scribblechic

There are four years between my children, library shelves heavy with written words could measure the space between them. My son reads with a natural ease; ingesting volumes of literature like air filling immeasurable depths inside his small, lithe frame. My daughter extracts words from the pages of books more intentionally, she leans into a book exquisitely extracting each word with the steadfast care of an anthropologist; examining each meaning, attributing value.

In life my daughter walks ahead, aware of the world around her. She is fluid in unspoken social exchanges, communicating efficiently and appropriately. My son walks in the world like a traveler in a new land, his knowledge of unspoken social language broken and based in clumsily memorized academic examples.

There is a place my children meet as equals, a playground of social and literary; life sketched in clean lines and thoughts condensed into neatly outlined bubbles. Words and images spill loosely, thoughts mapped on the pages of comic books.

Garfield’s sarcasm and Odie’s boundless joy; Calvin and Hobbes friendship, innocence, and imagination; the clever contest of Spy vs. Spy; the contemporary commentary of the Simpsons. My children align themselves side by side as they shuffle through stacks of comic books. On these pages my son more capably navigates social humor; images capture emotional context with clarity. My daughter feels less overwhelmed in this space where images create clues that lend comprehension to new words.

More importantly, for those minutes shared between pages riddled with humor my children are friends sharing smiles and laughter over a book. Late at night and on lazy weekends these books freckle the path between their rooms. I find them scattered near chairs, among Legos, beside the computer. One picks up where another walks away; it has become a dance they perform together and apart to a silent unending song.

Tagged: Books, Children, Comics, Social