how Goodnight Moon has been read a specific and enormous number of times in houses, towns and countries all over since its publication. That is…hushing. But then again this might be the book to give infinity a run.