Reading a Book: What a Novel Idea

I read a book last weekend. An entire, 300-plus-page book.

A book that was not written by Dr. Seuss, that did not have “Babysitters’ Club” in its title or an American Girl as main character, and was not about Stopping Sibling Rivalry or Building Your Child’s Self-Esteem or Finding Your Perfect Mate.

It was an ordinary, best-selling, paperback volume of trite fiction--the kind I imagine normal people read by the truckload while they’re relaxing at the pool or lying in bed at night. The kind I only used to get a chance to read when I was stuck on jury duty or flying cross-country sans kids.

It may seem like a small accomplishment. But finishing a novel represents a quantum leap for me in my relationship with my children . . . and with myself.

I’ve always been one of those folks who listed “reading” among her favorite hobbies. Even when I was a child, one of the things I liked best about summer vacation was the prospect of long afternoons spent sprawled across the glider on our porch, my nose buried in a library book.

But in the past few years--since I became the single mom of three busy, active young kids--the hours I could consider “leisure time” have dwindled to a precious few.

The press of business--laundry to do, homework to check, meals to make, errands to run--forced me to read in short snatches of stolen time and limited my literary fare to newspapers, short stories, magazine articles, anything that could be finished in one sitting and tossed aside.

But lately, I’ve noticed that my children’s needs no longer inevitably bump against mine. We have, it seems, crossed a threshold of sorts, into an era in which we sometimes go our separate ways.

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It’s a cliche that always makes me cringe:

Someone whose kids are grown and out of the house looks at mine--so small and cute, perched on my lap or playing together in the pool--and sighs wistfully: “Ah, it all goes by so fast. . . . Before you know it, they’ll be grown.”

Like heck it does. Their growing-up years are crawling by at a snail’s pace, it seems to me. They move toward independence in baby steps, each one excruciatingly slow.

You can look back at your kids’ lives and reflect on it all: One day they’re in diapers, the next in cap and gown. But I look forward and all I can see is an endless stream of lunches to fix, fights to settle, splinters to remove, tangles to comb through. . . .

One day, you tell me, I’ll wonder where their childhood went and marvel at how the years rushed by. But that day seems achingly far away. It’s hard to see progress and growth sometimes amid the chaos and demands of daily lives. Maybe it’s because there are three of them, moving through the stages of childhood in lock-step, someone always stuck at some uncomfortable, needy age.

Separate them and I can see how they’ve grown--the little one can do a cartwheel now. I remember when we thought she’d never learn to walk.

But together they merge into an unmanageable mass of ceaseless demands--always banging on the bathroom door when I’m inside, bouncing on the bed when I’m trying to sleep, interrupting conversations when I’m on the phone.

Suddenly, though--through this recent accumulation of free time--I realize what has escaped my notice: that they are outgrowing some of their need for me.

They can occupy themselves for hours on end--at the computer or playing Barbie or shooting baskets with their friends outside--before the game has turned ugly, or they’ve discovered they’re hungry or decided they’re bored, and someone erupts with “MOM-MY!”

And on the horizon I now can see a day no one will need my help finishing a puzzle or riding a bike or pouring milk into a glass. When I’ll have hours to myself, to pursue my own interests . . . if I can still remember what they are.

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There were other things I should have done last weekend: Bills needed paying, laundry had piled up, our stockpile of groceries was dangerously low.

But I hid out, instead, and read.

In the morning at the kitchen table, while the kids watched cartoons on TV. In the bathtub at night, while they played with their dolls outside the closed door. In bed in the middle of the day while . . . I don’t actually know what they were doing then. It was quiet, and I wasn’t about to ask.

I could hardly believe it as the weekend wore on. I would glance at the clock: An hour had passed, and no one had called out for me. It felt liberating, and slightly scary, like I was getting away with a crime.

In the end, the book wasn’t that good, and I was tempted to regret having wasted the time. The weekend had sped by and there were still, after all, bills to pay, laundry to finish, grocery shopping to do.

But what a glimpse the weekend gave me of a life to come, of light at the end of a tunnel that seems not so long and dark anymore, but crowded with children rushing to break free.

* Sandy Banks’ e-mail address is [email protected].