please read at the table

I read to my offspring while they eat breakfast and lunch.  I have done this for twenty years.  On the odd day that I take off of reading because it gets squeezed out by rushing out the door to dentist appointments and stuff like that they are shocked and dismayed that I am not going to read to them.

“What?” they protest.  “You AREN’T going to READ!  You can’t not read.  That is just not fair.”

For them, its almost exactly the same thing as if I announced that I wasn’t going to feed them.  Because it is exactly the same thing.  This is probably my most favourite part of homeschooling (yes, also for twenty years) my progeny; that I have this time to read to them.  

I suspect that the keenest disappointment they will experience when they get married will be that their spouse may not read to them at breakfast and lunch.  Perhaps they will include that in their marriage vows. 

Of course I don’t know.

Usually we read historical fiction because that is what we love.  But in the years I have been pregnant (fondly known as a baby year) I don’t usually study history.  We take the year “off” and read other stuff that doesn’t neatly fit into some historical category.  Like The Lord of the Rings.  Or Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.  Or Charlotte’s Web.  Or To Kill a Mockingbird or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Or The Shadow of the Bear.  Edward Lear’s Limericks.  Lots of different things.  

But I haven’t had a baby since Rosebud, and she is four and a half now.  So we haven’t had an Eclectic year for a while.  So we are going to bust out of our well established pattern next year and read anything we feel like.  Randomly.  Even though it isn’t likely to be a baby year.

Anyway, right now we are studying some American history, which is fairly radical for Canadians, who pride themselves, in as nice a way as possible, on their ignorance of American History.  But we are going to America to visit some History and some Leaves on the Trees in the Fall and thought that it would be a good idea to know some American History.

We are studying the Civil War.  Which, if you haven’t noticed before, is self contradictory.  The novel we are reading (I read, they listen) presently is called Across Five Aprils and is truly an outstanding book on the impact of the Civil War on a family, a community and a country.  Stunning and painful and beautiful to read.  I cry a lot when I read to my kids.

I also cry during toilet paper commercials which feature adorable fluffy white kittens with large blue eyes.