Easter isn't far away, which is awesome. When I still lived at home, Easter meant a visit from the Easter Bunny and a chocolate egg-covered house on Easter morning. I loved waking up and knowing that I would be spending all day eating chocolate and no one could tell me not to.
I also loved Easter books.
The holidays of my childhood were made even better by the revival of the seasonal children's books my mom stored with our holiday decorations. When it was Halloween, Mom brought out books about Wanda the Witch, or the Barenstein Bears and their trick or treating adventures. At Christmas, she pulled out The Little Match Girl, which always made me cry and my favourite book about Barnabey the mouse, who had Christmas adventures. The Barnabey book was scratch-and-sniff and every time I catch a whiff of peppermint or fir tree, I'm taken back to when I was small enough to sit on the couch and listen to Mom read the tale to my sisters and me. Kendelle, Janay and I also used to battle over whose turn it was to scratch the scented page. Oh, the memories.
It's been a long time since I sat down with any of our old holiday children's books. I know that before my parents moved to their new house, my mom asked my sisters and me to help her weed through our thorough library of children's literature. I kept putting the chore off, because 1) I am lazy and that did not sound appealing; 2) it's hard to think about donating favourite reads from when I was a kid.
I really hope all of the holiday books made the cut and are lost somewhere with all the unpacked boxes. I work this Easter weekend, so I won't be able to personally check. But there's something genuinely special about those books and the tradition we had of reading them together.
When I was old enough to read them on my own, I'd usually disappear to a corner of the house with a stack as soon as Mom unloaded them from storage. It was like revisiting friends every year. It was seriously awesome.
Someday, in the distant, distant future, I'm going to force my own children to love those holiday books, and new holiday books that I'm super excited about getting to buy (a new reason to buy books - yes!). They aren't going to have a choice. We're going to sit down and read them together and the stories in the pages will be a part of the tradition my mom instilled with me. No one will be texting (because four-year-olds seem to have texting mastered), no one will be watching TV (unless The Bachelor is on, then maybe) and everyone will get a turn to scratch the scented pages, because that's the best thing ever.
I guess what I'm trying to say, in the most drawn-out way ever, is being read to as a kid is amazing. I'm so thankful to my mom, and every other relative who heeded my demands and read me books. It is great being old enough to play cards with the grown-ups now, but the time spent reading was the best by far.
Tonaya Marr can be reached at tonaya.marr@gmail.com or on Twitter @TonayaMarr.
