Wampum

After stopping at the post office and mailing Grace's volume of poetry and Jonah's DK title "Weather", and my "La casa en Mango Street" back to the Tahlequah Public Library, the kids and I headed back over to the Santa Fe Public Library to kill an hour before swimming. Jonah was as direct as a jay at a picnic, he went right to where we'd left The Hello, Goodbye Window and said Hello, Goodbye Window in his sweet singsong. It had been shelved since we were there last, but with a little help Jonah found it and backed into my lap, holding it and laughing.
Nanna and Poppy live in a big house
in the middle of town.
There's a brick path
that goes to the
back porch, but
before you get there
you pass right by
the kitchen window.
I've no idea why right by is hysterically funny, but it is. Breaking up on each line, stumbling over the unfamiliar Nanna (his died when he was two, my mom is a different kind of elder, a grandmother) and porch, repeating for a comic effect only he knew, but it was pretty funny even without the punch line, Jonah read the first page, and then bounded out of my lap, and up off the floor, and off to car books, eventually the current copy of Road and Driver in the magazine reading room on the main floor.

The multi-page narrative thread is a long ways away for the boy who hits skip between scenes of movies, to repeat some moment of visual kaleidoscopic joy, but Jonah was reading and laughing, which is about the best thing a life of letters can touch in passing.