Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here:

When they grow excited, the children who rise from their pillows sometimes totter about as if they were auditioning to wear the Godzilla costume for a tiny-scale remake. Some go all out in offering prompted animal sounds, lifting their heads and closing their eyes and letting go their loud mewls and screeches and growly combustions. Then they follow my hand as I push down all the chaos and lift my finger to my lips and Elmer Fudd the line, “We all must be vewwy vewwy qui-et.” Calling out colors and numbers, the names of birds and big cats, chugging like trains, making spiders climbing spouts, rolling their heads upon their necks as they become Wookies and T-Rex wannabes even to little arms waving the air about, the children at Storytime, black and white and Asian and Indian and brown mixes, boys and girls, bold and shy, are the innocence of the tattered world in one safe spot. They give us an enunciation of grace we have not earned.