For the Love of Books

My oldest son loved books when he was a little guy.  We couldn't read his favorites to him enough.  He had them memorized so well that when he was about a year old, as we were turning the page of an animal book he would be making the sound of whichever animal was coming next--roaring if it was a lion, mooing if it was a cow.  When he was two and a half, I listened outside his door (when he was supposed to be napping) as he turned the pages of an oft-read book called Honey Rabbit and recited the text absolutely verbatim, right down to the "he said's" and "cried he's."  I could make him the happiest little boy in the universe if I bought him an 89-cent Little Golden Book.  That child soaked up words and pictures like an eager sponge.

The three brothers who came along after him--bing, bing, bing, so that there were four by the time he was four--loved books just about as much as he did, and storytime was a big deal in our house.  I tell you, our boys made us read to them so much about dinosaurs that they could spout facts about those prehistoric monsters like a quartet of miniature paleontologists.  Even our fifth son, who wasn't as interested as his older brothers had been in listening to the words, spent hours pouring over pictures of dinosaurs.

It is so fun to see that my granddaughters have inherited this great love of books.  (Of course, they get it from both sides: their mommy, a lifelong book fanatic herself, is in fact a librarian!)  Bonny and Kewpie would probably prefer a book to just about any toy there is. Okay, Bonny loves Elmo and rubber duckies, and Kewpie loves teddy bears (bee-ahs, she calls them--with a Boston accent!) and rubber duckies; but I think if either one of them could choose only one plaything to have, it would be a book.

Last night, I was able to capture this sweet vignette of my boy going through an animal book with his little girls.

I know when people use that saying "What goes around comes around," there's usually a negative connotation.  But that's what I think of when I look at this priceless photo.  I also think of the circle of life, and how awesome it is to see my son (who in some ways will always be my chubby towheaded toddler, listening raptly as I read--for the four-hundredth time--The Boy with a Drum) as a father reading to his own darling toddlers.

And I think that life is good today.  Very, very good.