Mommy Mondays: Bonding Over Books

When I found out my first baby was going to be a boy, I was scared. What was I going to do with a BOY? I had boxes of porcelain dolls and Breyer horses packed away since high school for my future daughter. My poor American Girl Doll, Molly, had been waiting patiently for her chance to don her yellow rain slicker once more (it has since melted). I didn't know the first thing about Thomas the Train, and I was rather blissful in my ignorance.

Then, for my baby shower, my sister made me a little card:
"Remember: Shakespeare, Kipling, Tolkien, Twain; all boys."

I still have that card. It was the perfect reminder that my true love - books, both reading and writing them - could just as easily be shared with a son as a daughter. Since then, reading to Jack has become one of my favorite parts of being a parent. We read something almost every night without fail. I am counting down the days until he's old enough for Harry Potter.

Of course, at the time I had no idea that Jack would take to writing the way he has. After he penned his first masterpiece, "Marshmallow Joins," last year, he has gone on to write and illustrate seven more books. He's even got his own folder on my desktop. A few of weeks ago I took Jack with me to Starbucks to work, and after we discussed narrative arcs and inciting incidents, he came up with a story called "Meteors" about a little boy who saves the world from a meteor that falls into an underwater volcano. It's actually pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Our hero, Zyrus, with his mommy and pet labradoodle.

Late last year I started buying Jack "chapter books." We've read several from the Roald Dahl collection I picked up at Costco (James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda) as well as The Wizard of Oz and Stuart Little. His observations are surprisingly astute ("This book has no plot," he declared midway through Stuart Little, and he's spot on with that one). To give E.B. White a chance to redeem himself, we picked up Charlotte's Web.

When I started writing, it was always in the back of my head that I wanted an accomplishment of my own, something my children could be proud of someday. I wanted Jack to be able to point to a book shelf and say, "My mom did that." But I never imagined my love of books would be the thing I shared with my sons.

There are many days when I worry I've spent too much time buried in my laptop instead of paying attention to my kids, when I'm preoccupied with an idea instead of focusing on a game of catch, when I let the baby stay in his crib a few extra minutes (or, you know, thirty) so I can finish a scene. Most days I feel guilty that I'd rather be writing than entertaining Will, that I'm simply not as passionate about mothering as I am about creating new worlds. I love my boys more than anything, but being a mom doesn't fulfill me in every possible way, and it shouldn't have to. I'm happy to have something outside of them, and I hope one day they'll appreciate it too.

Yesterday, we came to the point in Charlotte's Web where Fern describes the fair as the best thing she's ever done in her whole life. So I asked Jack, what was his favorite thing he's ever done? His answer caught me completely off guard.

"Going to Starbucks and writing down books with you," he said.
"Really?" I asked through my tears. "Not going to Disney World or something?"
"No. Because writing books is my favorite thing in the whole world."

There are many days where I feel like I've failed as a mother, but yesterday was not one of them.


(Note: I wrote this post on Saturday. Yesterday I TOTALLY failed as a mother. But that's another story for another time...)