Moss Will Be Right There
For the grown-up reading along
Every family has a Zip and a Moss: a big kid and a little one, a child and a grandparent, a rushed morning and a dawdling shoe. This book lets both speeds be funny and neither one be wrong. Zip says the honest thing, "You're too slow," and Moss answers with the equally honest thing, "Or you are too fast," and the story stops to let that be fair. What fixes it is not either of them changing who they are. It is finding one thing that goes at its own pace for everybody, and clouds happen to be it. Read Zip's lines quick and bright and Moss's lines as slowly as you can stand, because the pauses are the jokes. If you try the cloud game afterward, it works best lying down.
Moss Will Be Right There, in full
High in the rainforest, on the biggest branch of the biggest tree, lived Moss. Moss was a sloth.
Zip was a hummingbird. Zip was fast. FAST! Moss was slow. Sloooow.
They were best friends anyway.
One Monday morning, Zip zoomed up to Moss's branch.
"Moss! Moss! Let's play tag! Meet me at the big red flower!"
Moss smiled a slow smile. "I'll... be... right... there."
Moss was not right there.
Zip zoomed to the big red flower. Zip zoomed back. Zip zoomed to the flower and back, and to the flower and back, forty-seven times.
Moss had moved one branch.
"Tag!" said Zip, and tapped Moss on the nose. "You're it!"
Moss reached out one long arm to tag her back.
Slowly.
Slooowly.
Sloooooowly.
By the time his arm got there, Zip was having a snack on the other side of the tree.
Moss tapped the leaf where Zip had been. "You're... it," he told the leaf.
"Let's play catch!" said Zip, and she tossed Moss a round pink berry.
Moss opened his arms to catch it. He opened them very wide. It took a while.
The berry bounced off his tummy, rolled along the branch, and dropped into the leaves far below.
Moss closed his arms, very gently, around nothing at all. "Got it," said Moss.
"A race!" said Zip. "To the very top of the tree! Ready, set, GO!"
Zip was fast. FAST! She was at the top before she finished saying GO.
Moss was slow. Sloooow. Moss began to climb.
Zip waited.
Zip counted to a hundred. Zip counted to a hundred backwards. Zip counted every leaf on the tree, which took until Wednesday. Zip had a snack. Zip had eleven more snacks. Zip had a nap, and woke up, and had another snack.
Moss got to the top on Thursday.
"Did... I... win?" said Moss.
"No," said Zip.
Zip flopped down on a leaf. "Moss, this isn't working. We can't play anything together. You're too slow."
Moss thought about that for a long time. A really long time. A cloud went all the way across the sky.
Then Moss said, "Or... you... are... too... fast."
Zip opened her beak to argue. Then she closed it again. That was fair.
Zip sat still on her leaf. It was the first time all week that Zip had sat still with her eyes open.
"What do YOU like to play?" she asked.
Moss smiled his slow smile. "Watching... clouds."
Zip had never watched a cloud. Zip had never watched anything for longer than a blink.
So Moss lay back on the big branch, and Zip lay down on Moss's tummy, and they looked up.
The clouds went by. Not FAST. Not sloooow. Just exactly cloud speed.
It was the same speed for everybody.
"That one's a fish!" said Zip.
"...Fish," said Moss, a little later.
"That one's a boat! And that one's a teapot!"
"...Boat," said Moss. "...Teapot."
Then Moss pointed one long, slow arm at the sky. "That... one... is... a..."
Zip waited. It was very hard. But she waited.
"...bunny," said Moss.
By then, it was a duck.
Zip started to laugh. Zip laughed fast, like a tiny bell. Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee!
Moss started to laugh too. Moss laughed slowly, like a very big bell. Haaa... haaa... haaa...
Zip finished laughing. Moss was still going. So Zip started all over again.
When the sun went down, Zip zoomed up into the air. "Same time tomorrow?"
Moss smiled his slowest smile. "I'll... be... right... there."
The next morning, Zip zoomed up to the big branch.
Moss was right there. He had never left.
