Sunny Side Up March 12, 2003 �2002, Kathleen Gibson Read me another story I spent most of my childhood curled up with a storybook in the living room armchair. Authors like Rudyard Kipling, Lucy Maude Montgomery, Enid Blyton. Louisa May Alcott, Thornton Burgess, Charles Dickens. Madeline L�Engle. At night the book (and a flashlight) came to bed with me. I would be an emotionally shrunken woman without the books of my childhood. Without the kindred spirits in Little Women, the rascals in �Oliver Twist�, the mystery in �The Boy Next Door�, the bespelling magic in �A Wrinkle in Time�. I�m sometimes asked to read my writing at things like banquets and breakfasts and teas. Once I was seated next to a children�s librarian in a Santa-red suit. �What was your favorite book when you were small?� I asked. She laughed. �You�ve probably never heard of it. The title was �The Witch of Blackbird Pond.� I caught my breath. As a child I had read and reread that very same book by Elizabeth George Speare. It became my favorite too. When I told the lady in red, she nearly danced sitting down. We spent the rest of our meal remembering �The Witch of Blackbird Pond;� how it caught us off guard all those years ago, and how it had been teaching us ever since. About things like assumptions, prejudice, truth�associations we never would have made as children, but the words had �dwelt in us richly� and taught us ever since. I departed from fiction when I reached adulthood. It wasn�t necessary to grown-up life. There were more important things to read. College textbooks. Then �How to Keep a Husband�; �Raise a Child from Scratch�; �Stay Sane in an Insane World�. Biographies, recipe books. The Bible. I became so disconnected to the value of fiction that I felt a tickle of pride when I said, �I seldom read fiction; I don�t have time for it.� As though reading fiction is mere luxury�frittered time�and I was far above that. But I made time to read it to my children, understanding somehow that a childhood without story is no kind of childhood at all. Why couldn�t I discern that my own eagerness for the next chapter in �Lord of the Rings� or �Chronicles of Narnia,� or Susan Cooper�s magical �The Dark is Rising� series was telling me that an adulthood without story is no kind of adulthood either! Indeed�when the season of read-aloud was over in our home, I found I missed �story� dreadfully. Its truths. Its surprises. Its subtle invitations to change. So I�m reading fiction again, not even embarrassed to admit it. Quality fiction. Even the occasional children�s fiction, just to honor the child within who pines for the days of nothing more important to do than curl up in the living room chair and read, read, read. Aesop told fables. The brothers Grimm told fairy tales. And Jesus told parables. Of course! He understood that the best sermon about anything is a story. If we�d only listen. You can respond to this column at [email protected] |
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