"Oh Help, Oh No! It’s A Toddler Claiming He No Longer Likes The Gruffalo!"
In which I almost forgot World Book Day
Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I - Charlotte, hi! - write about my life as a mother of three small children - Poppet (m, 4 years), Pickle (m, 2 years) and Peach (f, 5 months.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.
My favourite place as a child was the local library.
I grew up in a traumatic environment, raised by two people in a toxic relationship with first each other, and then with other people. I don't know if I was miserable or if I just accepted it, but I do recall relating to one Matilda Wormwood, a voracious reader like myself brought up in an unhealthy home. Matilda had a power that brought her through to the other side - telekinesis. My own power was, I would later realise, repression.
Repression, and the reading ability of someone much older than I actually was. Repression, and a library card.
My first visit to the local library was not a memorable one - I know that because I don’t remember it - but many of the visits after are still locked in my mind. I would be in town with one or other parent, and I would excuse myself to return some books, or pick up some new ones, or both. I would take my time choosing, reading blurb after blurb and adding book after book to a pile I would then take home and devour one after another, sat in bed for days at a time as though the world I actually lived in couldn’t possibly be as interesting as the ones others had created in their heads.
It was through reading that I explored the world, learned about the kind of love that didn’t involve threats and tears and plates thrown at walls. It was an escape and a gift and a mind expanding, soul feeding activity all of my own.
It was a lifeline. It was a way out. It was, it felt at times, all I had.
“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” - Matilda, Roald Dahl
See also: Matilda, by Harry Styles
Imagine my surprise when, all grown up and so empowered by books, I found myself forgetting World Book Day.
Again.
The realisation hit on Tuesday morning. Sat in the library’s free ‘Rhyme Time’ class with Peach on my lap, I gazed around absentmindedly, waiting for the singing to begin. “There’s something I’m forgetting,” I thought, as a child in Peter Rabbit fancy dress wandered by, accompanied by Paddington Bear. “It’s World Book Day on Thursday!” the ladies running the group trilled. Not registering what was right in front of me - the circulation of blood to my brain clearly being cut off by the pre-pregnancy jeans I’d decided to squeeze into - “what have I forgotten?” I wondered.