Annie and her books

I signed the kids up for gymnastics for the winer to give them something to do other than huddle for warmth near the vent in the tv room. I was able to get Annie and Johnny into classes that are almost at the same time. John starts at 3:30, Annie starts at 4. For the half-hour that she is waiting, Annie brings a book. The first day she brought Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. A fellow gymnast hovered over Annie's book while she was waiting for the class to start and said, "What are you reading?" Not looking up, Annie answered, "Harry Potter." The girl kept asking questions, all while Annie couldn't be bothered to look up to answer. I imagine she was having a marvelous time in her imaginary world and wished the garrulous girl would just go away. When the girl finally lost interest in Annie, I went over and tried to explain to Annie how the girl was trying to make friends with her. "Books are great when you're alone...take advantage of opportunities to make friends...notice when someone's trying to be your friend...find something you like to talk about together..." I think she heard "wah wah wah wah wah" (imagine Charlie Brown's adult world). Sometimes I think this is how Annie sees the entire "real" world. Just noise in between the reality she finds in books.

Telling Annie what to read is like telling a teenage girl what to wear. She loves the "Little House on the Prairie" books except for some odd reason "Farmer Boy." She has a collection of Little House books in a neat little box that she got from her godmother Caroline. She treasures them and keeps all of them neat and orderly in the box, all except Farmer Boy. Poor Farmer Boy can't live in the treasured box, can't even live on the same shelf as the other books, but has to be kept on the baby shelf with Ellie's books. Last summer at our block party we had a book donation bin for the book walk (think "cake walk" except with books as the prizes instead of cakes). In a dash, Annie ran up to her room to finally have a chance to purge the despised Farmer Boy from her bookshelf. She was finally rid of her cryptonite. So imagine her face when she came home two weeks ago with none other than her school's copy of "Farmer Boy" to read for her next book assignment. I was happy when she started to read it and assumed she had changed her mind about how horrible it was. It sat by her bedside for the next two weeks, and silly me, I assumed she was reading it. Last night before I went out I asked her just to make sure she had read it. "It's due tomorrow," I told her. She assured me she did read it. Then I went out to a church event (I make it sound holy when there was actually a lot of wine and dice involved...Bunco). When I got home Matt told me of the scene that followed after I left. Instead of just taking her word for it like I did, Matt opened the book and started quizzing her on the subject matter. Then the truth came out. "I started reading it, but I DON'T LIKE IT!" And when Matt told her that it was due for school and she needed to read it for awhile before bed, all hell broke loose. "NOOOOOOOOO! BUT WE JUST WENT TO THE LIBRARY I HAVE NEW BOOKS I WANT TO READ ANNE OF GREEN GABLES!!!! DON'T MAKE ME READ FARMER BOY I HATE IT!!!!!!!" And she threw one of her all-out fits that turned her face blotchy and her eyes puffy just like when she was an infant. (Funny how some traits seem to be embedded from birth.) Matt calmly sat her down, talked her down from the ledge, and got her to read it before bed. As a reward, she got to stay up 45 minutes later than usual and watch some of the strawberry shortcake movie she picked out from the library.

Funny how we worry about our kids. They're either not eating enough or they're eating too much. They're too needy, they're too detached. They are pushovers, they are bullies. They are too social and not studious enough, or in the case of Annie, so studious that I worry that she will push friends away. The other day she corrected one of her friends on how to spell something. I cringed internally and tried to gently tell her to be careful about correcting friends. "You can let grownups do that. As a friend, you don't want to be the one doing that." In my head I was thinking, "No one likes that person. Seriously." But then I remembered having a huge argument with a friend when I was 12 about whether Alexander Hamilton, who was on a $10 bill, was a president or not. She thought he probably was. To prove it, I sung her the presidents song to the tune of "Yankee Doodle." "See! Did you hear 'Hamilton' anywhere in that song? Well, then, he wasn't a president!" I also think of my husband, who uses cool logic to defend his arguments like a mother lion would use her ferocious claws to defend her young. And now it occurs to me...am I afraid that Annie Is fated to become her parents? Will she unbendingly argue like Matt? Escape into her books like I escape into my mind? Is all the social awkwardness, all the intensity, all the oddness and sensitivity that Matt or I have experienced due to come her way as well? Maybe the key is not to try to change the more difficult qualities we see that our children have inherited, but to become comfortable with those qualities in ourselves so we can allow them to flourish in our kids. Sometimes parenting calls for worrying less and smiling more. The truth is, I love how much she adores books, I love that she uses big words but still has the curve of a baby face when she takes off her glasses, and I love that I can remember that tiny pink newborn who would throw inconsolable fits while her face grew blotchy. I love watching the miracle unfold of mixing two people and getting one beautiful, unique, spirited child that will grow into her own. God help me to give her the tools and the space to grow into who she was intended to be.