I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. I love children's literature and young adult

literature and I also love picture books because I love them so much although we gave away three

giant boxes of books to Elizabeth's son Jack when he was little. I still have many shelves of

my favorite picture books. The other day I was looking for my copy of Stone Soup when I happened

to pull out the book Little Bear by Elsa Hummeloon Minerick. I'm not a particularly sentimental

parent. In fact I've sometimes felt guilty about my lack of emotional response to a first haircut

or eighth grade graduation so I was astonished to find myself with tears in my eyes as I reread these

lines from the first story in Little Bear. What kind of story would you like to hear said

Mother Bear? Tell me about me, said Little Bear. Tell me about the things I once did. What was it

about this particular passage that pierced me to the heart? Well the utter trust for one thing

and the unselfconscious self-centeredness of childhood. Tell me about me. As adults we don't get

to ask for that kind of attention no matter how much we'd like it. But what really got me was the

reminder about the passage of time. Little Bear is still little but already he's bigger than he was.

So much has already passed. His unnecessary attempt to dress warmly for the snow, his trip to the moon,

his six birthday party. Childhood passes so quickly. In my own mind I summarized this bitter sweet truth

with the phrase, the days are long but the years are short. Little Bear asked his mother to tell

him about himself. As parents we play an important role in shaping and preserving our children's

memories of their own brief history. One of my happiness project resolutions is to be a storehouse

of happy memories because remembering happy times in the past is an important way to boost happiness

in the present and children need parents help to sustain happy memories. The responsibility to be

the custodian of the art projects, class portraits and endless anecdotes about the time you got

locked in the bathroom and the time you threw up on the way to the airport can feel fairly trivial.

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