Make a Promise, Keep a Promise

As I walked down the stairs from our bedroom, my one-year-old son looked at me and dared me to a race towards my reading chair.
He quickly grabbed a book and climbed onto it, staring at me with pride.
Proud he had conquered the reading chair for himself.
Game on, I stared back.
But inside, I was melting with love.

Make a promise

Toddlers are obsessive by nature; I sort of knew this, but am now experiencing it firsthand. Among his obsessions, his stuffed dog Boris and the magical world inside The Fridge are ranking the highest these days.
But there's another obsession I'm truly excited about: the one for his books.

I don't know or want to know if we'll end up becoming our parents, but I can confirm we begin to understand them when we become parents ourselves.
When my son started to hand me books to read together, I remembered the promise my father made me.

I must have been five when my father, a middle-class school teacher, told me something he'd repeat throughout the years: "There might not always be money for other things, but there will always be money for books."

I was never told what to study.
What to become.
My father never told me what I should or shouldn't do.
He simply shared what he knew and cared about. And books were a massive part of his love language.
I was told there would always be money for books.
I was given nice books for my age every time I asked for recommendations.
And that is a promise that was never broken.

I remember our house as a relaxing place.
Quiet, peaceful Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Genesis music in the background.
I remember my father's face buried behind the newspaper
(I will always remember that smell now in danger of extinction).
I remember the long hours reading, the importance of a comfy armchair.

My father raised a reader.
He financed my library.
It is and has always been my most precious possession.
It grows and expands like disease around the house, according to every partner I've had.
I never think of it much until someone points it out: there are books everywhere in this house!
My Zoom background is my floor-to-wall, gigantic and chaotic library.
It took me months of searching and half a month's pay to buy it.

When I look at that library, I thank him.
When I look at my son, obsessed with his books, I think of my father.
Whoever he chooses to be, I just wish for him to keep reading.
To be a reader.
And I can't wait to promise him I'll be there to build his library together.

Hilary Pecis (American, b. 1979, Fullerton, CA, USA)

Keep a promise

My father didn't promise me wealth or success or even happiness. He promised books. One simple promise that he could keep, and that then became an integral part of who I am.

But imagine he hadn't kept it.
Broken after a few years, or simply forgotten.
It would be a very different story, one of disappointment rather than gratitude.
The love wasn't in the promise itself, but in the consistency of keeping it.

My father's promise sounds almost old fashioned now, doesn't it?
In a world where we're drowning in words (posts and tweets, promises and big claims, declarations that disappear as quickly as they're made) the idea of someone quietly keeping the same promise for twenty years feels like something from another era.
But maybe that's exactly what makes it so powerful.
While everyone else shouts about what they could do, others simply do what they said they would.

Now, watching my son race to claim the reading chair, I think about the promise I want to make him.
He'll choose his own passions, his own obsessions. Maybe it won't be books at all. Maybe it'll be music, or building things, or something that doesn't even exist yet.
But whatever it is, I want him to know that when someone makes you a promise, they should keep it.
And when you make a promise, you keep it too.
In a world that's forgotten the weight of words, the most precious thing we can pass down might be the simple, radical act of meaning what we say.