Book and House Notes

There are still lots of thing that I need to put away, now that Christmas is finally over and the endless season of king cakes has begun. Wait, that’s a lie. I used the word “still” which probably gave the impression that I had, perhaps, already been putting some things away. That is not technically, nor literally, nor allegorically, nor metaphorically true. The truth, which I am waiting around for the moment of it setting me free, is that I’ve been on the couch for three days with something like a flu, or maybe just a fever, but probably death. I’ve been joined by my two little girls but everyone else is bouncing around in an intolerable and hideous bloom of health. It’s unkind of them, I think, and I feel personally injured.

But, the tree is down! Praise God. The happiest day of the year, for me, Every Year, is the day we get the tree out. It was a beautiful tree–perfectly shaped, elegant, glorious, but, by the end dropping needles and sorrow all over the living room carpet. Also, praise God, we came into the way of some beautiful bookshelves which Matt assembled in all his irritating robust health while I languished on the couch and criticized him. “I don’t think you should arrange those books like that,” I said, and some other things. It was the only way I could really involve myself in the project. I’m a giver not a taker.

We decided, as per usual, not to mix our books. “You can have those two,” I said, “and I’ll have this one.” He has more books and they’re all bigger and more manly, whereas mine are slim and whimsical, like novels and trash. We agreed to put books we want the children to read on the bottom shelf, one, because it will make a great sermon illustration (about the dumbness of putting theological truth in the lowest possible terms) and two because we don’t really want them to climb up the shelves to reach the books at the top, resulting us being in an endless loop on the evening news as bad parents who have furniture and children at the same time. Also, being a bad mother, I don’t have the problem of my children trying to read things I wish they wouldn’t, I’m at the level of begging my children to read Anything.

In this they are just like me. As a child I was always most anxious about reading something that wouldn’t make me really happy. I grew up, and continue, to hate suspense and anxiety. I wanted books that would surround me in a warm tepid bath of no pain and no trauma. This is why I never got all the way through Great Expectations. I couldn’t bear that Haversham creature. I would reread everything in the world before trying something new.

Elphine, much to my sorrow, is exactly like me. She stands in front of the shelves, her brow furrowed, and asks, “Will I like it? Will it make me happy?”
“How should I know,” I always say, “why don’t you try it and find out?” This is specious, of course. And she doesn’t believe me. “Did you like it?” she presses.
“Well, no,” I say, “I hated it.” And there the matter lies.

I’m writing all this out not because I expect you’re interested at all, but because I’m finally getting to read Booked, by Karen Swallow Prior. I came to the end of the first chapter (which is as far as I’ve gotten) and lapsed into a teary and nostalgic consideration of my reading past. And was once more confirmed in my feelings of regret over the last decade of having children (although, now, it is really a decade And A Half which is completely traumatizing) that I couldn’t read. I mean, I do always read, but not as much as I had up until that first sleepless night of nursing and freaking out. If 2016 was the year of writing (which, for me, it was) 2017 is going to be the year of reading. It’s nice to rediscover oneself on the other side, as it were.

So anyway, I’m loving Booked. And I’m loving Miss Read, and Made for More, and Fierce Convictions, and a few others which I will be enumerating at length in a more health filled future. And I am also dancing the delicate dance of reading Anne of Avonlea to all the children, even the boys, without indicating to them that it’s not a book traditionally read by the male persuasion. Line by line I’m praising God that though Montgomery lapses into flourishing poetry, the kind Alouicious particularly turns up his nose against, she generally saves the day with humor and absurdity. So far it’s going down like Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which I hoped it would.

And now I will stagger back to the couch and just keep reading. The house can wait.