It's Too Quiet Down There

It was football Sunday. I'm upstairs watching a game. During a commercial I notice that it is very quiet downstairs. With four kids in the house, sometimes that silence is scary.

The boy was upstairs with me watching football.

I looked down into the living room and what do I see two of my daughters doing? Reading. That's why it was so quiet. The older one was relaxing on the couch with a book. My youngest built herself a makeshift cubicle out of cushions and was reading a collection of the books from my shelves.

I'm always puzzled by her selections. For whatever reason, one book she always seems to go to is a small edition of "Democracy in America," by Alexis de Tocqueville. If I move it from its position on my shelves, she comes to me asking, "Daddy, where's your blue book?"

The other book was Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge." That one had previously been annotated by our oldest daughter.

"I can just read the annotations," my youngest said. It's a little weird hearing your second grader talk about annotations.

Content that they were up to good, I went back to the football game.