The 'Goldbug' Melancholy

Richard Scarry books are among my most treasured and favorite EVER. The drawings, the way the typeset on the page is obviously done in a time when typewriters were part of the creative process, the randomness of the characters and stories.

I bought one in Taos at my favorite bookstore, Moby Dickens, which is right off of the plaza on Bent Street, across and down the road from the store that hangs bells made from retired buoys. Ring one next time you're there, and I dare you to keep your soul inside you.

I also have one that was given to me as a toddler by my uncle Rick. Somehow it's still intact and not torn, and only has three pages with crayon additions to the original print.

Almost every night, I reach for one of these books, and try to subliminally make my kids choose it for bedtime story. But they usually don't, so I end up looking for Goldbug in 'Cars & Trucks & Things That Go' by myself.

I realize that the books I love are probably not the ones my parents loved, and probably not the ones they wanted me to love the most. But there are still a few that I know my parents loved and that I love just as much, like Maurice Sendak's 'A Hole is to Dig'. I realize that many of the memories that are special to me are not (probably) the ones that my parents would've picked for me to keep, and the ones they would've picked are mere blips on the radar of memory if they exist at all. 

It's hard to help my kids learn how to live, without living vicariously through them. It's hard to let them make their own memories and not push my wishes for memories on them. 

Music, though . . . . somehow that's more enduring.

We went to a wedding in May and the opening song was one that my Grandad used to sing, so I was crying before the first bridesmaid even set foot in the chapel. And it got better, in that every single song was one I know by heart because someone special sang it to me at some point. I was glad I had tissue stuffed in my bra, because I needed one from both sides. 

So, that night, I sang my kids to sleep. I sang all the songs I could remember and the ones that were most special to me. I ended with the Lords Prayer, because I heard it again at the wedding and had forgotten it. I can't remember all the words in the right order when I say it, which might automatically demote me from being a preacher's daughter. But sing it, and I can even recall it in the King James Version. 

I don't know if my kids will remember Goldbug, but I hope they remember that song.