Storytime

We didn’t mean to attend storytime. Rather, we stumbled across it unexpectedly, the way you stumble across an ice cream stand in the middle of the park. Oh! What a pleasant surprise. 

We just so happened to be in the right place at the right time. A woman suddenly started arranging miniature chairs, preparing to read out loud. First a story about ballet. Then another about trains. Presley helped herself to all of it: the stories, the books, the wooden blocks, the paint. She made herself right at home in my personal wonderland, the independent bookstore.

When her brothers were three, storytime was a given, a regular rotation in the calendar of events. To her, storytime is a novelty. She’s spent 2/3 of her life mostly at home, like a tiny queen locked in a modest, 1900 square foot castle. 

When it was time to go, I had to physically pry her away from the magic, like plucking a starfish off a rock. She wailed, thrashing in my arms. I carried her out of the bookstore sobbing. 

She cried, "I'm going to miss everyone!!! I am going to miss everyone at the bookstore so much, mommy!!!”

I’ve tried to convince myself so many times she won’t remember any of this. That she won’t remember the pandemic, that she doesn’t know any different. But in that moment, the grief hit me fresh, like a cold tide rolling up over my feet. Everything she’s missed out on. Everything she is still missing out on. 

I wiped the tears off her face, held my own back. 

“I’m going to miss everyone at the bookstore, mommy,” she tells me again. 

“I know, babe.” I tell her, “We’ll go back soon.”