Love Affair
I love to read. To me a day is well spent if I do nothing but sit in a comfy chair and work my way through two or three books. I’ve always been that way. One of the biggest perks to nursing (besides all that healthy for the baby, healthy for the mom crap) is that every couple of hours (and most of the time way more often than that!) I *have* to take a break. So I nurse and read. Awesome.
I’ve always been fascinated by the written word. I can remember being a little girl, no more than four or so, cuddled up in my bed trying to make out the words in my favorite storybooks. I would sit there and run my fingers over the printed words wishing I could just read…
When I finally learned how, I spent hours and hours with my nose in a book. Any book! Anything I could find! At night I would sit with a book on the hard wooden floor, shivering, after my mother sent me to bed. Long past my bedtime I would sneak-read by the sliver of hall light that came through my bedroom door.
(This probably why I can’t see two feet in front of me without my glasses now)
I would sit there for hours… my butt go numb, my feet would turn into icicles, and still I would read late into the night. I wouldn’t move until I either finished my book or my mother ventured upstairs. Then I would scramble to get back in my bed before my mother noticed I was out of it. I’ll never forget trying to run across my room, jump into my bed and burrow under the covers… All before my mom could reach the top stair, and though I didn’t have to worry about her hearing me, (she is deaf) all had to be done without thumping loud enough for her to feel the vibration through the floor! (And of course I had to do this and avoid putting my feet within range of the monster who lived under my bed)
Even at school, I would sneak a book and read with it tucked in my desk, whenever the teacher wasn’t looking. My teacher used to get so frustrated with me! She said I was the only student, in thirty years of teaching, that she had to tell to stop reading! Usually she had to repeat herself four or five times…
When I read, I fall into the book. There is no rousing me. I hear nothing, see nothing, and time just slips away without me.
Nothing has changed. James is resigned to the fact that he will be wifeless for several hours when he sees me crack the spine on a new novel. He doesn’t get upset, he just sighs, gets comfy, and clicks on the tv. Poor man.
I can’t keep myself in books. Often I finish them as fast as I get them. Its a never ending trial to get something else to read… I have tried to read slowly, to savor each page… To put the book down and do something else for a little while… But I just can’t.
I have taken to buying paperbacks from the used bin of the library. I go there with several dollars in quarters, and come out with a dozen new treasures.
It keeps me in books for about a week.
