All I need is the ink that I breathe
[snip][snip]
Anyway, I’ve had a hard time accepting how little interest L has in reading. It never occurred to me that I could have a child who is so disinterested in the magic of books. I was reading early readers at four and chapter books with ease at six. By eight, I kept a smuggled flashlight under my mattress and sat up inside my blanket tent gobbling up stories deep into the darkest night, every night.
I know kids have their own journey and they aren’t supposed to be little replicas of their maladjusted parents. But reading is fundamental, right? It’s not one of those things I can easily let go of like I can her refusal to eat salad. I have no problem if she’s a late reader. I have a huge problem if she hates reading. HUGE.
[snip]The point is, we both devour books constantly, and (as I am prone to doing) I worry that if I had a kid one day and it didn’t like to read, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. It would be like a little alien in our midst. Not unloved, not unwanted, just totally befuddling.
[snip]
Our first child was a bit of a surprise, so I didn’t really have much of an opportunity to ponder what he might be like. While I can see bits and pieces of both his mom & his dad in him, he is definitely his own distinct person. Kids come with quirks. He is a voracious reader at (almost) 4, but he also has a strong penchant for destroying books. (Go figure?)
It’s one of those paradoxes that became really clear to me after having him. I don’t have kids. Kids have me. They’re wildly unpredictable, and will shatter your heart and surprise you and be the only thing that keeps you going when you think you just can’t go on anymore.
We’re about to have our second child, this time in a very carefully planned and predictable manner. It took us a while to figure out why, after having one, we wanted to have another. Sure, there’s the whole sibling thing. But mostly, we both felt like we had enough love in our hearts that we wanted to share. There was room in our family for one more. When we knew, we just knew.
