My favorite reading memory

I grew up on a farm. Well, sort of. It was sixty acres of pasture and scrubby juniper forest. My mom kept a massive garden and we ate fresh and home-canned veggies all year. We had five to six indoor dogs, fifteen cats, a bird, a frog, a couple sheep, and six horses.

My horse was Phyllis, a gray dappled appaloosa mare. She’s still around and approximately thirty years old. She’s a crotchety old lady now, but when I was in elementary school, boy, did she and I have some good times. We used to ride those sixty acres and canter across sun-drenched fields. I gave her apples and carrots and brush-downs; she gave me nuzzles so powerful I was lifted off my feet.

My favorite reading memory has to do with Phyllis. I used to brush her down, give her some treats, and take her into the backyard where the grass was greener. I’d climb up bareback with a book in hand and she would meander slowly across the yard, grazing peacefully. I would lay down with my bare feet dangling beside her powerful neck and my head resting on her rump. In that way, I would read for hours and hours, listening to her pulling the grass, the swish of her tail, and the occasional puff or snort.

I was a lucky little kid.

My favorite book

My favorite book of all time is The Giver by Lois Lowry. You can go read a thousand reviews to get a synopsis of the plot. I’m not going to provide that here.

Why is The Giver my favorite book? I read it when I was still in elementary school. This book ROCKED MY WORLD. It helped me appreciate—really appreciate—life and living. It helped me realize that there was a bigger world than met my narrow view. I truly understood at a tender age how pain, relationships, families, laughter, communication, love, tears, and life are all precious treasures to be cherished and fought for. I apprehended that history and world events were about real people suffering or exulting.

I have 6 nieces and nephews, and my Christmas tradition for years has been to give them books. I was so excited when I finally gave my oldest niece and nephew each a copy of The Giver. If the book spoke to them as powerfully as it did to me, I was the most awesome aunt on the planet for sharing such a glorious piece of literature with them. I can’t wait to share it with the others.

My favorite quotation

“The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
—Mark Twain

I love this line from Mark Twain. In October of 2008 I visited his home near Hartford, Connecticut, where he wrote some of his most famous work including the adventures of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I was duly impressed. At the nearby museum honoring Mr. Clemens, I learned he was fastidious about the quotations he spouted. He scratched out dozens of drafts with the wording changed slightly in just a sentence or two before he settled on the right phraseology.

I love this about Mark Twain. I wonder how many drafts the above quote went through before he landed on perfection.

Being a good writer is knowing how to excise the waste and strike lightning into the hearts of readers with a turn of phrase that is just right. I strive to reach that pinnacle of writing and frequently fail. But when it happens, it fills me up and my readers notice.

The new direction for this blog

The fiction portion of this blog has run its course. From now on my posts will be writing-related. Thank you for reading and commenting on my work.

Abandonment

Something has changed. I wasn’t told of the change, so I learned of it piecemeal. Bit by bit, the new way of things has become increasingly clear. I’m not sure when it happened, exactly. Perhaps I am at fault, but I have searched my memory and don’t recall any offending incident.

I walk along the streambed and watch the tiny fiddler crabs burrow in the brackish mud. The Spanish moss drapes me, caresses my shoulders, shuts me out from the world. I leave no footprints in the grass. My white jacket flutters in the hot summer wind.

This place is beautiful, but I am so alone. My loneliness is a gulf that stretches to the horizon and back. My people, my friends, they have left me here to burrow in the mud. Even the fiddler crabs skitter away from me when I approach them.

When I reach out to my people, I am spurned. I can see them across the flowing waters; my people are out there, laughing and playing and living. Without me. I need to climb this tree and put them out of my mind, for I am out of theirs.

I lean against the tree, the ache in my chest too great to move further.