I have tried 12 times to finish the Solon chapter of Plutarch’s Greek Lives. I shouldn’t have even started the first time, an act of sheer optimism to pick up the book and lay back in my bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow I realized the audacity. I didn’t even make it to page 2 before my eyes gave a 3-second warning and then collapsed.
But the other 11 times were not my fault, I tell you. I have been interrupted by a poopy diaper, a call to eat, a request for water, the lovely opportunity to help administer medicine and brush teeth, conflict over a car, conflict over a truck, conflict over a hat, conflict over a shield, conflict over a book, another diaper (this time just wet—false alarm), and my own threshold of guilt having been reached because she is up there with the 4 kids all by herself.
And so I look longingly at the cover. I even open the book and just smell the pages once in a while. I think about what it would be like if I had read the book, what sort of conversation I could have, what sort of wisdom would be mine, what legacy I’d leave to my children.
But they are not interested in legacy. They want now. They want to make a sword, plunge a dagger into a giant, leap from the third stair onto the two-year-old to see what would happen (“He wanted me to do that, Daddy.”), and it’s my turn, and tell him to get off of me, and can I do what he’s doing, and stooooooopppppp I had it first!
And so when I wandered upstairs to see why things were so quiet up there, and ran into this, I stopped and thought about the book I wasn’t reading and consoled myself with the thought that to slow down and generate 4 more readers might be enough for today, and even if Susan Wise Bauer doesn’t like it, Plutarch can wait one more day. He’s already waited this long, hasn’t he?
Silent reading