May 4, 2012
I am not always a nice person. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” was one of my mother’s favorite sayings, but sometimes…
Joe and Amanda and I went out to dinner Friday night to celebrate the end of the FCAT’s, Florida’s terrifying standardized tests. We had a wonderful time at Harry’s downtown. Joe had a weird martini, I had a normal martini, and Amanda had a Shirley Temple. She was in high spirits, and decked herself with Mardi Gras beads, which she shared with the large plaster alligator next to her.
After dinner we headed to Mochi, where the frozen yoghurt is self-serve and the toppings range from blueberries through chocolate chips to Cap’n Crunch. Amanda boogied down the street ahead of us, but waited for us at the corner before crossing.
On the corner by Mochi we encountered a fair number of people who call themselves Warriors for Christ. A young man with a crewcut was standing on a milk crate. I believe he had a megaphone. Proselytizing Christians irritate me anyway, and anyone who calls himself a Warrior is down ten points with me before he opens his mouth.
I THINK I WOULD QUALIFY AS A GENERAL HEATHEN
He did open his mouth, and addressing me, asked, “Do you care about Jesus?” I should have just said no, of course, and continued on my way. Instead I replied, “I don’t give a shit about Jesus,” (I may have used the f-word instead; I’m not sure.) “You’re going to go to hell,” he told me, as I walked on with Amanda. “And you’re going to take that little girl with you. You have a responsibility to that child.” Amanda made some gesture which I caught out of the corner of my eye; I believe she was flipping a bird.
iMAGE FROM PHOTOBUCKET BY LIBERAL NC
Amanda does believe in God and Jesus, and cares about them both when she thinks of it. I asked her whether that boy’s Jesus was the one she knows, and she said no. We agreed that the only Jesus worth knowing is all about love, not hate and aggression. After we left Mochi, we crossed the street to avoid the asshole, and encountered another young Warrior who asked if we would like a leaflet. I politely told her no thank you, and we went on.
Now the last thing I need is a callow youth telling me I have a responsibility to Amanda. As I fume about it now, I make lists of all the responsible things I do that are focused on her, and wonder whether he’s ever been responsible for more than a goldfish.
Although I am not a believer, I usually try to respect the beliefs of others. I do find it annoying that strangers feel entitled to interrogate me, but I know that many Christians feel that it is part of their duty to spread the Gospel, as it is the only path to their Heaven. They’re supposed to be fishers of men (and women and children too, I suppose).
SOURCE: CLIPART.OCHRISTIAN.COM
So I put up with them when they call to me on the street, and even when they knock on my door. Part of me is sorry I was rude, and gave a rude example to Amanda. But a bigger part of me gets a giggle whenever I think of it. Joe was happy that we had dinner AND a show. I think perhaps I should drink martinis more often.
Feb 24, 2012
After I retired I went searching for a dog. I knew just what I wanted: female, two to five years old, around thirty-five pounds, short-haired, good with cats and kids. I read the classifieds, and went to two adoption fairs, but most of the dogs were too big for me, or too tiny for Joe.
Then I went to PetsMart, where rescue groups display adoptable pets on Saturdays. The cages were lined up in a wide aisle by the beds and blankets. The dogs were standing and wagging, pacing and whining, lying with heads on paws and ears twitching. Most of the dogs were very big or very old, and then I came to Dixie. She was sitting up straight with eager ears and cocked head, her eyes looking right into mine. She had a glossy black coat with a crooked white blaze down her chest, and her left front leg was missing.
I went straight to the adoption table. Laurie, from Puppy Hill Farm, told me Dixie had arrived just that morning, and they didn’t know much about her. She was a lab cross, seven months old. Her leg had been amputated after a car accident, and the owners had surrendered her to the vet. The vet’s staff described her as “very sweet.”
They gave me a leash, and Dixie and I went for a walk. She didn’t pull very much or very hard, except in the dog food aisle, and she was remarkably calm. Her tail wagged at cats and children, and when people stopped to talk to her, she didn’t jump up on them. When I sat outside on a planter she sat right in front of me and gave me her enthusiastic attention. I told myself that the trauma of the accident and surgery and the month at the vet had matured her, so it wasn’t really like adopting a puppy. I weighed her in the vet’s waiting room, and she was thirty six pounds. Already seven months old – I was sure she wouldn’t grow much bigger. And with only three legs, she would probably be comfortable with my slow walking.
I told Laurie that I did have to check with my husband before bringing home a three-legged dog, but I was sure it would be alright with him. Since I couldn’t reach him on the phone, I hurried home. It was alright with him, though he might have been happy to forego my imitation of the puppy’s eager expression and posture. I raced back to the store.
THE FEMINIST GRANDMA PLAYS PUPPY
Suddenly I had the pre-adoption jitters. Life was simple with only a cat. What was I getting myself into? Though I’d been planning this for so long, it still felt like my usual impulsive decision, guided by passion rather than reason.
But those yearning puppy eyes had me yearning right back. So I filled out the forms, and signed the papers. I promised that if it didn’t work out, I would return Dixie to Puppy Hill Farm rather than take her to the pound. And Laurie helped me pick out what I needed: a crate, leash, food, a chew bone.
I snapped on the new leash and Dixie and I walked to the car. I boosted her up into the front seat, where I had put our old beach quilt. I petted her and talked to her all the way home, and she was very well-behaved. We went for a walk around the neighborhood. I let her explore as she pleased, and for an untrained dog and owner, we did very well, with no pulling or yanking. That night, as she lay on the floor between our recliners, Joe acknowledged that Dixie was a very fine dog.
I have no allegiance to the old Confederacy, and I didn’t want a dog named Dixie, especially a dog who looked a lot like a lab in profile, and a lot like a pitbull from the front, a dog who lunged and barked at pick-up trucks. We tried out a dozen names. Joe rejected Callie; I refused to name her Stumpy. I’ve named my previous dogs after food – Tuna, Oyster, Chilidog – and so I finally settled on Trisket, changing the spelling so I wouldn’t feel like a commercial.
MY DOGS
A week after I got Trisket, we began obedience classes. I had three particular goals for her: to walk on a leash without pulling, to go to her bed (one in each room) when told, and not to jump up on people. She also learned to sit, wait, lie down, and stay. She learned to turn in a circle when told to dance, and ring a bell when she wants to go out. At the command ‘Leave It,’ she will reluctantly refrain from eating food or more disgusting things left by the side of the road, or keep walking at a steady pace, only her head turning, when another dog challenges her.
THE PROUD GRADUATE
The training made her a wonderful companion, and though she grew to fifty pounds, I was happy with my choice. Still, there is one behavior we haven’t been able to train away. All my dogs have been good eaters, gobbling breakfast and dinner the minute the bowl hit the floor. But Trisket is more than a mere enthusiast. She steals food every chance she gets – from the pantry, the table, the trash.
We try to keep Trisket out of the kitchen when we’re not there. We close her in the two front rooms, shutting the sliding door. But her friend Ouzel, like all cats, always wants to be on the other side of a closed door, and with a persistent paw she can inch it open enough to slip through. Trisket follows. Joe finally put a hook and eye on the door. As long as we remember to latch it, the food is safe.
Still, there are three humans in the house. If we are each inattentive once every three weeks, Trisket has unsupervised access to the kitchen once a week. It’s not that we’re stupid, it’s a question of focus. When Amanda was little I would ask her, ‘What is Trisket thinking about?’ and she would answer, ‘Food’. Although I am quite fond of food myself, I occasionally allow my mind to be distracted by other things, such as my afternoon nap or world peace.
When Trisket gets into the pantry she has a great time. She has torn open bags of flour and cornmeal and dragged them to her bed in the living room. We find granola bar wrappers in her crate. Once she ate a huge box of raisins.
Raisins are allegedly toxic, but the things that are supposed to poison dogs don’t seem to affect Trisket. When she was new to our family, she stole a giant chocolate bar from the pantry, and ate the whole thing. I called the vet and told her Trisket had eaten seven ounces of chocolate. The vet advised me to squirt hydrogen peroxide down her throat with a medicine dropper. Trisket was amenable, and after two doses she vomited copious amounts of slimy chocolate foam. In the middle of the pool was an entire stick of butter, unchewed. I’m so sorry I don’t have a photo to share with you.
To keep her out of the garbage, we tried a dog discouragement device with a red plastic flap on a spring, which we would set on top of the trash can. If she tried to get into the trash, it would fly open in her face with a loud snap. But it would also fall off the trash can, leaving it unguarded.
Even more than trash, or ingredients from the pantry, Trisket likes real food from the table. Bob and Arupa came over one night for dinner. Arupa is a vegetarian. I prepared a delicious cheesy vegetable casserole in a big pyrex pan, and set it on the kitchen table to cool. When I returned to the kitchen, Trisket had eaten a third of the dish. We ordered a pizza.
In obedience classes I learned to use rewards to train Trisket – a clicker, a cheery ‘Good dog!’, a kibble. But stealing food provides its own instant reward. Even if I believed punishment worked and were willing to use it, I would have to catch her in the act, and of course I never do. When I come in the room, there is the mess or the empty wrapper, and Trisket runs off to her cage.
Trisket is eight years old now, and sometimes I speculate about what kind of dog we will get when she is gone. Joe has an easy answer: our next dog will be a cat.
Feb 3, 2012
“Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance; everybody thinks it’s true.” (Paul Simon – Train in the Distance)
The whistle calls, “We’re on our way, we’re leaving you behind.” The roar of the wheels on the rails comes closer, louder, more urgent, and then fades away, promising new places, new romance.
I love trains. When I was at boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, I took two trains home to Ann Arbor – Boston to Albany, Albany to Detroit. It was Christmas, and the Boston train was filled with kids going home from prep schools and colleges. We took over the club car with our guitars, pocket flasks, and bags of sandwiches and cake. From Boston to Albany it was the great traveling Honey Hunt.
At Abbot Academy in the sixties there wasn’t a lot of boyfriend activity. Twice a week we could walk in pairs to town, so if we weren’t too scared of getting caught we could meet a local boyfriend. On Sunday afternoons after church we could have a caller in the parlor. At dances with boys’ prep schools we could pair up with a boyfriend if we had one, or we could love the one we were with. “Love” meant dancing as close as we could get away with, or sneaking off to make out behind the bushes.
So sex was hard to find. Of course there must have been lesbians, but I was never aware of them. Though a few of the teachers were long-time housemates, lesbian love seemed so exotic and unreal. Surely these dowdy spinsters weren’t involved. The teachers were in the same category as parents and other impossibly old people: we shielded our minds from any thoughts of their sex lives.
At the same time, we were obsessed with sex and romance. I had barely been kissed, but I was a virgin with aspirations – the only girl in the tenth grade dorm who admitted she wanted to get laid, the expert in sex who told the others everything I had learned (from books) about free love.
I had two boyfriends: Charles, a lanky senior at a progressive prep school in Vermont, and Toby, a pudgy Harvard sophomore. Until we moved from Cambridge to Ann Arbor I could see them on holidays – Charles and I went to a street dance in Boston, Toby took me to a night club. But in boarding school the point of a boyfriend was letters – after lunch we crowded around the mail slots hoping for something other than a letter from our mother. Both Charles and Toby obliged.
With a love affair that was essentially epistolary, we could have as many boyfriends as we wanted, or could get. So I sat in the club car on the train from Boston, singing harmony and hoping for romance.
Jamie McPherson* went to Groton. He was suave and preppy, with tousled hair and soulful eyes.
JAMIE WAS CUTER
When we learned that we were both going on to Detroit, we were a natural pair. He was joining a friend for the two hour layover in Albany; so we agreed we’d find each other in the club car on the Detroit train.
Union Station in Albany was like a smaller Grand Central: vaulted ceiling, crowds of strangers. No one knew me – I could be whoever I wanted. I loved to try on characters and lives. Once in a restaurant I pretended I was a French student and spoke no English. On a plane I presented myself as a thirty-year-old mother of three; this struck me as glamorous. It was modeled on my sister-in-law Esther, whom I adored.
I bought a ticket for a couchette for $11 and then wandered around with an ice cream cone, people-watching. When no one spoke to me and gave me a chance for role play, I sat in the waiting room with my novel, happy to know I had a date for the night train.
ALBANY UNION STATION
Jamie and I found each other, and went on to the dining car. White tablecloths, stemmed glasses, flowers, and the black night with flashes of light. The waiter was smiling and benevolent, but we didn’t have the nerve to order a drink. Though I wanted a steak, I had a salad. If Jamie saw how I liked to eat, he might think I was fat. Coffee was sophisticated so we ordered two demitasses, but barely drank it, and then made our way through the swaying cars to my couchette.
The couchette was a child’s delight. The seat unfolded into a narrow bed under a big window; the sink unhooked from the wall to cover the toilet. The sleeping car porter had unfolded and made up the bed. We explored all the cunning devices, and then lay on top of the blanket and began to explore each other.
I had a problem. Of course I wanted to go all the way – wasn’t I a proponent of free love? Jamie was as cute as they come, and I could lose my virginity on the night train! But I had my period. I had to tell him before he got past my bra, but then he would think that I thought that he thought…oh dear.
Somehow I told him, and we both agreed we would simply have to stop above the waist. If he had heard of fellatio, he didn’t have the nerve to ask me. So we cuddled and kissed, and for me it was True Love. He’d never seen a bra in full light so I let him examine mine. I showed him how a tampon worked, though I didn’t demonstrate on myself. We tried to sleep for a while, tightly spooned, but the bed was too narrow, and eventually he went back to his coach seat.
I woke in the middle of the night in Canada, warm in my bed, and watched the tall pines rushing past, the snow lit by moonlight. Alone, I could savor every word and kiss and touch, and dream of what would come.
I didn’t see Jamie in the morning, and he was going back to school earlier than I. Maybe there would be a letter when I got back to Abbot. My father met me in Detroit, and we drove to Ann Arbor. I didn’t know a soul there; we had moved from Cambridge just before school started, so I spent a lonely Christmas with my annoying family, waiting for my real life to begin again.
CLUB CAR DINING CAR
After a long three weeks I was on the train again, but this time the club car was full of boring businessmen, so I ordered a Coke and settled in with a novel. A Creep sat down next to me, a balding blonde with a red face and a gray suit. He bought me dinner and two rum and sodas, then followed me to my couchette. I opened the door, slipped inside and closed it securely behind me. I have a clear image of him standing stunned, open-mouthed – but it must be an imaginary memory
I spent the night dreaming, awake and asleep, of Jamie. In the morning I dressed in jeans and a sweater, and went back to the dining car for breakfast The waiter brought me water, offered coffee, and said, “Where’s your friend?” And so completely had I obliterated the Creep from my thoughts, so entirely had my dreams been filled with Jamie, that I said, “Oh, he’s not on this train, he’s traveling tomorrow.”.
Back at school I waited for a letter from him – a week, two weeks – and then it came, on high class cream-colored notepaper, black ink, a small clear script. “I’m glad I met a girl like you.” I puzzled over that line like a biblical scholar, trying to wring from it some pledge. I consulted with my friends – were they words of love or was he calling me a slut? I clung to his closing: Love, Jamie. I wrote him back, pages and pages of witty stories of my Christmas at home, full of scorn for my parents and stupid teachers, warm accounts of after hours revels in the dorm, and probably a bit of poetry.
I never heard from him again. It was a romance as beautiful and brief as a bubble. Charles and Toby’s letters kept coming, and there were more dances, more trains. Jamie was a game, Charles and Toby were games. Men only ceased to be a game when I began raising a son, and realized that these aliens beings were simply human.
I took a train from Jacksonville to New York a few years ago – a nightmare of crying babies, a seat designed to prevent sleep, and a club car full of drunken middle-aged people joking about penis size. Trains aren’t what they used to be, but then, neither am I.
*Fake name of course
Dec 9, 2011
A few weeks ago I wrote about finding a church that I loved, but Amanda rejected. We continued our quest, visiting several, and now I believe we have found the church for us.
Two friends told me that the United Church of Gainesville had excellent children’s programs. I knew they were a progressive church with a social justice orientation. They were the source of our first HOME Van donation nine years ago: in a single service they collected 189 pairs of socks, 189 jars of peanut butter, and $189. They also participate in the Interfaith Hospitality Network, in which member churches take turns providing temporary shelter, food and services to homeless families. So I thought we’d give it a try.
The people mingling outside the church were all white, but in the entrance Amanda was happy to see a girl she knew from kindergarten, and we sat with that family. The sanctuary is a beautiful space of wood and windows. People were welcoming, and the sermon was thought-provoking. The children gathered in front for a story, we sang to everyone who had a birthday that week, and then Amanda went off with the children for Sunday School.
PHOTO FROM TRADITIONALMASS.ORG
As a child I went to an Episcopalian church. To me, church is dogma and ritual and music. The only dogma I’ve found at UCG is a commitment to welcome everyone no matter who they are or what they believe. A part of me asks, So what’s the point? The congregation has created lovely rituals, but they lack the mystery, history and solemnity I loved as a child. There is beautiful music of all sorts – classical, Dixieland, bluegrass -, but the hymnal seems to consist entirely of hymns written since 1960. The lyrics are clunky progressive pieties, and give me the willies, though there are few I would disagree with.
Still, Amanda enjoyed her time with the children, and wanted to return. I found, as I always do in church, that the program of listening, speaking, silence and singing is a calming time that taps into wells of memory and grief I rarely visit.
Of all the churches we visited, Amanda liked this one the best. I had my doubts, but I went to a meeting for prospective members. We sat in a circle to say why we were there, and listened to members and ministers who told us what the church means to them.
I heard the same words over and over: community, commitment to service and social justice, spiritual seeking. I thought desperately, “I don’t want community. I’m drowning in community!” I’ve been in Gainesvillle over thirty years, and have many old friends whom I see too seldom. As for service, my hands are full with the HOME Van and school volunteering, not to mention Amanda. I don’t want any more obligations, or any more guilt. Finally, when it comes to a search for truth and meaning, I am like someone born with no sense of taste. I don’t miss it, and in fact take comfort in the thought that we are tiny specks in an unfeeling, unthinking universe.
HUBBLESITE.ORG/GALLERY/ALBUM/THE_UNIVERSE
But Amanda likes going to this church, and feels she is part of the group. We go almost every Sunday now, and bit by bit I am less of a stranger. I’ve learned a few names, and I’ve signed us up to help host dinner for the homeless families who are staying at the church. I like the thoughtful, honest sermons of the four ministers, and my prickly, judgmental voice is becoming fainter. We may have found our church.
NEXT WEEK: The No Bird
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Nov 17, 2011
I was looking for a church for Amanda and me. I am not a believer, but she attended church sporadically before she came to live with us, and her belief in God and Jesus are important to her.
FROM "A CHILD IS BORN" BY MARGARET WISE BROWN. ILLUSTRATIONS BY FLOYD COOPER
click
Amanda has been self-conscious about her white grandparents, and undoubtedly will be again. I wanted a church where we could both be comfortable, where a white grandma was accepted. More important, I wanted a church where Amanda would hear more about love and forgiveness, about doing good works and rejoicing in God’s creation, than about possession by demons and the fires of hell.
It was a puzzle. Where could I find a church for both of us – black Christian child and white atheist woman? I heard of two “integrated” churches, and went on their websites. They were big evangelical churches, and their photo albums didn’t look very integrated to me – a smattering of black faces among thousands of white. And their missions and messages disturbed me, insisting that Jesus is the one and only Way. Maybe searching for a Christian church that doesn’t focus on Christianity is unrealistic, but it can’t be good for Amanda to think Grandma and Grandpa are headed for hell. We ended by visiting four different churches.
Twenty years ago I took my foster children to a black United Methodist church. I really like the minister there, who told me, “God doesn’t see color.” The Methodists seem to accept that there may be various paths to truth, and they sing a lot of the hymns I grew up with. So on Palm Sunday, Amanda and I dressed up and headed to church.
Amanda chose a pew in the middle. At first she sat stiffly, two feet away from me, looking a little worried. But as the familiar sights and sounds sank in – the praise choir clapping and singing, people waving their hands, swaying – she began to relax.
PITTSBURGH GOSPEL CHOIR from IMAGES.GOOGLE.COM
I sang enthusiastically. At home I sing constantly, and it often aggravates Joe and Amanda. He says, “Please stop singing,” and she simply says, “Grandma.” But in church she didn’t object, and soon she was singing too.
The minister welcomed all the visitors, saying, “You are in the right place, you are where you belong.” She looked right at us.
It was a special day. They were baptizing a baby, maybe a year old. She had a great mop of soft black hair, and creamy tan skin. Her black father and white mother were surrounded by family in all shades. They passed the baby to the minister, and when the water touched her face, she cried. Amanda watched closely.
The minister introduced Michelle Duster, a descendant of Ida B. Wells. She told us that while she was proud of her great grandmother, the anti-lynching crusader, all our ancestors were strong. They were fighters and survivors. They survived the Middle Passage, slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow. And none of them did it alone.
IDA B. WELLS
click
As far as I know, these were not my ancestors, but in this church Amanda would learn the values and history I hope she will cherish. In this church I heard the messages that matter to me – messages about service, community, justice. Church is for believers and seekers, and I am a comfortable atheist. But gospel music makes my soul sing, and I love to be in a place where people are rejoicing and trying to be good. Here Amanda could find community and strength, and this is the church I would choose.
Unfortunately, our next visit was a disaster. The minister called all the children up to the front, and Amanda of course went too. But they had been rehearsing a reading, and the group leader sent Amanda back because she didn’t have a role in it. She was mortified, and NEVER wants to go back. I had to resume my search.
NEXT WEEK: One More Day for Thanksgiving
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Oct 21, 2011
I grew up in houses full of books. Book shelves are as fundamental to my sense of home as pictures on the walls. When I visit a friend, I head to the bookcase, and imagine moving in for a weekend so I can read her books. When Iris and I, both single mothers, decided to share a house, I was thrilled to see that she had an almost empty bookcase, then dismayed to discover that she considered books clutter, and used the shelves for ornaments and organizing.
My husband is resigned to my clutter, and he himself has shelves of natural history books, but he was pleased when I spent the first week of my retirement reducing the collection by a third. (Thus making room for more books.) With less money, I did resolve to rely more on the library, but I still have little bursts of book-buying, and my family gives me books for Christmas. I try to keep the collection culled by giving away anything that isn’t a keeper.
I always pack books when I travel. I like to take books about the place I’m going, and a fat Victorian novel for a vacation from the vacation. One is not enough. Suppose I don’t like it, or worse, suppose I finish it. Once, alone in Nova Scotia, I found myself on a Sunday with nothing to read. The only store open in Cheticamp was a drugstore, with a tiny book rack of mostly junk. I found an Agatha Christie, but it was a quick read, not nearly enough to fill the tired hours after morning hikes, and the long nightly stretches of insomnia.
MY B&B IN BADDECK, NOVA SCOTIA HAD A BOOKCASE
L'ACADIEN TRAIL NEAR CHETICAMP: GREAT VIEWS AND MOOSE TURDS, BUT NO BOOKS
When I travel by car, books are no problem – even for a weekend I have two or three in my tote bag. By air, with a small suitcase, it’s more of a challenge. In France I had a used paperback of Les Miserables, torn into five sections for easy portability in my purse, though I had to overcome a lifetime of training to mutilate a book.
An e-reader is the obvious solution, but I am a technophobe. I hate new gizmos. I grumbled when I had to learn to use a computer for work. Answering machine, cell phone, digital camera – I could write an essay about my long resistance and eventual submission to each of them.
So I bought a Kindle before our trip to South Africa with great reluctance. First I borrowed my stepdaughter Leah’s for a couple of days, to see how I liked it. I was amused to see what an ambitious and improbable collection of free books she had downloaded, including War and Peace, and the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens. I read a few pages of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I didn’t know whether it was the Autobiography or the Kindle that I liked, but I went ahead and bought one anyway. And I discovered the appeal and peril of the Kindle.
First, I downloaded a list of free books for Kindle, and a list of free children’s books. Then I went shopping. I’d never read any Wilkie Collins – I downloaded the The Woman in White and the Moonstone. Willa Cather’s My Antonia. Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities. To my shame, Virginia Woolf’s fiction has always been beyond me. I decided to give her another try, and downloaded Night and Day. For Amanda’s bedtime story I found Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, E. Nesbit, L. Frank Baum, and Hans Christian Andersen.
A character in The Moonstone uses The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe as his guide in all situations; it’s free on Kindle. The Moonstone plot turns on opium, so I found Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. I’d always heard Edward Gibbon was the great prose stylist of the 18th century, so I got all six volumes of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Now I understood Leah’s collection.
Everything had been free so far, and though I may never read the Gibbon, no harm done. Then I went on a spree. I had already read a lot of non-fiction about South Africa, but fiction illuminates a place in a way non-fiction can’t. I bought thirteen contemporary South African novels. Amanda is a reluctant reader, but loves anything with a screen. Ten easy-reading children’s books. I flew off to Johannesberg with nineteen novels and fifteen children’s books in my purse (not to mention Gibbon).
I loved the Kindle, and delighted in its special features. With one click I can look up almost any word in the New Oxford Dictionary. I can highlight and store passages that appeal to me. I can search a word, which helps when a minor character whom I’ve forgotten reappears. I often mis-lay a book when I’m in the middle of it, and wander the house trying to find it. If I remember to put my Kindle back in its garish neoprene cover, it stands out wherever I leave it.
MY HIGHLY VISIBLE KINDLE
Buying books on Kindle is easier than ordinary internet shopping. It may be too easy. When I hear of a book on NPR, or read a review in the New Yorker, I am much more likely to buy it. Most of these are happy impulses. I’ve read a fascinating account of two teachers in Colorado at the beginning of the twentieth century, and a warm and witty novel about a widowed British colonel and an Indian shop-keeper in Sussex. click click Nothing I buy is very expensive, but even in 2011 ten bucks is ten bucks, and though I never finished the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I still believe a penny saved is a penny earned..
So I traveled around in South Africa and Swaziland, with a book always available for me and for Amanda, and thought I would write an essay in praise of my Kindle. And then we came home. Blissfully I sat in my ancient La-Z-Boy, early in the morning, lamp over my left shoulder, coffee beside me. Home at last. I reveled in the familiar sights, sounds and smells (we DO have a dog), and I looked over at the bookcase.
Every book I saw called up memories – not only of its contents, but of where and who I was when I read it. Books are the most reliable companions, more constant than a lover, less trouble than a dog. But my memories of books are inseparable from their physical presence. The cover entices me, and the book designer’s choices about typography and placement and proportion become part of the reading. click
When I read a book on Kindle, the design disappears. All the technical challenges and choices that permit a book to fly through space and arrive on my Kindle within moments of my request are invisible. The author’s words come to me unmediated, and there’s something exciting about that. But a book on Kindle is like a phone conversation instead of a visit.
I wouldn’t give up my Kindle; there’s nothing like it for travel. Still, when I’m home, I’ll choose the serendipity of a trip to the library or book store, or the familiar volumes that have comforted and nourished me all my life.
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NEXT WEEK: Tidy Me
