Passing the Baton
April 13, 2000
6:25 a.m.
I'm sick. No, really. I'm sick, and it's all the lawn mower's fault. I felt it coming on Sunday evening after The Mowing. It got worse Monday and worse still Tuesday. I finally admitted I was sick Wednesday, and so am nearly human today.   It's the only excuse I have for not updating the past couple days, so I'm sticking with it. Susan Fry at Speculations appears to have accepted an artical I wrote for her a bit ago, so I went ahead and toggled the Ever Present Accept-O-Matic to show it. Yeah, it's non-fiction, but an acceptance is fun regardless. So, I was sick Tuesday night. I went to Brigid's room after getting ready for bed. "I need to beg off the bedtime story, Brig." "What?" Her face darkened perceptibly "I'm sorry. But I just don't feel up to reading." My voice was thick and raw after a day's coughing, and it was obvious that I was telling the truth and not just dodging the effort. Not that I would do that these days. She's 11, after all. Any day now she'll look up at me with those big brown Lisa eyes and tell me that she's too big for a bedtime story. I'm not going to miss one between now and then if I can help it. "That's okay," she said. Her book was lying on the pillow beside her pokemon stuff and Rosie--her little kitty that's been battered and beaten by years of use. Rosie's little button eyes are all scarred up. "She's got cataracts," Lisa had once said of them. "You want to tell me a bedtime story?" I asked. You see, there have come times before when I wasn't able to give her stories that she has read to me. She hadn't thought of those times, I guess. They're few and pretty far between. But she immediately agreed to this, and pulled her nightshirt around to get out of bed and grabbed her book. We went into Lisa's and my bedroom. I laid down. Brigid laid next to me and began to read. She's into the second book of Tamora Pierce's Immortals series. It's a nice set of books from what I can tell--when you only get to read 5-10 pages sporadically throughout any book it's hard to get a real firm grip on them. Brigid is a great reader. She got into the parts, using different voices for different characters. She grew concerned where she was supposed to be concerned, and put a pleasant lilt on the more humerous parts. Her voice was clear. I watched her and listened. She's 11. Wow. We talked for a little bit when she was done. Then she gave Lisa a good night hug. Me, being a sicky, didn't get such close partings. But I didn't really need it this time. I smiled as she walked away. I probably coughed, too. But already my mind is purging itself of these uglier memories. I scooched up in my pillow and picked up an Isaac Asimov book of science essays. Asimov is a fantastic writer on sience. He spells things out so clearly and with such fervor and excitement that I can't help but be awed at the world. But tonight, I thought, tonight he was going to have to go a bit farther than he normally did. Tonight I had just seen a glimpse of the future, of a young woman reading aloud to a hopeful audience. Perhaps she'll read her own daughter fantasy and fable, eh? Perhaps she'll read them all the books I've read her. Or perhaps she'll make up stories as I did back when she was a toddler. My version of "Puff the Magic Dragon" with Skyfox and the kidnapped elf will, I think, forever be a classic. My fingers grazed the cover. It was coated with library plastic. Okay, Isaac, I thought. Let's see what you got... And I opened the book to read about nebulas and novas and the origin of the world.  At least she doesn't pronounce 'bass' like the fish Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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