Books For All Ages

Mindful of what I’ll call the side effects of transitions on Charlie, I was careful that Saturday was well-stocked with familiar activities with definite endings, and in which Charlie was an active player. We went grocery shopping and Charlie carried his share of bags (including the one with the watermelon). He eyed the racks of Entenman’s and Tastycakes and pulled out the bag with gluten-free brownie mix soon as we got home; he stirred the batter and licked both bowl and spoon.

There was an old blue chair—a small Ikea armchair—that I had put in my office and have now determined that we need in our new place, so we drove into Jersey City. Charlie really wanted just to stay in the car but I didn’t think that the best idea and, while smileless, he held the doors open while I pulled and carried out the chair (at least two people offered to help: I have no delusions about my lack of ability to lift anything heavy). Jim took him on a long bike ride past Charlie’s once-favorite playground (and he loitered there for a long time). “Mac Donalds!” was Charlie’s dinner request and he went through his cheeseless Quarterpounder and most of his fries in the back seat of the black car. Right around bedtime, Charlie called for “socks, socks, ride.” We pointed out that it would soon be time for bed and he’d get to go out Sunday morning for his piano lesson. Charlie was disappointed and slumped in a chair (the blue one—I’m sitting in it right now) and I think it slowly began to occur to him that he was really tired.

I had found a photo of him as a six-month-old and me and, when I asked him who was in it, he first said “Mom.” And then “Charlie, baby.” And held onto the photo in its frame engraved with “Merry Christmas, Love, Charlie” (it was Charlie’s and my first Christmas present to Jim, in December 1997). It was a quiet moment and a book seemed in order: I went to Charlie’s room and came back with Hush Little Baby, read two pages, and shut the book. It’s a lovely book with sweet drawings of a mother rabbit and her blue and yellow pajama’d son, but the sing-song rhymes were something besides soothing tonight. It was not the right book—it was no longer the right book.

I cast about for something else and picked up the book my Greek History class is reading, the Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. Charlie pulled his blanket over his head as I read and, after being silent, called out at intervals. I am not at all sure what he thought about the ancient historian Herodotus’ account of how a certain Deioces became the first king of the Medes, built a palace in Ecbatana, and conquered the Persians.

Herodotus is a great storyteller and gives a lot of personality to the ancient kings and soldiers in his writing, and of the rise and fall of their fates, and tries very hard to steer clear of myth and tell what really happened. Whether or not Charlie understood every word or mostly followed the rise and fall of my voice, Charlie was very relaxed in the blue chair when I put down my book, I gently unwrapped the blanket from around him and he padded off to bed, and was soon asleep. So I’ve really no idea what Charlie absorbed from hearing Herodotus.

But tomorrow I think we’ll be reading about the birth of Cyrus the Great.