Books and Boys

I have always loved this saying. Most of the books in this picture can be found in one of my many bookcases. What are books to a person? To an imaginative 4 year old, they are doorways to magic lands. To a lonely 8 year old in a foreign land, they are friends and companions, something to pass the time. To an awkward and frightened teenager, they are comfort and escape from the darkness. To an adult, they are old friends. Full of life lessons, ideas, magic, history - books are constants in a world that passes in the blink of an eye.
One of my favorite quotes is from the movie You've Got Mail, even if it is delivered by a tweed-coat wearing computer phobic author obsessed with the sound of an electric typewriter. He calls it the basic truth: You are what you read. Having loved books all my life, I couldn't wait to share the magic in their pages with my children.

Enter Ian. As a baby, he would toddle back and forth between the sofa and the bookcase, carrying board book after board book. "Read, Mommy!" he would say, over and over. Now, my pragmatic, freckle faced boy avoids storytime. Math and science whiz that he is, he shrugs me off when I say "Let's read a book!" This is the child who, when asked to draw a picture, comes back with a bar graph and Venn diagram. There are times I look at him and think, "Who are you? What happened to my little boy who always wanted one more story? Where does this logical little mind come from?" As a confirmed bibliophile, I am out of my depth sometimes. I am anything but logical. I am impulsive, emotional, and impatient. Then he gets frustrated when something isn't perfect, or anxious over something we adults would find trivial, and I realize, so is he. Our minds may work in different ways, but he is still me. We share so much more than blood. We may not love the same things, or in the same way, but we love each other, and we are alike in more ways than we are different.



Then came Josh. The funny one. The artistic one. And once again, the stubborn one. If there's one thing my kids have gotten from me, that would be it. He was even less interested in stories and books at first, unless he had a crayon in one hand. Now he's a bit more interested. He's more interested in pestering his older brother.

It's taken me time to realize that you can't make your children what you want, or what you expect. What you can do is love them unconditionally. You can guide them, show them better choices, give them options, instill values, and expand their horizons. Share what they like and hopefully, open their eyes to the things you love. Like books.