Emma for the win

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Emma decided on a goal.  She would read every Harry Potter book in one week.   I checked and that is 3, 674 pages.

For the first several days, she was reading a book a day and was still managing to keep a fairly normal schedule, especially Sunday, the day she started.  We went to church as usual.  We played Risk in the afternoon.  She still read all of book one (the girl has skills.)

The next few days were the same.  It seemed about normal, she was just reading a little more than usual.  She'd still take time to write.  She was still fairly engaged in family life.  She played the piano.

When she got to book 5, all 870 pages of it, she disappeared from the landscape.  Besides swim team, meals and a few cursory chores, she was reading.  She'd emerge from her room occasionally, bleary eyed and with a slightly stunned expression.

She kept reading.

Saturday, the last day, she had a lot of reading ahead of her.  We didn't make it easy on her by requiring her to help clean--really clean--the van and by taking her to a play (she read during the intermission).

She wrote a note at 1:27 a.m. that she was finished.  (I was long since in bed.)  She wrote, "This brings to a close Operation Boy Who Lived."

At first, I wondered if I should be letting her do this.  It didn't scream Good Mother somehow.  Then I remembered to revel in the uniqueness of the experience.  I had a professor at BYU, whose class I took because Marianne was a devotee of his.  He told us to revel in the uniqueness of experiences.  I thought of that the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college when I worked at The Burger Express, a little fast food restaurant in Wells, Nevada.  I was cleaning the drive-thru and pretty much hating it, but then I remembered to revel and I realized that cleaning a drive-thru at a fast food restaurant was (hopefully) going to be unique in my life.

Emma's only going to be fourteen for so long.  She's footloose and fancy free.  When else in her life will she be able to read all the Harry Potter books in one week?  Certainly not when she's a mother or when she has a job.  It's unique so I let her revel in it.

She'll be able to point to this summer as the summer she read.  And read and read.