The Little Prince

Here’s another one from Max, who gave us the Magic Teapots, Dominoes, and Chicago Breakfast Bum.
***

Late Thursday night I was lying in bed reading with Becky. She was reading a book I’d gotten her earlier that week: Leo Buscaglia’s ‘Living Loving and Learning.’

(I’d ordered a used copy for her after I’d suddenly remembered reading in in junior high after finding a copy at a garage sale and really liked it.)

When she put it aside to go to sleep, I picked it up and paged through, wondering if it would seem terribly cheesy to my older eyes.

I glanced down the list of chapter titles until I saw one called ‘On Becoming You,’ and started at the beginning of it. A quote from the first page stood out to me, “Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.” The quote was from the book ‘Wind, Sand, and Stars’ by Saint Exupery – a name that rang a bell. Years ago, my grandmother had given me a copy of Expury’s ‘The Little Prince,’ telling me that it had always reminded her of me.

On impulse I looked for that copy of ‘The Little Prince,’ which I thought was in the bedside table drawer. Becky was startled by the burst of activity as I dug through the contents seeking the book, and I explained to her I was looking for ‘The Little Prince.’ I didn’t find it, and went to sleep thinking I’d locate it in the morning.

Friday afternoon my mom came to the house to get some help with her laptop and hang out a bit. As we sat around chatting in my living room, she sorted through the materials she’d brought along, then suddenly asked if I still had the copy of ‘The Little Prince’ that her mother had given me. She had just found a reminder note to herself saying: “Max – read: The Little Prince.”

I told her I had just been looking for that very book the night before. So I went upstairs and there it was on the bedside table, not in the drawer below.

Returning downstairs with the book, I asked her what had made her think of it.
It turned out that 20 or so years ago, her dad (my grandfather and husband of my Little-Prince-giving-grandmother) had given my mother a book which–after all those years–she’d just had an urge to read for the first time. In it, she found a chapter titled “What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye,” based on the philosophy of ‘The Little Prince.’

What was the book my grandfather had given her?

Leo Buscaglia’s ‘Living, Loving, & Learning.’

Needless to say, I’m reading ‘The Little Prince’ now – and paying attention to what it has to say …
Max

“You can see clearly only with your heart. What is truly important is invisible to the eyes.”
– Saint Exupery, ‘The Little Prince’