color my space

you are what you read

My aunt always says that the books we love as children, are our windows into what we will become, meaning of course that somehow, you become what you read. Her theory worked on her kids, who are now grown and moved away, who have become what they always read about.
Danny loved Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel with a passion, and now he loves his construction job too. Mitch was obsessed with Ferdinand the Bull, about the peace-loving, non-bull-fighting bull who sat under the tree all day smelling flowers, and now that is pretty much the life that this cousin leads too, smelling flowers and delivering pizza. My cousin Johnny loved books on tape with all the different voices and all the action. He is now an aspiring actor and a director. And my cousin Kelly, well, Kelly loved Barbie Gets Dressed, and to this day, she is one hot fashionista and does makeup in downtown Chicago. And maybe my aunt is right, and we actually do become what we read. Or maybe, we are led to certain things because they are already an integral part of who we are supposed to become.

At my house growing up, we were read to all the time, and we each had our own library card and book club membership by the start of kindergarten. My mom would set up a little chair for herself and set up three even smaller stools for the three of us, all about a year apart in age, and we would listen for hours as she read all this poetry and all the books that we could find.

We all really liked the sad books for some reason, like The Velveteen Rabbit or the ones where the little kid has a goat or a baby cow or a wild puppy and the animal becomes too much to take care of and the animal is taken away to another farm. We would just cry and cry about the poor kids in the story. We would start off loving that little puppy or the little goat so much, laughing at the silly things that would happen, and then by the end, we would be so upset every time at what we just kept hoping wouldn’t happen but always did, and then beg her to read it to us again because we were just so happy at how sad we were, I guess. So happy that words could have that kind of power.

When I couldn’t read yet and in fact when I could, I loved Amelia Bedelia, Madeline, Miss Rumphius, Curious George, The Jolly Postman. And I thought it couldn’t get any better than that until I had a teacher who looked like Snow White and she let us lay on big pillows while she read to us from Charlotte’s Web and Ramona the Pest, two of my all-time favorite love affairs. I fell head over heels, with not only my lovely teacher, but with the magic that those words held for me. It was all downhill from there, the passion had been ignited and there was no turning back.

I couldn’t get enough of the books I loved: Number the Stars, Matilda, my fifth grade bible, Are you there God? It’s me Margaret, Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Giver, Cricket in Times Square, Pippi Longstocking. Each one was better than the last.

These books set me free and even just the thought of them today makes me remember who I was and who I became through what those pages held. Later I found my freedom in the characters of Atticus Finch, and Jay Gatsby and Holden Caufield and in other books like Blue Like Jazz, First Comes Love, The Hours, and Life of Pi. These books were all there for me like the greatest friend I could think of, and perhaps really just served as mirrors, reminding me of who I forgot that I was underneath it all.

When I read, I want to find my freedom looming in between the pages. I want to agonize and celebrate and be moved to a new life, a new reality. I want to fall in love over and over again, and hiding behind some bookshelf of memories and magical words, I want to find that piece of myself that I didn’t know was missing.

posted by Mary @ 7:51 PM