“‘Help! Help!’"
Rereading amidst unrest
“The bellybutton lives in his mouth and hibernates in winter,” my son says at story time. He’s cocooned beneath the down comforter, which he describes as “warm as a bear,” tucked between me and my husband in “Big Bed.” My husband and I make eye contact, at a loss for the words to match the guile of our six-year-old, whose attention is fixed on Don Wood’s intricate illustration of King Bidgood1 that I hold before him.
“We’re learning about the forest,” my son says eventually.
“Is that a biome?” my husband asks.
“I don’t know,” my son says coyly. “You’ll have to ask Ms. Bryan.”
What would Ms. Bryan, the middle-school science teacher, say about a hypothetical hibernating, mouth-dwelling bellybutton? Is our son on to something about the nature of human anatomy? There’s no time to speculate; now, my son spots King Bidgood’s bum—actually, in illustration, his haunch.
“All right,” I say, ending the kingly body scan. I close the book and reach for the other one he brought into our bedroom, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Clearly, we’re playing the hits tonight. And, somehow, I don’t mind.
I’ll admit it: Occasionally, re-reading wears on me. Maybe it’s Gabba Gabba We Accept You, the new picture book bio of Joey Ramone we (okay, I) checked out from the library that beckons, or the dazzling Fireworks with Cátia Chien’s magical, fold-out spread, or the very prospect of the second chapter–please, lord, one of these nights– of The Mouse and the Motorcycle. I get antsy, or just bored. More often, though, and especially when life feels devastating and cruel, reciting familiar sentences and settling into their cadences calms me, lulls me into stillness the way it does my son. Reading can do this for us.
At least, for now. How much longer will he want to hear about King Bidgood? Or a ravenous caterpillar? In Big Bed? Snuggled between me and his dad?
I ask myself these questions, feel their weight, try to move on. Parenting gives me new opportunities to let go every day. This evening, before stories, it was during a game of Sorry!, which my son abandoned halfway through. My husband clocked my brow knitting in agitation.
“It’s your turn,” I called weakly to my son.
He’d retreated to the couch, where he had the puppy in a full body snuggle while humming the Lemonheads’ “Into Your Arms.”
I called his name, louder. “Your turn,” I pleaded.
My husband eyed me, amused. “This is really putting a strain on your completionist impulses.”
I laughed. And then I rapid-fire played out the board: pulling double the cards and moving my pawns, red, and my son’s, green; shuffling the deck three more times; and watching my husband win.
I had definitely not let go. But I had made peace with an alternative way of playing. I’d refrained from imposing my demands on my son.
If you haven’t read King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub, you might want to. It’s the story of a capricious king with a pathological fondness for soaking and the young boy who calls bullshit on the court’s complacency.
At dawn, the tow-headed page summons the court. “‘Help! Help!’ … King Bidgood’s in the bathtub, and he won’t get out! Oh, who knows what to do?’”
One by one, the king’s entourage offer suggestions, beseeching the thalassophilic tyrant. The Knight proposes it’s time to battle; the Queen, “‘time to lunch’,” the Duke, “‘time to fish.’” But the King is stubborn. Everything can be done in the tub—from battling to lunching.
Tonight, the King’s recklessness concerns my son. “I wouldn’t do that, would you?” he asks, as we pause on the masquerade ball scene.
It takes me a moment. “No,” I agree. Dancing in the tub wouldn’t be wise.
The King has a one-track mind: tub, tub, tub, tub, tub. His retinue crumples at his whims. It’s only the young Page who observes the precariousness, the hedonism, the ouroboric song-and-dance of magistrate and flunkies bound in lock-step allegiance to some pre-ordained, dangerous vision.
By the end of the book, the whole Court is debauching in the tub and water overflows. A full moon peeks through a window shaped like a tombstone. The Page leans against the tub’s edge, holding his mop, fed up.
“‘Who knows what to do?’” the Court cries, soaked.
It’s Monday, January 26. My son has no idea yet what’s happening in the country, what’s happening in our world.
What he does know is that the Page, not the King, pulls the plug.
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