A Boy in a Barbershop

I took my youngest sons to the barbershop Sunday afternoon and, as usual, my 6-year-old brought a book. While the 4-year-old was getting his hair cut, Michael knelt on the footrest of an empty barber’s chair. He propped the book on the seat and, with perfect obliviousness, rotated the chair by pushing against the floor with one foot. In that unlikely posture, he read Strange Museum for the 10 minutes it took the barber to cut his brother’s hair.

I would have been crippled had I done what Michael could do without thinking. His body and mind are elastic. Story enters his consciousness and fills it to the exclusion of sore joints and a too-loud radio. He is open to words and narrative in ways I can no longer imagine. Story displaces cares and conventions – a gift of which he is unaware, that he will some day lose. Remember the wistful opening lines of Randall Jarrell’s “A Girl in a Library”:

“An object among dreams, you sit here with your shoes off
And curl your legs up under you; your eyes
Close for a moment, your face moves toward sleep . . .
You are very human.
But my mind, gone out in tenderness,
Shrinks from its object with a thoughtful sigh.”