�Tuck me in, Mommy, on the next page.�

AJ is so much about reading at the moment that it has become the framework for life. He no longer does things next but �on the next page.� �What�s that word� can also mean simply �what is it?�

I find myself kind of fascinated by the ramifications of living by a metaphor like that. AJ�s life is divided into pages at the moment. He lingers on something and then suddenly everything changes. The connections between the pages require a mental leap, because he cannot see beyond their edges, yet he knows they are somehow bound up together.

To complicate things, we have been spending a lot of time reading a book called The Three Pigs. The story begins pretty much as you�d expect from a book with that title. �Once upon a time.� Three pigs. Straw, sticks and bricks. But when the wolf huffs and puffs to blow down the house of straw, he blows so hard that the pig who lives there is blown right out of the story and into a space that exists between the pages of his book (although of course, he is still confined to the pages of the physical book). He rescues his fellow house-building pigs and leads them on adventure that includes an exploration of the story of �Hey Diddle Diddle,� the rescuing of a dragon about to be slain by a prince in another tale, and the eventual return to the pages of the Three Little Pigs, only to have the wolf blow so hard at the house of bricks that the letters of the story blow away and the pigs literally write their own ending by reordering the letters they collect from the wind.

My life feels more like it�s divided into volumes than pages these days. There is the Book of Mommy, with chapters on cooking, cleaning, care for the sick, playgroups and potty training. There is the Book of Wife, which has a fair amount of overlap with the first book, but has additional material on discourse and finances and a couple of other chapters suitable for late-night reading. There is the Book of the Doctoral Student, with chapters of�chapters. This is a book that is all about words at the moment. There is a very dusty volume on the Book of the Musician, which is consulted relatively infrequently these days, although it often opens most easily to the chapter on piano, even though that is possibly my worst instrument.

Juggling multiple books at one time is something I must manage in every arena, but I never feel fully competent at it. Despite the huge pile of books on my nightstand, I am usually only reading one at a time. Despite my dissertation bibliography, now topping 200 pages, I never feel well-enough informed, nor do I feel consistent about the application of my knowledge. And in all of this, I inevitably feel I don�t read anything thoroughly enough. What I find I miss the most at this stage in my life is the ability to exist between the pages.

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