The Silver Lining

My daughter loves to read. It's a great hobby and I support it fully. She can't actually read herself yet, but I'm not concerned. I'd rather foster a love for it and then learn to do it than force her to learn to read and in doing so kill the love. Love is important. Eventually when it's grade and age appropriate, yes, there will be times I will force her to do things, but for now, she is three, and not knowing how to read is perfectly acceptable, and loving to read is wonderful.

As an adult, I'm torn at times. She loves to read stories from these small "anthologies" of Disney stories. People have gifted us and given us many of these various books with tons of stories in them. At first I read them, and they were fun, silly stories. Adventures of what Mickey did. A sequel to Cinderella. Just short, fun stories. 

And then something changed. I experienced something I never thought I'd have to, and that's saying quite a lot. Considering I am someone who lost a parent at a young age, which was something I'd never imagined experiencing either, even this was profound. It is not something to be quickly forgotten or healed. It is not something that will really ever "get better." It has become a part of my life.

I read the stories again, and suddenly, I felt they weren't as fun or silly as they should have been. They were a little too optimistic, too perfect. The bad guys always got punished. The good guys always prevailed. Unfortunately that's not how the world works. They need to learn there are injustices out there in the world. There are innocent people being accused of crimes they didn't commit. There are people out there committing crimes and getting away with them. There are people afraid to tell the truth. There are people lying and being believed as truth. Life is not so simple as right and wrong. 

Disney always showed happy endings. The good prevails. But let's be honest. Tons of bad things happen to good people. So many injustices are out there. As happy and as fun as Disney is, I will always choose the books with deeper messages more than just happy endings. 

My husband came home from the library with my daughter and had this book in the pile. I quickly flipped through all the books he'd brought home just to see what they were about. Rabbit and the Motorbike was one of them. I read it part way and immediately said to him, "This is a sad book. Did you know that?" No, he didn't. Then I kept reading, and although sad, I really liked it. They didn't go into detail about the sadness but as an adult, you can infer. 

This book does have a "happy" ending, but it's not the same as Disney story happy endings. There's pain, there's struggle, and there's the search for the silver lining. I know my children won't understand the depth of it now, but teaching starts early. Every little seed, idea, inspiration, starts way before you thought it existed. 

Make it count.