I have read it so many times. The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man with Moskowitz the Awesome Dog. It is my little one’s favourite book right now and so we read it frequently. In the morning, in that awkward pause after the big siblings have gone off to school. Midmorning after our snack.
Maybe after lunch. And often at bedtime. Don’t get me wrong—it is a fantastic book. Michael Chabon has created a brilliant reinterpretation of all our favourite comic book heroes, with a beautiful quirky kid-enchanting twist.
But so many, many times.
Each time, he asks me the same questions. Why the giant killer robots? Why is slime gross? Why chocolate milk not hot chocolate? Why?
The book ends well—with a great big hug between Awesome Man and his secret-identity mom over the aforementioned chocolate milk, cheddar cheese and crackers. All of which warms my own little Awesome Man’s heart and my own. I’m never in autopilot by the end of the book. It ends too well for that.
Little people love repetition. They find comfort in their favourite game, or song or story, repeated time and again. And again and again. Repetition helps them to learn what to expect and that brings security, as well as helping with language acquisition and that exciting feeling of getting something right.
I know all this, and still I sigh a little when Awesome Man is dragged into bed with me first thing in the morning. I’m not always at the height of my shiniest grin-and-bear-it ability before breakfast. What I need to remember is that repetition is a way of reminding yourself what you know.
That is something that we never outgrow.
In the church, we celebrate the circular year. From fasts to feasts, through ordinary days and into times of anticipation and preparations, we trace familiar patterns. The seasons play into this, of course, but our circularity moves beyond weather and warmth as we celebrate the seasons of the church.
Through story and history, we remember what we know. We hear again the ancient calling to be a covenant people. We hear of struggling nations, struggling families, and the struggles of individuals as they grapple with what it means to be called children of God. These are all old stories—some of the oldest—and each year we listen to them again. Maybe this repetition helps our own development. Our own faith language acquisition. We repeat actions and rituals in the cycles of our lives and find comfort and security.
We call this tradition, but I have a sneaking suspicion that tradition speaks more to who we are today than who we once may have been. Reaching for old ways, we look for the solidity of established patterns, and as we repeat ourselves, our understandings deepen. On good days, so does our ability to listen for God.
One of my own often-read books—though not as frequently consulted as Awesome Man, I can assure you—is From Ink Lake, a thick collection of Canadian fiction that sat weightily on my undergraduate reading list. The professor hoped to enlarge our perspective on Canadian literature, and perhaps help us to think more broadly about what a short story might be. Because of its breadth, I find myself picking it up between other books, dipping in and seeing what slice of Canada comes to the surface. I recently reread “Spring and Summer” by Alice French, a Ninatakmuit Inuit author who describes the patterns of her family life in the Mackenzie Delta. French was writing to record a way of life which she felt was slipping away, and the juxtaposition of that intent with the rhythmic nature of the life described creates a haunting effect.
She describes how every spring, the tundra turned bright with colour—the yellow marsh marigolds, the purple vetch, and the flowers of blueberry and cranberry plants.
“The white flowers … told us where there would be an abundance of berries for later picking.”
These flowers pointed to something more, their value resting in the promise of berries still to come. A useful kind of beauty repeated each year with the turn of the seasons.
I wonder what fruit might spring from my own repeating days?
