Just Like Me

I walked past the video monitor last night, and FlapJilly was no where in sight.  It was an hour or so after her parents had kissed her goodnight. I said nothing to the grownups and began to walk upstairs to her bedroom.

I never got there.

On the landing lay my granddaughter. Flat on her belly, bent elbows and upturned palms cradling her head, she was engrossed in the biggest,fattest, heaviest book she owns.  Surrounding her were the teeniest books she owns, square cardboard with a finger puppet poking its face up from the cover, just like the one she chose at Barnes and Opal for her soon-to-arrive baby brother.

The contrast made my heart soar.

I snuggled up against her, not saying a word. I was a child again, sent upstairs before I was ready to sleep, covertly turning to the foot of my bed with a collection of illustrated Washington Irving, reading in the dim light from the hall.  The picture of the Headless Horseman is as vivid today as it was in reality five or six decades ago.

I, too, had a huge collection of stories. I, too, wanted to be left alone with the words and the pictures. I, too, was too awake, too filled with the day to sleep most nights. So, I read, in the half-light, just as my little one was last night.

“What goes around comes around,” G’ma used to say. Last night, I knew she was right.