“A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days: the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.” Gandalf, The Two Towers
A thing happened to me yesterday that has not happened since my Younger Days: I lost myself and time and all responsible adult duties in a book.
I do not remember when I first started going to the public library. I don’t remember if my mom took me, if I walked there of my own volition, or if I’d gone with a friend. I never thought much about it, to be honest. Reading (and later, writing) were as much a part of my blood as my blood type. My parents liked to tell me (and many others) that I could read whole sentences from a young age and that my favorite television show was the game show ‘Password’ and that I was in the Talented and Gifted Program for the first few years of my schooling. The word, I think, would have been “precocious”.
Whether I was precocious or not is subject to discussion, as I was dropped from the TAG program in the third grade and proceeded to then have an average elementary school experience. According to family lore, this is because the effects of an unfortunate curling iron-bathtub incident in my toddler years (thus causing my alleged precociousness) had finally worn off, rendering me completely ordinary.
But the love of words and reading remained. I discovered the public library and began my weekly homage to Andrew Carnegie’s ideas that libraries make communities special. I found out that my favorite movie was actually a book first and not only that, but it was a series! Long before book series became commonplace! THE WIZARD OF OZ! OZMA OF OZ! THE EMERALD CITY OF OZ! And so on. I was hooked. My dream world could go on forever, as long as I could check the books out over and over again.
My parents teased me about bringing home the same titles over and over. They were comfort, old friends, but I didn’t know how to explain it like that at the time. I liked the beginning, the ending, lines and scenes in between and I would reread them again and again because it made me happy. Who cared what they thought?
As I got late-middle-school older, my tastes changed course. I discovered that my public library had Sex Books. And by Sex Books, I mean only one Book. I’m actually scrunching my brain now to remember the title of it…and I want to say Our Bodies, Ourselves, but I don’t think that’s right. The Joy of Sex or The Kinsey Report don’t sound right either. Doesn’t matter, it’s irrelevant…
I became familiar with words like masturbation and orgasm. It was a very intriguing and titillating time for me, in more ways that one. I’d tuck myself in an isolated reading carrel down in the basement to pour over chapters of that book whose-name-I-can’t-remember. And on one very shameful occasion, I snuck the book in my backpack to read at home on my own.
What in the name of all the angels above and devils below was I thinking?!
A. I took a book from the library without checking it out and that alone reserved me a place in the lowest circle of hell.
B. I took the book HOME. To where my parents lived. My gods, what if my parents had found it? And interrogated me about it? They’d be far less concerned about my “stealing” and more about the sexual “gateway” I was potentially entering through. But worse, what if they actually confiscated it and read it themselves? And then I would have to share a small living space with them when they’d became just as titillated as I had.
Moron. Idiot. Dunderhead.
I took it right back to the library the next day, of course. With as much nonchalance in my demeanor as I could muster. As much as one can at fifteen years old, that is.
I checked out Pride and Prejudice in high school after I’d found it in a newspaper column titled “100 Novels to Read Before You Die”. Jane Austen became my new best friend and she also set the standard for my expectations of romance that carried well into my twenties or forties. Incidentally, I was also still reading Harlequin-type romance novels as well, and if that doesn’t send a impressionable teenage girl the wrong idea about the perfect man, nothing will.
And then…the age-old tale of marriage, childbearing, and the Internet…I became too busy to indulge in reading anymore. I wanted to sleep or pay bills or watch television or subscribe to Facebook/Pinterest/Allrecipes.
Except in the early to mid-2000s when my husband and I hit the Harry Potter craze and we’d turn off the rest of the world just to finish the books. But that was an anomaly.
Enter 2022.
My reading habits have grown sketchy in the years since HP. A book here, a short-lived book club attendance there…nothing sustained. I started participating in the novel-writing “contest” NaNoWriMo in 2009 and I have participated in that every year since then. My writing habits were far more established than my reading habits!
Two days ago, in a (probably) futile attempt to hang on to my youngest child as long as possible, I asked him if he wanted to do the library’s Summer Reading Program with me. As a lifelong reader himself (but with a busy schedule that sent reading for enjoyment down his list of priorities), he said, “Sure”. After I’d filled out my form, handed it over to Circulation and perused the new arrivals, I chose two books to take home. I didn’t want to overdo it and set too high of expectations; after all, I was well aware of my track record of the last two decades: I started probably twice as many books than I finished. I didn’t even often purchase new novels for myself because I didn’t want to spend the next bunch of weeks simmering in a Guilt & Disappointment Stew of my own making.
Thus, it was with trepidation that I began India Holton’s League of Gentlewomen Witches. By the early evening, I was asking my son to please make dinner so I could read. I automatically slipped into the passenger seat whilst with running errands with my husband so that I could read for a few minutes as he drove. I’d be deep into a chapter and realize he’d asked me a question four times. Cats went unfed, lawns did not get mowed. Laundry *did* get folded, but with much grumbling and as quickly as possible.
And like I said, I’m barely hanging on now through this blog post because I just want to get back to the book. It’s a weird place to be. I feel like I’ve arrived somewhere I know I’ve been before, except it’s been a very long time and I am a very different person. Or…am I?
One Poor Correspondent,
Heather