Love you forever/ by Robert Munsch

 
LOVE YOU FOR
EVER written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Sheila McGraw tells the story of a mother sings to her sleeping baby:

I'll love you forever,

I'll love you for always,

As long as I'm living

My baby you'll be.

With unconditional and enduring love and a good sense of humor, she continues to sing the same song through the terrible two's.  And, through his childhood, even when he was 9 and what she wanted to do was sell him to the zoo she picked up that sleeping boy and sang the same song.  Though the radical teen years when she felt like she was in a zoo she still found a way to hold him and sing those familiar words.  Even when she had to drive across town with a ladder so she could reach to her son's window she continued to hold him and sing of her love for him while he slept.  (This is an allegory of the memory of a mother's abiding love, I believe.)  Then, inevitably, the day came when she was too old and sick to hold him and sing to him, and the roles were at last reversed and the story becomes a tender ode to the life cycle of a family.  The son becomes the loving parent to his dear old mother and to his newborn baby daughter.  Love begets love.  Tears came to my eyes and I found it difficult to read the last few pages as I sat there at the nursing home surrounded by dear old mothers, many of who, don't have the completion of that cycle for one reason or another.....  Maybe that's why I'm there....
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Bonnie R