The First

I've been reading to my daughter since she was a baby, like parents are encouraged to.  I remember the times we read together fondly, mostly because I have faulty memory and have filtered my attempts to get the toddler that she was to stop running around and just listen to me, into a cherubic scene of us snuggling while looking through the pages of Jamberry.

When she got older, I wanted to so much for us to read together.  A mother-daughter book group of two.  Reading to me is a lifeline. I am not happy unless I have a book that engages me.  I am not happy without a book.  She resisted.

Although she was an early reader, she hated to talk about books.  And I didn't love the books that she chose.  Junie B. Jones drained me. I didn't understand why Junie wasn't in a constant time out.  Or incarcerated.

"Can we talk about the book?" I'd ask, having bought myself a copy of From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler so that I could read along with what she was reading in school. She looked at me as though I'd slapped her. Stunned. Offended. Hurt.

"You're reading what I'm reading?" she asked. 

"You were enjoying it, and I thought I might too," I defended myself.  "I thought it would be fun for us to read it together."

She didn't think it would be fun. She didn't want to share.

Until this summer.  She turned 11 and told me that she read a book that she loved, that touched her and changed her.  She asked me if I wanted to read it.  Of course I did.  And I loved it too.  Because it was the first book that my daughter introduced me to and shared with me.  And the story's not bad, either.

Marinka lives in New York City's West Village with her husband, kids and books.  Her personal blog is Motherhood in New York, she dispenses life-saving advice at The Mouthy Housewives and whines at Secret Spinless Whine.