My son Jefferson is downstairs reading...he rarely reads.
Yet, one of my best memories of Jefferson before we became a family was his sitting on the stairs outside reading a book on Babe Ruth when he was 9. Steve and I looked at Jefferson reading and smiled. Jefferson looked up, his hand holding his chin and smiled back. {Side note about the Babe Ruth book: he would write a book report a year and up through his freshman year of high school, the book report was always on the same Babe Ruth book. As parents this flustered us...now it's a 'classic' Jefferson story.}
"Howard Roark laughed...."
Steve came running through the door, "Jefferson is downstairs reading. Guess what he is reading?" Huge grin on his face.
My first guess was the first published work by Barak Obama. Amin was asking to borrow it during xmas dinner while we sort of roamed through the book shelves...mostly in front the book case with African American related books of which he pulled one volume after another off the shelf settling on a Shelby Steele as Barak was elsewhere...it turned up a number of days later only to be lingering from the commons to the kitchen to the stairs back to the kitchen.
Barak seemed a logical and good choice for Jefferson...another person who has learnt to balance two worlds--where is home--who am I--I am neither this nor that...but both. Jefferson would enjoy Barak's voice. Agree with some of it, perhaps all of it or maybe just a sentence here or there that speaks to his own experience of growing up in white America but still seen with all of the sterotypes associated with African Americans. Maybe Jefferson will read this as well...but not tonight.
Steve said, "No, go wilder than Barak" (Barak is not a wild but logical choice--'wild' is applicable to Jefferson in the act of reading.) And I said, "A Rand book." Steve bright eyed--so much hope, "The Fountainhead."
We just sort of stared at one another. I said, "Someone at school has gotten to him." Steve said, "I don't know." And we both smiled because it doesn't matter.
We have a lot of Ayn Rand...a lot. Numerous copies of the same book to hand to those who seem as if the words would sink in or want a different perspective or just enjoy a good read. Jefferson and Freddie have made fun of us for years, "Who has a library in their house? And why does our library have like enough copies of books where our entire neighborhood could check out the book and we'd still have a copy?" Atlas Shrugged is in this class and a number of other Rand books.
Whatever the reason he chose The Fountainhead, this particular book--there are few coincidences with Jefferson, we're glad he has reached out his arm to remove it from the shelf. Hopefully he finds his way to the end of it and takes up Atlas Shrugged next. If not...in time it will come.
"Howard Roark laughed...."