Of elephants and men...

          In this household, one of the highlights of the day (at least for us!) is the start of the bedtime routine, where everything mellows out; (unless the rockstar Jaelster puts in an appearance, in which case the boys start pummeling each other to be the first to give her a kiss... with the almost inevitable result that Jael gets accidentally trampled, no one gets kissed, and someone ends up doing 30 seconds of time in the slammer) Life, which has been racing at me since 4am most days, starts slowing its pace down to an easy trot. We all pile together on the couch-- Elijah to the left, myself anchoring the center with Judah to the right.  Once we are all settled comfortably, Judah will start burrowing, digging his little feet and elbows into me until I bark something sharply at him and he looks at me with sleepy eyes like "Geez, Dad, I do this every night.  Get used to it!"  I apologize (most nights) and we finally are at equilibrium between bustle and rest, a perfect harmony of mental engagement and soulful contemplation, something like this below.



      Well -- that's most nights until I start reading.  After I start reading it can go seven ways to Sunday.  Some nights it's the question barrage, which I have written about previously http://lifeonkingarthurscourt.blogspot.com/2014/06/bonus-what-its-actually-like-to-read-to.html; some nights it's that they just can't quite stay still for five minutes (I'm not going to judge; sometimes the hardest part of life in the cube farm I now call my 8-to-5 home is staying put at my desk), and sometimes it's because the managing editor of the nightly literary expedition needs to get his act together.

     Repeat after me, kids:  If a book was written before WWII, they aren't going to be nearly as squeamish about "real life" (which, curiously, always seems to mean something bad) as you or I have been brought up to be.  People used to die without life insurance; catastrophes and natural disasters weren't federally insured, and bad people did bad things to others without DNA evidence to convict them.  Anyways, I have you repeat this because I didn't repeat it to myself and thus this happened.

    I read the kids that wonderful classic The Story of Babar, which is a French classic written between the world wars about an elephant raised in the jungles of Africa (sounds a little like Curious George, right?) until poachers shoot his mother and attempt to kidnap him.  Oops!  The funny part isn't that LJ and Judah couldn't handle it; it's that they were fascinated by it. Judah especially.  Our little thespian put on his 'elephant face' and said, "Oh no.  Bad man kill mama of Babar.  Oh no!"  (Think Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone).  The other part of great interest?  When the king of the elephants ate a bad mushroom, and promptly took ill and died.  The book was very matter-of-fact about it.  It's just what happens when reigning pachyderms eat a rotten fungus.  But oh, the questions on that!  "Dad, are we going to die when we eat mushrooms?"  (Humorously enough, we of course had mushrooms on our steak tonight!)  " Dad, why does he turn green when he dies?"

          And when Babar gets married:  "Is Celeste his cousin or his wife?"  (Both.)  Judah: "Can you just get married in a car like they did?"  (They actually got engaged in the car, not married, but I suppose you could get married in a car.)  Elijah knew the answer to that: "You can get married anywhere.  I asked the girl on the playground if she would marry me, and she said 'Sure.' "  (True story, that. Not going to touch it here, though, except to say that my follow-up question to him may have been 'What was her name?' and he might have said 'I don't remember. Does it matter?'.   Firstborns... especially swashbuckling ones! )

                                                                                 
     

         All the above, though, is why this old-fashioned relic thinks you should read old books.  Stretch your thinking.  Who knows... maybe you DO turn green when you die, elephant or not.

   I wouldn't care if I did.