If I were ever forced to make a list of my five most prized possessions
in the world, at least two of them would be books. One of them is my ancient,
elderly, bruised and beaten and battered paperback copy of Slaughterhouse-Five that I stole from a yard sale when I was in
high school. The page corners are dog-eared and passages are highlighted and underlined
and notes are scribbled in the margins from I can’t even tell you how many essays
I wrote about it. I don’t know where that book is right now, and I won’t allow
myself to die until it is located. (Note to my husband: this is not a challenge.)
The other book is hardback, still in its original dust
jacket, was a gift for my husband the first Christmas we were dating and has
pretty much saved our relationship hundreds of times since then, and is
basically pristine except for the fingerprints. Three sets of fingerprints, to
be precise: his, mine, and hers. Because the other book is Where the Wild Things Are, and even when she was very small, our
daughter knew not to mess with the Wild Things.
I don’t know a lot of people who don’t know about the Wild
Things. The book was published before I was born, but not too long, although it
seems like everybody including my own parents was read that book as a child. I’m
sure my parents read it to me, because I remember the pictures, and I remember
sitting in the dark at night thinking about those creatures who roared their
terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes
and showed their terrible claws, and I remember never once wondering what “gnashed”
meant, because I already knew, from the book.
We went through a phase, a wonderful phase, my favorite so
far, where Shae wanted to read Wild Things every night before bed for like a
whole month, and my husband and I would take turns reading it to her, and we
each had a different way to read the story. My husband, surprisingly, is all
energy and light and loud noises, and when he reads it to her there is a lot of
laughing and giggling and crazy frenetic dancing. His Max is much more regal
than mine, more kingly, and his voice is deeper and manlier, and his Max is
strong and assertive. I think she likes his version best, honestly.
Because mine is different. When I read the book, and we get
to the bit about “LET THE WILD RUMPUS START” there is jumping on the bed and
crazy choreography and hooting and hollering and howling at the moon and
sometimes I’ll pick her up and fly her around the room, but when we get to the
part about “BE STILL” my voice breaks a little bit, cracks ever so slightly,
and once we round the corner of “OH PLEASE DON’T GO, WE’LL EAT YOU UP WE LOVE
YOU SO” … there is quiet. My Max is sad. He misses his Mommy and his toys and
his string cheese and all the things that he loves best in the world, and when
he says, “NO,” it is a whisper.
In that moment she is not Max any more – I am. And I have
gone from being master of the house, superhero of the world, king of where the
wild things are, to a tiny little thing, just a mom, whose daughter is growing
right there in the bed where we are all snuggled together reading, and I can
feel the time ticking away, and already she is about to start kindergarten and
soon middle school and then high school and then college and then marriage and
then children and I just want it all to stop, to calm down, to be silent and
small again, my little baby, the best thing that has ever happened to me, the
greatest thing that I have ever done in my whole entire life, possibly the
greatest thing that I will ever do, and I just want it all to be still.
So I whisper “NO,” and she steps into her private boat and
sails back almost over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and
into the night of her own room, where I have always been waiting for her, with
her supper.
And it is still hot.
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