I Am What I Read

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel...is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

Ursula LeGuin

In glancing over my Book Journal, the notebook where I list the titles of the books I've been reading, I realized that I've been meeting a lot of lovely people in books lately. People like Emma Gant, the fiercely ambitious and determined young journalist in Gail Godwin's Queen of the Underworld. Or Frederica Hatch, the intrepid teenage heroine in Elinor Lipman's My Latest Greivance, as she struggles to forge her own identity in spite of her parent's, two very principled college professors who serve as "dorm parents" in a small New England college. Then, there was Elizabeth Gilbert, as herself, in Eat, Pray, Love, on a voyage of discovery about her corporeal and spiritual life that took her to Italy, India, and Indonesia.

In thinking about the things I've been reading, I can't help but notice some similarities - for the past month, I've been keeping company with several young women striking out to forge their identities and discover their passions. So if what Ursula LeGuin says is true, that the lives of other people, real or imagined, help us understand who we are and what we could become, what have I learned from my meetings with these bright and plucky women, with whom I have absolutely nothing in common? And is it consequential that I've been drawn to stories about young women, when I am clearly no longer young myself?

I think there was a part of my youth that went missing, the part where you rebell, and experiment, and try out several different states of being. When teenagers like Frederica Hatch were questioning their parents beliefs and reaching out to other adults for inspiration, I was quietly ensconced in a girls school, following the nun's rules, and doing my homework each night. When young women like Emma Gant were traveling to Miami, living in a hotel run by refugee Cuban's, and carrying on an affair with a married man, all while making their mark as a reporter on the Miami Star, I was setting up housekeeping in a home inherited from my in-laws and just down the street from my parents. And when Elizabeth Gilbert was traipsing all over the world, tasting life's pleasures, I was raising a toddler.

So I read about their adventures, and sometimes wistfully wonder "what if?" But I'm also inspired by their courage, their inventiveness, their self-confidence. And now, as I embark on the next part of my journey, I can look at them for inspiration. Who knows, I may yet travel the world on a spiritual journey, or make my mark in the world of letters. It's never to late to be young in spirit.

One Deep Breath

Burgeoning blossoms Hastily grow Spreading abundant impatiens It's probably not a coincidence that I plant lots of these in my garden. For one thing, they're easy to grow, and gardening does not come naturally to me. But more likely, it's because these particular flowers and I are so much alike. We're always anxious to grow quickly and become better and more beautiful as fast as possible. Always in a hurry, we are. Always impatiens... for more of One Deep Breath, go here

What Lazy Days of Summer?

I'm sure glad I'm not a teenager anymore. In an article in today's New York Times, writer Alex Williams reports on a "small but growing number" of college bound students for whom summer has become a time of "resume building academic work and all-consuming, often exotic projects to change the world." Apparently there is a growing belief among young people and their parents that "downtime is wasted time," so teenagers are spending their summer months doing everything from advaced prep on their AP classes and early level college courses in basic subjects, to political internships in Washington, and working with impoverished families in the Phillipines. Obviously there is great value in all these activites. Who can argue with furthering your education, or volunteering to help your fellow man? I just can't help feeling saddened that young people believe it's worthless to spend a week at the beach with their family or friends, or to lay on their back porch reading a book. One student interviewed for the article admitted that she didn't have much time for her friends, and philosophized that it was just a "give and take." Another young woman expressed her hope that the "carefree feeling of being young would come out in college." Well, I didn't make it into Harvard, but I'm smart enough to know that you don't get second chances to experience the "carefree feelings of youth."

With this trend toward year round achivement, as with everything in life, the key is finding balance. Teenagers tend to believe that if a little bit of something is good, then a lot is even better, whether that something is drugs and sexual activity or advanced placement classes and volunteering in foreign countries. They aren't always mature enough to find the happy medium which best suits their individual emotional and physical capacities. As their parents, teachers, and society, it's our job to remind them that productive growth experiences really can occur in non-structured situations. Let the rat race wait a little longer - there is plenty of time for that!

Sunday Scribblings-Earliest Memories

Just the other evening I took a trip back in time to "the old neigborhood," the one where my earliest memories would have occured . Mind you, I haven't been back to that area for almost 45 years, so I was somewhat anxious, not knowing how the old place had fared over time. I was pleasantly surprised. Of course there were the requisite McDonald's and Walgreen's on the corner where I recalled The Clock restaurant and Sam's Drugs. But the homes still looked much as I remembered them, and my old house was sporting new windows, and a stylish entry door with beveled glass. The tiny back yard was now surrounded by tall white fencing, so the little round gate that I remember trying desperately to open so I could "get out" was no longer there. But I was amazed to see that small patch of woodland at the end of the street where my grandfather and I would walk our dog, me carrying a miniature Winchester rifle and pretending to be Daniel Boone in the forested hills of Kentucky. Something that had not changed at all was the stone fronted library, which stood just around the corner from our house. I was about age four when my mom and I walked there for the first time. The first wonderful scent of those pages and ink is still stored in my olfactory memory, and as I breathed in the aroma of all those words, printed and bound so beautifully, it was like the breath of life to me. That was the moment I fell in love with books, and I have loved them ever since.

On the last Christmas we spent in that house, I got a little toy piano as a gift. I can clearly recall sitting on the bottom stairway, playing my heart out on that miniature keyboard. My parents must have realized that my desire to play was genuine (or they just couldn't stand the tinny sound of that toy once second longer!) for it was on my next birthday that a real piano appeared in our living room.

It's interesting to me that my clearest early memories all involve things that have become crucial to the center of my life today - books, music, even dog walking! I wonder if early exposure ignites our gentic proclivities, sort of "jump starting" our inherent talents and desires? Or is it that our experiences over the course of a lifetime tend to clarify those early memories, sort of flag them as important in our unconscious mind? Whichever way it works, I know those incidents I now recall so fondly became cornerstones for the things that I love, creating years and years of special memories for me.

Mug Shots

According to novelist Joanne Harris' protaganist in her latest book Gentleman and Players , "you can tell a lot about a teacher's personality from his coffee mug." Well, if that's true, I must be schizophrenic, because all these mugs are mine. Yep, there's mugs here that date back to the first year I set up housekeeping (1976 in case you're keeping track), and as new as the one I bought at the Smithsonian Institute two weeks ago when I was in DC with the school choir. Why so many?

I'm willing to bet that if I looked inside most of your cupboards, you'd have your own motley collection of mugs. We get them as gifts from our friends, our co-workers, our kids, and especially from our students (for those of us who are teachers). I've done quite a bit of mug weeding over the years, and I still have this many left. Do I use them all? Actually, I do. As I stumble into the kitchen each morning, blindly reaching toward my lovely Cuisinart programmable coffee grinder/maker that has my morning brew nicely prepared and steaming hot for me, I'm already in the process of deciding which mug it's going to be. The white bone china with pink roses that I bought not long after my wedding because it "matched" my pink kitchen? The tall slim ironstone one, covered in Monet's famous Water Lily? The plain white Corelle mug that I picked up in the dollar store in Orlando to keep at my son's apartment so I'd have a mug to drink from when I visited him? Decisions, decisions...

Coffee mugs, like T-shirts, and key chains, and calendars, are one of the little ways we use things to express our personalities and our feelings on a particular day. When I want to feel elegant, I use the bone china mug. When I feel like I need a "really big cup", I'll grab the one festooned with hearts and music staves that Jim gave me for Valentine's day a few years ago. When I'm missing my boy, I'll pick up that Corelle, or the one he gave me once for Mother's Day that says "A good mother is like a quilt; she keeps her children warm, but doesn't smother them."

So I guess my mug collection doesn't necessarily mean I'm schizophrenic. There are many facets to my personality, and many ways I like to express them. Coffee mugs are just one tiny one. So, what does your mug say about you today?