An Open Book

Reading has always been an escape for me. Once, after a particularly bad break-up, I read The Satanic Verses in two days. I'm one of those people who really gets sucked into a book. I'm often a bit melancholy when I finish a book that I've really loved because...well...it's over.

But with parenthood there is no escape (Chamudi, I mean this is the kindest way). It's impossible for you to shut out the world for two days while you devour a fantastic book. Sure, you can get through a page or two, maybe even a chapter, but sooner or later the world comes a knockin'.

So for the last 20 months or so, I've hardly gotten through a single book. I've subsisted on the New Yorker--an article here, a comic there. Just enough culture to keep myself high-brow.

And now I'm planning a Jewish literary festival. Courtesy of my new job as Director of Literature, Music and Dance I'm a bookworm again, trying to read through all the fantastic books we've included in our festival.

It's the best kind of work to bring home--the books are really interesting and a joy to read. But I find myself constantly wanting to read just one more page, one more chapter. To ditch playing on the floor with Chamudi for the world on the page. Now that my life is more hectic than it's ever been, I'm finding the escape even more delicious.

And more dangerous. Everybody knows you shouldn't turn on the TV and tune your child out, but a book? Somehow it seems more...virtuous.

But it's eating away at those precious few hours that I have with my Chamudi. So from now on, amazing books be damned, I'll be saving my grown-up reading for after-hours and spending some quality board book time with my little boy, hopefully giving him some of my love of great literature.

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?
I see an Ima reading with me!