When my children were small and wild at heart, they loved Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are."
At least, I think they loved it. They never said they didn't. It was definitely one of my favorites. That would explain why I read it to them time and again, night after night. I liked it. That was my rule. To read a book more than once, I had to like it a lot. If I didn't like it, they could read it themselves. If they hadn't learned to read yet, they could just gum its pages.
I think that's how it works in most families. The books that get read are books the reader likes. That is as it should be. The reader should get to pick. Same goes for storytelling. No one should ever tell a story she doesn't like, or something will surely be lost in the telling.
No matter how busy or tired or hopping mad I might be, I could usually manage to read "Where the Wild Things Are."
I loved Max's magic trick, how he tamed the Wild Things by staring into their terrible eyes. I used that same trick on my kids. But my favorite part was where Max would grow weary of romping with Wild Things and long to be where someone loved him best of all.
I would read that part slowly in my very best voice. Then I'd stop and look in my children's sleepy eyes to let that thought pass between us -- to let it linger for a moment and settle into our bones -- that one-of-a-kind comfort of being with someone who loves you best of all.
Then we'd give a knowing nod to how lucky we were, and I'd go on reading the story.
I wonder if they remember that? Children have a tendency to forget what you want them to remember and remember what you hope they'll forget.
I thought of that recently, late one night, talking with my daughter-in-law, Jesse, who was visiting for the weekend.
Earlier that evening we had gone with my husband to see Spike Jonze's film version of Sendak's classic on the IMAX screen, where even the littlest monsters were big enough to scare the bejeezes out of us.
For all its jaw-dropping imagery, the movie delivers a wonderfully seamless blend of reality and imagination, suggesting that one is never far from the other -- a fact that children always seem to understand and the rest of us would do well to remember.
After the movie, Jesse and I sat in the hot tub under a big desert sky watching planes fly in and out of Las Vegas.
She couldn't wait to see the movie again, she said, with her husband, my youngest, a rookie teacher who'd stayed home to catch up on school work.
"He'll love that movie," I said. I told her that I used to read "Wild Things" to him, and that my favorite part was the line about wanting to be where somebody loves you best of all.
I was about to say I hope that he will always remember that line and the sound of my voice and the look he saw in my eyes as I read it. And that he will always be wild at heart ....
Suddenly, she gasped. "I saw something move," she said, "over there in the shadows."
I smiled. "Probably a jack rabbit. We get busloads."
"It was pretty big," she said. "Oh! It just moved again!"
"Trust me," I said, "it's only a rabbit. But it is getting chilly."
We grabbed towels and went inside. The next day she flew home to California, promising to bring her husband back soon.
That evening, our neighbor -- never one to jest about matters of life and limb -- reported seeing in our yard just before sunset a rather large bobcat.
I'm sticking with the rabbit story. But just in case, I'm working on Max's magic trick.
(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at www.sharonrandall.com.)
COLUMN
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