Books, Movies, and Comforts

Books mark my life and seasons, much the way that notches on a doorframe track the days, weeks, and years that speed by to grow your small one to a tall one.  

I can name series and book titles to mark the seasons of my life.  For example:

The Castle Glower Series and Mysterious Benedict Society mark the season that I drove all the way to and from KY by myself with my three girls for the first time.  The Island of the Blue Dolphins?  Nestled in the sun streamed living room of my mom's next-door neighbor's house as she (my mom) was recovering from surgery.  When I was living in NYC, enrolled at Joffrey Ballet's Summer Academy, at the age of 16, I discovered Christian Romance in the writings of Lori Wick and Jane Peart.  Struggling through the angst of teen years, I first read They Cage the Animals at Night and Where the Red Fern Grows.  As a young, much self-absorbed, sleep-deprived mom I first met Corrie Ten Boom in the pages of The Hiding Place.  

My childhood could be summed up by my favorite books, James and the Giant Peach, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Freckle Juice, Super Fudge, Little House in the Big Woods, Danny Champion of the World, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and Bunnicula.   The Christmas that I was sick and my girls were still (mostly) young, I tore through the Harry Potter series for the first time.  

The late summer and early fall of my eye procedures to correct narrow-angle glaucoma?  Squinted through the blur and read Anne of Green Gables and literally sobbed until, my already sensitive eyes, stung.  Perhaps for the first time, as Anne bid Marilla and Green Gables goodbye, I realized that goodbyes to the ones you love the most are heartbreaking, beautiful, and unavoidable.  The years that my girls were still little, yet finally old enough to snuggle in for a long book, we embarked on the TumTum and Nutmeg series, the summer that it was so hot here that it registered triple digits for like thirty or forty-five days straight, that was the summer of Magic Treehouse books, A to Z mysteries, and  Nate the Great.  

The fall where I felt like we were truly getting a grasp on this whole homeschool thing we read Understood Betsy, and in the spring when it all fell apart?  We read Mountain Born.  The Christmas I got the flu?  I ached and coughed and read Island of the World.  

Dear Mr. Knightley was the last Christmas I was close friends with Kathleen, one of my dearest friends I met when we still were nursing our youngest ones.  She had recently moved and this book was the last book suggestion I shared with her.  

To be sure, I have read a lot of bad books (yes, even those deemed twaddle) between life changing good ones, but thankfully, I mostly only recall the really great ones.

These stories, beloved characters, and enviable settings - I draw them around me like a warm blanket. 

I am a TOTAL introvert.  

I would choose a conversation in a coffee shop with a close friend or a night nestled at home with a good book, or a Christmas movie and a mug of hot chocolate than just about anything else.  

Just like it starts to finally feel like the holidays here in my house when I pop in our first Christmas movie on October 24th (the day after the last birthday of the year for us) and watch every single one we own (sometimes more than once) until December 31st, and crunchy fall leaves and pumpkin spice candles mark fall, the holidays and seasons would feel a bit naked without them...the seasons of my life would feel lonely without the stories and characters that have helped shape them.

I just finished a book I started multiple times.  The Reading Promise, My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma.  I am sending this book off to my mom to read.  She was a public school teacher, reading specialist, and still is herself, a passionate reader.  Because of her and my second and third-grade teachers from St. Peter's Catholic School, I love to read. 

I love to read to myself, I love to read to my girls, I love to read to our dogs, I love to read to anyone or anything that I can convince to stop for a moment and listen.  

I hope my girls grow up and write about all the books we have shared and the seasons they marked one day.  It is a beautiful, beautiful gift we have been given - the written word.  May we love it enough to gift it to those around us, especially if like me, we parent those that struggle so very much to do something we often take for granted.  Read aloud.  Read long.  Read deep.  But especially, read aloud long, long after people think you should stop.  Of course, they could read it for themselves, that isn't the point.