My grandmother passed away this morning. The morning of the day I’m writing this—not the day you’re reading it.
My grandmother and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, as is the case with people who are generations apart. But something that she always told me—and something we will always be in agreement about—was:
“One of the most important things you can do for your children is to read to them.”
I think I owe her some credit for my becoming a librarian, especially since reading to kids is part of my job. Even if they aren’t *my* kids.
When I look back on my childhood with her, most of my memories are of me sitting on her lap while she read to me.
She read A LOT of books to me, but one I remember vividly is Margaret Wise Brown’s Pussy Willow. Specifically, the one with this cover:
For those of you who aren’t familiar with that tale, it’s about a little kitten named Pussy Willow (he named himself after the flower since he was also small, gray, and fluffy). After thinking the pussy willows had disappeared, he looks for them “through moonlight and starlight, thunder and lightning, day and night, wind and rain.”
He meets many other animals and bugs throughout his journey, asking them, “did you ever see any gray fur flowers that look just like me?”
The creatures all give answers that direct him further along in his journey. The butterfly instructs him to look in the sky, the bee tells him to check the garden, the rabbit tells him to look in a carrot. The only one who didn’t provide an answer was the cabbage who “sat there in its great green silence, and never said a word.”
At the end of the story spring has come again, the pussy willows are blooming, and Pussy Willow is relieved to have found them. The book ends with the following lines, the first from an owl:
“Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they left it. In a song, In the spring. In the dark.”
And then this one from Pussy Willow:
“Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.”
And as someone who is grieving those lines read differently to me than they did when I was younger.
I lost my grandmother today, but I found her in the memories I left her in. I found her in this book.
I will find her over and over again, too in other books. In other memories.
I hope that you find yourself or your loved ones in old memories when you lose someone (or maybe when you’ve lost yourself a little bit, because that happens too).
Or maybe even in a book from one of our libraries.
Instead of a book list, or a link to a program, I’m going to give you a prompt: Look for a book that brings back memories for you, one that reminds you of a loved one, or a favorite moment of time. Reread it. Is it any different now than the first time you read it?
If we don’t have that book feel free to request it.
I’ll be requesting Pussy Willow.