The Greatest Gift

                When I was a little girl my dad would read books to each of us kids. I recall listening as he read the Wizard of Oz series to my sister, and not listening when he read whatever books my brother selected. When it was my turn it was usually one of two books I remember him reading: "The Wind in the Willows," and "Mrs. Frisby and the rats of N.I.M.B."   (I was fascinated by anthropomorphism.)  I loved curling up next to him and looking at the black and white sketches on a random page while the cadence of his voice rose and fell rhythmically. Every Christmas we gathered around his lap and shoulders as he read the book his mother had read to him, The Littlest Angel.  So strong are the memories of this book that I can hear his voice echoing in my mind as I read it to my own children each year. He was a good storyteller.

                The first book I remember reading on my own was "B is for Betsy" a book given to me by my mother. I was only about six, but I have some recollection of being on vacation somewhere with snow while I read that book. I know I was little but I can still vaguely recall the book, sort of an orange color with a little girl in cameo on the cover. I didn't recall much about the book except that it was about a spunky little girl. Later I read classics like the Ramona series, the All-of-a-kind Family series, Arabella's Ravin, A Windmill Summer,  (more spunky little girls.) In my later adolescence I became obsessed with the supernatural. I read books about girl's with ESP, séances,  and haunting specters.

                Reading has always had a major role in my life. I can remember my mother teaching me to read. She had made her own flash cards of letters, and there was a homemade game where I used a toy fishing pole to catch felt fish with magnetic strips out of a box and then combine the letter sounds to make words. There were others, things so far on the fringes of my memory that I know they are there, but I can't quite make them out. We would sit on the living room carpet and play as though these were "real" games and not educational-- she was tricky like that! I remember Little Golden Books and their endearing animation that drew me to look at pages even if I couldn't quiet read them. My favorite was about a little girl and her first day in Kindergarten. And I remember a set of encyclopedias with a world full of fascinating adventure and knowledge.

                I remember the tiny library at my elementary school. I think it was at one time a janitor's closet it was so small. It smelled like warm, old, paper and dust. I was obsessed with one book there and I would sit in the shadowy room leaned against the bookshelf and read it during my class' library time, even though I knew I was checking it out-- "Annie E. Lee and the Wooden Skates." It was the story of the youngest daughter of Robert E. Lee and at least a portion of the story revolved around a pair of wooden ice skates. Again, there are pictures in my head of a sketched little girl in her big Southern dress and furry hat and muff skating across the ice in the special gift from her father  at the end of the book.

                When my Mom had to go back to work we became what was called latch-key kids, except instead of returning to an empty house afterschool my siblings and I would walk three blocks from school to the public library where we would work on homework with all the other kids until our parents came to claim us. At least in theory. I made friends with the two college aged library aides. They were a girl and a boy who spent a lot of time sarcastically bickering in what I now realize was probably a flirtation. They would allow me to ride the book cart up and down the aisles in the Children's section as they shelved books and whispered snide comments to each other. Now that I think about it…she may really have disliked him.

                It was here that I mastered the Dewey decimal system and the card catalog and decided when I grew up, I wanted to be a librarian. It was in the Children's section I also found my new obsession, The Lonely Doll books. The stories were told with beautiful, vivid photos of the characters-- Father and Baby bear, two stuffed Teddy bears, and Edith (yes I had to look her up)the lonely little porcelain doll who they take into their loving family. When I got older I moved to the adult side of the library where I began reading the young adult literature. Books by Lois Duncan, Joan Lowery Nixon, and Torey Hayden. I didn't go for the books other preteen girls like my sister had started reading like those famous Judy Blume books. To this day I don't know why Margaret wanted to have a word with God or what was so Super about Fudge.

                In the fourth grade I read one of the most significant books of my youth, "I Trissy." Yes, she was a spunky girl, but more importantly she had divorced parents. I had divorced parents. I only had one other friend with divorced parents and she had moved away, (Hey Becky, you made it into one of my blogs!) I went to a Catholic school. No one's parents were divorced (or if they were none of us knew.) But Trissy's parents were divorced and I cried when I discovered what catharsis was--to see my feelings and thoughts splashed across the pages. I knew reading could be about adventure, and escape, but I didn't know it could be about identity and solidarity. I knew I could imagine myself in a characters adventure, I didn't know I could imagine a character in mine!

                I always read books but sometime around fifth grade it got harder. I didn't know it at the time but it turns out I was dyslexic. (Yes, my blog title makes sense now!) Because I was gifted it wasn't diagnosed until I was in college. Until then, I just thought I was stupid. All those years of hearing "doesn't work to her ability" were not explained until much later and I spend the next few years struggling. Reading was my addiction the way kids today play video games or watch TV. But teachers sucked my love of reading away. Making us read terrible, boring books. In Sixth grade, Scott O'Dell's "The Black Pearl" almost killed me. (Does Scott O'Dell give a kick back to schools for forcing kids to read his books?)

                 Textbooks, which were my downfall, were an illegible jumble of meaningless splotches. Later it was explained to me that my particular type of dyslexia made mechanical language hard to decipher. I could read a novel because my brain could make a movie out of the words, but a textbook was useless. I could photographically recall what each page looked like, where there was a picture, what information was written about, but only because I attached it to the auditory lesson that was taught in conjunction with that page. I could even see the shapes of the paragraphs in my head, like puzzle pieces, but the words, undecipherable, meaningless. The problem being, You THINK you can read. You think you know the words when you look at them. Your brain doesn't actually register that they have no significance. When you finish the paragraph, you can't quite recall anything you read, no matter how many times you read it.

                So, by the time I reached high school I was sort of burnt out on reading. I could have fallen by the wayside at that time, lost my passion for reading completely, if not for a dumb Christmas present. The Christmas I turned 14 my dad gave me a giant book for a present. It was bigger than the Bible! It was probably the first hard cover book I had owned. It sucked! Who buys a 14 year old girl a book for Christmas? The book was "It" by Stephen King and it not only renewed my passion for reading, and hooked me on Stephen King for life, it completely ruined my Winter break. At first I wasn't going to read it, but at the urging of my father to "just give it a try" I cracked open the cover. I was mesmerized. I had NEVER read anything like this. Horror. Graphic and frightening horror. A terrifying clown who eats children. Good God! I spent every waking moment with that book. I huddled in my bed night and day (with my closet doors closed tightly.) I made a sandwich with the book open on the counter. I dressed with the book laid open on my bed. I never attacked a book so veraciously as I did that book. And a whole new world was opened to me. Until that time books were pretty much about spunky little girls, and they all ended happily. I didn't realize there were other stories out there. After that I started reading again. Which was very lucky for me, because after that I read the second most important book of my life.

                When I was about 15 I read "The Outsiders." I'll admit, I was inspired by a movie full of hot boys, (perhaps my first memory of thinking…"hmmmm. Boys are kinda hot.") But that book touched me in a way the movie hadn't. The writing was perfect. The characters were the most authentic I had ever read. They talked like real teenagers. They thought like I did. They felt like I did. There was a ragged honesty in their story that fascinated me. They were genuine. They were not so much characters, they were friends. They were like people I might actually know. This was when I learned about Voice. These characters had voices. Real voices that spoke to me. Inspired me. That's when I discovered the most amazing thing, it was written by a sixteen year old girl. A girl like me had not only breathed life into these characters, she had published a novel (four in fact.) I was in awe.

                Later that year, my tenth grade English teacher Ms. Main asked us to write a character description. I described a boy who might have been found in this book because I was obsessed with it. When it was done I suddenly realized, I wanted to know this character's story. He had appeared in my head and he had started speaking to me. His voice, his story was in my head. I opened a spiral notebook and started writing what I was hearing-- what he was seeing and feeling. He quickly evolved into a secondary character when a spunky girl turned up in my story. I filled the first spiral notebook and I started another. I wrote and wrote.

                Eventually a friend (There you are again Becky!) asked me if she could read it. I handed over the first notebook and kept writing. She read and made editor's notes. She offered observations and questions (but never direction.) She became my first audience quickly followed by my poor father. I would sit near him while he repaired the car or made dinner and read from my "novel." Let me be honest, it was horrible. I still have it and it was tragically awful. But Becky kept reading it and Dad kept listening, or at least pretending to listen (I do not think I'm a good enough mother to have listened to that crap for that long.) As our group of friends saw Becky and I swapping the notebooks they started asking to read it  too. Multiple spiral notebooks circulated our group. Like a living soap opera my story grew, changed, rambled, and they read and discussed and encouraged me to write more. I had fans!

                I knew then that I wanted to be a writer. My whole life had been grooming me for it. Like all young people I believed I could do it. I believed there was an audience for my voice. But like all young people life happens and derails our best laid plans, for better and for worse. I took another path and after I quit school my first year at college I abandoned my writing the way I had abandoned reading so many years before. I became busy living my own story and I didn't have the time to write someone else's. Except, I didn't stop hearing the voices. Characters tromped through my brain constantly, telling me their stories, introducing me to their friends and begging me to solve their problems.

                 While I stopped putting pen to paper, I never really stopped creating. I would have dialogs with them while I did laundry, and washed dishes, and drove my car. When we finally got a home computer I sat down and tried to write one of these stories but I was discouraged by my incessant need to edit and re-edit sections rather than move forward, seeking perfection rather than doing what I had as a teenager, and just letting it pour out, to be fixed later.  By the time our computer finally gave up to the Blue Screen of death, and all my work was lost, I was so disheartened I couldn't start over.

                Still, I couldn't make my brain stop making up stories. Stories I never shared with anyone. Every once in a while I would jot down a sentence that popped into my head. All over my house are small memo pads with strange scribbling that mean nothing to anyone but me. An observation, a line of dialog, a description. Some I cannot even recall what they meant, or who's story they were a part of, but I kept them. I kept them for some reason I didn't understand. I almost forgot about being a writer. I may have completely forgotten, except for these scraps of paper.

                Then one day my children's school librarian quit and they couldn't find anyone to replace her. The PTA meeting I was at was discussing the option of possibly having a library run by parent volunteers. We were informed we couldn't do that, but if a parent wanted to go take the district test they could be hired by the school to be the librarian. Hmm. I could make a good librarian. Didn't I want to be a librarian when I was a kid? And I loved to read, even if all I ever had time for now were cheesy, "bodice ripper" romance novels. I volunteered to take the test which was only offered twice a year and signed up.

                By the time the test came around our school had hired a librarian, but I figured, what the hell, and scored so well I was placed in the top position on the hiring list. I was placed almost immediately in a school library near my home and had a wonderful ten years there. Many of the books I loved as a child found their way to my library in those years. So did comic books, and books about skateboarding and guitars and paintball. I took a library full of unopened "classics" and filled it with things kids wanted to read. I wanted to inspire at least one child to the love of reading I enjoyed. I wanted one child to find their escape, or their identity, or their passion in a book I had helped them discover. I loved being an accidental librarian. All those years I had allowed my life to take a detour, and yet, here I was in the first job I ever wanted, (other than being a mom.)

                Somewhere in those years I decided to write again. I had become a part of an online community, a message board of friends around the world. And some of these random strangers had made random remarks about my ability to share a vivid story in text. They encouraged me to start writing with more of a purpose. So I started over.  Sometimes I struggled over writing something bigger on my computer, many stories with many beginnings on paper, but endings in my head. Unfinished. I decided I should write something smaller, shorter, just so I could actually finish something. Something like I wrote on the message boards. I seemed to be able to write short non-fiction essays about my experiences. I wrote about a pie. Not just any pie, but the pie an overwhelmed woman desired to save her sanity in an uncontrolled life. My life. A true, but humorously embellished account inspired by a line I had written on one of those scrapes of paper stuffed in a drawer.  I edited and refined it and shared it with my community. The first intentional writing I had shared since my days in high school. It was received so well that I offered it to the community of people I knew in real life. I shopped it around to some online magazines, but having little understanding of the world of publishing, especially online, I gave up pretty early. But I challenged myself to write something else and about six months later I slow-churned a little piece about marriage and cars. Again, I gave up on doing anything with it, outside of sharing it with a few folks online.

                Then I got sick, and sicker. When I was at my lowest possible place: sick, weak and discouraged, the universe decided to throw me another curve ball. The day before Thanksgiving two years ago I received a letter from the school district laying me off, taking my job and my benefits. I was pissed. And then I was ready to move forward. One of the reasons I had stopped writing, the thing I used most to discourage myself, was that I couldn't possibly really become a writer, because I wasn't educated enough. Whenever I read a book I liked I would read the "about the author" blurb in the back. I always hoped that one, just one, would say "under-educated housewife"  but they never did. They were always people with Master's degrees. Sure Lana Turner could be discovered at a soda fountain, but writers seemed less lucky, and more educated. Apparently talent wasn't everything in the publishing world. They wanted credentials too.

                When I found myself suddenly without a job and on the mend I had an epiphany of sorts. I HAD read a book where those credentials didn't apply. I had fallen in love with a book written by a 16 year old girl. A book so well written that it was commonly assigned reading in schools today. A book that had been turned into a movie which launched the careers of some of Hollywood's biggest names today. I started reading books about writing books, and I realized I knew a lot of these things already. I decided to take a college class. I started with that first online class and then continued to more risky face to face classes. Where I once felt incompetent as a young adult I suddenly felt exceedingly capable. Sure, I still struggle with the cursed semicolon. I don't know that I will ever figure that sucker out; and I have a tendency to overuse commas in run-on sentences, but I suddenly found something that had been missing from my life-- A Voice.

                 Something clicked and I realized that I was meant to be writing. It didn't really matter what, as long as I kept writing. I had a talent. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. Music is chicken scratch to my dyslexic eyes. (someone remind me to tell the story of my first music recital one day. It’s a riot!) I can't paint or sculpt or draw a stick figure with proper proportions, but I finally discovered my talent. I don't know why it took me so long. It was there all along. Maybe I just wasn't ready to accept it until now, but all those experiences, when laid out in sequence seem to tell the story of a writer waiting to become.

                And here I am. A writer. Writing and being read. During this holiday season I decided to write a reflection on the greatest gift I ever received.  My greatest gift wasn't just a book, it was all of them. It was the gift of reading; from the first home-made games to the massive novel I got for Christmas. It was every book where I saw myself as a character. Every book where I shivered with fear, cried with heartbreak, laughed with empathy or soared with passion.  It was every book that added strength to my character and voice to my soul. So this Holiday season, when you are standing in a long line at Toys R Us or Target, make sure that somewhere in your cart is the greatest gift of all-- the gift of inspiration.