Here I am, only 18 months old, and already multitasking. Reading a book, painting my nails, and feeding the baby. Apparently I did not yet know about the benefits of breastfeeding. ; )
Okay, so maybe this picture isn't exactly good evidence, but the fact remains that I love to read. I really, really do. For pretty much as long as I can remember, I have spent every spare second with my nose tucked in a book. Or a magazine, newspaper, cereal box, iPhone, hotel welcome booklet, airplane safety manual, etc., etc. You get the idea. If it is a word on a page about pretty much anything, odds are good I want to read it! Well, this insatiable appetite for books means that I go through them rather quickly. It also means that by this point, 27 years into my reading obsession, for the most part, I have read everything in my realm of knowledge that I am truly excited about, so I am always on the hunt for great new books. Well, not necessarily new, just new to me.
Well, after a couple of failed experiments at
Barnes and Noble (
The Sisters Antipodes and
Flash Forward, to be exact), I had decided that rather than wasting my money blindly plucking choices from the shelves of the bookstore or forgetting to take my library books back (seriously, I pay so much in overdue book fines I ought to have my own wing!), I would first exhaust all the reading material at my disposal here in the house, and then work on researching out a Christmas list of old and new books that came highly recommended from... Well, pretty much anyone.
So yesterday I read two books about old Hollywood glamour photography from cover-to-cover. One was
mostly just pictures, the other was more of a
"how-to" book about recreating the lighting in the pictures. They also had some mildly interesting stories about the actors in them, but overall, they weren't terribly thrilling, or even all that informative, to tell you the truth. So last night, after Jason and the kids were fast asleep, and I had finished my nightly Christmas gift wrapping of any new purchases (trying to stay ahead of the game!), I went on the prowl for something to read. I scanned the bookshelves in my room, the sunroom, the garage and the piano room to no avail. I had already read every single book on there, many of them more than once. Out of desperation, I headed into Autumn's room.
I was scanning through the books on her shelf when I happened upon an unexpected jewel. To add a little variety to Autumn's usual reading diet of
Harry Potter,
Goosebumps and
Spiderwick Chronicles, I had bought her several books that I thought would be good for her to read. Among them were some
American Girl books, a handful of
Ramona books, some
Little House on the Prairie books,
Anne of Green Gables, N
umber the Stars and the one that my eyes settled on with the most excitement:
Bridge to Terabithia.
It piqued my interest the most, because unlike the others (which I've read too many times to even bother counting), this was one book that I'd always heard was wonderful, but I'd never actually gotten around to reading. I plucked it from the shelf and made my way to the living room to read for a bit to wind my brain down before bed. Curled up on the couch under a soft brown blanket with 2 cats on my feet reading a book by the light of the Christmas tree, I was pretty much in heaven! I read for a bit longer than I meant to, even, because the book turned out to be so engaging that it was hard for me to put down, even though I was exhausted.
It wasn't the kind of fast-moving, plot-driven book that you would call "a page-turner" in the usual sense, but it was just so warm and comfortable and deliciously well-written that I wanted to wrap myself up in it and go to sleep there instead. Eventually, I relented and put it down to catch some Z's before life started all over again at 90 miles an hour at approximately 6:30 a.m. Well, once the kids were ready for school this morning and Jason had left to go drop them off and take some
pictures of the fog on Mt. Sequoyah, I picked the book back up again. It's not too long, and it's fairly easy reading, so it didn't take long for me to make it to the end. By this point, Norah had woken up and was eating breakfast in the high chair.
I had gathered from the heavy foreshadowing that something bad was going to happen, and I vaguely recalled that I had heard the book was sad, but that still did not prepare me for the ending. It just hurt my heart. Tears welled up in my eyes and fell into fat wet splotches on the kitchen floor as I tried to cut up the cantaloupe on Norah's high chair tray. She just looked at me, puzzled, and shouted for another bite.
It truly broke my heart. This is especially the case in light of the fact that my cousin Krystin just lost a very close friend of hers down in Mena. It is her senior year of high school, and I know that the ache will overshadow so much of the joy that she should be feeling right now. Please keep Krystin, and especially the family of that boy in your prayers this week, because I know they are hurting so much.
It just reminds me of a line from the book, one which, ironically, is found a good ways before the tragic ending (part of the foreshadowing I mentioned). "...Life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits."
So take a second to be thankful for the beauty that is in your life today! Also, go read
Bridge to Terabithia. It is a lovely book, and you will not regret it.
Oh, and for my moment of thankfulness today, I snapped a picture of Norah just now so you could all see how sweet she is. She's taking her morning nap on the mattress here in our "cage" in the office, and she is so precious to watch there sleeping while I work!
