I was sitting at the dining room table munching on my after-school snack when I noticed a collection of boxes sitting just inside the front door against the wall.

My mother looked up from the kitchen and caught my gaze. “You looking at those boxes?”

I allowed that I was.

“Just something your Daddy ordered,” she said. She waved her hand dismissively and moved on, opening the refrigerator to get something.

I puzzled on the mystery of what was in those boxes. After a minute or so, my Mom left the kitchen. I seized the unsupervised moment to hop down from my perch at the table and inspect the cartons.

The boxes were made of thick cardboard. They were heavy. I tried to push one with my foot and it didn’t budge. Unusual.

I felt my Mom’s gaze. She was standing in the dining area looking at me with a dish towel in her hand. “You through with this?” she asked, pointing at the barely nibbled snack and the half empty glass of milk I had left on the table.

“Yes, ma’am” I said.

“Then get it on to the kitchen” she commanded. “And stop fidgeting about those books.”

She started back toward the kitchen.

“Books?” I exclaimed. “What kind of books?”

“It doesn’t matter a lick,” she threw over her shoulder. “They’re your Daddy’s business and they don’t concern you or me.”

As I settled at the breakfast table the next morning, my father cleared his throat and produced a good-sized brown book from his lap. He opened it up, considered the page, and pronounced with some gravity “Aardvark.”

My mother stopped dishing food. “Bill, if we are going to read at breakfast it ought to be something from the Bible.”

He gazed at her with a pleasant expression over the top of the big brown book he held open in his hand. “Darling, we have a preacher that is paid, not well, but paid to teach us from the Good Book. I’ll wager…. well, maybe I shouldn’t bet on it…. but I am thinking that he is better trained to direct our religious education than I am.”

He said this with an air of satisfaction and returned his gaze to the book. It was clear to me that he felt the issue settled.

I looked at my mother to see what her take would be.

“Excuse me,” she said flatly. “I’ll be feeding the boy and myself. We’ll save you some for when you are through holding your encyclopedia class.” She proceeded to load my plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, and biscuits slathered with a big ladle of red-eye gravy.

My father seemed content with this and proceeded once again: “Aardvark.” When he was through reading the entry he closed the book, looked at me and said, “Now that was interesting.”

Dad gathered up his food, and the two of us proceeded to eat. Mother was ahead, but we caught up quickly.

Thereafter, an encyclopedia reading was added to our morning routine. And it was, just as he declared, interesting.