24 Comments

Another great story about your mother. I remember my mother reading Winnie the Pooh and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to me. I found a copy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Amazon and read it to my daughter.

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I tell you, they are sweet memories! Something unforgettable about snuggling up with Dad or Mom as they read to you. It is not old-fashioned. It is the truth.

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too much emotion at crack of dawn. I had a yellow house like this for 30 years. We're both gone now.

Can't read it today.

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Understood. Sweet sorrow, I believe it is called. The older we get, the more we experience it. It let's us know we are alive and we are glad for it.

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Very nice, Sharron!

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Thanks for walking down memory road with me for a few minutes!

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I really like the children's hour one!

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Yes! The rhyme and meter reminded me of you, Linda

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So beautiful - and how lovely to share in such beautiful memories of yours. Thank you. ♥️

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One of the happier memories of my chaotic childhood! I have no doubt your parents read and sang with you! Thank you, Rebecca.

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You are so right Sharron, the gift of language opens up the whole world to children. I love the poems. So much easier to memorize when they have rhyme and rhythm. Lovely piece!

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Thanks, Jim! Waiting to see that next post of yours! It is a beauty!

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You are so right…. about reading and singing together.

As a part-time elementary music teacher, my work comes and goes with various grants or budgets. When I meet a new class and invite them to sing with me, they look at me like I’m an alien.

Their teachers tell me parents don’t sing with kids anymore.

It doesn’t take long, though, before they jump right in. Yay!

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Beautiful, Penny! Children are children if you let them be. Thank you for caring about them!

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Two poems I memorized in childhood, just because I liked them, are Jabberwocky and Paul Revere’s Ride. I can still recite the first and some of the second.

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Great poems! Parts of them stick in your little grey cells and forever come back to entertain you. " into the valley of death rode the six-hundred" ... "a nest of robins in her hair" .... "a bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon" ..."Listen, my children, and you shall hear"

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In college I took a class called Acting for Non Actors. Our first exercise was to stand in front of the class and recite a poem from memory. So of course I chose Jabberwocky. I had the class in stitches, which was very confusing to me, because I consider that poem to be deadly serious.

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Ah, Mr Wolf, just like when we write ... we can never anticipate the readers' interpretations. We just put it out there and hold our breath.

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Heartfelt words, Sharron. Makes me grateful for my mom reading to me and encouraging me to read early on.

I have no human children; my kids have tails. Is it weird that I sometimes read to them? 🙄

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Wait a minute ... doesn't everyone read to their cats?

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I always enjoy reading about your mother, and I absolutely loved the Longfellow poem (both poems, really). Thanks for heartwarming work!

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Thank you, Justin for looking at this little memoir for the second time! I thought I would bring a couple of Katy's stories up out of the deep dungeon of the archive and air them out.

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Hi Sharron, sorry I'm falling behind! Just read this to my wife; it has such a nice feel. We read and read to our daughter and she is a book vacuum as an adult. So much life comes out of those words. We had the night before Christmas children's book, which we made dog-eared. I think the rhyme still echoes. Thank you for this one!

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I am falling behind, too. I am glad you found personal meaning in this little memory. I think all of us "elderly" folks could. Elderly! ha ha ha

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