Summers used to be so easy – creamy satisfying as a root beer float and lazy as an all-day sucker. Now the summers slip by with my shoulders curled over a keyboard, a phone stuffed in the crook of my neck and a pencil tucked behind my ear. My Daytimer marks the passing of the season in a succession of appointments, circled paydays and payments due.
The summers of my childhood were fully given over to reading, lying prostrate in the shade with the scent of an ‘old library book’ rising with the turn of each grass-stained and Kool-Aid-ringed page with bugs in the creases. The humidity leaving the pages tacky to the touch. Hot, hazy mornings tempered only by an oscillating fan, filled with the mournful call of doves and relentless cicadas. Moving to a musty-cool corner of the basement to hide from neighbor kids who wanted me to play. The setting sun drawing out the mosquito’s and fireflies, and chasing me inside for a bath before jumping into baby-doll pajamas to read on the screened porch. Vacations spent lolling in the backseat of the car with a pillow smelling of strawberry shampoo reading on the way to Grandma’s, or gripping sand in my toes through a beach towel with my Coppertone-fingers leaving sandy fingerprints on the dog-eared pages while my father cast his fishing line into the surf. The whistle of wind through the tall grass of the dunes.
The total freedom, the languid days, the acrid scent of Queen Anne’s Lace and summer lightning set the stories in sharp relief. The adventures were more immediate, the danger more real, the heroines more tragic because all my senses were quickened. The stories saturated me, tattooing me with indelible ink. The characters waited for me to get up in the morning, tossed pebbles at my window, whispered from the pages. I was the girl captured by Indians, the silversmith’s apprentice, the hopeful child of migrant workers, the orphaned girl raised by a reclusive uncle. Yes, and even the dog in the Yukon Gold Rush and the black horse that led a difficult life. As I grew, they grew with me. I was the girl wrongly accused of witchcraft in a Massachusetts colony, the poor governess with the deeply troubled Master, the sister pushing the social boundaries during the Civil War. I was the young woman living at the mysterious inn with a dangerous uncle and the young bride overshadowed by the memory of her husband’s dead wife.
At the turning of the last page, I sometimes began again. Unwilling to release the characters, I created more adventures with satisfying endings and intimate conversations. They became the stuff of my dreams.
At the end of each summer, I looked up surprised to find it over and a change in the air. I’m not sure it’s possible or even advisable to give a summer over to the abandon with which I devoured books as a child. But I would do well to recapture some of the wonder of that time by not leaving the business of reading to chance and happenstance, or to a book-sized opening in my busy schedule. The benefits of full immersion into another place and time cannot be overstated. For me, it is necessary nourishment, and I have been starving a bit lately. Now to make my to-be-read list and see how much progress I can make before Labor Day.
In case you are wondering, these were some of my favorite books that made summers magical:
Calico Captive, Johnny Tremain, Blue Willow, The Secret Garden, The Call of the Wild, Black Beauty, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca
Which books made an impact on you growing up and fed your desire for story?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Watership Down. Anything Tolkien or Lewis. Piers Anthony was a perennial favorite. As was L.M. Montgomery. I never spent a great deal of time reading YA novels thanks to my parents who were both voracious readers. I went from chapters books straight into Dick Francis and Stephen King and George MacDonald. And while I plan on easing my children in a bit slower to the world of adult fiction, I can’t help but smile at how I got my eclectic reading tastes.
Thank you for reminding me about L.M. Montgomery! I started with Magic for Marigold. Watership Down and Tolkien came later for me, but I think I understood them a bit better as an adult.
Sigh.
I can’t think. The beauty of this post has robbed me of my sensibilities.
Thank you for your beautiful post. In your final paragraph you sum it up so well. The thing I struggle to hold onto in these grown up days of calendars and schedules is my sense of wonder. It is hard to hold on to that wonder of being fully alive and in those fleeting moments when I rediscover that wonder again it is indescribable the impact it has on my life and my walk with Christ. Thanks for awakening that desire again in my today.
A few of my favorite childhood books were: Osprey Island by Anne Lindbergh, A Little Princess, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Black Stallion series and the Boxcar Children novels.
Debbie, what a beautiful post. I was right there with you, saharing every summer-day experience. You took me right along with you. Like you, I loved nothing more than a visit to the library, bringing home my treasures, and immersing myself in the stories. For a moment, you gave me back those feelings.
Loved this post! Because I didn’t live near a library until I was in the 5th grade, I read the same books I owned over again, seven times each: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, Little Men, Treasure Island. I read them under a weeping willow tree where no one could see me. I was rarely in trouble but when I was, my mother punished me by withholding a new book. I remember mournfully seeing The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes sitting on my mother’s nightstand for a week. Nearly killed me. Any Sherlock Holmes book to this day feels like forbidden fruit.
Thanks, ladies. I really enjoyed revisiting those times. It’s funny how we don’t realize what we have at the time. Well, but maybe I did!
The book series that comes to mind immediately when I think of summer reads is “The Box Car Children”. As a third grader in the mountains of West Virginia and the beloved city of Beckley, my teacher, Mona Woods, would have us rest with our heads on our desk as she read a chapter each and every day. I would be taken away to the woods and an old box car where young children who had been orphaned lived together with their siblings. In the school yard during recess, we would play “The Box Car Children” under the shade trees along the fence line. I recently visited the old school yard and the tree line is still there after all these years. As an adult, I passed the love of these books along to my own daughter who loved the characters as much as I did. I don’t remember all the characters names but my granddaughter is named Violet. And one-year old Violet is going to be as memorable a charcter as in the books!
Like you, Debbie, summer was for reading! I would get a stack of books, pile them beside my bed with the goal of reading them all before summer ended. I loved all books but mainly stuck to any subject that dealt with animals. I loved “The Yearling,” Old Yeller,” “Call of the Wild,” “Where the Red Fern Grows.” One book, that I’m sure not many have read, was “Bambi.” It was not written as a childrens book. Wonderful book! I would recommend it to anyone. I did branch out when I was about 14 and read “Gone With the Wind,” which I absolutely loved!! I still love to read but my taste has moved on to Christian Fiction. All I know it that if you loved reading as a child, you love reading as an adult, and vice versa. Thank you for a beautiful post that took us back to carefree days. Days we didn’t have to worry about a job, what to make for dinner, or how we would pay the rent. Days spent just reading, letting our imaginations take us on wonderful journeys.
Oh, Debbie. You make me want to stop everything and curl up with a good book and get lost for weeks and weeks. I remember the year I read Little Women and became Jo March. Didn’t like Jo’s Boys so much – like the young Jo, I wondered why everything had to change – why did she have to grow up, get married, get busy and become the responsible one instead of the dreamy girl in her writer’s hat?
A book that brought the summertime feeling back to me in my adulthood was Gilead. That book will slow your breathing and your clock and you will actually enjoy the languid passing of the minutes. Best read on the porch while the sprinklers are going.