I have always read a lot. There’s a picture of me, scarcely out of toddler-hood, running around in the orchard behind my grandparents’ house on Burchfield Street, holding a Little Golden Book.
I read to cope with a wide variety of situations: boredom, sadness, happiness, needing a place to hide. If I’m bothered by something I read about it. Sometimes I use the Internet to get information which is fast, efficient, and easy to use; however, books–just holding books in my hands–is the most comforting thing for me. I also buy books just to own them. They sit on a shelf and look nice. Sometimes I read them; I have to watch myself with Amazon because there are so many books there and I could easily spend a lot on books and have no place to put them.
I like to say this a lot to myself and sometimes I tell somebody–for a stretch of ten years–when Michael was age 9 to 19–we had the most fun any family could have. What we had in part was movies, favorite movies that we watched, over and over. We had our own secret words and funny phrases we found in movies.
My mother was self-educated; she loved to read and passed that on to me. She belonged to a book discussion group and there’s a picture of her someplace in the many photo albums we had, that had appeared in the Pittsburgh Press. She brought me to the big Carnegie Library and I got a library card when I was five years old. She also introduced me to DH Lawrence and gave me Sons and Lovers to read when I was only 16; she also told me the stories of Lawrence’s life. I marvel now when I realize how young I was when this happened. She was quite honest and told me what parts of Lawrence’s life and work influenced her. One of these was reading a quote from Lawrence–“A woman unsatisfied wants luxuries; a woman in love with a man will sleep on a board.” Hmmm…what could this mean? If it meant what I thought, my mother was letting me know how she felt about my father. She would sleep on a board to be close to him. Wow. I still am amazed at the amount of very personal information my mother passed on to me at a young age. I was just still a teenager! But I got the message.
Books and movies and how they have been incorporated into me and the three of us at Six Pines Farm.
lgmwriting 