Meet the Author Day

Yesterday, I attended my son's school for a "Meet the Author" day. The kids in my son's class had each written a book and were sharing it for the first time with their parents. I admit that I was a bit frazzled and impatient when I arrived as I was in between clients and feeling a little put out in the middle of the day. Then, the look of joy that spread across my son's face at the surprise of seeing that I made it was enough to engender gladness despite the inconveniences for me.

His teacher began with clapping her hands and the children followed suit as they turned their attention to her. We parents just stood in bewilderment at her ability to control our children so efficiently. She gave us instructions about where to gather to share our children's stories and then pointed out the refreshment area (of which I was thrilled to see chocolate there)! I sat down at my son's desk and noticed the inside of it looked alarmingly similar to his messy bedroom. I felt the urge to start cleaning it out for him, but resisted and folded my arms over the desk so that I couldn't see the broken crayons hanging over the edge. He stood next to me and proudly opened a white book illustrated with a large, black spider. The story began with a man innocently purchasing a spider at a pet store and bringing it home to his two daughters. Obviously, no mother exists in this story. The spider grows inexplicably during the night and then devours the father. The girls get away, but are then charged with trying to save the town from the fate of their father. At the end, there are bloody, spider parts and human body parts being blown up and flying over the heads of the girls as they run for their lives. My heart couldn't take much more as my mind raced over all of the names of my therapist colleagues to determine who could see him the quickest. In my state of panic I almost missed it when he read the part called "About the Author" with his innocent looking picture above it. He explains to his readers that he and his father share a terrible fear of spiders and this book was a way of facing his fears! How amazing is that?!

He looked to me for approval and I smiled the smile of the proudest parent in the room. I also felt a pang of shame at nearly overreacting. His teacher approached us and asked me what I thought about his book. I told her I liked his attention to detail, his illustrations were very nice, and above all - it was scary. She winked at me and my son smiled as if he felt his job was done. I wondered if I had just gotten a glimpse of a mini Stephen King in the making. I grabbed several chocolate cookies from the refreshment table and determined I'm keeping that list of colleagues close at hand.