Yap Yap, Chat Chat, Chop Chop!
“Enough yapping! Chop! Chop!” I said trying to herd the children out. We had worked hard to carve this time out for ourselves and I was excited. We talked the whole way there. Or rather, they yapped, and I listened. I can’t say I understood- but the number of phrases and words that seem to make no sense seems to increase over time. Age really is a funny thing. It takes everything mutable, garbles it with time, and presents a slightly unintelligible version to you.
“Anyway – excited?”
“Yes Mother!” They chanted. How one phrase can hold both a dutiful and a sarcastic response I don’t know, but that, right there is another thing the young seem to have down. Sigh.
Library Browsing
It seemed like a long time since we’d had a children’s book read-a-thon, and so off we were, to the library. We meandered through the library shelves each of us taking our time, wondering how long it would take us to find things once the reshelving was done.
Library browsing is one of the most under-rated pleasures of the world. We each came back with a stash of books in our hands, and picked out a sunny nook in which to curl up and read for just a few minutes before heading back home to hole up in our home.
If we run out of words – By Felicita Sala
One of my favorite books from this haul happened to be – If we run out of words – By Felicita Sala
It is an innocent earnest worry of a child’s turned into a book. What if you run out of words to speak?
The increasingly exaggerated lengths to which the father would go to find words makes it a sweet story and finishes on a predictable, but heart-tugging phrase that remains unspoken. That is how you bring a smile to the face of children and adults reading the book. Well done Felicita Sala!
When there are words everywhere, words can be swords, pinpricks, thumps just as much as they can be balms of kindness and encouragement. I closed the book, and realized that fears, worries and anxieties come in so many forms. Speaking about them to the ones who matter is the key, says every wise one, but that remains the most difficult thing in the world. For don’t words spoken have to be heard?
The children (one a teenager and the other a young adult) picked up the book, and eloquently summed the book up “Duh! Bruh!”
Nourish-n-Cherish 