Boy, I hope that voice never changes. I was sitting in the rocking chair in my daughter’s room. It was night. She was doing pre-bed reading. She’ll go all night if her absent-minded parents drift off to sleep before she does. And her absent-minded parents often do!
I tried to keep my eyes from growing heavy and tipping shut. They were fluffing the pillows and turning in for the night. (No! Don’t do it! She’ll read ‘til 3 a.m. if we let her!)
But it’s easy listening to that little voice reading “Magic Tree House” chapter books, or Amelia Bedelia’s crazy antics. What was wrong with that crazy maid, anyway? Putting icing on the fish?!?
When an adult says “Amelia Bedilia,” it’s just a name. Just a couple silly sounds strung together. Cute. But a kid makes it a sing-song masterpiece, rolling like a rollercoaster up the vowels and down the consonants in a way I can’t even replicate: A-m-E-l-IA … Aaagh! How do they do it!?!
That warbling. Everything ending in a twirly, whirly whoop. Da-da da-da da-da DAAAAA!
Then one day they change. I did. We all do. I talk like a monotone gorilla now. My sinuses do more work than my vocal chords.
They’re gone forever. Those sweet little, rosy-sounding, high, hypnotic, squeaky, playful, perfect voices. All full of ticks and quirks and theatrics.
A-m-E-l-IA! bA-d-E-l-IA!
That’s it!
Somewhere along the line we lose it. And we read and we drone on and we don’t warble anymore. SNORE. When I read, it’s like I’m chewing stringy meat. It plods on endlessly — chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp.
Where’s the play?
I got to thinking about this the other day when my mother dropped off a book. She always has books she thinks I MUST read. Normally they’re about gene-sequencing or how the planet became doomed when we stopped eating kale and started putting it in salad bars as decoration. Something like that.
“Thanks,” I usually say, and then put it on a big, sagging stack with the rest.
“You’re going to read it, right!” she demands. There are no question marks with my mother.
“Oh, yes, of course. We’ll polish it off tonight … right after we finish the next installment of ‘The Curious Bean Named Wally Jean.’”
But for some reason I started reading the book — “Making Habits, Breaking Habits” by the psychologist Jeremy Dean — or at least a chapter of it called, “Creative Habits.” (I don’t know what my mother was implying with a book about “habits,” but I always find my own meaning in gifts.)
I read this line: “There’s no better examples of the wandering, playful, creative mind than that of a child. If you watch children play, they can pick up anything and imagine it as something else.”
And it made me think of that little voice. Of reading. Of how that warble is the same thing. Wandering aimlessly through a forest of words — adding a pinch of this or a smidgen of that whenever it seems to fit. For no other reason than it sounds good. Because it’s fun to say. Because they can’t help but create.
All that “defocused attention,” as Dean says, lets them be creative — to run wild and free.
A-m-E-l-IA! bA-d-E-l-IA!
I love it!
Then something happens. We get purpose and direction. Focus! A need to get quickly from point A to point B. To extract meaning from writing in the most efficient and expeditious way. It isn’t FuN to say. It’s imPORtant to read.
Sure, we need that, too. But reading is never the same. It starts to change. It loses something while gaining something else. No longer is it a form of creative play.
Oh, I hope that little voice never changes. Never loses its ability to get lost in the words. Sing-songin’ and lollygaggin’ about. All while I desperately try to keep from drifting off on warbling rollercoasters with Amelia Bedilia and a curious bean named Wally Jean.