Moonlight and Love Songs: Never Out of Date

I'm much too young to remember, but I seem to recall reading a line from Jimmy Durante. Somebody said to him "You're no Caruso!" and he responded with something like: "It's true I ain't. But sometimes I sing so pretty I could break my own heart."

I'm shy to a fault and can't carry a tune, but I've always sung to the children.

The first song I remember sharing with them was Dream a Little Dream, a good song for rocking a baby.

Sweet dreams 'til sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams, whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.

Jessica has always wanted to sing, too. Before she could say her prayers, she struggled to sing Taste and See, her favorite hymn.

Years later when I walked almost daily to the library with kindergarten-aged Jessica, I turned her love of song to my advantage. She protested these trips terribly. But I would sing on the way, and she eventually stopped fussing and joined in.

I love you
For sentimental reasons
I hope you do believe me
I've given you my heart

That one must have sunk in: I once overheard her explain to a doll that there's not just one, but "sanny many reasons" for people to love each other.

Both kids also protested at having their teeth brushed, and I fought those complaints with song too, picking disco or techno dance tunes in case Camille overheard. (I like to give my love a chuckle.) Many uninspired lyrics have I sung into Jessica's gaping, foaming mouth while she rolled here eyes helplessly.

Mostly our children are growing up on the lyrics to old standards. I didn't. My earliest memories include Mom listening to soft rock and Motown while driving, but by the time I was eight or nine she had shifted to non-vocal arrangements. When I finally discovered Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart, I was enchanted. In college I worked my way through my grandparents' LPs, and though I never cared for Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra, I love the words to their songs.

Camille, on the other hand, grew up with a father who might at any moment erupt into clamorous song. His singing charms our children, too, and he introduced much older songs to them: counting songs and alphabet songs with a romantic twist.

One, two, button your shoe.
Put on your coat and hat.
I play a game like that
While I'm waiting for you.

Three, four, open the door.
Hurry for heaven's sake.
I count each breath I take
While I'm waiting for you.

and

A you're adorable
B you're so beautiful
C you're a cutie full of charm
D you're delightful and
E you're exciting and
F you're a feather in my arms

One December day a couple of our children's friends visited. At the piano I started my stilted renditions of some carols. The visiting girl, who could already read easily, sat on the bench with me and began singing along. Jessica, unfamiliar with the words, so young she could hardly remember an earlier Christmas, was agape with envy. Perhaps the green-eyed monster did more than picture books did to propel her to early reading.

When Nathaniel was two, I made up a Good Morning song.

Good morning! Good morning!
It's time to wake up. It's time to go downstairs!
Although it's still night, I can turn on the light
So sleepy-heads beware.

Good morning! Good morning!
It's time to wake up. Get up, get out of bed!
We can play with our toys! We can make lots of noise!
Too bad for sleepy-heads!

It has a sort of upbeat circus tempo. I'm not sure from where I stole the melody--it always reminds me of Herod's song from Jesus Christ Superstar.

An early-riser, he loved it. We sometimes used it to wake up Mommy who didn't love it so much. At night he would ask me to sing it. And instead I would sing these lovely lines from Harry Revel, softly and slowly:

Good night, my love, the tired old moon is descending.
Good night, my love, my moment with you is now ending.
It was so heavenly, holding you close to me.
It will be heavenly to hold you again in a dream.

Then Nathaniel would plead until I finally gave him the Good Morning song and put him to bed. In my heart I agree with him: we should always fall asleep to the promise of morning.

Though eager to trot out his violin in front of strangers, Nathaniel is terribly embarrassed about singing. Altar-serving appeals to him partly because it allows him to wear a silent, stoic mien while the rest of the church is in song.

On the rare occasions when he has sung, he has always been a one-trick pony. In diapers he struggled to sing Chim Chim Cheree. Then he switched to Holly Jolly Christmas, but nothing else.

Oh, by golly have a holly, jolly Christmas this year!

That last line was a tongue twister for him, and I used to love the way he plunged through it, tossing random consonants onto the words.

That was displaced by the theme song from the Mighty Machines videos (low-budget tapes of construction trucks at work). Nathaniel did a yeoman imitation of the singer's guttural voice, but I don't think he ever made it all the way to my favorite line:

Liftin' and pullin' and flyin' so high. Building a building up to the sky.
You can watch them all day and never know why. They're Mighty Machines!

I recall a brief period when the only thing he sang was from the Muppet musical of Treasure Island.

Shiver my timbers, shiver my soul.
Yo, ho heave ho
There are men whose hearts are as black as coal.
Yo, ho heave ho

It's as dark a tale as was ever told
Of the lust for treasure and the love of gold
Shiver my timbers, shiver my sides
Yo, ho heave ho

After pirates lost their attraction he prided himself on his public performances of the theme from Star Wars. It has no lyrics so, with charming earnestness, he hummed it.

It occurs to me that my memories of our children's music must differ from theirs. When I was small, my brother and I played a handful of albums hundreds of times in the basement. My parents were busy upstairs, and today they would probably be surprised that I recall all the lyrics to Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. These were etched into my developing brain alongside Mr. Rogers' piano melodies, Joe Raposo numbers from Sesame Street, and even some awful tunes from a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang record.

My children still fall asleep to CDs every night, and I bet those lullabies, Disney ballads, Mozart sonatas, Raffi songs, and Taizé chants that repeat endlessly in the dark sit deeper in their memories than the songs we sing together. But as a parent, I treasure the songs that unite us, the ones that bridge a generation.

Last summer I picked up a songbook from an antique store. Camille's parents, in their nineties, recognized songs from their own youth like these lines Alfred Bryan wrote seven years after the Wright brothers took off:

"Oh! Say! Let us fly, dear."
"Where, kid?" "To the sky, dear."
"Oh, you flying machine!"
"Jump in, Miss Josephine."

"Oh! Joy! What a feeling!"
"Where, boy?" "In the ceiling! . . . "
"Whoa! dear. Don't hit the moon!"
"No, dear, not yet--but soon!"

Last night I was alone banging out very old tunes like that one, songs from my parents' and grandparents' times, when I sensed someone at my shoulder. Jessica peered to find my place in the music. I pointed, and she picked up the melody and started to carry it forward:

If you knew Susie like I know Susie
Oh! Oh! Oh, what a girl!

There's none so classy as this fair lassie
Oh! Oh! Holy Moses! What a chassis!

Out in public how she can yawn,
But in a parlor, you would think the war was on!

If you knew Susie like I know Susie
Oh! Oh, what a girl!

I bet you're smiling, Mr. Durante. Wherever you are.

Bossing and Begging

Me, from the driver's seat, engine running, car in reverse, foot still down on the brake: "Are you belted in yet?"

Jessica, from the back seat: "So where are we going to meet Mom and Nathaniel? What time are we meeting them? How far is it?"

Me: "Could you please just get strapped in?"

Jessica, reaching idly for the seat belt: "I'm just asking what time we're going to meet them."

Me, handing her a coupon: "And hold this for me. Don't lose it."

Jessica clicking the belt at last: "Well, I guess that's the way it is. The parents get to boss the kids."

Me: "I'm not bossing you."

Jessica, indignant: "Yes, Dad. You're bossing me. That was a command." In her deepest voice: "'Hold this for me! Hold this for me!' That was a command, and it ended in an implorative period!"

I think she meant "imperative." On the other hand, bossing the kids can sure feel like imploring.

A Chip Off the Old Block

From my lovely spouse:

As we were doing our writing exercise this morning Jessica asked how to spell the word pretty. This was about her fifteenth spelling inquiry, and it was really slowing us down. (Also, she's an excellent speller and was doing this for dramatic effect. But I digress.)

I told her we'd make all corrections after we read what we'd written and she said, "But I can't. I'd just die if I don't spell it right." I retorted, "Well, we'll give you a lovely funeral and on your headstone we'll inscribe, 'If only she knew how to spell pretty.'"

At this point Nathaniel popped up and said, "Yeah and we'll spell the word wrong just as a joke."

Consequences of the Fall

Jessica, at the end of a long hike, was tired, thirsty, and impatient: "I wish everything was perfect," she complained.

I was about to remind her that nothing apart from God is when she added: "I wish when Eve saw that apple she just clapped her hands together and left it alone."

Taking Candy from a Baby

One-year old Jessica sat on my arm, her fingers prying into my lips, while I cleared dishes. She often used to touch me in the special way of someone who doesn't know what it means to poke out your eyes.

But soon her nails started scratching painfully at my teeth and gums while she peered into my mouth.

"What are you doing?" I laughed, holding her out at arm's length, knowing she would not answer.

"She smells the chocolate," Camille chimed in.

Ah, yes. I have a sweet tooth, and chocolate is my chief vice. Too often there's some in my mouth, and sure enough, Jessica was making for it.

• 
  

At nine years old, Nathaniel's taste is finally broadening. In fact yesterday he made himself a ham sandwich that incorporated strawberry jam, cheese, pickles, peanuts, and barbecue sauce.

But as a toddler, he had mysteriously transformed from an omnivore to a fussy eater. Camille and I were exasperated with trying to feed him a balanced diet.

"Just try the asparagus," I said. "You don't have to eat them all, but you have to eat two."

"I don't like them," he said, tears coming into his eyes. We had been through this before.

"You don't know you don't like them," I insisted. "You've never, ever eaten asparagus in your entire life." I was pretty sure he hadn't eaten it uncooked, anyway.

"I know what I like," he said. "I don't have to try it."

"How can you know what you like if you haven't even tried it? Maybe you'll love it."

"I always know what I like. I like Mac and Cheese. I like Cheerios. I like chocolate."

Something dark crept into my mind. "You don't always like chocolate," I said.

Scornful disbelief. "I always like chocolate."

"No," I said back at him slowly. "You don't know until you try." I pulled a box of baking chocolate from the cabinet. Unsweetened.

I set a square ceremoniously onto a clean plate. Without hesitation he took the bait. He was so sure of himself that for a fraction of a second he actually gloated at me in triumph. Then he ran to the bathroom.

As he frantically scooped water into his lips, I sermonized at him, "You don't know if you like something until you try it."

He never did eat the asparagus.

• 
  

We still control our children's diets, so treats are really treats for them. They greet a slice of birthday cake or a bowl of ice cream excitedly: Jessica has been known to quiver with heady anticipation.

Long ago I introduced the idea of testing for poison. How uncertainly she looked at me the first few times I carefully tasted a corner of a brownie while assuring her I was protecting her from possible harm. Now, even before a cookie hits her plate, she proclaims, "There's no poison in it, Dad! You don't have to test it."

Lately she's varying her routine. As I entered the kitchen yesterday morning, she leaned over her plate, spread her arms protectively, and called, "The Pop Tart shop is now closed!"

Among the many lovely things Camille does for me is to have the children copy and illustrate poems. Nathaniel recently chose Shel Silverstein's poem, "Poison-Tester." It includes lines like these:

. . . Mmm--it's OK, but these boysenberries--I'll make sure they're not poisonberries.
Mmm--no, they're safe, but that burger might be deadly.
Mmm-no, it's all right. And now I'll test your hot fudge sundae . . .

It's good to know I'm not the only dad who tests for poison.

• 
  

Both children love to help us cook. Lately the path to pancakes is strewn with bits of eggshells, and I've become expert at extracting them from our mixing bowls.

The children now also occasionally cook for us. I mean "cook" in the sense of adding milk to cereal or microwaving leftovers, but it pleases me to no end.

If Nathaniel is awake with me early in the morning, he'll sometimes offer to prepare a bowl of oatmeal for me while I shave. He tops it off with yogurt and nuts, just like a fancy restaurant. Somehow his tastes better.

• 
  

Situated between a Home Depot parking lot and the town dump, we have a wonderful local ice cream stand. Unlike the nearby Ben and Jerry's--understaffed, over-priced, and occasionally out of milk--it's a great spot. It means everything to Jessica that she can order her own ice cream.

Always I ask "Do you want to share one with me? We can get something really special." And always she answers "No, Dad. I want my own." And we buy her a "baby" sized cone, and she picks her flavor, and she's perfectly content.

Secretly I want her to share with me. There's some kind of a super-mega-ultra-lightning sundae on the menu, and I swear I'll buy it if she ever offers to share with me, just to make the point that good things come to those who share.

But I think I'll see her married first.

Tongue-Rolling Your Way to Your Identity

After finding a storybook character who could roll her tongue, Jessica decided she needed this skill.

The list of tasks Jessica can do better than her big brother is short, and it was a long winter for her sibling rivalry. Nathaniel, former seven-year-old-who-can't-read-as-well-as-his-five-year-old-sister, leapfrogged from being a competent reader to an avid one. Lately he pretends to be still asleep in order to steal half an hour with The Secrets of Droon before breakfast.

In ski lessons Nathaniel promptly earned the nickname "Dash." If Jessica had earned a nickname, it would have been along the lines of "Snow Bottom" or "Tearful."

Nathaniel can't whistle, but neither can Jessica.

She's the natural musician, but it's hard to gloat as she's on piano and he's on violin.

Only in winking and finger-snapping is she truly dominant.

The promise of beating Nathaniel to tongue-rolling meant a lot to her. She began to practice without telling him.

For days she alternated between the mirror and her mother, sticking her narrow finger of a tongue out and asking, "Ith thith it? Amth I lollin' it?" Even navigating our icy road home from Girl Scouts, I heard a plaintive cry behind me and saw Jessica craning in her seatbelt to make eye contact in the mirror, pointing at her out-thrust tongue, and shrugging her shoulders inquisitively.

"I don't think you'll ever be able to do it," Camille warned her. "It's genetic. For you to roll your tongue, maybe your biological parents would need to roll their tongues." (We've since learned that the genetic aspect of tongue-rolling is still a hotly contested debate.)

Jessica's contorted face relaxed and became thoughtful. "So . . ." she said carefully, "there's a woman in Romania who has brown skin and can't roll her tongue."

"Ah, the puzzle pieces are filling in," I quipped.

I spoke lightly, but that's exactly what was happening. Both children are becoming curious about their roots.

Recently they sat captivated in front of an old audio tape of a two-year old Nathaniel. At the start of the tape, I was singing to him: "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins. After "Good luck will rub off when I shake hands with you," I had left the room. For the next twenty minutes Nathaniel repeated hundreds of times in a sing-song, "Good luck will rub oss!" among deliberate, guttural truck noises.

The children love this window into Nathaniel's toddler days. They sit rapt when Camille and I recall their strollers and one-sies. Jessica has become a regular reader of Camille's scrapbooks, poring over her own baby pictures.

Their earliest windows are the VHS tapes we received from the adoption agency when the children still lived in Romania. In the videos their foster parents coo over the infants while measuring their heights and head sizes.

On Jessica's tape, a family dog makes a cameo. Currently Nathaniel wants very much to have a dog, and Jessica knows it.

Sensing a new weapon, she began to fill unusually peaceful moments at dinner by intoning wistfully, "Oh, I wonder what my foster dog is doing now. He must be missing me. He loves me very much."

Then she would look pointedly at Nathaniel.

At first the speech upset him, but he found his comeback.

"That was seven years ago. . . . Dogs don't live very long." He looked pointedly back at her. "Your dog's probably dead."

Nathaniel's science curriculum has introduced genetics recently. That got both kids speculating about the traits they share with their biological parents. In third grade the details of heritability are still fuzzy, however, and the kids sometimes credit biology where they shouldn't.

Nathaniel and I were struggling to finish a wooden birdhouse in time for a fund-raising auction. I was starting the nails for him, and I bent one.

As I pulled it out, Nathaniel suggested that he could start his own nails.

"You might as well try," I said encouragingly. "You swing a hammer better than I do." He beamed.

I held a new brad. After hitting my thumb a couple of times, he drove it straight and true, finishing with the nail's head recessed just under the surface.

I was proud of him, and suddenly a little nostalgic for his discarded Fisher-Price hammer and workbench, and my thumb still smarted.

He looked up, and I was sure he was going to thank me.

"I guess my biological father was a better hammerer than you," he said.

The next day Camille sent Nathaniel to read his science lesson while she worked with Jessica. A short time later the door sprang open, and Nathaniel returned.

"Look what I can do." Effortlessly, he rolled his tongue. "I read about it in science."

Jessica's mouth opened, and she began to stammer and stamp her feet, but for once, her tongue failed her.

[This blog got a nice mention on Matt Langdon's The Hero Workshop a while back. Matt does a great job promoting heroism in everyday life. I'm grateful.]

Kids and Heroes, in My House and in Pakistan

I had no childhood hero. Athlete and astronaut left me equally unimpressed. When Time Magazine pronounced “Generation X Doesn't Believe in Heroes,” they were pronouncing about me.

But I have one now. Since I first learned about his building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I have increasingly admired Greg Mortenson.

They say the problem with heroes is the falling. You can adore Mel Gibson or Marion Jones, but where does that leave you when they go on a drunken tirade or admit to steroids?

Still, falling is a problem only in cases of hero worship. The risk of glorifying people is that they're people after all. They have faults.

I like to think that if some side of Greg Mortenson disappoints me, I will feel only crestfallen, not crushed.

Heroes also remind us of our failures.

You don't admire the chess-playing of someone who loses to you. To admire someone is to admit to your weakness. Maybe it was just stubborn pride that kept me from having heroes when I was a kid.

Greg Mortenson sold everything he owned and begged in order to build his first school. To this day, he lives in impoverished places and negotiates with dangerous people in order to teach reading to girls half a world away.

I can't think of any reason I shouldn't do the same. Instead I maintain a comfortable job in lovely New England and pride myself on Camille's success at homeschooling.

When I heard my hero was speaking nearby in Vermont, I immediately called my wife and told her I wanted to meet him. What I said next surprised me: “And I want the kids to come, too.” Camille, may God bless her always, bundled them up in spite of her flu and drove them out to meet me.

So I hurried them through bitter cold, at just about their bedtime, to meet my first hero.

Greg Mortenson really knows what it is to cherish education, and I admire him. And I'm in awe of him, and intimidated by him, and inspired by him, and indebted to him. I spoke with him that night in Bellows Falls, but I couldn't look him in the eye. I was too ashamed.

This is why it was so important to me that the children see and hear him.

The event was for adults. In a crowd of hundreds, Nathaniel and Jessica were the only kids. They fidgeted through parts of his slide show and looked to me for explanation when he fielded questions about American foreign policy.

I think I did right to bring them. My hope for Nathaniel and Jessica is that they will turn out better than I have. I want them to have the courage and the yearning to do tangible good in the world. I want their actions to emulate Christ's. I want them to love strangers. I don't want them to be afraid.

Maybe the evening with Greg Mortenson will influence them. Already they are collecting pennies for his schools. We keep some of his promotional photos in the kitchen, and I like to think they are starting to feel a kinship with these utterly foreign children half a world away.

As a child I had no hero; as a parent I do. My hero's achievements point to my failures, and my failures point to my hopes for my children. I want them to be a little more like him—and a little less like me.

All Games Lead to Chase

Our children always loved to be chased.

Running exhilarates toddlers, and I suspect the mental challenge of navigating at speed excites them too.

Children never hide their need for attention, but in a game of Chase they feel wanted. They are actively, physically pursued.

Chase even lets toddlers delight in their independence. Running away from Mom is, ultimately, what kids are built to do. Darting away from outstretched arms might deliver an extra frisson because it's practice for the real escape.

And Chase is about love. Ultimately Mom catches the child, and hugs and tickles ensue. (Even if a stubbed toe ends the game prematurely, hugs ensue.) Maybe the promise of affection is the game's biggest appeal.

When Nathaniel and Jessica were first walking, I could start a game of Chase at any time. A fierce look, a sudden movement towards them, stomping my feet so they could hear me coming—any of these could cause them to look up suddenly—is he really chasing me?—and totter away in peals of laughter, abandoning whatever play was at hand.

A little later, whether we were playing Concentration or Construction Trucks, the kids began to initiate the games of Chase. That crazy foreman who always ordered his crew to dump the dirt in the wrong spot would run off in Nathaniel's hand, leaving it up to his dump truck, in my hand, to bring him to justice. Even Construction devolved into Chase.

Tag is Chase with rules. By the time our children played Tag with other kids, they were expert evaders.

Even so, Jessica, fearing capture, would sometimes give up and fall down laughing when no pursuers were near. The anxiety was just too much for her.

Nathaniel was always confused about “It.” No matter how often we told him otherwise, he believed that It was the quarry, not the predator. His goal was escape, not pursuit, and when another child tagged him and called, “You're It!” Nathaniel would zig-zag away. Sometimes the other kids didn't notice, and the playground would be full of frantic children, all running from no one.

I recently played Running Bases with Nathaniel and Jessica. Jessica can throw and Nathaniel can catch. I can't do either, so perhaps the game was doomed from the start. We kept at it for about fifteen minutes, until Nathaniel, about to be tagged, veered off the baseline.

“You can't do that,” I called. “You have to stay between the bases.”

He hesitated. Jessica rallied and took off after him. She heaved the ball at his back, still running wildly, and missed.

“You can't do that,” I called. “You can't throw at him. You have to tag him.”

He snickered over his shoulder. This fresh insult accelerated her.

“You can't do that,” I called. “You can't tag him now—you don't even have the ball.”

Nathaniel put his toe on a rock, and yelled frantically, “I'm safe. No tagging me here.”

“You can't . . .” Oh, what was the use.

Jessica surged towards him, but he darted again.

He led her around the clearing of clover and daffodils that serves as our lawn. Both deftly avoided the wide holes where I had pried out stones and the deep ones where I had spent a morning locating the septic tank. When they came close, I could see the muscles in their calves, and I marvelled at how untoddlerlike their running had become.

Finally they exhausted themselves. Jessica trudged back to me and panted “I'm going in. There's too many bugs out here.” Nathaniel jogged toward the house. “I need water,” he called.

Running Bases was over. No one tallied a final score. Chase had won again.

Marvelling at Butterflies

As a college student I was reading in the park one day when a butterfly landed on the back of my hand. I remember the incident because of how I reacted. I didn't cherish the moment or murmur a prayer of thanks. Instead, my very first thought was, “Oh, no! This butterfly is about to leave me.” And it promptly did.

I'm a forward-looking, planning type of person, and even now I have to try consciously to live in the moment, to appreciate life's wonders, to just be.

The other night I was driving home from Cub Scouts with Nathaniel. We marveled aloud at the thousands of trees knocked down by a recent storm. Then he went quiet, and I turned on something called the John Tesh radio show, a mish-mash of soft-pop tunes and little monologues advertised as “intelligence for your life.” (The samples of intelligence are really just factoids gleaned from bullet points in USA Today.)

That Don't Impress Me Much was playing, and I'm a sucker for gimmicky pop songs.

As it ended, Nathaniel asked, “What was that song about?”

I explained that the girl was singing each verse to a different boy: a smart boy, a handsome boy, a boy with a fancy car. After describing each one's qualities, she concluded, “That don't impress me much.”

“She wants a man who is kind and loving,” I added, perhaps being a little hopeful in my interpretation of the line, “I think you're all right, but that won't keep me warm in the middle of the night.”

“So the smart guy was the one where she said, 'So you're a rocket scientist,' right?”

This was the first time Nathaniel had shown a real interest, indirectly, in how to win a girl's heart, and suddenly I saw his childhood flitting away. I've known him almost eight years now, and I've spent many of them trying to arrange my own life so I can steal more time with him. I feel like I'm just starting to prepare for fatherhood. But in another eight he'll be dating and driving.

While we were doing exegesis on Shania Twain's lyrics, the sun was setting behind scattered trees in what used to be a thick wood. They cast long shadows over the many already dead upon the ground.

I enjoy talking to him at eight. I'll miss his freely asked questions just as I miss the way I used to pull his stroller up to a stop sign and put on a little show.

“Stop sign,” I would say, pointing.

“Dah!” he would confirm, enthusiastic.

“The cars are coming”—I point to a driver who sees me and looks quizzically at the gesture—”and they see that sign: 'Stop!' So they stop their cars,” I conclude, abruptly halting my hand in front of him.

“Dah?” he would say, his questioning tone indicating that he wanted me to repeat the performance.

And I would . . . many times.

That stop sign feels so close. I can't quite believe it's irretrievably gone.

Another song ended and the radio proceeded to offer some of its intelligence, the results of a recent study on finding a mate.

“ . . . so if you want to attract a spouse,” John Tesh reported cheerfully, “don't decorate your room with those Legos or Star Wars action-figures that you hope will be worth a fortune some day. Over 65% of women said they would stop dating a man who had toys in his room.”

Nathaniel was alarmed.

“What!? That's like my room. What's he talking about? . . . no Legos, no Star Wars figures.”

“He means that if you want a woman to marry you, maybe you shouldn't have your room all full of toys, because the woman might think, 'Hmm, if I marry this guy, I'll have to have a bedroom full of toys.' And most girls don't really like Legos or Star Wars figures so much, do they?”

“Just because you get married doesn't mean you have to have the same bedroom,” he argued. “Your wife could have her own bedroom.”

“Usually when you get married you do have the same bedroom. But I'm sure that if a woman really loves you, she'll love you even if you have some Legos in your room. Remember Mommy bought me some Legos once?”

I drove onto our dirt road, slowing to see any deer emerging from the dark forest. I'll miss this eight-year old when he's gone, and I'm sorry to see him taking flight. But I'm cherishing him now, and I'm so grateful he landed here.

Wanted: Not-So-Easy Readers

Did Henry James Write Anything along the Lines of Junie B Jones?

A few years ago when the Captain Underpants series was becoming popular, I recall that some parents were complaining about the increasingly sarcastic, scatological content of children's books. In a bookstore I bumped into “junior chick lit”: Barbie-pink paperbacks in nearly monosyllabic prose that belies their cynically fashionable, prurient content.

I recall an article in which a librarian defended this trend toward simplistic books with a worldly, jaded attitude. She pointed out that many adolescents don't read at advanced levels, so we need I-Can-Read books that are also PG-13.

Our family has an opposite problem. Jessica started reading alone at five and hasn't looked back. She works out syntax and pronunciation effortlessly and reads a newspaper without stammering—even if she doesn't comprehend the story.

When Nathaniel was six, choosing books at the library was like a math exercise. He carefully counted pages and estimated the words-to-picture ratios of books with numbers on their spines. Jessica, however, just peruses thick paperbacks from the spinning racks.

So we need to locate Captain Underpants' nemesis: writing with fifth-grade syntax that appeals to a wide-eyed first-grader.