Bumpers and Boards

This week’s contributors offer their insights on reading, being read to, or not. If you are interested in becoming a Tuesday contributor, fill out an inquiry form on the Let’s Talk page.

Either my mother never read to me or I just don’t recall. My father didn’t read to me because he never entered my bedroom—unless maybe he leaned against the door frame and read from there? My mother did sit on the edge of my bed, tracing my brows with a fingertip to help me sleep. I still don’t like to fall asleep; I want nothing to do with falling.

The Bumper Book—a large format, hardbound book with a yellow-orange cover—is the one book I have from childhood. Its illustrations contain the colors of birthstones—citrine, emerald, ruby and aquamarine. Within its pages—a span wide enough to swallow a child’s periphery—rabbits abscond with basketball sized cabbages, kittens suck their thumbs, women perform specific domestic duties depending on what day of the week and children travel to the Land of Nod.

Did ‘bumper’ in the title refer to a child needing protection from the big, bad world? My parents were bumpers, then starting in grade school alcohol became a bumper for me, which naturally lead to sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. Recently, I had to give up listening to talk radio as it had become a bumper between me and the real world: incessantly letting other voices and ideas into my head helped to keep my messed up inner voices drowned out.

My childhood eyebrows maneuvered like small, fuzzy caterpillars. When I was afraid the caterpillars humped up their backs. When I panicked, they lifted up—trying with their front feet to reach something higher. My mother murmured softly next to the yellow-orange book on my bed. Music and voices drifted down the hall from the radio in my parent’s room as my tiny brows dreamed of becoming butterflies.

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Edie Everette is an illustrator, teacher, and writer who drinks a lot of coffee in the Pacific Northwest.

The Digging-est Dog
Green Eggs and Ham
The Snowy Day
Twas the Night Before Christmas

Titles, time, tenderness.
The safety of being the center of their universe.
Bonding me to a parent. Bonding me to books.
Trips to the library, coming home with a canvas bag shoved full of books, waiting for my mom to read to me.
Opening a worn spine, getting the heady whiff of the shelved books that the International League for Antiquarian Booksellers says comes from a faint vanilla scent, released when the lignin in old books starts to break down.
My mother’s voice. My father’s voice.
Head on a shoulder.
Hands touch. Pages turn.
Thighs skin to skin, the book resting on our attachment.

Harry Potter
Curious George
Madeline
Sylvia Long’s Mother Goose
Junie B. Jones
Henry and Mudge
Jan Brett, Tomie dePaola, Eric Carle, Maurice Sendak, E.B. White, Shel Silverstein, Robert Munsch, Ezra Jack Keats.

I take my kids to the same library.
A basket of books for every holiday is lugged down out of the attic.
Every day, every season, we read.

I sit cross-legged on the floor, my son plopped in the open space of lap…quiet, calm, heavy with relaxation, listening.

I am cuddled in the faded blue rocker/recliner, my two older girls on my lap.

All four of them are with me on the couch, two kids on my lap, the other two leaning close against opposite shoulders.

I am lying in one of their beds—always two kids, sometimes three—lights dim, covers pulled up to our chins. They pile the books on my tummy, each trying to get at least one that they like. We are always skin-to-skin, the rhythm of my voice pulling them in, the physical touch keeping us locked in place. We are safe, all in one spot. I can smell the shampoo in their hair, the toothpaste on their lips. It is intoxicating. I drift. “Mom, you’re falling asleep again,” one of the girls says, tugging on my face with her little hands, irritated that I’ve left the story hanging, even when they can read it themselves.

Now they are teenagers, young adults. The books stand at attention, decorations.

I listen to Audible, hungry to hear the rhythm of the language. Tom Hanks reads The Dutch House, and his soothing voice reaches into the far corners of my brain, massages the words, phrases, tweaks it for comic relief, eases me into a character’s grief. Being read to, even by a stranger, relieves my loneliness. My introverted nature draws me to solitude; I often find myself more engaged with the characters on the page than the family members who linger above the outlines of the book. The Audible narrators join my solitude, keep me company, the way that I used to with my kids.

I pull out all of our old board books and start reading to my granddaughter, but, at five months she lasts a few seconds, grabs the shaped book, and shoves it in her mouth. The softness of her relaxed body, her leg against mine, our voices working together—mine reading, hers babbling—puts my body back in that state of calm. I cannot wait until she is ready.

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Beth Casteel is a writer, organist, community volunteer, mom and grandma who lives in southwestern Pennsylvania with her husband.

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