When Parents Grow Up

So, we've been on vacation in the US for the last 4 days.

All in all it's been great, catching up with family, friends, eating at favorite restaurants and walking down memory lane.  Plus, there is the space, the open roads, the convenience and that US dollar to Euro exchange rate which turns us into consumers-with-a-capital-C.  

Maya's been an absolute trooper.  She's dealt with long flights, lots of waiting in line and temperatures topping 100 degrees fahrenheit, which by the way, is never great for her Excema.  Still, she's been great, going with the flow, the unfamiliarity and having absolutely no routine.

Sometimes it takes a trip like this to see how far you've come.  

This morning we woke up and decided to take Maya to the Carnegie Science Center, probably one of the BEST children museums in the world.  It's a beautiful place with wonderful exhibits and lots of space and oodles of fun and exploration for kids and adults.  The layout is great as well, with sweeping views of the city of Pittsburgh and even when it is packed to the brim you don't feel like you are on top of other kids.

The last time we were in Pittsburgh, four years ago, we also took Maya there but it was a very bad day for her and we left after just an hour as Maya couldn't handle the sensory overload and just wasn't having any fun.  We made the the rookie mistake back then of not taking Maya's feelings fully into consideration, we felt that since it was such a wonderful museum, Maya "had" to enjoy it, no matter how much torture it was.  That hour was sixty L  O  N  G minutes of laying on the floor, covering her ears and screaming.  We left to keep ourselves from losing it with our daughter and with each other.  We retreated in defeat.  Our daughter was the ONE kid who couldn't enjoy one of the best spots on earth for kids.  

Parental fail.   

We've learned a lot since then.  We've learned that it really doesn't matter if we are in a kids paradise, a mall playground or hanging in our hotel room, what matters is that our daughter has a good time.  We've learned how to (most of the time) not heap our expectations onto her, but to let her go and discover what she likes to do, whatever that is.  Most of all we've learned that when something's not working, it's better to just sometimes make an ad hoc decision to shift gears instead of continuing onward when something isn't working.  

So, we armed ourselves this morning with a pancake breakfast and decided to try once more.  We talked to Maya about the Science Center, we showed her the exhibits on the Internet so she would know what to expect, we told her if she didn't like it, we would leave.  

 We went to the exhibits that she wanted to and skipped those she didn't like.  We walked out of the electricity demonstration because it scared her.  We didn't worry about whether or not she understood gravity but just let her have a good time.  

We learned.  We did better this time.  She had a great time.   We laughted, we had fun, we marveled at our daughter's wonder.

Until Omnimax that is.  

Leo really wanted to see this movie at the Omnimax theater about the Hubble telescope.  Maya enjoys watching documentaries on space so he felt it was a total no brainer.  As we bought the tickets in the back of my mind I wondered if Omnimax would be too loud for her, but I figured we'd go with it.  She was excited to see the movie as well.  Plus the box of Sour Patch Kids I let her have sweetened the pot no end.

We were good to go.  

In we went.  Maya saw the seats and the screen and immediately grabbed onto my leg, she stopped communicating with words but with furious nods, always a telltale sign that a meltdown is in the works.  She went very tentatively up the stairs and avoided looking directly at the screen.  She insisted we sit in the third row.  Leo, who always wants to sit at the top was disappointed but Maya's movements were already tentative enough, any further we thought she might transition to a meltdown,  so we decided to just sit where we were.  Leo tried to get Maya to sit back in her chair to enjoy the film more but she was having none of that and finally turned away from him refusing to look at the screen.

I asked Maya if she wanted to leave, she said no, but that she just didn't want to sit back in her chair.  I told her she didn't have to and I put my arm around her.  When the movie started she covered her ears.  I rubbed her back.  

It took about half the movie's running time but slowly I felt her body relax and I heard her gasp with wonder at the beauty of the stars and the magnificence of seeing the earth from space.

I felt like it was a victory.  Actually anything without a meltdown is not only a victory, but something to be celebrated with actual song and dance.

We went to leave the theater and then it happened.

Maya froze at the stairs.  She started shaking, she couldn't go up.  Both hands gripped the banister and she bent over looking at the ground.  I tried to get her to let go of the bannister with one hand to help her up the stairs.  She was having none of it.

My husband looked at me with frustration.  I told him to go on ahead and that we would follow.  I asked Maya again to take my hand.  She shook her head furiously and made a squealing sound.  I then told her that I would stay behind her, to take her time but to go up the stairs when she was ready.  Slowly she climbed, she took one hand off the railing and put it on the step above her.  "That's it," I said, "you're doing it." After about three steps she got down on her hands and knees and started crawling up the steps, one at a time.

The usher in the theater asked me if she was scared of heights.  "No, I said, she just needs a little extra time, " without missing a beat she replied "no problem at all."

It took about 10 minutes but she finally made it up those steps.

If this had been four years ago, I would have been stressed and would have considered it a colossal failure that my daughter couldn't just walk up the steps like everyone else.  I would have been fueled by  my own embarrassment that my kid was having such a hard time with such a seemingly easy task.  Four years ago I would have most likely lost my patience with my daughter and would have made things even worse.  Four years ago I would have considered today a complete and utter failure.

I am no longer a rookie, I've learned through five-plus years on our autism journey.

A few years ago today would have been a failure, but today  I consider it a success.  She made it up those stairs, sans meltdown.  I didn't yell, I didn't make it worse, I wasn't fueled by embarrassment.  I stood behind her, I encouraged her.  I didn't heap my own expectations on her, but let her find her way.

Maybe my daughter is not the only one growing up?

The Best Gift

A couple of nights ago Maya spent the night at her grandparents' house.  When she came back last night both she and my inlaws were all a-flutter with stories about what they did and how fun it was and both my MIL and FIL were talking about what a wonderful child Maya is.

One of the best gifts my parents ever gave me was living in close proximity to my grandparents.  For the majority of my childhood my grandparents were a mere few minutes away and in my teen years 25 minutes.  

We were a small but close family.  We didn't have a big extended family and we only saw them a couple of times a year so largely it was just us.  

Us being my parents, my aunt and uncle, my 2 brothers and four cousins.  

We spent a lot of time together, besides being in school together (as my brothers were with my older cousins), we all spent time in and out of our furniture business, working there, going there with my grandmother and on Sundays we were always together at my grandparents' house.  We went to Sunday school and often afterward walked straight to Meme and Pepe's house, about 5 minutes away, and Meme made us lunch, of course none of us ate the same things but Meme didn't care, she loved having all of us squeeze around her 4 person kitchen table, making so much noise that a plane could have landed in the dining room and I am not sure we would notice.  There Meme shouted over us, hearing our orders for sandwiches,  and of course there was chocolate milk, 7 glasses filled to the brim with whole milk, 3 tablespoons of Nestle's Quick and the perfect stir.  

And of course when we were all done with our lunch, we headed to Meme's laundry room, what she called the utility room and opened the candy cupboard where there was enough M&M's Nestle's Crunch, and Life Savers to feed a small nation for a couple of years.  

In the afternoon we sprawled into the living room, the boys always outnumbering me and my cousin Alison, the only girls in the family, so they dominated the television, first cartoons, then Three Stooges, then sports, all the while Pepe snoozed in his chair in the living room, with a handkerchief over his eyes.  On Saturday nights Pepe, a master bridge player, played bridge until the wee hours of Sunday morning and spent Sundays catching up on his sleep with us basically burning down the house around him.  I never understood how he could sleep through our noise but he did.  

Eventually, Al and I, sick of the boys, took our leave of the living room and went into Meme's bedroom where we watched movies, played with Meme's jewelry, did our nails and just talked.  In summer we would sit outside on Meme's big back porch with Meme, she would make us lemonade or we would drink Pepsi and talk with her, while she rocked back and forth on her glider and called us her meideles (a Yiddish term of affection, literally, little girls).  She often told us stories about when she was a girl, talking about her mother, her sisters, her piano teacher whom she was really close to.  It made Meme really happy that Alison took up Piano lessons and sometimes when we dared enter the living room, Meme and Alison would play the piano.  I didn't play but I always danced and Meme would always stop playing and clap along to Al's clunky tune and my clunky dancing.  Meme's eyes would sparkle with laughter like she was watching Tchaikovsky and Anna Pavlova perform Swan Lake.


At some point Pepe would wake up, he would say hello to each of us in turn and then go to the kitchen to eat his lunch, usually consisting of something like herring or sardines, cottage cheese and fruit.  Meme often gave us ice cream while we sat there with him, Neopolitan, perfect rows of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate scooped into her little red ice cream dishes.  Sometimes if she was a little slow with it, Pepe would tell her Masha, put out die ice creem.  And when he finished his lunch he would drink his tea. 

Now that I am older and have learned a little something about the world, I understand that he drank his tea the Russian way, the way he learned as a child.  As a kid it was just Pepe's way and the funniest thing ever.  He would fill his cup up to the brim, steep his teabag, when he finished, Meme would quickly take it and put it in the strainer.  He opened the sugar bowl and took out a sugar cube, he would take one and break it in half in his hands, popping the sugar cube in his mouth, and putting his face down to the tea cup and slurping about half the tea in one go, then after a few moments he would pop the other half of the sugar in his mouth and drink the rest.  I never failed to bust out laughing hearing this little man of about 5'2" whose voice didn't go above a whisper slurp his tea.  And every time Pepe would say to me, vy you laugh, Dana, I am just drinking my tea?  

And while Pepe ate his lunch, we would file into the kitchen, 2 or 3 at a time and sit with him and he would ask us about school or we would ask him questions and he would tell us things he knew.  I am always amazed that Pepe talked to us like adults, he always listened to what we had to say and we hung on his every word.  

Pepe had a real dry humor about him and he could make us explode in laughter with his zingers.  One legendary Pepe story went like this.  He was at the store and he handed the delivery orders for the day over to the delivery guys, and one particular guy, a real mouthpiece, started complaining.   One of the deliveries was a sofa of which the only one in stock was in the very back of the warehouse, which meant a lot other pieces of furniture would have to be moved out in order to get this sofa and get it onto the truck.  He started with "uh, Mr. Gross, I don't think we are gonna to be able to get that sofa, it is in the back of the warehouse and will take half the day to move everything out of the way to get it onto the truck and we'll fall behind and not get all the deliveries done today." Pepe paused for a moment, turned to this guy and said, they are putting men on the moon, I tink you can get a sofa from de varehouse.  


My brother and I still tell that story and many other of Pepe's classics and they never fail,  even today,  to make us roar with laughter.  

Still, we loved talking to Pepe and as each one of us grandchildren in turn got older, our relationship with Pepe strengthened.  As the youngest in the family I watched my brothers and cousins go off to college, meaning they weren't there every Sunday, but when they did come home, they always came to Meme and Pepe's house on Sunday and there they would sit, while Meme fussed over them and while they would sit and talk to Pepe about school, about what they were studying and about the future.

And it wasn't just Pepe that we adored, it was Meme and her sweet nurturing way with us, she did everything for us so happily.  The joy on her face when she was running around making lunch for us or sitting and watching us eat and laughing with us was evident to me, even as a child.  We were everything to her.  She relished every single second spent with each of us.  As I got older I learned more about what Meme and Pepe went through during the war and how Meme was the only person in her family to survive the Second World War (Meme's parents, grandmother, 6 brothers and sisters, their spouses and children were all killed).  My mother used to admonish me and tell me to help Meme more with lunch and dinner and when they would come over in the afternoons she would tell Meme to sit down and relax, but Meme wouldn't hear of it.  She didn't talk about it much but I think having us there and doing for us made joy pump through her veins, after having experienced such an immeasurable loss as Meme did, she was grateful for every single second with her grandchildren and the mess and chaos were just a very happy by-product.

Later in the afternoons Meme would start to make dinner and the menu was usually the same thing, Delmonico Steaks, homemade French fries, fresh green beans and salad.  Meme was not an all around fantastic cook, but she had her things that she made better than anyone.  This meal was the pinnacle of her culinary abilities, how in the hell she was able to turn out 12 steaks using her broiler in the oven all hot, all at the same time, all well done but still juicy, I will never ever know.  Her salad was the best salad ever.  Not fancy ,she never used anything but iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, radishes but it was her vinaigrette which sealed the deal.  A very simple vinaigrette of oil, red wine vinegar and salt.  She would put it in the salad bowl first, stir it and put the salad on top and not toss it until the very second that she served it in her individual glass salad bowls.  It was cold, crispy and fresh and perfect every time.

Our parents would come around 4 and we would eat dinner in the dining room.  After dinner came dessert,  Mocha Tort cake from Silberbergs Bakery in Pittsburgh.  The most luscious yellow layer cake with mocha icing and chocolate sprinkles.  Our family practically sat shiva in the 80's when Silberbergs closed its doors and to this day I never have tasted a more delicious cake (although the Burnt Almond Torte at Prantl's does run a close second, they even ship them in the US, order one, you'll never be the same).

I spent a lot of other time with Meme and Pepe growing up.  I often slept there as a young child on Saturday nights while my parents went out or my dad took my brothers to see the Penguins play at the Civic Arena.  My parents would drop me in the morning and Pepe would drive us (and often my cousin Alison would join us) into downtown Pittsburgh on the way to his bridge club.  He would drop us at Kaufmann's or Joseph Horne's (the two big department stores of the day) and we would go into their more than 20 floors and shop and usually Meme would buy us a new outfit or hats, gloves and scarves, shoes or whatever fancied her or us.  We would always eat lunch at Kaufmann's and I'll admit it was fun seeing Meme, this kind, mild mannered, demure Yiddish woman eat a hamburger and fries.  She cut her burger in half and ate it like a tea sandwich, taking little bites out of it.  To this day I still cut my burgers in half.

In the afternoon we would go with our purchases to the bus stop to take the bus that ran between Pittsburgh and Washington, PA.  Alison and I would sit together and Meme across the row from us, it was usually a pretty quiet journey, sometimes Meme closed her eyes but she was often in her own reverie until it was time to get off the bus which dropped us right at her house.  Back at their house we would relax, sometimes playing cards or watch tv until Pepe came home for dinner, we'd eat early (well early by today's standards, 5.00 was a regular dinner time when I was a kid) and then Meme and Pepe would get in the car to go to the Washington Mall to take their evening walk and go food shopping.

When we got back it was just in time to watch All in the Family.  Meme, Pepe and I would sit in the living room.  I used to love watching this with them.  Pepe wasn't much of a tv watcher but he loved All in the Family and he and Meme used to laugh their heads off watching it.  Of course I grew up watching All in the Family and still love it, but really, I loved it because they did.  After it was over Pepe would leave to go to his bridge club and play until 2 in the morning and Meme and I would retire to her bedroom and watch the rest of the Saturday night TV in bed.  I loved her crisp white sheets that she pressed in the mangle and her big flowered duvet cover that she pulled out from the closet every night and how it smelled like the many bars of  soap that she kept in her closet to keep everything smelling fresh and clean.  I loved seeing Meme in her fancy silk nightgowns that she bought at Saks Fifth Avenue that were pressed and perfect, with her matching pink slippers and robe.  I loved hearing her laugh at the Bob Newheart Show or at Carol Burnett and how after it was over she would tell me to turn over and go to sleep while she watched the late movie, always rubbing my back softly until I fell asleep.

The comfort of that familiarity, at least for me was like the perfect blanket, never too hot or too cold, keeping you warm and safe at a place where you know you were loved. 


Of course being a kid, I didn't realize how special it all was until it was gone.  But that is how it is with life.  And to be honest, perhaps if it was something that lasted forever, it wouldn't be so special.  


Maybe it is the fleeting nature of beauty which makes it so precious?  


When Leo and I talked of getting married and where we wanted to live our lives, I didn't hesitate in the decision to move to the Netherlands, even though it was a new country, with a new language, where other than Leo and his family I didn't know anyone.  Leo was pretty surprised at how easy it was for me to decide to live here, he thought I would have wanted to settle in Israel, where I had a great life and where Leo's brother and sister were or that I would want to go back to the US.  But it was an easy decision, I wanted any family we would have to have the possibility of having grandparents close by.  I knew my parents, divorced and blinded by their own pain, they would have loved her certainly, but I didn't really think I could create that special bond with them.  

Of course what I really want to give Maya is Meme and Pepe.

My inlaws are very different people than my grandparents were,  they have a different life, their own way about things and their own manner with Maya.    Despite all the differences though I can see that my daughter is just as close to Leo's parents as I was to Meme and Pepe.  She sees them a few times a week and I can see the same wanting in her to be with them, the same wanting as I had as a kid.  Maya loves being with them and they her.  She has the same light in her eyes and enthusiasm that I felt just being in Meme's living room.  She does things with them, small things but that are very special to her, they are uniquely hers and Oma's and Opa's.  Maybe she will be able to take comfort in replicating certain things in her adult life the way they were as a kid, like the way I always make my vinaigrette the same as Meme's or how I keep soap in my drawers and closet or how I rub Maya's back the same way Meme did mine before she falls asleep or how I tell her that she is such a beautiful sweet girl, the way Meme told me.

I hope that when she grows up, just like me, her time with her Oma and Opa and her cousins will be a source of comfort and security for her, it will serve as a touchstone for her, helping her through the tougher times, remind her of how much she was loved and how no matter how much time passes that love will stay with her, just as Meme and Pepe's stays with me.

3 (ish) Words

I owe this post to my friend Sarah who often poses random but interesting questions to her friends on Facebook.  Sarah by the way has her own fascinating blog chronicling her unique journey as a young mother, a new immigrant and a person who like the rest of us is fighting to find her way in the world.  Her blog is is daring and beautiful.  She's not afraid to write about the hard stuff.  It's a good read, check it out.

Anyhoo, today's challenge laid out by Sarah was to describe your parents in three words.

It was hard to come up with just three, because really, my parents were so many things, 3 words is not enough.  30 words?  Maybe.  As I read through the list of other responses, I found lots of words like supportive, neurotic, inspiring, demanding, loving, overbearing, selfish.  Of course my parents had all this too but I decided to go with the first words that occurred to me.  

And it was clever, independent, tragic.

My parents had a lot of traits in common and that is probably what drew them to each other in the first place.  In asking them both that very question at various points in life, they gave me more or less the same answer - "I liked the way she looked," "He was charming and handsome." Keeping in context that my parents came from a generation where after you finished college you were expected to marry and start a family.  And my parents were true to that expectation.  They met in their senior years (my dad's of college, my mom's of nursing school), they dated, they got pinned.  They both graduated in June of 1957 and in September 1957 they got married.

Anyhow as of late, my dad has been on my mind a lot.  I think that is largely because we are in the cusp of summer, which was always my favorite time of year as a kid, particularly when I was a teenager and lived with my dad.

In summer, my dad was done teaching for the year and even if he taught in summer, as he often did, it was usually only a class or two so he had a lot more free time.  We went out for dinner a lot, during the school year we stuck close to home going to the Acropolis or Alfano's in town or over to Bartoletti's in Fredericktown near the store.  If my dad was in the mood for something more sophisticated we headed over to the Back Porch in Charleroi or our family standby, the Red Bull Inn.

In summer though,  he took me to the symphony at Heinz Hall or to shows at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh and I used to love those evenings with him.

We'd make a day of it, starting off in Shadyside in Pittsburgh, having breakfast or lunch at Pamela's or heading to Bloomfield to Tessaros.  We'd invariably end up in the afternoon in Oakland, walking the campus of Carnegie Mellon when he would tell me of his days there as a student or we'd go to the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of learning and stroll through the Commons Room and tour a couple of the Nationality Rooms which I highly recommend if you're ever in Pittsburgh.

We'd have dinner at family favorite spots Samreny's or Poli's and then we'd get lost in an evening of music, pomp and circumstance.

My dad also gladly shlepped me around a lot in the years before I could drive.  He would gladly take my friends and I to one of the malls in and around Pittsburgh and he would let me get my girl on and he would take the Sunday New York Times and he'd go explore the book store and of course the tool section at Sears and then he'd sit on one of the benches in the mall and read the paper while I shopped and enjoyed myself.

He didn't talk about it much, but as a single dad, there was a part of him that I think felt guilty that I didn't have a mother around to do girl things.  I think because of that he was indulgent about me doing girl things and that is why he would so easily give up a whole afternoon just so that I could shop, try on clothes, makeup and shoes and he never uttered a word of complaint about it.

During high school I spent 4 weeks at summer camp.  He sent me to Camp Tel Yehudah, situated on the Delaware River in upstate New York.  TY as it is known by it's campers is a Young Judea camp and having a Jewish identity and Jewish friends was something which my dad was important.

We lived in a very small town and there were hardly any Jewish kids around.  And while I enjoyed California, Pennsylvania and made good friends there, there was always a part of me that felt different from everyone else.  I was an active member of BBYO a popular youth group and  I enjoyed the weekend get togethers and activities.  I made friends in BBYO but it was pretty cliquey, I never quite made it into the "in" crowd there and I always felt like I was trying too hard.  At camp it was different.  Yes there were cliques but a lot of the kids in Young Judea in Pittsburgh were more down to earth, they seemed to have less to prove and I just fit in there more easily.

So every July I trodded off to the pinnacle of the Young Judea year, spending 4 weeks at Tel Yehudah.  I flew by myself to NYC and met up with the camp there and headed out for the 3 hour ride to Barryville, NY.  I loved camp, I made good friends there, I learned a lot and developed a love affair with Israel which continues to this day.

Still 4 weeks was a long time to be away and there was no Skype, email or Facebook so my dad and I wrote letters, his letters mostly consisting of small notes or something a newspaper clipping of things going on at home or comics or other little snippets he thought I'd find interesting.  Two or three times a week I would dutifully call collect and my dad would want to hear everything about camp, what we did, what we learned about, about my friends.

And midway through the 4 week period, there was visitor's day, where parents could come and see their kids at camp.  Most of the parents that came were those from NYC and the surrounding area.  For kids like me and many others, from farther away, trodding out to Barryville, NY was just too far to come for one day.

But my dad always came.

He would drive 7 hours each way to be able to spend 4 hours with me.  I'd show him around, show him my bunk, introduce him to some of my friends but mostly he enjoyed walking down by the river bank where there was nothing but the sound of the water running over the rocks and nothing but trees and blue skies all around.  We'd talk about home and the family, what was happening at the Store (which was always a common topic in our family) or we talked about the trees or the flowers or the indigenous wildlife of the area.

Those were perfect days, not just because I was young and as you get older your youth takes on a splendor which can only be enjoyed when the times are a few decades in the rearview mirror.  But they were perfect because they were wonderful in and of themselves.

When your parent commits suicide, it can, if you don't pay attention, color every memory with that one horrible, sad, tragic, inexplicable act.  You can forget that there ever was anything wonderful or beautiful.  The pain, that your loved one carried with them and endured until they could endure it no longer as well as your own pain, at the loss which can never be truly explained, take up residence in your head and heart.  If you're not careful, it can eclipse everything else.

Sometimes those beautiful memories are too hard to think about in light of what happened later.

But sometimes, something so inconsequential as a question can bring those beautiful memories back, they can also lay their claim to your mind and your heart and just be wonderful and beautiful in their own right.

Untarnished by any suicide.

Life Imitates Reading

Over the past few months I have been noticing that Maya is imitating more and more.  She´s always been a good at imitations and her tone is pitch perfect.  I cannot tell you how many times Leo and I have been taken aback when she says something in exactly the same words, tone and pitch as we do.

It´s literally like living with someone who has a tape recorder for a mouth. 

It´s so funny to hear Maya say to me, you´re such a drama queen. In the same nasal-cum-Southwestern Pennsylvania tone of voice drah-mah queen.  

If I didn´t know any better I would swear I was talking to someone from dahn moon tahnship.  


And it is not just my Pittsburgh drawl that she can do but she has pitch perfect Dutch, and even pitch perfect English with a Dutch accent.  I can´t tell you how many times I have corrected Maya´s pronunciation of Peter Pan as Maya sometimes refers to it by the Dutch name Pieter (pronounced Pee-tare) Pan.  I tell her it´s not Pieter, but Peter.

That´s usually met with her saying Peter and then muttering something like mommy, stop it with that Peter.  


And now she loves a lot of the same music as our au pair Violah and she loves to dance and she is slowly learning how to play Rummikub since I play that a lot on the computer.  And of course, like her dad she is a whizz with the iPad.

She sees what we do and say and she models it.  Simple as that.


It dawned on me recently that imitation is in a lot of ways the way that you know your child is learning, particularly when you have a child with special needs and your child doesn´t have a lot of homework or has difficulty talking to you about what she did at school that day.

It is often the imitation which clues me into her learning, that her body of knowledge is expanding very slowly every day.

She is still very shy about reading though.  Although I know she can read more than she lets on and she is making progress in school, since January she has moved up one more level in her reading (ka-ching!)  She still will not practice reading at home and any time we try to very by-the-by try to steer her in that direction, she is on the first train outta there.

It´s perplexing because I want her to be able to read, not only because of my fantasy of reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and other books with her but reading is a life changer.  If she doesn´t get good at it, there is virtually no chance that she will be able to be and live independently as an adult.

Reading is a deal breaker.

I had a thought.  Maya doesn´t really see us reading all that much.  The computer and news, sure, but we can just as easily be playing games, blogging or watching tv.   She doesn´t pay that much attention to what we are doing when technology is opened in front of our faces.

Perhaps if she saw us reading, she might follow suit.

I used to be a book junkie.  I devoured books, I was usually reading 2 or 3 books at a time, one for every mood.  But that largely fell by the wayside after I had Maya, at first being too distracted and later wanting what  me-time there was to involve sleep.  I´ve gone back to reading, although I still don´t read nearly as much as I used to, if I read one book a month, that is A LOT.  But most of the time when I read an actual book, I do it outside of Maya´s presence, when she is out with Leo or on my commute to and from work.

I hardly ever read in front of her.

Next week for my anniversary I asked Leo for a Kindle.  I´ve resisted tablets for reading books for a long time as I do love the feel and smell of books in my hand but to be honest, books are super expensive over here and Kindle is most of the time cheaper, plus we just have no place left to store lots of books and I cannot bear to throw even one book away.  I did try reading on the iPad, as of course Leo would prefer to have a second iPad, but the reading is just not as good as it is on a Kindle.  You get a horrible glare even on the grayest and gloomy of days and I´m not even going there.  And to be honest, while I think the iPad is great, I still prefer my trusty laptop to it.  Plus Kindle has the most titles of any e-reader out there.

So, armed with my Kindle, I will start modeling reading for Maya and forgo tv and movie time on weekends in favor of curling up on my favorite chair in the living room and reading.

I have the whole month of August off of work, we are headed for two glorious weeks to the southern part of France, where there is nothing but sun, wine, fois gras, a pool, beautiful gardens and day upon day of solitude and night skies aglow with stars and the backlight of my Kindle.

Let the summer of reading begin!