MotherReader

Yesterday was the day I was going to get things done. I had canceled my trip to my mother’s house based on all of the things that I needed to do here, so it was time to actually do them.

I puttered around in the morning with small chores, but after lunch it was time to get to work. Except... the sun shining on the couch made it look like summer, and summer is my favorite season (number 47 on my “things about me” list), so really... shouldn’t I appreciate that hour or so of the sun shining on the couch by picking up a book and reading? I mean, the sun will only be shining there for so long, and I can get to work right after.

So, I picked up a book that I had ordered from the library and started to read. Now the cool thing about this book was that I had ordered it a while ago and then had it in my stack for a couple of weeks, so I had now forgotten why I had ordered it at all. And to make the experience of reading it as fresh and unprejudiced as possible, I didn’t read the inside cover as I picked it up. I just started reading.

So, I’m enjoying my book and the sun is moving slowly across the sky, as it will, until my spot on the couch is no longer in the sun, but if I hold my book a certain way, then the book is still in the sun, so it still counts and I keep reading. My children ask for dinner (a reasonable request), and I fix the quickest thing that I can think of — hot dogs, which they hate but I tell them that in every life a little hot dog must fall, even though I am sure that’s not the quote, but whatever.

I eat my hot dog very quickly and return to the couch where the sunlight has completely faded, it being evening now, but I’m more than halfway through the book now and I just don’t feel like doing the work anymore so I read and occasionally remind my youngest to keep eating because without these reminders she will be there all night but I don’t have the patience to wait at the table for her (number 71).

My husband comes home and I tell him that he has to get the kids ready for bed, because I have been with them ALL DAY even though they have been almost completely self-sufficient and I have been reading for most of the day. But, my husband, God bless him, just gets the kids ready without giving me any grief and I keep reading until I get to the last page of the book and I think to myself, I can’t believe I read the whole thing. And now I have proof positive of why I never get anything done, which should be a little sad, but mostly I think, Wow, what a great book.

The Center of Everything, by Laura Moriarty.