During our first clash with Covid, in 2021, my wife, Vicky, and I, took turns caring for our four-year-old son, Aksel. Vicky or I would move from the bed to the living room couch where we would curl up under blankets and somewhat supervise Aksel while he played with LEGO bricks or worked on a puzzle. We also watched a lot of Paw Patrol. An hour or so later, Vicky and I would switch places.
Vicky’s turn watching Aksel coincided with bedtime, so I buried myself in bed hoping to smother my suffering. Twenty minutes later, Vicky croakily called from Aksel’s room, “Dada, time for Moone Moon,” our nickname for Margaret Wise Brown’s celebrated children’s book Goodnight Moon. The pounding behind my eyes and the aches in my back and legs were enough for me to feign sleep, but thirty seconds later, I found myself slowly sliding out of bed and stumbling into Aksel’s room. I crawled onto the floor and grabbed the tattered book, whose spine is held together with duct tape, wondering how Wise’s story held so much sway over me.
In an essay about what makes good fiction, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that, “… in fiction, if you like the person telling you the story—which is to say the voice, not the author—you generally will let them tell you a story” (The Atlantic, 11 June 2013). For more than four years, I have let Wise’s narrator, who, although not clearly identified, is presumably the voice of the little bunny laying under the covers on the opposing page of the opening line, tell me her story. And, it’s the bunny’s first line that makes her so intriguing and likeable.
Without even being invited, the bunny has placed Vicky, Aksel, and me in her private space— “the great green room”—and allowed us to participate in her bedtime routine. Knowing how particular Aksel is about his own bedtime routines, the bunny’s move is meaningful; the only appropriate response is to join her. Artist Clement Hurd’s drawings confirm the Bunny’s likability as she is visibly reliable; the room is great and green, and there is a telephone and red balloon. That the Bunny’s shoes are lined up neatly under her bed only adds to her appealing personality.
Two years into our nighttime routine, Aksel took it upon himself to change one of the characters, the cow who jumps over the moon. Now, before we start reading, Vicky and I ask Aksel who is jumping over the moon. For a while he chose friends—real or imaginary—and animals. But, for the past year, he has chosen me or Vicky—the decision seemingly based on who had let more rules slide during the day or played with him the most. I had a good run in late fall, where I jumped over the moon for three weeks straight, but during Christmas break, when I was sick with a stomach bug and didn’t play with Aksel too much, he replaced me with his mama for a month-long spell. Though, on the night in question, as Vicky and I lay listlessly on Aksel’s floor eager to get back into our bed, Aksel told us that Mama, Dada, and Aksel were jumping over the moon. Aksel’s choice of characters didn’t clear me of my Covid symptoms, but the reminder that I wasn’t suffering through my illness alone gave me enough strength to read the book with more liveliness than I had shown in the previous two days.
Aksel has lived his entire life in Switzerland and is known as a third-culture kid—a child who is raised in a culture different from his or her parents. We observe American and British holidays, but their significance seems to wane with each celebration. And, with Aksel’s increasing involvement in local and national festivities like Fasnacht, or carnival; Alpabzug, the celebration of the cows returning to the valley after summering in the high mountains; and Samichlaus and Schmutzli’s emergence from the woods on the eve of Saint Nicholas Day, his link to his parents’ cultures is becoming more tenuous.
The one constant that sustains Aksel’s connections to Vicky’s and my respective cultures and childhoods are the books that we have curated for him.Aksel loves to read The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Thomas the Tank Engine, which Vicky enjoyed when she was Aksel’s age, and our stack of Berenstain Bears books, which were my favorite, is growing as tall as Aksel. Though, it’s the nightly reading of Goodnight Moon that allows me to end each of Aksel’s days feeling connected to my cherished memories with the book as a child across the Atlantic.
Over the past few months, Aksel’s relationship with Goodnight Moon has continued to evolve. He used to get upset if I didn’t turn each page of the book as I read, but he now allows me to recite the story from memory. Aksel seems to understand that the story is about more than the bunny, who is jumping over the moon, and Hurd’s fantastic artwork; it is also about our little family, lying together in his small brown room at the end of a busy day, creating memories that will follow him wherever, and with whomever, he decides to jump over the moon.
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Tommy Mulvoy is an American expat living in Andermatt, Switzerland with his wife, Vicky, and son, Aksel. After teaching high school for nearly 20 years, he is now a stay-at-home dad. His published writing, which focuses on parenting, mental health and sports, can be found at tommymulvoy.com.
© 2024, Tommy Mulvoy
Halfway Down the Stairs 