love letters
September 14, 2016 § 2 Comments
It should have been a day of learning co-workers names and memorizing workday routines, but I faltered at each corner. Between every tidy shelf of books was a love story I couldn’t dismiss. Picture books from bedtimes past and chapter books that bookended forgotten passions.
Hand to heart I held the books of my children’s childhood just long enough to remember the weight of clumsy hands tangled in my hair as they distracted themselves from the temptation of thin paper pages. Eyes that watched my mouth conjure shades of sound from black shapes on white pages.
As the books lengthened into the thick binding of lost afternoons, I could see the outline of my children bent over the work of reading or curled beside me as I tumbled freely into my own escape. Cold months under warm blankets and summer afternoons inside the shade.
Old friends and new loves, quietly waiting for the next chapter.
book ’em
February 2, 2016 § 9 Comments
On Sunday I escaped the loosely configured routine of our typical Sunday to explore our new public library with both children. It was a homecoming of sorts, a happy reunion of lost afternoons; memories of old experiences in an unfolding moment of discovery.
For the past nine years we had lived in an unincorporated neighborhood, where the cost of joining our local library was beyond the limitations of our budget – with one exception. On a singular occasion, several years past, we invested our holiday savings into twelve months of indulgence; scooping piles of books into heavy bags, weekly, to fill endless hours of adventure.
At the conclusion of that year, we returned to supplementing our personal library with our children’s school libraries, friendly exchanges, school book sales, and e-readers. Still, we reminisced the luxury of squandering afternoons among shelves of unread stories. The liberty of endless titles.
Frequently, as our errands lead us past the grandness of a building to which we so fleetingly belonged, we would find ourselves lost to sentimental musings of that year among her walls. We resigned ourselves to contentment with the library we built at home.
Books gifted from family friends, keepsakes of my husband’s and my own childhoods, beloved series of our children’s early favorites and required school readings endlessly stacked and reorganized with great affection.
Here, in our new community, it took me too long to consider the possibility of a different experience. Having moved at the start of the school year, my children’s backpacks and hands are perpetually filled with those titles that follow them home from school.
Sunday, I was more a child than my own children.
I visited familiar stories as I sought specific titles, let my hand linger in acknowledgement along well-worn bindings. It was the place of every library I’ve loved and ever story I have lost myself to.
I was a child with a wagon and a girl with large dreams.
A new mother in our first family home, a closely knit community with a modest library just an unhurried walk away. The place of my son and daughter’s first library cards, hot summer days and cold winter afternoons given to stories.
A mother to older children squandering savings on a passport to a year of privilege among so many pages.
A reader and dreamer once more entitled to travel the world of storytellers and sages for free.
by the book
July 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
Today we began the process of packing. Everyone woke eager to begin and so we dove into the nearest starting point, the fireplace cabinets. Behind each set of doors were shelves of books, well-loved and, some, long forgotten. Both children quickly fell into old stories while I created piles and folded empty boxes into shape.
I am practical above sentiment, but these pages of beloved characters were nearly impossible to sort. In the end each child was given two boxes each to fill, another box to share between them. I packed one of my own with room enough for picture books I could not yet part with.
Soon after we sifted through games and crafts without the same tenderness with which we struggled over book titles; old friends bound lovingly for their new home. The remaining titles were thoughtfully distributed among friends as parting keepsakes, a few stragglers reserved for strangers.
Full corners filling empty boxes, a slow beginning to a new chapter.
bookends
February 5, 2013 § 6 Comments
Last Friday I was happily distracted by the sight of my daughter’s head bent in concentration over colorful, misshapen stacks of picture, chapter, and reference books as she sought to catalogue her most cherished books into order that she might better find an old friend to accompany her in quieter moments. Watching her progress my heart and mind were weighted with sentiment for the memory of introducing my children to the beloved collection of stories scattered across our floor.
Set off to the side, alone, Guess How Much I Love You was curiously tucked behind a pillow. My daughter hesitated to lend a place of permanence for our old friend uncertain if the sweeping ink strokes marred the destiny of the book, its future seemed as precarious as its past was familiar.
On an end table, The Secret Garden rested atop a collection of Shel Silverstein’s poems; an old friend lending companionship to a new adventure. One a keepsake from my husband’s youth, the other a gift from an old friend.
Reference books peeked from the piles acknowledging both children’s individual interests; science, animals, history, and encyclopedias contrasting sharply against fiction. My husband’s childhood Garfield books worn and yellowed were shuffled between newer, glossier editions. Calvin and Hobbes kept one another company while Spy vs. Spy plotted quietly between closed pages. Chapter books clustered by characters rested alongside Dr. Seuss and unused books hinted at anticipated adventures shelved among old favorites, each waiting for their turn.
Nostalgia for titles was replaced by an unraveling of order as my daughter attempted to make sense of out the eclectic collection of books. Her initial intention to gather titles into alphabetical order was compromised by the availability of space. Her momentum clouded with frustration left stacks of books littered across our floor, couch, and end tables overnight.
My daughter’s exercise in order created a beautiful metaphor for the importance of certain cornerstones missing in my days. Like one of my daughter’s books I have felt misshelved; practical pieces of my day have been displaced by available pockets of time and activities that center my spirit and organize my home have been absent creating a sense of chaos. So, I begin again at the colorful stacks of books scattered in the corners of our home. Applying my daughter’s logic I am flushing out the pieces of self that get shuffled between busier moments, stretching them out to better see what is amiss and centering myself between the colorful characters, bookends, that weigh my days in joy.
main characters & supporting roles
January 29, 2013 § 5 Comments
My daughter has been home, under the weather, our normal school day routines replaced with restful inactivity. Yesterday the hours passed quietly as she slept through most of the day. Today her eyes alert and body sleepy I picked up a book title we had recently begun eager to fill the hours of the day and curious to follow our story to its end.
We met our main character, the story’s narrator and a big sister to a little brother with Autism, in the quiet darkness of bedtime. That first evening my daughter’s face registered surprise and comprehension.
Mom, her brother is like mine.
Her words were not accusatory but rather a statement of self. Through the wall of her room came my son’s voice volleying an equally firm statement:
He is nothing like me.
Main characters in their own shared story I was determined to meet my children in the middle, supporting each of them with a neutral acknowledgment that similarities allow for differences. Both children accepted this fortune cookie truth with a sense of validation.
The second night that we read from the book, my son was quiet. There were no arguments or defensive proclamations of self to distinguish himself from the young man in our story. I wondered at his silence, but resisted an urge to draw out his thoughts and emotions. Instead I let the story unfold between the wall that divided my children hoping that each child might hear one another’s voice in a shared story.
Today I allowed the quiet of our empty home to give my daughter room to speak between the lines of the main character’s story. In recent years the weight of looking after her big brother has created an awareness of imbalance between my children. On the most difficult days her needs are sometimes misplaced in the chaos of her brother’s behavior. Curled away in her art she waits for us to complete a teaching moment with her brother, a lesson that all too often she, his junior, has mastered.
This story seemed to create an exaggerated sense of normalcy for experiences that sometimes leave our daughter sensitive to the differences between her story and her friends’ experiences. Despite an unconditional love that binds each of us as family, there exists an unspoken subtext of secret wishes for simpler moments uncomplicated by needs outside our control. Even in the silence I could hear my daughter’s wish that her brother might out grow pieces of himself.
Today, without her brother listening in the dark from the other side of her bedroom wall, it was safe for my daughter to share words like embarrassed and angry without letting go of the word love. For just a moment, art imitated life, and we acknowledging our own stories as main characters with supporting roles.
the end
January 6, 2013 § 2 Comments
There is no sadder ending than that which comes too soon. A new book, now old, mysteries unraveled dispelling the allure of the unknown. With each page I fought against familiar tendencies to stow away with my story, hiding from responsibilities, breathing the words like physical sustenance; feasting without patience too eager for each subsequent word. This story crafted intentionally and layered with imagery begged for stillness and so I forced myself to give each line attention; extending each phrase with unpracticed emphasis like a child testing a new word aloud. Placing paper pages in a state of unrest I moved through simple housekeeping tasks over the weekend while my mind wandered, weighing the characters’ plights, intentionally inviting the author’s company into my thoughts. The end has brought an emptiness and I am lonely for words to fill a new beginning.
paper weight
January 5, 2013 § Leave a comment
Despite the sinfully indulgent gratification of receiving a book instantly, delivered as if by magic through the air conveniently into a lightweight gift of modern technology – I still linger lovingly over the heavier, tangible shape of a book. Pages of another’s dreams collected between the shield of book covers; to be held and protected, cherished and shared. This morning as I curled beneath a blanket of my mother’s making, beside a warm cup of coffee, and in the company of a new story, I gave thanks for the dreamers and writers who fill my days with magic. The weight of paper and the spell of a new story welcoming the day with possibility and prose.
a book shared
December 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
Once upon a book store, there was a book I could not leave behind. I tried to imagine a home for it upon my shelves, but it seemed intended for somewhere else. Wanting to keep it close, struggling to say goodbye, I wrapped it tenderly and sent it to my daughter’s elementary school library. Today I borrowed it from the librarian’s cart, sharing it with my daughter.
Side by side tucked among rows of books we marveled over the illustrations as we unraveled poignant prose. In our quiet corner of the library we followed a young man between pages as he befriended books, gathering stories into his life while writing his own. Happily, the story does not end when main character comes to the end of his life. Rather his story captures the heart of a young girl sending her on a journey of her own, giving flight to another chapter.
Page by page I revisited my own love story beside one of my greatest loves. It was a moment borrowed and shared like so many of our quiet companions stacked neatly in want of a reader. In this spirit, I share with you a title for your own shelves:
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Joe Bluhm.
funny pages
January 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
There are four years between my children, library shelves heavy with written words could measure the space between them. My son reads with a natural ease; ingesting volumes of literature like air filling immeasurable depths inside his small, lithe frame. My daughter extracts words from the pages of books more intentionally, she leans into a book exquisitely extracting each word with the steadfast care of an anthropologist; examining each meaning, attributing value.
In life my daughter walks ahead, aware of the world around her. She is fluid in unspoken social exchanges, communicating efficiently and appropriately. My son walks in the world like a traveler in a new land, his knowledge of unspoken social language broken and based in clumsily memorized academic examples.
There is a place my children meet as equals, a playground of social and literary; life sketched in clean lines and thoughts condensed into neatly outlined bubbles. Words and images spill loosely, thoughts mapped on the pages of comic books.
Garfield’s sarcasm and Odie’s boundless joy; Calvin and Hobbes friendship, innocence, and imagination; the clever contest of Spy vs. Spy; the contemporary commentary of the Simpsons. My children align themselves side by side as they shuffle through stacks of comic books. On these pages my son more capably navigates social humor; images capture emotional context with clarity. My daughter feels less overwhelmed in this space where images create clues that lend comprehension to new words.
More importantly, for those minutes shared between pages riddled with humor my children are friends sharing smiles and laughter over a book. Late at night and on lazy weekends these books freckle the path between their rooms. I find them scattered near chairs, among Legos, beside the computer. One picks up where another walks away; it has become a dance they perform together and apart to a silent unending song.
old habits
January 15, 2012 § 2 Comments
Little things and comfortable routines, bookstores and baked goods. When my son was little I would take him, swaddled in a stroller to our local bookstore where I could browse heavy hardcovers for myself. Once home I would nestle him in my arms are read aloud to share my first love with my tiny new love.
As my son grew older and more independent he would gather near the bookshelves quietly captivated by the images that danced among the pages of picture books. The hands of time stopped marking minutes while we browsed shelves for hidden treasures. Later we gathered my daughter into our adventures. Once our books were purchased we would celebrate with a small treat, stretching an errand into an event.
Trips to the bookstore were something we took for granted. Nearby and diverse in their offerings we filled rainy days, snow days, summer days and quiet days in familiar chairs. Employees were friends and the colorful walls of books landmarks by which we could find favorite stories and recall old memories. Our local stores now closed, we have found new stores for old habits.
Last night we made our way to our new bookstore, each child quickly found their places and curled into stories. Sitting among rows of colorful book displays and small children bent over books my heart was full for the easy friendship among readers; the shared solitude and community of dreamers.
We celebrated our findings over a simple meal at a nearby bakery; my son hiding his new books on his lap beneath the table unable to leave them unattended and my daughter eagerly reaching for and hovering over her brother’s selection desperate to share. The books were closed only to eat. The car ride home was quiet as each child held open books in their arms stealing a moment in the glow of a dome light. A flurry of footsteps marked our return home as both children scurried upstairs to their rooms eager to finish new books and joyful with old habits.
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