These Are a Few…Some…One of My Favourite Things

Mr. Duffy sits on the edge of his desk in the front of our class reading. He is using his Bilbo voice while I listen with eyes wide and lips slightly parted. Bilbo is in the middle of a contest for his life with a creature called Gollum; they are in the dark, beside a lake in the depths of a mountain, beside dark waters with fish that have no eyes.

“What have I got in my pocket?”

I sit completely still, which is almost unheard of for me; after all, I have been labelled the squirmiest kid alive. He stops the story for the day and I feel it like a hollowness in my chest. What happens next? Does Bilbo make it out into the sunshine, or does the nasty creature eat him?

I squirm and bump the chair, making the clicking noise which Mr Duffy hates. He raises a thin eyebrow.

I am eleven years old and thus has begun my love affair with the scribblings of Mr. J.R.R. Tolkien.

~

The library is quiet and cool, and I am surrounded by the muted ticking of a large grandfather clock which sports carvings of bear cubs. It is the first day I am allowed into the adult section all by myself. I stare at the walls lined not with books but with possibilities. I run my hands over leather-bound volumes, their soft, smooth surfaces solid with promise under my seeking fingers.

The librarian smiles, the first smile I’ve received from her. She no longer seems bent on shooing me downstairs into the kid section. She introduces me to the Dewey Decimal System and I realize that finding a good book no longer means having to trip across the book I want, although I still love coming across an unexpected treasure.

She can’t see me over the stack of books in my arms as I bump into walls before finding the desk. My new world darkens when she tells me that three is the maximum I can sign out. Two hours later I am finally able to leave the building. Decision making can be arduous.

~

Small waves gently push the boat against the dock with a rhythmic thump, thump. The resonating splashes under the wooden planks and against the hull will forever signify summer to me. A light breeze ruffles my hair as I stretch out across the seats of the big vessel. My feet dangle over the sides and an occasional splash of cool water tickles my toes.

There is a layer of detritus strewn across the floor. My shoes, towel, lunch, and a bucket with cleaning supplies sit untouched. I am reading The Man of the Forest. The Lodge has the entire collection and I am systematically making my way through each book.

My love affair with Mr. Zane Grey ends almost as soon as it begins. But for a brief time my fourteen-year-old heart is smitten with slow-speaking cowboys, lonely campfires, and wild horses.

~

The road stretches flat and straight in front of me. My little Jetta wagon is packed to the rafters with “stuff.” I am on kilometer 300 of a six-thousand-kilometer journey. I pull the first CD out of the case and watch it slide into the dash. A few brief notes of music play, then the narrator’s voice begins to read.

I’ve quit my job, sold my home, sold or given away most of my possessions. I am leaving my old life behind and heading all the way across the country. It’s exciting; I feel light, happy, scared, and a little in shock. I have no home to go to – only a small travel trailer waits at the end of the journey – but in the meantime a small girl has been left on a ship and no one knows how she got there, or who her parents are. I change the disc a hundred kilometers later.

~

“It’s not working,” my mom says. “This is stupid.”

I sigh and sit down beside her and go over the steps again. As usual, she pays little attention; she is more interested in telling me about her neighbour and what she cooked for supper. I finally get her to push the right button and she giggles as it is replaced with a new one.

“If the writing is too small,” I tell her, “you can increase the font like this.”

“That’s better,” she exclaims. “Leave it like that.” Over the next year she makes her way through a few of the free books which have come loaded on her new Kobo. Then she’s admitted into the hospital.

Even though it’s noisy and frenetic, she mostly sleeps. I sit beside her and read while she dreams her final dream.

Image Credit

“Books” by Henry… . www.flickr.com. Some rights reserved.

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