After B&N

On Thursday, famous children’s author Jan Brett (The Mitten) was in town. It hurt me to have to drive past Barnes & Noble, where her tour bus was parked, and head home to get my kids ready for the school dance. I would have loved to stop in and meet Jan, watch her interact with the children, see the gleam in her eye as she talked books and reading with youngsters and their parents. But on that day, at that hour, I was wearing my mother hat and I had another obligation to meet. Reluctantly, I drove past the store’s windows, and as I rolled past, I saw ever so briefly a smiling lady with people gathered round her that I’m almost sure was Jan. It seems only yesterday I sat down with my firstborn in my lap and read to him, for the upteenth time, The Mitten. He’d become so acquainted with it that he’d started anticipating which animals would climb into the mitten next. We’d giggle together every time the little mouse perched on the bear’s nose and sneezed, sending all of the animals flying out of the stretched-out mitten and into the snow. I never would have guessed then that twelve years later I would be on my way home to my five children to cook dinner, focused on a mother mission, too harried to stop and meet the gal who had been such an inspiration to me.