When I think of my childhood, I think of my mother reading to us. This essay is a reflection of how important being a reader is to me. How the stories I read as a child continue to influence and inspire and sometimes even challenge me. I studied film at SCAD, but it was this composition class full of reflective essay assignments that allowed me to explore so many more sides of myself.
Spring Semester, 2012
(8 minute read)
Go potty.
Wash dirty face and hands.
Brush teeth.
Put on PJs.
Pick out book.
Yell from the bedroom… “Mooooommmmmm!.” At least four times.
Reading at bedtime was a ritual in our house
My sister and I shared a bedroom — the yellow room. We had twin beds with yellow quilted polyester covers. And became avid readers under yellow rice paper lampshades that were handmade with love and PG13 swear words by our mother. I loved those lampshades and their light is a memory that connects me home.
We grew up in a small community. So small that I still cannot add Harrigan Cove as my hometown on Facebook. Grocery shopping and filling the car with gas was a thirty minute drive. Because I loved to read, and didn’t have regular access to a library, and because the local drugstore carried more Harlequin than Hemingway, Mom signed us up for Books by Mail.
Every few weeks we filled out mint green cue cards with topics of interest and mail them to the big city. The main library staff would select the titles and send back piles of books in manila padded envelopes. We waited for those envelopes with the same anticipation as a five year old on Christmas morning. On my third attempt, I realized that if I did not add my age to the card I would receive the kind of books that would have been rated “R” if they had been movies.
My eclectic tastes introduced me to books that both fostered and challenged my worldview. And set me on a life-long path of pushing limits. In teaching me to read, mom made sure my bed was so much more than just a bed (1). Every night she turned it into a vehicle that took us beyond the boundaries of what we knew and expanded our horizons. As a reader, my worldview grew from journaling about the ideas I encountered, time traveling, and investigating the fictional and non-fiction roles woman played in history.
A Room of One’s Own
I am a reader as a means of expression. My journaling began when I received my first diary. It was white with pink trim, had gold letters, and the classic lock and key that could be pried open with a popsicle stick. Reading and writing go hand and hand. Readers often translate what they read through their own experiences, digging for meaning and truth that becomes a worldview. For me, books that explore the writing process, writer’s memoirs, and stories that celebrate courage (especially in women) have been some of my most influential reads.
I was married with a child the first time I read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. The essay explores among other things why “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…”, and this idea caused me to look back with nostalgia on the day I came home from summer camp to a room of my own — in the basement. It took me less than an hour to pack up my side of the yellow room and move into the wood paneled bedroom my father built for me. I felt so independent and grown up.
I only spent three years in that room, but they were important, teenage boundary pushing years. Journaling and rambling on patient paper (2) allows us to both explore and capture our world. As Ernest Hemingway so eloquently shared in his memoir A Moveable Feast, “…Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.” My room belonged to me and I belonged to my journal and my pen. I had my own room, a safe place to experience and explore the loss of leaving childhood things behind as well as asserting my independence for what was to come. It was the last time I would have a room that was truly my own.
I still write. My space is a little spot on the World Wide Web that I can access from almost anywhere. Sitting in Hemingway’s seat at La Closerie des Lilas on the Boulevard Montparnasse, I can open my laptop and find myself in my own little world. I write because deep down the process teaches me something about myself, but I’m sure Hemingway would agree, it can’t hurt to have a little money and a room of your own.
Time Travel
In addition to journaling, I also read as a means of metaphorical time travel. I am interested in understanding the social structures of our ancestors and how that often dictated behavior as well as station in life. Charles Dickens wrote about the underdogs in Victorian society and included social commentary in his character’s rhetoric. In A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Christmas Present has this exchange with Scrooge:
“‘There are some upon this earth of yours’, returned the Spirt, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, and not us.'”
A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Christmas Present
Very little has changed in 150 years. Scrooge was experiencing time travel and was given the opportunity to reflect on his life through the visits of three spirits. Scrooge is not just an observer of his past, present, and future; he questions the spirits, engages with their worldview and is given the opportunity to change his behavior. How fortunate that in reading A Christmas Carol we too are given this same opportunity.
I also read to travel through time because it helps me understand references in popular culture and I take great pride in that. I am mindful of these relationships and believe we have a responsibility to understand our history so we can feel connected to our present. Then there are modern books that take us on a journey through many cultures and deep in to the past like Gospel.
Wilton Barnhardt’s novel takes us on a quest in search of a lost biblical gospel, but as I finished the novel I realized I had been reading the gospel all along. Barnhardt’s stylistic approach to incorporate the gospel in the chapters and the footnotes highlights the interdependent relationship between our past and present. I look for these connections to our past because they help me have a well rounded view of today and quite honestly gives me a better position to argue from.
The Gumption of Women
As well as keeping me inspired to journal and time travel, I enjoy reading about the lives of spunky young women finding their way in the world. I grew up in the land of Anne of Green Gables so it probably comes as no surprise that I would love the precocious spirit in Anne and other coming of age heroines such as Scout Finch (3) and Addie Pray (4).
I carry a keychain that says “All serious daring starts from within.” It’s from Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, a memoir not only of a writer’s life, but of a woman writer’s life. I do not wear it to remind me of my spirit; I wear it to state it. Growing up with these characters fostered my need to ask questions and to not worry about being called stubborn.
Another reason I read about women’s history is because I want to know about the evolution of the feminist. And I want to share it with my my daughter. Lucy in Gospel struggles with her faith while experiencing issues in a bigger world. The Governess in Turn of the Screw struggles for control of her charges while trusted in a position that is probably above her skill and possibly drove her mad. These women and many others inspire my desire for awareness of our history and the roles we have played. Amelia Earhart once said, “Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace”. Brave (fictional and non-fictional) women have laid open their lives for us to explore. Through understanding their journeys, we can continue into a world of possibilities.
My precocious little girl reminds me every day of the characters I grew up with and admired. And I’m excited to see her start to discover them on her own. I love those not so quiet and often rushed moments at night when I am reminded how important books were, not only in shaping who I am, but for teaching me it was okay to explore my ideas, ask questions and to value these characteristics as tenacious and courageous. My daughter is a boundary pushing, twenty-question-asking kind of girl. It is incredibly frustrating at times. But the apple did not fall far from the tree and I have faith that her spirit will serve her well.
Reading at Bedtime is a Ritual in our House
Lay out PJs.
Bath time and one last potty.
Brush teeth.
Pick out book.
Yell from the bedroom… “Peyton!” At least four times.
Works Cited
Barnhardt, Wilton. Gospel. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993. Print
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2004. Print.
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. 1954. New York: Dell. Print
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Touchstone, 1964. Print.
Welty, Eudora. One Writer’s Beginnings. USA: First Harvard University Press, 1995. Print
Woolf, Virgina. A Room of One’s Own. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, inc, 1929. Print.
Notes
- See Slyvia Plath’s The Bed Book.
- See Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.
- See Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
- See Joe David Brown’s Paper Moon.