Boy, I hope that voice never changes. I was sitting in the rocking chair in my daughter\u2019s room. It was night. She was doing pre-bed reading. She\u2019ll go all night if her absent-minded parents drift off to sleep before she does. And her absent-minded parents often do!<\/p>\n
I tried to keep my eyes from growing heavy and tipping shut. They were fluffing the pillows and turning in for the night. (No! Don\u2019t do it! She\u2019ll read \u2018til 3 a.m. if we let her!)
\n
\nBut it\u2019s easy listening to that little voice reading \u201cMagic Tree House\u201d chapter books, or Amelia Bedelia\u2019s crazy antics. What was wrong with that crazy maid, anyway? Putting icing on the fish?!?<\/p>\n
When an adult says \u201cAmelia Bedilia,\u201d it\u2019s just a name. Just a couple silly sounds strung together. Cute. But a kid makes it a sing-song masterpiece, rolling like a rollercoaster up the vowels and down the consonants in a way I can\u2019t even replicate: A-m-E-l-IA … Aaagh! How do they do it!?!<\/p>\n
That warbling. Everything ending in a twirly, whirly whoop. Da-da da-da da-da DAAAAA!<\/p>\n
Then one day they change. I did. We all do. I talk like a monotone gorilla now. My sinuses do more work than my vocal chords.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re gone forever. Those sweet little, rosy-sounding, high, hypnotic, squeaky, playful, perfect voices. All full of ticks and quirks and theatrics.<\/p>\n
A-m-E-l-IA! bA-d-E-l-IA!<\/p>\n
That\u2019s it!<\/p>\n
Somewhere along the line we lose it. And we read and we drone on and we don\u2019t warble anymore. SNORE. When I read, it\u2019s like I\u2019m chewing stringy meat. It plods on endlessly \u2014 chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp.<\/p>\n
Where\u2019s the play?<\/p>\n
I got to thinking about this the other day when my mother dropped off a book. She always has books she thinks I MUST read. Normally they\u2019re about gene-sequencing or how the planet became doomed when we stopped eating kale and started putting it in salad bars as decoration. Something like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks,\u201d I usually say, and then put it on a big, sagging stack with the rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to read it, right!\u201d she demands. There are no question marks with my mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, yes, of course. We\u2019ll polish it off tonight \u2026 right after we finish the next installment of \u2018The Curious Bean Named Wally Jean.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But for some reason I started reading the book \u2014 \u201cMaking Habits, Breaking Habits\u201d by the psychologist Jeremy Dean \u2014 or at least a chapter of it called, \u201cCreative Habits.\u201d (I don\u2019t know what my mother was implying with a book about \u201chabits,\u201d but I always find my own meaning in gifts.)<\/p>\n
I read this line: \u201cThere\u2019s no better examples of the wandering, playful, creative mind than that of a child. If you watch children play, they can pick up anything and imagine it as something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it made me think of that little voice. Of reading. Of how that warble is the same thing. Wandering aimlessly through a forest of words \u2014 adding a pinch of this or a smidgen of that whenever it seems to fit. For no other reason than it sounds good. Because it\u2019s fun to say. Because they can\u2019t help but create.<\/p>\n
All that \u201cdefocused attention,\u201d as Dean says, lets them be creative \u2014 to run wild and free.<\/p>\n
A-m-E-l-IA! bA-d-E-l-IA!<\/p>\n
I love it!<\/p>\n
Then something happens. We get purpose and direction. Focus! A need to get quickly from point A to point B. To extract meaning from writing in the most efficient and expeditious way. It isn\u2019t FuN to say. It\u2019s imPORtant to read.<\/p>\n
Sure, we need that, too. But reading is never the same. It starts to change. It loses something while gaining something else. No longer is it a form of creative play.<\/p>\n
Oh, I hope that little voice never changes. Never loses its ability to get lost in the words. Sing-songin\u2019 and lollygaggin\u2019 about. All while I desperately try to keep from drifting off on warbling rollercoasters with Amelia Bedilia and a curious bean named Wally Jean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boy, I hope that voice never changes. I was sitting in the rocking chair in my daughter\u2019s room. It was night. She was doing pre-bed reading. She\u2019ll go all night if her absent-minded parents drift off to sleep before she does. And her absent-minded parents often do! I tried to keep my eyes from growing heavy and tipping shut. They were fluffing the pillows and turning in for the night. (No! Don\u2019t do it! She\u2019ll read \u2018til 3 a.m. if we let her!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436,8],"tags":[29,518,517,519],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2013-nutshells","category-parenthoodandchildren","tag-children","tag-little-kid","tag-reading","tag-voice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1006,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}