Friday means I get to read all weekend....Books, love them, gotta have them, can't live without them....

I grew up reading. 

Reading is like breathing to me. I cannot live without reading. People at the library always know me no whatever where I live because I am there at least every week or so. 

My parents did not get a TV into our house until I had left home, so even though I am a Baby Boomer, I did not see many of the tv shows that my fellow boomers grew up on. Many tv shows I saw for the first time when they were re-runs after I was married. When my husband and I were newly married, I fell in love with James T. Kirk and watched all the re-running episodes of Star Trek that came on every day at 5:00 pm when I came home from work. That would have been in the mid-70's. 

So instead of TV, I read. In the long winter evenings in the frozen north, we read out loud to each other. Classics like Old Yeller and Little Women came alive as my mother read a chapter to us every night before we went to bed, and we often could hardly wait until the next evening for the next installment. My younger sister and brother are big readers too. 

On Friday afternoons I came home from school, elementary and high school to a spotless house. Friday was my mom's cleaning day and she kept a very clean house. I would grab an apple and whatever book I was reading, and sit in my little corner in the living room where the sun was shining and I would revel in the experience. Bliss.......

My parents would say that if they could not find me, they only had to look for a book and my nose would be in it. My maternal grandparents lived only a block away and I was grandpa's favorite. When I went to the library I would pick out travel books that we could read together, and we pored over many a book about Mexico (his favorite) or Africa (my favorite). I sat with him at his handmade rolltop desk top, and we would look through the pictures of exotic places and talk about how we would like to visit those places. 

Luckily I married a reader. My husband reads differently than me, but we enjoy many of the same books, especially about travel. I also love mysteries - not the blood and gore kind, but the police procedural novels that talk more about how the detectives solve the mystery than how the crime was committed. Henning Mankell is a great writer, and got me hooked on Swedish and then Scandanavian mystery writers - that was after I had read all of the Inspector Wexford novels by Ruth Rendell, and the Inspector Morse and on and on.... My big love are the books that tell another person's travel experience. So many writers excite me about the places they have been and give me a little hollow feeling inside that can only be filled by planning another adventure. 

I have about 6 books just waiting for me on my beside table. I can hardly wait.

This should be fun.....more on reading to come. 

My Inner Children......

My inner child flares up every now and then, and embarrasses the heck out of me.

I want to love that inner child, but she is such a rascal. She just spits out words without a filter (even though she is a 58 year old child). Sometimes she pouts and that ain't pretty at all. Mostly she does behave and just sits and reads but the times she comes out with full force, I just want to take her across my knee.

She says, "I don't want to play nice when people take away my toys in the sandbox...When the big kids are mean...stick their tongue out at me...or throw sand in my face...or just don't like me."

After her outburst, I tell her that I understand, and I try to teach her how to deal with them big kids. I let her know that she is loved, but sometimes that does not make a bit of difference to that little red-haired stepchild. She just ain't havin' none of it. (Notice how she has acquired a bit of a southern accent too?)

When I see her appear, I cringe on one level, and yet admire her spunk on another. She wants life to be fair, and does not understand that there is no such thing. She wants to be heard, be noticed, be made a fuss of, and in her childish naiveté does not understand that life does not revolve around her and that other people have things they are dealing with too. Which means they do not understand the stresses you are dealing with either.

Yesterday, the red-headed girl came out strong when I was trying to have a very adult discussion about the future of some important work. She wiggled and squirmed her way into the conversation and soon she interrupted with her fears and frustrations. I know she just wanted the other people to love her, accept her, and listen to her, but she never comes across that way. She just seems pushy and frankly, rather annoying.

So if you happen to meet that little girl, who looks a lot like I used to, then just give her a hug. Sometimes that is enough to make her go quietly and read her book for awhile.
 

39 years is a long time....to be married.

Waiting for Spring?

Yes, I know it is June. In fact I was reminded of that Saturday as my husband and I celebrated 39 years of marriage on the first day of June. 

 

Our day together was not fireworks and big presents; in fact it was a calm day with lunch at the new Casino's buffet and time at the library, also at the bookstore where we bought each other a new journal with a gift certificate that had been given to us at Christmas. We watched Atlas Shrugged Part One again, and Part Two for the first time. We are both fans of Ayn Rand's books, and often read the same books and discuss them. The day had a zen-like quality and except for the DVD player breaking down, it was very peaceful. 

 

Thirty-nine years is a long time to be married to the same person, especially in this day and age as I understand statistics. Herb and I met in our senior year of high school, both 17, already set in our faith and in our political leanings. He had (and still has) a confident walk and sexy eyes, a straight forward way of talking and I knew immediately I could trust him. We met at a church youth group event and I kicked him for teasing me before the evening was over. Two years later we were married, he had just turned 20 two weeks before, and I was still 19. We have lasted through very humble beginnings to still humble present day, two children, seven grandchildren (four of them adopted - from Africa, but that is a whole 'nother story), 17 different homes, 3 countries, and 3 states and 3 provinces. 

 

I recognize that not everyone has the same experience that I have had. I understand that some people chose wrong in the past, and are now single for a variety of different reasons. However, I also recognize that I do not need to apologize for having a good relationship with a man who is slightly chauvinistic (I told him in 1992 that he was a man of the '90s but that it was the 1890's), who knows that I can cook better than his mother ever did, and who is organized with his date book but horrible with any other paperwork.  He is a whole lot better about being on the road alone than being home alone when I am gone. He thinks that hair on a woman can never be long enough (the one thing we often disagree on) and he rides motorcycle better than almost anyone else. He is a good man, who wants to do the right thing. 

 

It seems only yesterday that I came home from the hairdresser on a Saturday late morning  in June 1974. Two hours later I was walking up the aisle on my father's arm and joining my life to the man of my choice. My dress was sweet and simple. The food was good at the reception, mostly the work of my mother, aunts, and women of the church. The band was terrible and we asked them to stop before they were done their first set - the lead singer was an old boyfriend, and I knew there was a reason I dumped him. At the end of the event I was tired of pictures and ready to ride off into the sunset.

Now almost four decades later, we love each other more than we did two decades ago. We understand each other better, and we are willing to stick together through thick and thin, rich and poor, health and sickness, because we know that we are better together than we are apart.  If I am in a room of sixty people, and my husband catches my eye across the room and winks at me, my heart still skips a beat. This is the man who held my head over the porcelain throne last year when I had the flu so bad that I wanted to die, and was afraid I wouldn't. This is the man who hugs me like there is no tomorrow and my throat lumps up with his energy. We have produced two children who amaze me with their strength, their smarts and their sweetness. 

The older I get, the more I see that life is seasonal, but that the seasons can be in "shuffle mode". I am not heading into the "fall" of my life.....I think I already had that season. I think it is Spring, and I know there is still lots of hard work ahead, but that summer is around the corner in my life, and some lazy days on the deck with a glass of sweet tea sounds really good.