Last night Alexander was looking for something to read (he's become a voracious reader and considering I nearly compromised my liver trying to teach him how to read in second grade this is no insignificant detail. In fact, he gets away with a lot because he's reading all the time...I'm that happy, still.) Anyway, he picked up my copy of "Catcher in the Rye." I had a moment of thinking: "Wait a minute, that's not really appropriate for a just recently turned 9 yr old. But that feeling was replaced with an intense curiousity to what he would say and what he would think about it. After a few pages he put it down saying he liked it but he wasn't going to read it right now. And then, after further consideration, he came up with: "Was this book like the 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' of your times." On the mark, I'd say.
Eliot last night couldn't fall asleep. I started reading her "Cinderella" and she burst out in tears: "What if you die, then I'll get a stepmother. Or if you fight with Daddy and he changes his mind about loving you and then I get another stepmother. Or if you die, but then you come back and I already have a stepmother." First, I reasoned that I wasn't dying, that I would always be her mother, and I even added as a reassurance: "your Daddy would never marry somebody evil. She would be nice." But this provoked an even more frantic reaction: "but he doesn't know anybody, he doesn't have any girl friends, it might be somebody who seems nice and then is evil."
Hard to fight that sort of logic. So, I did what any rational and sensible mother would do. Put away "Cinderella" and pulled out "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie" (Thanks Arlene!)
(Photo taken on Alexander's 9th birthday. He's wearing the cap Eliot just gave him as a present.)
The eternal questions of life, livers and stepmothers as seen through the eyes of a four-year old. Priceless.
ReplyDelete