Gas of Green Gables

(Challenge #2; Watcha reading?)

One of the greatest legacies my parents passed down to me was a love of reading.  From my earliest memories I can recall snuggling with my parents reading Good Night, Moon and The Sweet Pickles books.  My parents didn’t just love to read with us kids; my dad always had a paperback in his back pocket and my mom has authored several children’s books.   Reading was and is an important part of our family culture.  This is tradition I really look forward to passing down to Eloise.  (Who, by the way, was named after my favorite childhood story-book character ever,  Eloise from the Plaza.) 

Upon confirming that Eloise was a girl, my mind began to race with all the possibilities our life together held.  I pictured tea-parties, and father-daughter dances.  I imagined spa days and whispered secrets.  I began compiling a list of things I wanted to share with my daughter; topping the list was L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books.  After my Nonnie gave me the classic Anne of Green Gables for my birthday one year, I quickly read the rest of the series.  These books provided so much, “scope for imagination,” and they truly helped me appreciate beauty; beauty in nature, people, and in the written word.  I read these books almost every summer until I went to college and now, guess what?  I am reading them again!  As I rock my sweet baby to sleep every night I share with her the beautiful prose so artfully spun by my favorite author.  The gentle cadence of the fanciful words accompany Eloise as she  drifts off to sleep.  I know she is too little to follow the story and her vocabulary comprehension is likely limited to “more moomoos?” and “There’s Daddy!”   But I believe that some part of her subconscious is soaking up the essence of the words and that their special magic sweetens her dreams.