In honor of National Read Aloud Day, a picture of me and Eleanor reading my favorite BabyLit®  book, Moby Dick, on my most recent trip to SLC:

Tonight, Eleanor is much more involved in our reading…she counts anything and everything on each page, waiting for me to read the words before providing the numbers. She bounces on my leg and yells out “1, 2, 3, 4…” usually 5, sometimes up to 6 and the occasional word and points and points and points. It is one more reminder of how much she’s grown and changed since I saw her in November. Also new: she looks at me, grinning, when I do the pirate and captain voices. There’s some extra awareness now in this grin even though it’s the same voices–one of the reasons I love this book so much–I’ve done for over a year. But it’s the last page that always gets me, the quote from the original text: “Sing out for new stars.” And, as with many things that could mean many things, that string of words written together tugs at something (hard to pinpoint) in me–my heart, my hope, my sense of possibility and adventure. All of which–hope, possibility, adventure–I want for her and which somehow we share–or I imagine we share–through my conjuring of words off the board-page into the air.

Tonight, as I type here in Texas days later and miles and miles away, I hear my voice reading lines I know by heart:

The waves rolled by like scrolls of silver.  

Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?

Better to sail with a moody good Captain than a laughing bad one.

Anchor.

Harpoons.

If you’re a big white whale, bite here…

Also new: after we sing our songs (You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…Jesus loves me, this I know…) and Eleanor says our prayers (Jesus, our hearts…Aunt Say precious…And mommy and daddy and Shepard and Gammie and Gampsie…Amen) and I ask for and she gives me a big hug and I lift her up and into her bed and tuck her in (comfy cozy), she does the voices herself.

Shipmates ship ship (with her mouth all folded in and her little voice deep and her head bobbing side to  side and a grin when I laugh. And repeat, repeat, repeat to make Aunt Say laugh again, again, again…)

Ship shipped. Shipmates. Ship.

Also new: after I tell her I love her so much (I love you, Aunt Say) and give her her “towel” (Thank you) and say I’ll see you in the morning (See you in the morning) and turn off the light (Awwww) and slip out of the room, Kate looks up from where she’s holding Shepard in the living room and smiles and says the other night after they’d read the book she’d picked out, Eleanor asked to read Moby Dick and said it was her favorite.

There aren’t words to capture my answering smile, to conjure the swell of my heart off the screen-page and into the air.

Or maybe there are:

Sing out for new stars…