Dear Harry,
We spoke about many things on that bench over a year ago, but there is still so much to tell. A year has passed, can you believe it? My first post to this blog was on July 11, lucky 7/11. My anniversary post is on 7/7. Hoping to keep the good luck flowing.
I am a voracious ready, Harry. It does not have to be anything of literary value, I just read everything, food labels, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, road signs, everything. It never stops. I soak it all in, the good, the bad and the ugly, so I decided earlier this year to make a list of books, classic literature mostly, that I needed to read. I put away my fun fiction, my Nora Roberts and Maeve Benchy and picked up Sagan, Salinger and Steinbeck. Ok, not Steinbeck, sorry Mrs. Baxley, The Grapes of Wrath left a sour taste. Jack Kerouac did make the list though and my local library is fairly small, but it had a copy of Kerouac's On the Road. I read this line, "I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost." I paused, reread it, thought, "Man, I've been there."
Not only have I been there, but I've revisited it a few more times than I'd like to admit. I can't speak for other moms, but sometimes the routine, the constant noise, work, home, cook, rinse, repeat, ugh! I wake up and think, "Where is the person I planned to be when I grew up?" I have already spoken about finding my passion and I have definitely spoken about how precious it is to me to be a mom, this does not change that; however, as readers are want to do, we begin to question everything.
I call this my internal battle with meaning of life vs. living of life. This is where intellectual debate battles with water balloon fights, culture vs. fun, reading for pleasure vs. reading for broadening the mind. I am constantly torn and I believe this battle has intensified as a parent/teacher, not lessened. Now I am not just responsible for my intellectual and spiritual growth, I am also responsible for theirs, which leads me to make lists of classical literature I need to read, which leads me to read lines like Kerouac's, which leads to the questioning above and the vicious cycle continues.
Our world grows smaller everyday. My phone now takes me anywhere I want to go with a swipe of my finger. A mere 30 years ago, that same swipe, only got me one number dialed on a rotary phone and I still had at least six numbers to go. Even then, that only led to another phone ringing and the hope that someone was there to answer. Books were our main resource. My mother was proud to be able to provide her children with a complete set of encyclopedias where we could learn about he world around us. She also subscribed to National Geographic and bought the complete ChildCraft series, all in an effort to enlighten and inspire her children. We took museum trips, zoo trips and she was always pointing out some cultural something.
Today, the leather bound encyclopedia has been replaced by Google and sadly, wikipedia. I now follow National Geographic on Twitter and there is a new Cosmos hosted by Carl Sagan's former student. With information so readily available, I found the intellectual in me craving leather bound beauties. I needed to smell paper and ink. I needed my children to see me reading, my students to know there was life outside the internet and video games. I began scoffing at anything I deemed unworthy. If it was pop culture, I did not want to hear about it. I only wanted to discuss the great philosophies of life and debate their meanings. I became obsessed with my own self importance and then as I read Sagan, my almost insignificance in the grand scale that is our universe.
Two things brought me out of my own head, a friend and of course my babies. This blog was inspired in part by an old friend who travels the world taking photographs and sharing the stories of the subjects they display, those human experiences, connections. He always seems to be reading and quoting something prophetic while being humble and approachable. Definitely someone I want to be like when I grow up. A few weeks ago though, he asked if any one had an old video game console he could borrow. He said he needed to get back to basics for a while, connect with the child inside. Hold the phone! Then later that same day, my son wanted to watch Swamp People while singing the entire soundtrack of Frozen. He is eight. I cringed but you are only a kid once, so I left the room, grabbed Kerouac and put on an old episode of Cosmos. A few minutes later, I realize not just one, but all four of my children are on my bed watching Cosmos, asking questions, answering each other and pausing the episode for bathroom breaks, and there it was. My answer as usual lie within the human connections. My friend was right to look for our child inside, that curious, wonderful, full of energy and light and questions youth. He was not leaving his other pursuits behind, he just needed to reconnect with why he was pursuing them and so did I. I sat there and watched several episodes with my babies until the day caught up with them and one by one I put them to bed. I remembered a quote I had read by mathematician Blaise Pascal, ". . . it is much better to know something about everything than everything about something. Such universality is the finest." I had deemed things unworthy where it was not my place and I shut myself off from the real reason to read, curiosity, child like and simple, but still worthy and most of all, joyful. I had become the "haunted life", "the living ghost".
Again, I say thank you to my friend whose photographs and stories inspired me to start this blog a year ago and whose words still remind me that my journey is evolving. I say thank you to my children whose effervescence gives me the energy to evolve and finally, as always,
To you Harry from New Jersey with love from East Texas!
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