(This entry is dedicated to Lynda. The cousin that gifted me with one of her memories and opened my heart to the past.)

This outpouring of my love affair with reading was prompted by a reconnection to family that had been lost for close to 50 years. Cousins came into my life and gave me a sense of family that heretofore was missing. While there were memories that were forgotten and relationships that were lost the familial love came pouring back into my life. One of my cousins told me that the thing she remembers about me was that when I went to live with them during a period of need was that she remembers me reading to her. My heart ached to hear that and yet it was definitely a window into my love of reading.

I don’t know why anyone reads or loves reading, I only know why I do. I am sure that a variety of reasons are hidden in my conscious mind and many of them must overlap and run together. I read to escape and then became addicted. What I was escaping from is irrelevant, what is relevant is that it led to a lifelong desire to read at every free moment, and when there weren’t free moments there was always a way to steal time. I still work on that premise and there will always be dusting to be done in my home.

Very early on I have memories of being on the floor with the newspaper spread out in front of me and being told to “quit pretending that you are reading.”  Very early on there were really no books in my house. Lucky for me I was quite an adventurous child and found a stash of Popular Mechanics magazines in a neighbor’s garage and I would squeeze my body into an undiscoverable place and read and read and read. I could hear my mother calling and was able to block out the sound until I finished that “one more page” that was always there waiting for me. At one point, we lived in an apartment that had “carports” with small wooden closets to store whatever. Once I discovered the hiding place for the lock on the door it became another scrunched up reading spot.

Since there were no books in our house, the library was heaven to me. I’m not sure at what age level I decided that “grown-up” books would be more interesting. I was definitely not old enough to have a library card for the adult section so I did what any semi-delinquent child would do, I hid them on my body and sneaked out. The first book I took was “The Mothers” by Vardis Fisher. I am certain that I chose that title because of my dysfunctional relationship with my own mother. Well, let me tell you, it was not what I expected. The book was about the Donner Party and the ensuing tragedy. Nothing like a bit of cannibalism in a fifth grader’s mind to goad me into further excursions. I do recognize, however, that this tidbit of information that gave me a head start when classroom discussions gave me an opportunity to work cannibalism into the mix. This type of “know-it-all” attitude did nothing to further my popularity amongst classmates.

I did always sneak the books back in that I had taken and basically “trade” them for a new surprise. While there was no one to push me in the right direction for choices, my were based solely on some indescribable force that led me right to the most inappropriate titles.

The next title that I remember as probably outside the range of what a preteen should read was “Lilith” by J. R. Salamanca. Again, I can come up with no reason as to why I chose this other than I had never heard the word “Lilith” and/or the author’s name was close to salamander. Who can fathom the thinking of a preteen’s mind? Again, what a surprise. This is a story of a young man who works in a mental institution who falls in love with a beautiful young woman, Lilith.  It was a portrayal of love and insanity. While I would say that it did help me romanticize my future commitments to the “nut house” (that is what they did with acting out teenagers in the 50s and 60s.) Anyway, who the hell knows how anyone’s immature mind interprets anything, the only thing that is certain is that it fed into a romanticized vision of tragedy in a mind that was looking for any form of escape.

The last title that ranks right up there with the previous two is “Uhuru” by Robert Ruark. Again, who the heck knows why I chose this title? By this time I was in high school and allowed to check books out from the adult section and this is the one book that wasn’t assigned in school that really opened the door to the world and served as an entrance out of my own little corner of America. Ruark chronicles the political turmoil that swept through Kenya, the Congo and is still going on in Africa today. It covers the Mau-Mau uprising, the white colonialists reactions and the period of “freedom” that followed that wasn’t really free.

So, there you have it. A somewhat incomplete introduction to the impact reading has had on my life. It does not explain the stacks of unread books that are slowly taking over the house or the incessant list keeping of “books to read.” I no longer read to escape. I am now a reading glutton that is afraid to miss some vital bit of information that can be gleaned from the minds of others. It makes no sense but thank goodness making sense no longer matters to me!