One question stabs many husbands with increasing intensity as the time draws near: what should I get my wife for her birthday? Not me.
Every year my wife thoughtfully formulates a special request–whatever she pleases–for her birthday. Once she selflessly asked me to donate $100 to a favorite charity in her honor. Another year she desired $100 to produce a Christmas play at church. A play, by the way, she had written. This year, however, the request reached beyond the simple: a children's book contest.
Making books herself is nothing new for Mary; she's been at it for years. Endless varieties once flowed from our son's boundless activities: touring the firehouse, having birthday parades, vacationing, visiting the county fair… and more.
Though Mary wishes she could have written children's classics like Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny, she has instead concentrated on tailoring unique book creations as gifts for friends and loved ones. One of these chronicled Jenny Jan, a tiny plastic pig once belonging to our daughter Jenny. After Jenny's death, Mary wrote a story describing how Jenny Jan went to live with her friend Jan Simmons, a perpetual porcine paraphernalia aficionado. And along with little Jenny Jan, Mary presented the tale of Jenny Jan's travels to Jan.
Then there was the birthday book for sister Betty based on her emails combined with Mary's childhood memories.
Mary has oft been encouraged to sell her handmade cards, but they are so unique that she realizes they would fit no one but the particular person for whom they were created. In the middle the outdoor wedding ceremony for Kristian Andersen, for example, several sheep jumped from bushes and trotted near the wedding party. The card for that memory would fit no one else.
And the card about literary twins Wan and Tan would appeal to but a few who appreciate the humorous nuances of our language.
So the request for a book contest–plus the ubiquitous $100 for three prizes–wasn't really too far afield, considering our history. Contest rules directed entrants to both write and illustrate their books and bind them appropriately, of course, in true book fashion.
So the contest was held, books received, prizes awarded, pictures snapped, press release issued.
But why all this fussing over a birthday book contest? Because we're in that awkward stage between children and grandchildren where close contacts with the young are limited. The contest served as a means to an end, an opportunity to draw from others the energy bound up in their enthusiasm.
Forgetting from whence he has come, Age often develops a jaded cynicism that considers youthfulness a wretched condition to be avoided. And the singular cure is for Age to humble himself before Youth in order to feel again awe and wonder over new things learned, to marvel at the prospects the future holds for those who may grow old in body but not in mind.
But what next year's birthday holds, no one knows… yet.
Copyright 2004 James McAlister
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