One of the gifts that my youngest granddaughter got for Christmas was a book. I was at her house when she awakened to find that Pollie, her Elf, had given Santa a good report and Santa had delivered on many of Myah’s wishes. Of course, Clop (me) and Auntie Lisa weighed in, too. But this Christmas morning, Myah sat on Clop’s lap, and we read her new book.
When Myah comes to visit me, she enters the House of Books, a place where she is comfortable. I have set up an art and reading center for her in the dining area, but she must pass three hundred thousand books to get to it. Sometimes, she will pause in her passage, select a book from a shelf and sit on my futon, cross her legs, and open it. The book is never one that she can easily read, though the kindergartner is reading at a second-grade level. (Stand down, you mothers and grandmothers: This is not a competition. I know that your children and grandchildren began to read as soon as they cleared the birth canal.) We recently played a game that Myah named “Groundhog,” and she selected a novel by Tom Corcoran to pretend to read after she wakened the groundhog (me). “The Mango Opera” had been sitting on the floor in front of a bookshelf, a handy place to find a book for a child who spends so many hours dusting my naked hardwood floors with her hair and clothing.
I am a book pusher; I give books to my children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors and other people’s children. I have friends who have written to me to thank me for the books that I have sent to their children. “Thanks for helping to make them readers,” one friend wrote to me. When my first granddaughter was making tough decisions about what books to pass on to others, Imani told her mother that she could not give away the books that “Cool Papa” had given her. Imani is an active young lady, a participant in sports: soccer, volleyball, basketball, and track. She is also active on social media sites, the new normal for our young. The book that I read to her cousin on Christmas morning is about a Paralympics Gold Medalist. Splash was written by Claire Cashmore and illustrated by Sharon Davey. It was not until the 18th page of the 24-page story that Myah quietly noted something about the girl featured in the story: “She only has one arm.” That kind of magical discovery while reading books is what keeps me reading books. And why I am pleased that my youngest granddaughter has a comfort with books.
I’ve written of the many hours that my sister and brother and I spent at the Carnegie Library in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh Pa., and my job as a page at the University of Pittsburgh library. I brought home many of the books that the library was discarding — books that were multiple duplicates of others in the library — and my mother’s long-suffering acceptance that I was going to bury the apartment in books. My oldest daughter still remembers my reaction to her attempt, at the age of 7, to sell some of her books at the yard sale her parents were having. She claims that I told her, “Never give up your books.” She never has. (Except those I have stolen for her.)
I’ve paused in the writing of this to read my latest book gift, Demon Copperhead, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Barbara Kingsolver. I am comfortable.
cjon3acd@att.net