Tribute to an Imagination

MS

The books above were last week’s haul from the local library. Every Monday I take my daughter to the library and try to pull a small stack of books from the shelves. We read that entire stack in one sitting, believe it or not. We finished one book and she would either say “read it again” or point to the next book. It’s fascinating to see which books strike her from the start.. and there’s a decent overlap between recognized “classics” and re-reads. So in the above group of books she particularly likes The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Toby Who Are You is a favorite because she likes all the Toby books by Willam Steig. Finally there is a small one in there called Best Dad in the Sea—an easy re-telling of Finding Nemo. These were the three books that got a re-read demand.

Today my daughter surprised me twice with books. While I was doing stuff in the kitchen she was flipping through The Three Billy Goats Gruff and when I got closer and looked over her shoulder I realized that she was turning the pages and telling the story. We’ve only had the book for a few days, so I was surprised at how well she was able to do this. Then when we were reading another favorite—and one I bought for her birthday—Strega Nona, we came to the part where Strega Nona recites four lines of poetry and the pasta pot starts to bubble. My daughter knows details from this story, but this time when I came to the four lines she said them from memory: “Bubble, bubble pasta pot. Boil me some pasta nice and hot. I’m hungry and it’s time to sup. Boil me enough pasta to fill me up.” Her recall of those four lines blew me away because I’ve never worked on them with her.. she just knew them and could say them.

My daughter turned three yesterday, and I want to mark that in my blog. Watching her develop and grasp new ideas.. and imagine things.. is the principal joy of my life. She’s a regular shape-changer, running around as one animal or another.. or one dinosaur or another. She’s constantly working out scenarios and then asking me to supply dialogue for a creature or inanimate object. One of her most common phrases is “What’s he going to say when..?” Or when we read a book she will fasten on a page and ask me for extra dialogue between minor characters. I never would’ve guessed that being a dad meant becoming an impromptu novelist.. but that’s how it often feels.

I never would’ve guessed the extent to which she would change me. When I think about the future I don’t catch myself thinking: I want to see this, or do this. I’ve always had a mental list of places to see and books to read.. and I’ve been fairly successful at doing these things. Now that’s not the same. There are many things I look forward to doing, but I find myself now thinking more in terms of what I can give to my daughter.. and how I can make sure she has some of the opportunities I’ve had. I feel a level of contentment that I’ve never known before with respect to my own life, and I know that’s because of this internal change in orientation.