10/15/2021 0 Comments the journey through a book-loving lifeand passing it onToday I was food shopping and my daughter was along for the ride. I stopped for a ritual coffee on a cold day and she ordered a kids hot chocolate. Anyways, I look over and she is sipping on her hot beverage and reading her book. Is she becoming me? Am I creating a monster? Let me tell you about how this started for me. First of all, I had several very memorable school library experiences in primary school. I remember checking out a book in kindergarten over and over and over because I kept trying to figure out how to say a particular word and I wouldn't ask anyone for help because I wanted to do it for myself. I finally figured it out and was hooked. It gave me the confidence to try any book and any word. In third grade I had an incredible teacher who made me feel confidence in math and reading. I felt good about learning in third grade. In 4th and 5th grade I remember having older female teachers with a colder demeanor and I was more afraid and intimidated by them. I don't have many learning memories from these years. I had an especially inspiring and literature-inclined 6th grade teacher. I had a mother who went to school to be a teacher specializing in childrens' literature and reading. I also had a great deal of things to escape from when I was a child and that helped develop this habit too.
As a child, I remember books like Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and The Stinky Cheese Man, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I remember playing outside in the snow and coming in to have spaghetti and bread and butter for lunch and then watching sesame street, Mr Rogers and Reading Rainbow until I drifted off to sleep. I still like to have docu-series playing in the background while I fall asleep. I am a proud 90s kid. Trying to stay awake to watch Reading Rainbow so I could hear the book they read. To be honest television and books were so intertwined for me. Equally impactful. I feel as though the quality of television was better then compared to now for children and adults. I digress... My mother gave me Jane Eyre to read the summer before my 7th grade year. It was probably above my level but I was fascinated and intrigued and determined to prove that I could read and understand something that seemed a bit daunting at the time. I spent a lot of time in the backyard reading that summer. Getting away from the fighting. Hiding in my room reading or practicing my violin. I was alone a lot. Those were the Bronte years. I went from Jane Eyre to Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice to all sorts of other more contemporary literature like all of the Gary Paulson and Jack London books featuring a rugged outdoor life experience. I was in 7th grade when I read a book called Tessa about a woman brave enough to go teach in a rural Alaskan Native village on her own. I read about Gandhi and Buddhism and Mother Teresa. I figured out that the world was a big inspiring beautiful place of opportunity for us to choose who we wanted to be. I wanted to get away. I wanted to be independent. I went on to high school and was exposed to Homer's Odyssey and The Iliad. We also read The Things We Carried, J.D. Salinger and a lot of C.S. Lewis. I started having a lot of thoughts about Christianity. A lot of doubts about religion. It seemed like a big farce. A bid for power and control. An excuse and a way to justify. Not to mention the birthplace of misogyny and bigotry. I wanted to burn down the patriarchy. I hated all that fake shit. In college, I met my best friend Sara and she was more of a writer who knew a lot about books. She would recommend and I was in this underground music scene enough to start discovering the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Sylvia Plathe, among others. There was a counterculture for books I was discovering in this underground music world. The undiscovered "geniuses" were my key to visiting an entirely knew world of philosophy, cynicism, romanticism and dry humor that I really identified with at that time. It was all the things I was feeling. Inspired and disheartened. Whimsical and disturbed. Sara got me into the Louise Hay books later on. Wayne Dyer, and all the other positive-thoughts-lead-to-manifestation gurus. The Tibetan monks came next and then the research psychologists and therapists. I'm finally back to straight fiction for nothing but entertainment. Different times call for different measures. My daughter has seen me in bed every morning and at various other times throughout the day reading. I read to her every single day for at least the first 6 or 7 years until she started to want to read on her own more. She still asks us to read to her before bed at least once a week. This was and is a lifestyle. This is and will always be a part of my evolution. My healing process and my never-ending quest to understand why. And so it begins for her too.
0 Comments
|
AuthorMy cathartic stream-of-consciousness processing of the day-to-day. Archives
September 2023
CategoriesAll Art Art Gallery Art Museum Art Show Best Friend Bibliophile Books Bronte Buena Vista Children's Literature Citizen Cope CO Colorado Colorado Hiking Colorado Live Music Coming Of Age Cross Country Cross Country Skiing Date Night Day Hike Day Trip Fall Family Family Vacation Freshman Frisco Hank Hiking Hiking With Kids History Humboldt County Indigenous People Jane Eyre Life Lessons Live Music Long Term Relationships Louise Hay Marriage Middle School MMIW Moab Mountain Bike Mountain Bike Race Mountain Bike Season Mountain Biking Mountain Towns Museum National Park New Mexico Nordic Center Red Rocks Ampitheater Redwoods National Park Relationships Running Santa Fe Sister Skiing Skiing With Kids Summer Break Summer Vacation Teacher Appreciation Week Trevor Hall Van Gogh Weekend Getaway |