February 16, 2007
Memoirs on Mommihood XIX
HUMBLE PIE
I started taking the O-face to our local county library about a month ago. It was the dead of winter, we were severely bored with one another and short of peanut butter wrestling in the bathtub, I couldn't come up with a better idea. They have a half decent children's section with a few toys, tables and even a puppet theater. And of course books. Shelves and shelves of books.
I read to Owen three times a day, three books each session. I guess that works out to be nine books a day for all those stellar mathematicians out there who must have missed their calling for a career in statistics. Nine books divided into the moderate library I have compiled from used bookstores and yard sales still means I see the same book once every couple of days. And lately, that has seemed one time too many. So we've been checking out board books. Sturdy, impenetrable cardboard things that will withstand accidental encounters without costing my library card and my wallet pain.
We'd been to the library twice already with some success. While Owen was not overly impressed with this temple of learning, he was fairly quiet and content to page through the books I dolled out to him on the floor. Occasionally he would waddled away a few feet when the voice of another child or the wildly patterned rug beckoned. This week was a complete disaster for an entirely predictable reason that should have hit me over the head days ago.
Owen has been going through a shelf clearing phase recently. My bookshelves are in the living room and while we have devoted the rest of the living room to Owen's empire of toys, I was not in any hurry to relocate my collection. A few weeks ago he began making great heaps on the floor of all of the titles he could throw off the shelves. Thomas Wolfe, Cormac McCarthy, Ayn Rand- he was alarmingly indiscriminate. He wasn't interested in anything between the covers, thankfully. Just in creating a large, heavy mess that resembled a leaning tower of literature. I had resolved this issue by packing the books in so tightly on the shelves Owen frequents that he was not able to wedge his little fingers in. Problem solved by ingenious mommy type. Next step, world dominance.
But then, without a second thought, I took him to the library and set him down in front of a long, low shelf full of board books. This was like giving a prison inmate a loaded gun. He began throwing books off the shelves as fast as I could put them back. And because there was no space in which to contain him, no convenient door to throw him behind, no way to avoid a screaming tantrum in the middle of a public place devoted to quiet introspection, I created the perfect storm. Owen giggled and shrieked with delight- there were hundreds of possibilities for destruction and upheaval. I quietly followed behind, fuming at my own stupidity and secretly appalled. Because if you know anything about me, you will understand the reverence I have for books. Throwing a work of literature is the same as if we were Jewish and Owen decided to light a big, fat doobie with the menorah candles. It was so wildly inappropriate that it took my breath away and I could only stare. I may be atheist but libraries are like temples to me, sacred places entombed with the knowledge of the ages. Places where we walk softly and speak hushed because there is an understanding that this is sacred ground. And here was my OWN son, yelling like a lunatic and dismantling an entire section of books. I was as horrified as my grandmother would have been if my father had dared to get hit by a car and shown up at the hospital in dirty underwear.
Lesson learned. All those parents who put their toddlers on the end of leashes that were the secret subjects of my ridicule... I have just one question for you. Where do you buy kiddie handcuffs?
Posted by Kaz at February 16, 2007 1:30 PM