Irish Examiner January 23rd - A child lost in the books
I’m jealous of my Eldest. It’s not toxic jealousy though. Not like peer-jealousy which leads to the hatching of elaborate schemes, the writing of poison letters and building traps in the forest. This is good jealousy. I’m delighted for things in her life. Lots of things. She has no worries. She sees a career that she likes and announces that’s what she’d like to be when she grows up. She writes little songs and stories with no internal editor. There is no one else in her brain telling her she can’t do those things and don’t be stupid, and don’t take on too much, you’ve been disappointed before.
She doesn’t have a phone. She has attention span. Hasn’t yet made shite of her teeth. No existential angst. No guilt. She doesn’t fret about what she said to someone at a house party in 2012.
But the main reason I am delighted is she is after getting into the books. I don’t mean she’s doing my VAT. Although that would be a help. I mean books books with stories and heroes and talking dogs and quests. I am watching her now as she is just DUG INTO A BOOK. Miles away. The world around her has lost definition, like the blurred background on a zoom meeting.
I remember that feeling well. Looking up from the book an hour later and finding the world has changed or the sun had set. The voracious appetite for books. Adults have got competitive with their book reading stats, setting goals. Putting up the lists of books read last year. Well children eat your targets up for a snack. They’ve smashed your annual output by mid January. I used to wonder why the library gave out 12 books per person. It’s because of children. I used to think there’s enough books in the world. But you need them for the children.
As she reads I know that she will come across words that she’s never seen before. If I’m not around, she may pronounce them in her head. Maybe she’ll get it wrong, and that weird pronunciation will stay with her somewhere for life no matter how many times she hears it. I still read ‘atmosphere’ as aTOMsphere because of some book in 1986. There will be a word she guesses the meaning of and then one day will use it and realise it’s not what she thought it was.
There will be the book she read too soon that was a bit grown up but it was weird in a good way, that tweaks her brain to be better able to deal with dissonance and stuff being out of kilter and just general oddness. I believe it to be an essential skill to be ok with weirdness if you’re going to be a daughter of Future Me When I’m Decrepit.
Her relationship with the library will change too. Before we would browse together. “Oh Look, this looks lovely, would you like this?” Now she will prowl the shelves, hungry. Looking for berries.
It’s slightly bittersweet of course. As our whole downstairs is one room, for years the children would spot us and suspect we might be relaxing or enjoying ourselves and then come up and ask us “Who invented words?” or to take part in an overly-complicated game involving the spoon people. (spoons). And on occasions like that one might possibly mutter under one’s breath ‘would they ever leave us alone?’
And now she is ACTIVELY leading us alone. In another world. We are interrupting. Philistines. “No books at the dinner table darling.” Who AM I? Mathilda’s father? It’s like I’m telling her ‘that there reading will rot yer brain’
But mostly she’s an inspiration. To read like crazy again.