The Simple Kindness of a Storybook

Cultivating Fatherhood will be space made for the dads among us who love their kids and yet know that the adventure of parenting, with all its joys and beauty, can also be a perilous one. Make no mistake, showing up for your kids is beautiful, rewarding, hard, holy, brave work. My efforts are here intended to provide encouragement and understanding that equips us for our responsibility to the amazing beings who call us “dad.”

The last day I would see my grandmother in this life was the day I brought my new baby girl to meet her. It was a few days after my daughter’s birth and I had been looking forward to introducing the two of them to each other. Two incredibly dear women: one who just arrived, the other getting ready to leave. Grandma had been declining more rapidly, but I still had hope that she would be able to feel the joy her new granddaughter would bring. But when we arrived it quickly became clear that this meeting would not be as anticipated. Though her eyes were opened and active, the brilliant mind and quick wit my grandmother was known for was now veiled, inaccessible to us. I held my daughter close to her but I don’t know how much she understood. Did she recognize us? Did she know that this baby was her great-granddaughter? 

A week or so later she passed, and I must admit that, in addition to the grief, I felt cheated. Even though my daughter and my grandmother occupied the same room for a brief amount of time together, it still doesn’t feel like they actually met each other. They didn’t get to become the old friends I had every expectation they would become if given the chance. Time didn’t heal this wound. Time caused it.

But recently, as I walked down the hall of our home, I saw my now 9-year-old daughter sitting in her room reading a familiar-looking book. I stuck my head in and smiled at the sight of Mr. Shaw’s Shipshape Shoeshop, a book my grandmother would read to me when I was a child, now being read by my daughter. This lovely story by Eve Titus, illustrated beautifully with cross-hatched ink and watercolors by Larry Ross, is a story about a little man named Mr. Sylvester Shaw who mends shoes in his small shop. In addition to mending shoes, Mr. Shaw loved closing up his “Shipshape Shoeshop” every Wednesday to watch ships and boats come in and out of the harbor. But one day Mr. Shaw learns from his landlord that the building he shares with Mr. Brown the Baker and Mr. Green the Grocer has been condemned by the fire chief. Even though it’s common knowledge how “shipshape” Mr. Shaw keeps his shoe shop, the building is of old construction and is now deemed a fire hazard. Mr. Shaw and his cat Shoo-Shoo will have to look for somewhere else to rent for his Shipshape Shoeshop. The story ends beautifully for Mr. Shaw as his skills as a shoemaker become well-known in the nautical community, and a series of kindnesses leads him to the best of both worlds—he becomes the shoemaker for a large ocean liner.

A shoemaker fixes shoes worn down by use and age, making them look like new again. But the passage of time is hard on footwear as well as those with feet, and people, like shoes, will one day wear out beyond repair. It happened to my grandmother; it will happen to me. It will one day happen to us all.

But a few days later I began to realize what a strange grace it was to see my daughter reading that book. Though time had separated my grandmother from her great-granddaughter, in a way, this story had brought them together again. Unlike the march of time that slowly carried my grandmother away from us, this storybook remained the same. The same words on the page that my daughter read were the same words my grandmother would read to me decades before. The same brightly colored illustrations showing Mr. Shaw’s bushy mustache, Shoo-Shoo’s fur and the shoes and ships Mr. Shaw held so dear still shone brightly off the page. In the unrelenting progression of time, this story somehow stood outside of it and gave my grandmother and my daughter the meeting I dearly wish they could have had nine years ago. It’s not quite the same, but it’s something special that a storybook has brought these two incredible women together.

Maybe we’re not meant to get used to the passage of time. Maybe it’s meant to hurt. Maybe the confusion and the sting and ache it brings is meant to show us that something larger is at work in the cosmos than we can possibly fully understand. As C. S. Lewis puts it,

“We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. ‘How he’s grown!’ we exclaim, ‘How time flies!’ as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.”[1]

The strangeness of time may be a compass pointing us to our “true country.” I hope that is true. I hope that there will be a grand reunion of all those old friends who haven’t met yet. But for now, I must be content for the simple kindness of a storybook that brought my grandmother and my daughter a little closer.

And when that still doesn’t feel like enough, I must hold onto the hope that, by the grace of God, the two of them will get to meet again for the first time.

As fathers and followers of Christ, it is our sacred call to help our kids acclimate to the atmosphere of time, while simultaneously persuading our hearts to not become too accustomed to it. We are beings made for eternity but bound by mortality. It is a strange tension to hold, but hold it we must. How grateful we can be for the anchors that give us a breath of timelessness. Anchors like storybooks, music, works of art, and, more so, the Scriptures themselves. “Ancient words, ever true. Changing me, and changing you.”[2] What saints and sinners have pondered on for millennia, what has confounded the wise, toppled tyrants, and given hope and comfort to the downtrodden can now be the traveling guide for our kids who must chart their own course between two worlds, the “now and not yet.” What time has taken, eternity can hold.

[1] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms.

[2] Michael W. Smith, “Ancient Words,” Worship Again (2002).

The featured image, “Invitation to Enter,” is courtesy of Steve Moon and is used with his kind permission for Cultivating.

Adam R. Nettesheim

Adam Nettesheim is Director of Fellowship for The Cultivating Project, and a columnist for Cultivating magazine. Through writing and illustrating, Adam seeks to pull on the golden thread that leads us Homeward. Adam is a ‘Multi-Media Specialist’ by day at a municipality in Colorado but his most important (and favorite) work is husband to his wife Sarah and father to his 3 children. His writing (and a few other things) can be found at https://adamrnettesheim.com/.