Will you read to me?

My mother didn't grow up with lots of hugs and kisses, but she was a mother who was very generous with them with her own children. I was, and am, even more so. I think after Madison was born I must have kissed and hugged her a million times a day. I couldn't stop. I pushed my nose into her neck, her cheek, and smothered her with love, inhaling her scent, rubbing her soft skin. It was the same with Darcy. Both of my kids are used to me kissing them for no reason. They can just be telling me a story, and I feel that rush of love that I have for them, and I act on it. We can be anywhere, in the grocery, the library, at school. They take it in stride. I will miss doing that come August.

For some reason, I haven't been getting enough sleep. I'm someone who needs eight hours a night. I can survive on six, but eight is my ideal. Before spring break, I was getting into a decent habit of being ready for bed by ten o'clock, but then Maddy came home, and I wanted to be with her, and so I slipped back into my stay-up-all-night-sleep-all-morning-routine. The NCAA basketball tournament didn't help matters after that. Why must these games start after nine o'clock? So this Sunday I was showered and reading in bed by ten o'clock, feeling great that I was going to soon be asleep.

Darcy came into my room around ten thirty. She came in with, "M-o-m-m-y", something she calls me when she wants something. I sighed, looked up from my book, and wondered how much money she wanted and where she was trying to go this weekend. Instead she asked me to read to her.

Another thing I learned from my mom, was reading. She was an avid reader and she read to us and instilled that love in me. I tried to do the same with my children, as did she. Most of the pictures I have of my mother with my children, she is reading to them. They are always stretched out on her lap, and she is introducing them to the wonder of different worlds and activities. I did the same. Reading was our nightly routine, but we read in the morning, the afternoon, before dinner, and after school. Madison is a huge reader, but Darcy lost it somewhere down the road. She doesn't have to have a book in her hands like Madison and I do. She goes through phases where she will read for a week and then not read for months. I'm not sure what happened there, but she does love listening to someone else read.

She needed to read a book for her English class, and while she had devoured ninety pages already, she had another seventy to go. She was tired of reading. Her eyes were twitching and she was having trouble focusing. Before going to college, Madison would read Darcy the books she needed for class. Since Madison was gone, Darcy needed someone else to read to her. She asked me.

A part of me wanted to decline. I was tired. I was getting back into a better sleeping habit. I didn't have time to read seventy pages. Plus, I am a terrible aloud reader when the books don't have simple titles like, Nina, Nina, Ballerina, a once staple in our home. For some reason, my mind gets ahead of me, and I stumble over words, mispronouncing them. I think it had to do with being chosen to read aloud in school. Nothing worse for a shy kid, which I was. (Don't laugh, it is true)

But Darcy was speaking in her little girl's voice. "M-o-m-m-y, will you read to me? P-l-e-a-s-e?" How could I turn that down? I whined, of course. She didn't care. She was done reading. And so she begged, I relented, and she climbed into bed with me, lying next to me, and I began to read. She didn't have her phone. I didn't have my phone. She snuggled against me, reading with me over my shoulder. She corrected me immediately when I mispronounced "facade". We laughed, and then we laughed even harder. She hugged me, told me it was okay. "Oh, Mommy," she said, laughing.

It was magical. I read. We talked about the book. I got better in my reading. She eventually stopped following the words with me, and just listened. Had she been little again, her thumb would have been in her mouth. During our hour and a half of reading, I stopped many times just to smother her with kisses. At some point, Tom joined us, and listened. It was time well spent, and when she announced at midnight that I could stop, I was disappointed. I could have done that all night long.

But I have learned since my kids got older, to know when to push and when to back off and let them find their own way. I still may follow behind, my hands out to catch them if they falter, but I do it now wearing my invisible cloak because they don't need Mommy to help them. Until they do. And I'm so glad that I am here when that happens.