My father's book

Perhaps the most touching- is that the right word? Not quite: moving, or affecting might work better - piece I've heard on the radio lately was Robert Siegel's interview with a young woman who had always joked with her father about the Warren Zevon vampish romp 'Werewolves of London.' The father, who was a trucker, knew his girl didn't think much of the song, but he made a point of calling her whenever he heard it played on the radio: it thus became a means of bridging the hundreds of miles between them, and of sparking chats. It was kindling, in a sense, for conversation, a small fire around which they could huddle from time to time, to tell stories, and catch up. And then, when the daughter grew up and was about to get married, she - well, you can figure out the rest, if you click here.

Well, with a hurricane approaching, there's little distance between Cleo and me: in fact, we're cooped up at home, with both of our schools closed for the foreseeable future, and L. in San Francisco, for a public health conference (and, hopefully, for an impromptu street celebration or two after the Giants completed their very improbable sweep last night). Anyway, Cleo and I have spent the morning rather as we often did when she was 1: we make a snack; we try our hand at a puzzle we look outside at the weather; we listen to the news; we stack blocks; we make a snack. But of course she's not 1 anymore, and so the sheer range of things we can do is comparatively wide: she helps to stir the macaroni and cheese, she sketches the design for our jack-o'-lantern, she passes ten minutes with a computer mouse, pretending that it's an iron. Passing time with her is still intense - she doesn't like to be too far from me - but it's certainly interestingly varied, and often truly collaborative.

But, still, a day's a long while, and so a couple of hours ago I suggested that we try something new. Let's get under a blanket, I suggested, and read My Father's Dragon - which just happened to be one of my own father's favorite books as a child. Okay, said an amenable Cleo, who quickly set about arranging pillows for our reading nest. And then we were off to the island of Tangerina (see map, above) - and into a story that still carries for me, as well, a sense of magic and sheer immensity: it was, I think, the longest book I'd ever encountered at the time, and it's certainly longer than anything I've tried with Cleo.

She stuck with it, for the full 80-some pages. Sure, she wriggled, like any 3-year-old listener, throughout, and spent much of Chapter Seven bouncing on the side of the bed. But when I paused, at the end of one complex sentence, and asked her if she understood, she responded immediately and correctly, and when I wondered aloud, at the end of each chapter, if she wanted to keep reading, the answer was always yes. And soon little Elmer Elevator was standing face to face with the dragon.

Right now, Cleo is playing with a hot dog-shaped car that I once designed for a scouts' Pinewood Derby. A piece of my childhood is literally in her hands. Likewise, the volume of My Father's Dragon that we read is still inscribed with my own father's boyhood address. Inheritances, passed from father to child. But the child always makes the inheritance his own, or her own. Cleo just wandered over and announced that the hot dog was a weight, a barbell, and hoisted it over her head, and then asked how the car was meant to work.

And so another twenty minutes will be passed:

May this storm leave all those over whom it passes safe, sound - and, perhaps, surrounded by the sound of stories shared and tiny rolling race car tires, as well as howling winds.