Read To Me

Shortly before Keilana was born, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses set off a firestorm of controversy over an author I had never heard of before. When he began getting death threats, the popular media aimed the spotlight on Rushdie for his fifteen minutes. I particularly remember one interview where he said that, in his family of origin, the written word was so sacred that if someone accidentally dropped a book, they had to pick it up and kiss it in remorse. That kind of commitment made a soul-deep impression on my young, pregnant self and I vowed to teach my soon-to-be child an appreciation for books. I took a whole stack of them with me to the hospital and began reading to her the moment we were alone. I read to her every day, including the day we sat in the pediatrician’s office for her two-week checkup. When I told the doctor that his staff spent our entire wait mocking me in quiet nurse-y voices, he asked me if the baby listened when I read. Defensive, I launched into a detailed description of how Keilana’s eyes would get bigger looking at the pictures and how she would sit quietly and…and... When I finished, he just said, “Well, then, it doesn’t matter what they think.” And we just kept reading. So, it touches my heart when I watch my first baby, now a beautiful woman, share Phoebe Gilman’s Grandma and the Pirates, or any of her childhood favorites, with our little caboose.


http://www.amazon.com/Grandma-Pirates-Phoebe-Gilman/dp/059043425X


http://www.phoebegilman.com/home.html