I just recently started reading Little House on the Prairie to my son. It is the exact same book I had as a child, the same one my Dad read to me in our living room. I remember those times so vividly, as vividly as possible anyway. I recall the smell of coffee on my dads breath- Folgers, in the days before fancy coffee. Sometimes dad still had the heavy scent of paint from work. Both of those smells today immediately kindle these memories. I remember the black vinyl chair that was my dads. That chair that I thought was leather and cut up and turned into moccasins (no doubt inspired by cowboy and Indian stories dad had read to us) for my baby sister a few years later when the chair had endured so much of my brother and I climbing onto its squeaky armrests, vying for position to see the few pictures in the Little House books. Dad read us Drama in Real Life from Readers Digest, too. Many of those stories stuck in my head, plane crashes and bear attacks boiling up the excitement in me for adventure. The stories were always riveting, not just for their content but for the way dad would read, different voices for each character. The fun he seemed to have for reading to us played no small part in my love of reading.
I had almost forgotten that I still had those Little House books hidden back on the shelf behind an array of thick cardstock books that Ethan is used to reading. I wasn't sure that a book so lacking in pictures would fire his interest when I stumbled upon them two weeks ago. I started reading as he lay in bed expecting him to grab that annoying Spiderman book (pronounced "cyberman" by Ethan, in spite of his best efforts to correct himself) and beg me to read it instead. But he didn't. He stared off almost as if he was imagining the places I described, the people whose voices had their own accent, the creaking of the wagon and the smell of the sweating horses so well described in the book. I read him three chapters before my voice couldn't take the strain of imitating the various characters. He was ready for more, not just because he didn't want to go to sleep but a genuine interest seemed to be started in him.
I don't have many pictures of myself growing up. Ethans aunts and uncles and a grandma choose to distance themselves from us. It's easy for a bit of melancholy to hit me at times when I consider that there are parts of my history that he won't likely ever know because there aren't family around to tell him. But reading these books, my books from my childhood help in a small way to share part of my youth with him.
