Small Moment

 

I recently emailed a friend and began a sentence with the phrase "It goes without saying." Even before sending the email, I was pulled back decades to a young boy, an amazing book, and a shared moment in time.

The young boy was my son Ben. He still is my son, of course, only now Ben is 36 and not 9 or 10 or whatever age I am remembering. 

The amazing book was (and also still is) The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I have referenced it from time to time in this blog, but never in the context of Ben and our shared moments.

I have written before about sharing my love of reading and books with Ben from his earliest days. Over time, as the home dynamics withered around us, reading to him every night before bedtime became a quiet moment of quiet and love and safety. We kept that up well into his middle school years for the comfort of the books and the comfort of one another.

The Phantom Tollbooth was an early share between us. It is a book full of clever puns and literary allusions, and Ben enjoyed them all. We followed Milo on his trip through the Kingdom of Wisdom to bring back Rhyme and Reason, laughing together at times, Ben quiet when the plot took an ominous turn every now and then. 

We did not read it together again, but Ben read it several times on his own. In 2011, when a 50th anniversary edition came out, I bought it and sent it to Ben. 

Of course I did.

So back to the phrase that sent me down a rabbit hole or, more appropriately, through a tollbooth into the lands beyond: "It goes without saying." In Dictionopolis, the king's cabinet members rush Milo to a small wooden wagon so they can get to the royal banquet on time. Milo starts to ask how the wagon is supposed to move, and the Duke of Definition answers.

"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."

And indeed it did.

And still does.