This Gorilla Got Me through the Diaper Years
An Enchanted-by-the-Book bonus essay about "Goodnight Gorilla," by Peggy Rathmann
Welcome to Enchanted in America! To help kick off the Enchanted by the Book contest today, here is a short bonus post about a book I counted on when the kids were small for its double dose of a Sleeping Spell and an Incantation for a Peaceful Disposition. This is one way to think about enchantment. You may have others.
If you are a new subscriber, The Mudroom is a good place to get oriented to the website. The contest announcement is here.
I’ve been enchanted by books since before I can remember. When the kids were small, this lifelong susceptibility became a much-needed parenting superpower.
I have exactly two parenting superpowers. The first is making up silly rhymes and alliterations about bathtubs and household chores. Strangely, that one lost its usefulness around the time both kids started first grade.
Power #2 was and still is reading books aloud to the kids. Even now that they are a teen and a tween, the kids will usually allow me to read to them. And once we start, we are all transported somewhere we would rather be . . . together.
In the years of parenting preschoolers, most days wrung me dry. I came home from teaching and meetings with a tolerable level of fatigue, and then the hardest work began: the waning hours of a family day. Like many parents, I reached maximum stress and peak exhaustion regularly at the kids’ bedtime. The father of the children took charge of water activities; the rest was up to me. And so it was that I found myself at my weakest hour, grasping at the holy of holies, the ark of the covenant, the Miracle on 34th Street: stowing the little treasures into bed.
I dreamed of fat, potty-trained cherubs tip-toeing on bathroom footstools and spitting toothpaste (in the sink, thank you) to the tune of Kum-ba-ya. The dream children had a knack for skipping hand-in-hand down the hall, kissing each other on the cheek, and sliding into their beds like feathers dropped from a pillow fight, gently landing.
Of course, it was nothing like that, except for the pillow fight and the spitting.
They were almost never down before I hit my wall and the transformation to Incredible HulkMom began. Fortunately, I could feel it coming. I had a few minutes to get to the book before my green skin showed.
In those days, a board book of few words called Good Night, Gorilla was one of the strongest spells in my skimpy bag of potions. Because of my aforementioned lifelong susceptibility, it worked on me as well as the kids.
In this book — perhaps you know it — a zookeeper passes through the zoo saying good night to the animals. Early in the book, a gorilla sneaks the ring of keys from the zookeeper’s pocket, finds the one that opens his or her own lock, and then tiptoes after the zookeeper, opening every cage. The man remains oblivious as the animals follow him home, all the way to his bedroom. I don’t think it will spoil the book for you if I tell you that the zookeeper’s wife gets out of bed and takes all the animals back — except the gorilla and a mouse, who evade even the matron.
There is not much to say aloud while reading this book, which makes it an excellent choice for a frazzled parent whose vocalizations are transitioning to snarls and pops. One falls right into the incantatory language as into a hymn or a spell: Good night, Gorilla. Good night, Elephant. Good night, Giraffe. The parent holds the page open, quietly, taking breaths, while the child reads the funny pictures.
“What’s the giraffe doing?” I would whisper. “He’s getting out,” observed the child.
Parent: “Where is the gorilla?” Child: “In the bed.”
By then we would all be laugh-yawning or yawn-laughing. With just puffs of life-force remaining, I would tuck them into bed, tiptoe out of the room with exactly the motion of the zookeeper, and sing “Good night” to them in the same incantatory voice.
It’s nothing much. A parent reading a bedtime story. Happens every day.
I keep reading to my children so they never forget how to release themselves to enchantment. Some day they will need it.
Goodnight Gorilla is one of my son’s favorites! I love it, too. Nice and short. Easy to repeat.