Well read

Jack sits on the couch, ankles crossed casually as he opens the book in his lap.  He asks me to sit next to him so that he can show me the pictures as he unspools the story on his own.

“I’ll ask you if I need help, but I think I can do it myself,” he says, fanning the pages.  Easy reader, I think as I look at Jack’s curly, bowed head, an image of Morgan Freeman from his “Electric Company” days bubbling from memory. 

Word by word, I sense how we’re trading places.  I’ve become an audience of one, my silence a stage for his newfound storytelling.  How unexpectedly easy it is to slip back into the role of being read to, to let someone else hold what happens next. 

“Are you listening, Mommy?” Jack asks, and I nod, snuggling against him to enjoy one of the rare moments he is not in motion.  But I know I’m paying less attention to the story than to everything I’m hearing as he finds his voice.