Reading has always been a solace. An escape. A suit of armor. A way to learn. How to do something new. How other people live. A way to see the world. I loved books and rhymes from a very early age. Lines from childhood poems, Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose I remember still. I was entranced with life among pages. This love of books was fostered by two very different women whose every action influenced who I have become more than any others - my Granny and my mother.
Looking back I am not certain of all the dates or how long some practices endured. But this is what I remember...
I don't recall learning to read. It just seems as though I always knew, though clearly that couldn't be the case. I didn't attend kindergarten. As I remember, I read well when I entered first grade. I thought going to school, something I had long looked forward to, would be a source of astounding revelations. Alas, being forced to write page after page of cursive e's, on that horrible grey weirdly lined paper that tore with the least provocation, was sorely disappointing! Did this teacher not realize how many e's were in my name???!!! I did the work. But ~ I cried. Silent tears. Yes, I was a crybaby. A real joy, I'm sure! Finally, not knowing what else to do with me, Miss McKissick placed me in a back corner and allowed me to read through all the primers. "See Spot run!" Posh! I quickly moved on from that!
I remember waiting on the front steps of The Grey House, aged 5 or 6, eagerly waiting for the mail and subsequent arrival of the latest Book of the Month (I think that was the interval) from a children's book club my parents joined. I presume my mother guided me as to what days to man my post. Surely, I didn't do it every day!!! At any rate, the tremendous thrill when the books arrived is truly beyond description. The books were surprisingly good for a club that couldn't have been too expensive given my family's resources. Fifty years later, the pictures and words remain vivid. Miss Suzy. "Oh, I love to cook, I love to bake, I guess I'll make an acorn cake!" Ma Lien and the Magic Brush. The Mole Family's First Christmas. Jerome. Alexander. The Story of Zachary Zween. To this day, as I mow our yard, I pretend I am The Sheep of Lal Bagh! From Just Only John ~ "Be yourself, because somebody has to, and you're the closest." ~ is good advice, still. My mother would read them to me and my two sisters, while sitting on the couch. The many interruptions as my mother tried to make our youngest sister sit down or stop sucking her thumb, spurred me and Ruthie to begin reading them on our own as soon as possible.
The summer I turned 12, like every summer the six years prior, was spent on two acres of swampy land just beyond the city limits of an incredibly small town in South Alabama, near the Florida line. It was hot. Several of those years were without air conditioning, something I recall missing only on cold winter mornings. Visitors were infrequent. Mostly it was just me, my two sisters and my parents. Daddy, a forester at the timber company went off to work week days, returning for a full lunch with tales from the piney woods and of the men with whom he worked, then heading out again. For extra cash he worked nights welding ragged pulp wood trucks or doing body work on fast cars. Weekends found him outside in his shop or yard when he wasn't working on the house. Momma stayed home, sewing most of our clothes, managing the house, with the conviction that children should be little seen and even less heard. Gardens were large with long rows to hoe, vegetables to pick, prepare and freeze. A few years prior, Daddy, with just one man to help him, tore down a lovely old Southern mansion turned boarding house turned ruin, purchased for a dollar, from which to salvage bits used in building our house while we lived in a trailer steps away from the construction. Huge heart pine timbers became the foundation. Beautiful knotty beams part of the main room. Old pipes, to plumb the sewer portion I presume, required packing with jute (?) and melted lead to solder them together; a process I loved watching and helping with. During the summer I cleaned old brick brought home from the destruction and dumped in great piles. With a hammer Daddy rigged from a length of pipe welded to a rough, thick, dullish blade, I beat off clinging mortar, loaded them in a wagon, and carted them to neatly assembled stacks for a penny per brick. On my best days, I cleaned 200. The year I turned 12, we moved into that house. As long as I can remember, my mother rarely left home. She had a car. She could have. She didn't. As a kid, I didn't think much about it. That's just how things were. She didn't visit friends or family. She didn't go anywhere. As an adult, the strangeness, the limitations, the frustration of that life dawned on me. Reasons for her reclusive behavior remain unclear. Fear is the only answer I have been able to come up with given the anger, the rage, that lived alongside and poisoned life for all of us. At any rate, the solitary excursion for the week, on Thursday as I recall, was to get groceries - either from the A&P or Piggly Wiggly - along with any other errand absolutely required. If it didn't take place on that day, it would wait until the following week. I loved Thursday. I loved the excitement of getting to go somewhere, see other people. I also loved the possibility of getting to spend time in my mother's presence. Strangely, despite being home all the time, hours in close proximity to her children was not something that happened a great deal. That summer, and likely summers before it given the number of books I plowed through - though I can't be certain - my next sister and I were not taken on the adventure that was the A&P. Where men with hair nets and bloody aprons hacked up carcasses behind the meat counter. Where rows of interesting comestibles filled the shelves while Muzak filtered through the cold conditioned air. No. Instead, Ruthie and I were dropped off at the local library. As far as I know, a building my mother rarely, if ever, entered. Only our younger sister was allowed special Mommy Time and the bright lights of the A&P. Unsupervised, 10 year old Ruthie and I perused the shelves as we liked. I read EVERY book in the 'juvenile' section. Laura Ingalls. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Heidi got on my nerves. So did Anne with her Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking. I moved on to the biographies for children, loving Clara Barton and The First Woman Doctor. Finding The Lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale, freaky even then. Having run out of material, I timidly ventured into the 'adult' stacks. Selecting books at random gave way to a simpler approach when I found I had no mechanism for informed choices. A to Z, baby! From Aldrich and A Lantern in her Hand to Bronte and Buck. The Time is Noon, The Good Earth, Pavilion of Women. That last engendered a few questions from the Librarian. "Do your parents know what you're reading?" A polite, "Yes Ma'am," was met with a doubtful look. She never asked about my selections again but remained watchful during our visits; ultimately, bending the rules on the number of books we could borrow and quietly discussing our reads. Dickens and Elliot. Hemingway and Hawthorn. Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. McCullough, Michner, Mitchell. Steinbeck and Twain. I discovered a world of personalities and places I never knew existed. Words became an escape filled with beauty and hard lessons on how to live. The backbone of my greatest treasure. A gift given as unwittingly as it was received.
Again, I am not sure how many summers included the library drop off. However, this particular summer is distinct because I started work at the local dentist's office the summer I turned 13. But that year, as soon as we were back home, my sister and I would help bring in the groceries, do any chores required, then sit on the back porch of the completed house, plowing through most of the books we had just attained that very afternoon. Flipping back to the start, once the final page was read! It was our happy place. We especially liked reading there through thunder storms. Despite her threats and screams for us to come inside, our mother would never venture to fetch us as she was too frightened and would remain huddled in the middle of her bed - at least until the storm rolled by. Afternoon storms are frequent in south Alabama summers.
Hattie Celeste, my maternal grandmother, completed her formal education at 3rd grade. Her complicated life included the loss of her mother to tuberculosis at age 5, a father who was a bit of a drunkard, at least for a while, a step mother who was only 13 years of age, and two younger brothers who required her care. She was one of the most intelligent and resilient humans I have ever known. Opinionated for certain, but staunchly loyal. She could always be counted on to have your back, to encourage and support those she loved. She was a fierce advocate for education and reading, working tirelessly in the schools her children attended. She could sew, tat, embroider and crochet. I spent time with her during summers starting in my pre-teen years and visited her often as a young adult. Her own reading tended toward Reader's Digest Condensed Editions, religious material, self-help books. I remember a copy of I'm Okay, You're Okay laying around. She also liked mild romances, not graphic bodice rippers, and Titillating Tell All's about stars of her time - Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson. Her most precious gift to me was her complete faith in my ability to become the woman I wanted to be, encouraged in no small part through the books she gave me. I still have the toddler washable books she sent me as an infant. Used by my own kiddos and stored for whomever they can serve next. In fact, I have ALL the books she ever gave me. The little wildflower guide she gave me in 1975, when I was 11 is well worn. So is The Best Loved Poems of the American People, received on my 13th birthday. "Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul." I'll stop. But, yes, I can quote most of the 648 pages. Later, there was a beautiful copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book I'm sure she never read. It was followed by a two volume set of The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham. Stories I have read repeatedly over the years. Given my age at the time of these gifts, I found these books challenging. That was the genius of her gifts. To me, these pages exemplified HER belief that I was smart enough, able enough, to comprehend and appreciate important things! I have much to thank her for. Her admonition that I stand up straight as a 5 foot 9 inch twelve year old. My first pair of high heels. Her letter that let me know she was GLAD I had failed to be a basketball star in my senior year, as it was important that I learn I would not be good at everything I tried. (Girl! I didn't just fail to be a star! I SUCKED!!!!) Her glee as I drove her tiny self in her gigantic land yacht of a Ford LTD through the streets of Talladega BEFORE I had a license! Her nervous giggles that gave way to a belly laugh, as she fretted in the passenger seat of my red Camaro as I drove through a terrible rain storm in Birmingham. She only half jokingly twittered, "I think we're going to have to pull over, because I can't see!" To which I replied, "It's a good thing you're not driving then, isn't it???" Her willingness to share her stitchery skills. The many trips we made to Morrison's Cafeteria for her fav liver and onions and my plate of fried chicken. The stops I made at Shoney's to pick up her favorite, gruesomely red, sickeningly sweet, strawberry pie. The lesson learned only after her death, that it is NOT best to save that which is precious for a future special day. Ahhh, so much! Still, her belief in me and the love of written words, looms largest. Thank you, Granny. I hope I have done you proud.
"Who hath a book, hath friends at hand...." Indeed. Reading is a powerful force. Ruthie became many things including an educator and reading specialist. I was the visiting 'reading lady' at my children's school and volunteered as such in several others. I had hoped to return to that and volunteer in a literacy program for adults this year, but alas pandemic pandemonium put a damper on that for the moment. I repeat, 'This too, shall pass!' enumerable times each day! Still, the beauty humans convey through the written word has helped me survive this crazy year. This rambling post is as an introduction to a new segment: A Few Good Reads.... Thanks for reading! Watch this space. ~ les
