Read Making Toast for Free Online

then return to my book.
    Sammy hurtles downstairs and demands to know where his knight outfit is. Amazingly, I spot the outfit, which consists of silver pants, a shirt of mail, a shield, a sword, and a helmet with a visor. Sammy puts it on at once, lowers the visor over his face, and parades back and forth before the couch.
    Jessie drops her book and plays a song from High School Musical 2 at full blast on the stereo. She dances in front of the couch as Sir Sammy marches. Bubbies climbs down the stairs, Ligaya trailing behind him. He dances, too.
     
    Bubbies warms to me. Among the adults of the household I stand a distant fourth in his affections to Harris, Ginny, and Ligaya, and he continues to regard me accurately, as an amateur entertainer. Yet little by little he has detected that I have certain practical uses, in addition to toast-making, and as long as I keep my place, and perform the few duties of which I am capable, everything is okay.
    I love his voice. He speaks the way I imagine Paul Newman sounded as a baby—with a slight husky rasp—and every statement is authoritative. His questions are authoritative. He also has a good ear, and pronounces all the syllables of longer words, such as “chocolate.” Often he sounds like a southern European learning English: “cho-co-laht,” emphasizing all syllables equally. He calls his sister “Jess-see-kah.” I will say, “Jessica is sharing her water with you. What do you say, Bubs?” He says, “Thank you, Jess-see-kah.”
    Ginny frowns upon my roughhousing with him, but I did it with Carl, Amy, and John. We perform the “upside-down baby boy,” which is what it sounds like. I hold him upside down over the bed, and swing him around by his ankles. I also perform the “flying baby boy,” when I lie on my back on the bed with my legs raised and balance him on the bottoms of my feet. And I give him the “squeak,” my word for a quick tickle. These assaults are welcomed gladly, except when he is intent on some matter of business—climbing up on the couch in order to jump off, or “cleaning” the floors with a length of hose from the vacuum cleaner. If, during any of those missions, I grab him to give him a squeak, he will protest—“No, Boppo!”—as if to remind me that he is not a toy. If I behave myself, and if there is no one better around, he will climb onto my lap, and take my face in his hands.
     
    Here’s a book for Bubs. Margaret Wise Brown’s Little Fur Family . Garth Williams’s drawings are fuzzy, in dusty, muted colors. Their spareness gives them life: the tree home of the fur family, and its curtained windows and green shutters and red door with its own little green roof; the nearby stream and its serene fish; and the members of the family, who look like bears with a strain of hedgehog in them. Bubbies studies the pictures as I read the passage in which the little fur boy sneezes and wakes up his grandfather, who lives in a hollow stump. The grandfather appears disheveled, his eyes are dazed, and his unkempt fur is gray. Bubbies studies the drawing, then me.
    The grandfather emerges from his hollow stump and says, “Bless you, my little grandson, every time you sneeze…Kerchoo!” The little fur child says, “Bless you,” and walks on “through the dark and sunny woods.” Bubbies likes the way the book begins: “There was a little fur family, warm as toast.”
     
    The Word for the Morning is “consider.” It has been selected because Jessie and Sammy have been at each other too much lately. They cannot stand it if one interrupts the other. When an adult arbitrates, deciding in favor of one of them, the other will shout, “It’s not fair!” I want them to make the connection between “consider” and “considerate.” I connect the two words on the Post-it at breakfast. “If ‘consider’ means to think about, what does ‘considerate’ mean?” I ask them. They do not answer. I persist. “Well, ‘consider’ means to think