Dear Old World...

Dear Old World,

You're such a contradiction...roses, tea time, hot water, friendship, kindness, love...

Lies, undrinkable water, rubber bullets, tyranny, corruption, disregard...

How can it be reconciled?

What does a person do?

Read.
Read.

Read.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my 24 year old son was lamenting our world and then asked,
"I need to find some uplifting fiction."

Since we were talking on the phone, I just decided to Google it right then and there...

the number one book on the list:

Anne of Green Gables.

I laughed out loud.

I'd been reading this book every night for a few months with my younger daughter, 10 year old Caroline...and, indeed, I found it to be my very favorite part of my day.

It was a respite.

A haven.

Sweet Anne just melted my heart every time.

First off, you need to know that Anne is an orphan who lands at a house in the darling town of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island as a mistake. An adult brother and sister who live on a farm and are both unmarried had put in that they wanted a young orphan boy to help with chores on the farm...

But when Matthew comes to the train station to pick up the orphan boy he is surprised to find a little girl of about eleven years old.

Matthew is shocked to find this young girl...and shocked more when the train official says, "I asked her to go into the ladies' waiting room, but she informed me gravely that she preferred to stay outside. "There was more scope for imagination," she said."

Right there on p. 15 we meet Anne and we find out an important clue into her heart.

Imagination matters.

It had been a long time since my imagination was summoned, but Anne called to it like some sort of Emergency Broadcast System and it found its way back home.

Turns out that Anne's imagination was her defense against a difficult world. 

When Matthew meets Anne she immediately showers him with all of her thoughts.
She shares her plans if he had not come, she shares about her carpet bag and she shares this tidbit:

"Oh it seems so wonderful that I am going to live with you and belong to you.
I've never belonged to anybody - not really."

That sentence caught in my throat as I said it out loud.

Belonging.

I have had the privilege of belonging for my entire life.

So many many children ache for it.

How?

Why?

I'm crushed to consider Anne's plight...even if for a moment.

Anne is so full of life and light that her conversation with Matthew is a comfort to all of us. She points out the beauty of cherry blossoms. The fun of not knowing and asking questions, the joy of having a companion to notice things with...she continues:
"Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? 
It just makes me feel glad to be alive - it's such an interesting world."

She is on the look out for kindred spirits...and she finds them, plenty of them, in some of the most unlikely people, including a crotchety old woman and darling, shy Matthew.

Always be on the look out for a kindred spirit...they are all around. 

Anne makes plenty of mistakes...
which lead to this gem:

She is stubborn, super smart, over dramatic and hilarious.

She's reflective, which in turn helped Caroline and me to consider things...like this:
"What a splendid day! said Anne drawing a long breath, "I pity the people who aren't born yet for missing it.
They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one."

Never have I pitied those who haven't been born for the loss they have endured for not living my wonderful day...but after that, I started to consider what amazing days came before my life and how much I may have missed...more than that, I stopped to gratefully cherish this day right now...
it will never come again...
those babies are missing it...
and it's pretty incredible.

But, it was the very last chapter, The Bend in the Road, that sealed my Anne Adoration.

Anne has won a scholarship to college. This is a very prestigious prize since at the time very few women go to college.
But, as life does, hard things happened.
Precious Matthew, her biggest fan and best encourager, passes away in a shocking way.
Marilla, Anne's adoptive mother and Matthew's sister, is ailing and looks to be unable to care for Green Gables. Marilla, seeing no other solution, puts Green Gables up for sale.

Anne will have none of that.

She changes her plans and works to find a way to work as a teacher nearby.
She will stay at Green Gables with Marilla.

"I shall give my life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.
When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road.
I thought I could see along it for many a milestone.
Now there's a bend in it.
I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does.
It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla.
I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes - what new beauties - what curves and hills and valleys farther on...

...Anne's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen's but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would blossom along it. The joys of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams."

Anne's ability to handle the bend in the road with her one-of-a-kind grace and graciousness were just the lift up my heart needed.

Watching her think through the options and adjust so nimbly was a great reminder.
We are capable of so much goodness.
So much kindness.
So much belonging.

So...in this world where so much difficulty lies, what books have soothed your soul?
Spoken to your spirit?
Nourished the aching parts?


For Caroline and me, it's been sweet Anne.
With an "e".

Enjoying the pearls in our days.
How about you?

Forever Free

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." 

-- Frederick Douglass

I remember learning to write.  I was given a string of phonetic symbols for every sound in the English language and for that reason I could write anything.  I felt so powerful.  Spelling wasn't a problem.  All I needed was time.  However, I don't remember learning to read at all.  I must have breezed through that because I can never remember not knowing what all of those letters meant. I remember getting a prize in first grade for reading the most books and I still have my prize: a book, of course.  

I have always loved to read.  So many books and words of wisdom from writers have touched my heart throughout my lifetime.  I remember crying in my blue room in Illinois over the heartbreak of Old Yeller.  I fondly hold a collection of over 50 Nancy Drew yellow and black hardbacks, beginning with one of my favorites: The Secret of the Old Clock.  I was right alongside the young girl in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret wondering where my boobs were. As an adolescent, I triumphed with Scarlett O'Hara and detested passive and perfect Melanie in Gone with the Wind.  I snuck books into virtually all of my classes in high school.  My reading was insatiable.  In college, it was destiny that I would gravitate to an English major.  Writing and reading as homework??? Perfect.  I sat in awe as my English professor recited John Milton's Paradise Lost from memory and made those densely woven words sensible through his passion alone.  I had the privilege of reading Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Thoreau, Emerson, and, of course, Shakespeare.  

Throughout any difficulty in my life, I have found a book that has soothed my soul.  Martha Beck's book Expecting Adam became my mantra about having a child with Down Syndrome.  Where is God When It Hurts? helped me to make sense of leukemia and fear.  Maya Angelou helped in so many ways on so many days.  

It was only natural that when I had kids the reading would take on a new richer, more amazing dimension.  Sitting with a child on your lap, laughing at Dr. Seuss, wondering with Roald Dahl, rhyming with Margaret Wise Brown makes any day pure magic.  I remember riding bikes with Jack the summer of third grade down to grab the newest Harry Potter, number three -- The Prisoner of Azkaban -- and oohing and aaahing over the hardback book, all 435 pages.  The warmth of the sunshine, the gift of another epic installment about Harry and Hermione and Ron, the joy of watching Jack enthralled made that moment one of my sweetest memories.  We had the thrill of waiting up until midnight for the subsequent Harry Potters, dressing up, cheering with the crowds and devouring the books within days of their release. I am forever grateful to JK Rowling and her imagination!  Her books lit a fire within Mary Kate as well, along with Junie B. Jones, Judy Moody and our tear-inducing favorite Charlotte's Web.

One of the first things that I read after Patrick was born was that the French school system did not believe it was possible to teach a person with Down Syndrome to read.  They actually stated that any evidence of someone with Down Syndrome reading was equivalent to training a monkey!! It was a trick, not reality.  I remember getting my momma bear claws out and chiding whoever wrote that crap in my head: "Oh yeah, maybe that's true for all the French kids but look out -- my kid's no monkey!  Get out of my way.  My kid is going to read."

In preschool and kindergarten he focused on letter sounds and sight words and in first grade he was given a scientist of reading for a teacher, Mrs. Thompson.  I had complete faith in her ability to teach Patrick, along with 34 other first graders, how to break that code.  Two weeks into school I had a meeting with her.  I'm sure she doesn't remember the exchange at all, but to me, Patrick's literacy hung in the balance.  I asked her if he was going to be a good fit in her classroom.  Did she think he could learn in there.  With no hesitation, she assured me he could be there and that he would learn to read.  Five years later, almost every night Patrick reads to me and almost every night I sit in awe as I hear his voice wrap around the words in print.  Some nights, I can't help it and silent tears just come streaming down.  My boy can read!

That might not seem like much when you've never had a memory of not knowing what those crazy scratches on paper meant but I'm reading a book right now called Life is So Good.  It is the true story of George Dawson, a black man who did not learn to read until he was 98! Listening to the times he was in a restaurant and couldn't order off of a menu, feeling the times he knew he was cheated because someone realized he couldn't read, and knowing how many posters, newspapers, books, magazines, billboards, tickets, medicine bottles, doctors orders, cards, letters and life opportunities just passed him by  like leaves blowing off of a tree makes me cringe.  It's impossible to imagine being so cut off...so left out...so isolated and ashamed.

As I listen to a little voice sound out children's books beside me and feel that familiar curl of coziness as Caroline climbs aboard for another adventure I think of George.  There is so much grace in shared stories, the written words of people from past ages sharing their observations and the beauty of letters coming together in a way that hasn't happened before.  Reading is a comfort and sense of belonging to all of humanity; it's a highlighter pen for places to visit or people to meet, a spark that lights a fire, and a salve for the deepest wounds.

Today I'm grateful that I was given an opportunity to learn to read and know the love and power that comes from being able to seek information for yourself.  I'm grateful for the educational opportunities that my children have been given -- for the schools and the teachers that believed in them.  I'm grateful to live in a place where ALL children are educated and I'm profoundly moved that I can continue the circle of education with beginning teachers.  Today, I'm going to appreciate print and the immeasurable joy reading has given me my entire life and I'm going to finally find out who taught George to read..