Between the lines

Jack curled against me with a book curved in his hands.  He laughed as he read aloud about a bossy young king who in the end is ordered to bed by his mother. 

I love how Jack’s newfound ability to wade into simple sentences still surprises him, the fanfare of words drifting through his mind like floats in a storied parade. 

This latest evolution of his bedtime routine surprises me, too.  The way we now take turns reading.  A conversation in pages.  I hear Jack’s voice in a different way, listening to all that is blooming between the lines. 

As he reads, I look at his bedside table, a mirror image of my own, overflowing with books.  I remember my grandmother Betty’s coffee table, where Flannery O’Connor mingled with Erma Bombeck in a cascade of titles. 

An afternoon with Grandmother meant a trip to the Baskin Robbins in Broad Ripple for bubble gum ice cream and a stop at Kids’ Ink, the neighboring children’s bookstore.  I had the agonizing pleasure of choosing any book I wanted without censorship or judgment.

On the car ride home, I would clutch the peppermint-striped book bag and look forward to a deliciously silent stretch of hours spent reading beside my grandmother in twin rocking chairs that flanked a golf course view. 

When my granddad arrived, shedding his starched white coat and stethoscope, he called out to his “girls,” asking what we were doing.  “Swimming through pages,” my grandmother replied, capturing her place with a gold-plated bookmark.   

That phrase echoed as I leaned my chin against Jack’s freshly shampooed head.  Thinking of him bathed in words as he swims through pages.  A baptism of possibility.