Few activities bring me as much honest enjoyment as reading.  But I don’t necessarily need to read in order to find comfort in books.  Here, in a bookstore, with a cup of coffee and wi-fi, I feel as though I am in a little square of paradise.

I saw my friend Julie Connor yesterday (Dr.Julie, to you) and learned that she has published her book.  “I had to,” she kidded me.  “You told me I could do it so how could I face you and say that I hadn’t done it yet?”  I understood her sentiment.  I’ve been threatening to try to publish a collection of my essays for several years and have gotten no further.  The idea of having a book filled with my words seems to be enough, so far.

My basement and attic hold several boxes marked DO NOT THROW AWAY THESE CHILDREN’S BOOKS.  Some of them come from my childhood, but most date from the last two decades.  My son and his friends  read almost as often as they played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or raced Hot Wheels.  One of those friends designs computer games; one works with computers; my son is a writer.  The books stored in those boxes gave them their first fields of combat, the lyrics to songs,  stories of bravery and timeless life-lessons.

My son had a couple of books that frightened him.  One of them came from Sesame Street.  Grover proclaimed on every page, “There’s a monster at the end of the book!”  Grover urged the reader not to turn the page! because there was a monster at the end of the book! My child, two or three at the time, would plead with me to obey Grover’s admonishments.  I showed him, every time, that it was just Grover himself, loveable blue Grover, nothing more, at the end of the book.  But he didn’t care.  Don’t do it!  Don’t turn the page!

I  tried to give the book away but he wouldn’t hear of it; some other child might be frightened.

We read plenty of books that we both enjoyed:  Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you hear?, Where the Wild Things Are, all the Max books while he was still in pre-school, and many more.  One book that he particularly liked was called, ironically, The Monster Under the Bed.  In it, a little boy, often warned of a monster under his bed by his well-meaning parent, wandered into the bedroom of a young monster who had been warned by his well-meaning parent about little boys sleeping in his bed.  What a delightful volume; and only after my son learned to read did he realize that I had invented lines for the last two pages, when the little boy dangles over the bed, the little monster looks up, and they both learn that their mothers were right.  “Eek!  said the boy,” I would intone.  “Eek! said the monster.  And they both ran away.”  I will never forget the baleful look that Patrick gave me when he realized that those words did not appear in the story.

Here among the books, I can imagine that I’m seeing countries that I’ve never visited and meeting people more interesting than I am.  While not all books end happily, the endings make sense and seem to flow effortlessly.  A well-written book might surprise but it never disappoints; the characters behave consistently with the personalities they’ve been given, even if nuances of their yearnings cause them to make choices that I find puzzling.  When I close a book that I have enjoyed, I feel satisfied, knowing that people whose lives I have come to understand have ordered themselves in a way that allows me to imagine them continuing, waking up the next day, doing the next thing, loving the next person.

I was recently asked what activity invites me to feel most like myself.  I chose writing.  But I could just as easily have said reading, for among these volumes, which beckon me to open their pages and curl in a chair to read them, I can both escape and explore, laugh and cry, feel longing and feel comfort, and in the last few paragraphs, draw a long, healing breath before I close the book.

 

Here’s where I am today:  Mysteryscape.