Today is my Dad’s birthday. I’m not going to wax poetic about what a lovely guy he is since I already did that at Father’s Day. I will say though that I wish I could be in Michigan with him to share Mexican food and birthday cake. If nothing else I wish I was there to talk politics with my Dad, or to talk about books or movies or to share a box of doughnuts. When you’re not yelling for absolutely no reason Dad — you’re pretty great. Happy Birthday Pop!!

When you’re pregnant, especially with your first, you dream of all those “first” introductions. Experiences you can’t wait to share with this new little person. For David, it was “Star Wars” and indeed I think it has more than lived up to his expectations. His 2 year old son wants to be Darth Maul for Halloween — I think the introduction was a success. For me, it was “Alice in Wonderland”.

Lucy and I started reading chapter books this week and as I was putting her to bed tonight she asked if we could start “Alice in Wonderland”. I hesitated. Was she ready? Would she be bored? Would she understand and relate to Alice’s wonderfully contradictory personality. Alice is both logical and fanciful, a pragmatist and a dreamer. I LOVE that about Alice. Lucy and I snuggled into bed and as the soft glow from her sunflower lamp spread over our shoulders I opened the red cover of the book and we jumped down the rabbit hole. As we slowly made our way to the end of chapter 1 Lucy turned to me and with a crooked smile said, “I can’t wait to find out what happens tomorrow.” Yes Lucy, me too. I can’t wait for you to travel to all those wonderful places I’ve been in my imagination, to meet all those wonderful characters I’ve met. I want to introduce you to “Anne of Green Gables” and “Mary Poppins” and “Harry Potter”. Won’t it be lovely? And when you return from your journeys you’ll know. You’ll know all the things that I could never explain – the feelings, emotions, people, experiences — the words. The beautiful words spread out on the page, one after another inviting you to continue. And hopefully, like me, your love affair with books will start with Alice.

As a service to family members who might be living with a bibliophile I thought it might be a good idea to describe what a typical day might look like. These people need your help for they surely do have an addiction.

7:30 AM: I wake up and my first thought is about my new book. How many pages can I read before the kids wake up?

8:00 AM: I was able to squeeze in ten more pages while I made breakfast. Thank goodness the toaster is slow

9:00 AM: Kids are watching cartoons. I’m going to sneak into my bedroom and see if I can get one more chapter read before they realize I’m not in the room.

9:45 AM: I decide to take the kids to the park. I figure they can play and I can read. Best of both worlds.

11:00 AM: I got one more chapter read but the kids didn’t want to play because some little boy was following Lucy. AARRGH! It’s almost nap time. I just need to get them through lunch. No food in the house, need to stop at store first.

2:00 PM: I fed the kids and they are down for nap. If I’m lucky I can get two hours of reading done.

6:00 PM: David just called to say he’s on his way home from work. REALLY? I haven’t put the groceries away, done the breakfast or lunch dishes, or cleaned up toys. Where are the kids?

7:00 PM: I was able to squeeze one more chapter in as I cooked dinner. I’m so close to the end now that surely I can finish this book tonight.

7:25 PM: I’m going to bathe the kids so I can read in the bathroom

8:45 PM: Kids are in bed. I’m almost done now.

9:45 PM: Finished “New Moon”. Wow. David horrified that I read 600 pages in 24 hours. I wonder if I’ll have time to stop at the bookstore tomorrow?

The kids are back at gymnastics and they are both LOVING it. Unlike our past experience – where Max cried almost the entire time – he is now engaged and giggling. And like everything else my kids do, their differences become very pronounced during these lessons.

Lucy
She is in a class for pre-schoolers with about 5 other little girls and 1 boy. She rarely smiles. She listens intensely and with purpose. She follows every instruction given to her down to the last period. She ALWAYS follows the single-file line and ALWAYS waits her turn. Today after class I had this conversation with her coach:

Coach: Lucy is doing very well and I think she’ll be ready to move up into the next class in about 4 more weeks.
Me: Great, she seems to really enjoy herself
Coach: She is a VERY good listener which makes it so much easier
Me: (whispering so I don’t embarrass Lucy) she is quite the rule follower
Coach: YES, I noticed that.

Yes, that is my daughter, the rule-follower.

Max
He loves gymnastics and approaches every activity with gusto. He throws himself onto the trampoline. He follows instructions only after being asked at least 6 times. He rarely notices that we have a coach. The coach says “straddle position” and Max does pike. Coach says “tuck position” and Max does straddle. His favorite part of the entire lesson is at the end when all the kids get to “race” which just means they get to run from one end of the gym to the other and then turn around and do it again. I sit at one end of the gym and the coach sits at the other. Max runs as fast as he can and then flings his arms around my neck and collapses into a hug – having NEVER slowed down. Most of the time he knocks me over. Within five minutes of even being at the gym his hair is wet with sweat and he’s rolling on the floor out of joy. To say Max is enthusiastic would be an understatment.

Now, if I could somehow get them to rub off on each other everything would be just fine.

Lucy and I have started a new tradition of surfing You Tube for videos of cool animals. I figure I might as well show her that the Internet can be used for good not just for playing video games. So yesterday we came across this video previewing a documentary by the BBC:

Well, OH MY GOSH!! I could not believe that penguins fly. This was AMAZING. Lucy and I giggled and talked all about how amazing it is. We IM’d David at work who quickly sent us back this video:

Huh. The British have a sense of humor. Who knew? Of course, it was quite a lesson to explain to Lucy why the penguins weren’t REALLY flying.

It was going to happen. I mean, it was really just a matter of time. You get notified of the impending disaster when they send you home from the hospital with your baby boy. He WILL injure himself. What I didn’t expect is to be making my first trip to the emergency room before he was five years old.

On Friday Micki, our sweet, sweet nanny, informed me that after returning home from a simple trip to the park Max quickly broke out into large hives all over his face. She took him to his room to change his diaper and as she went to lay him down he went “dead weight” on her and threw himself backwards — she was still holding on to his wrists. Max broke out into tears. Micki broke out into an anxiety attack. She put some ice in a bag, gently placed him on the couch and tapped her foot nervously until I returned.

When I came home Max was lying on the couch with a tiny bag of ice on his left wrist. The hives had magically disappeared except for a couple on his legs and neck. Micki anxiously related all the details to me and with a proper amount of hand-wringing said “I’m just not sure what is wrong with him”. I quickly reassured her that Max can be wild and that it probably is “nothing” and for her to go on home. She left, apologizing all the way out the door.

Well, it quickly became obvious that Max was NOT fine. He didn’t move – AT ALL. Not a toe. If I even thought about touching his arm he broke into hysterics and started shouting “Owwww”. When I tried to remove the now warm bag of water from his arm he clung to it like his own personal life-saver in a pool of toddler despair. I didn’t know what to do.

Well, after a restless night of Max crying and not moving we took him to the emergency room Saturday. We waited – because after all that is really what one does in the ER. I took Max to the xray room where they asked me to hold his arm straight, and flat. A position I knew hurt him. He whimpered and cried, but he didn’t move. Max and I returned to the hospital room and waited for the news. We watched Dora on my iPhone while I tried to block out the sound of vomiting in the room next to us.

The doctor returned and in a voice that belied the truth he said “Well, it looks like the little guy has dislocated his elbow. So, this is what we are going to do, I’m going to pop it back into place. It will hurt him, but within 30 minutes he will feel great.” My stomach sunk. I knew what was about to happen was going to be excruciating for my little man. I knew that it was going to hurt, but I also knew that Max had already been hurting for at least 24 hours. I held my breath. The doctor looked deep into Max’s eyes, gently grabbed his hand and elbow and ever so delicately pulled his hand. I HEARD and FELT his elbow pop back into place. Max turned to me with eyes that accused me of the biggest violation of trust and started the silent scream. The doctor repeatedly assured me that he quickly would be fine and not to worry. I wanted to believe him – I really did, but the hot tears were flowing fast and hard down Max’s face.

The nurse returned and stressed to me how easy it will be for this to happen again. We signed the required 50 pages of disclaimers and promises that we’ll pay them and weaved our way back to the waiting room. Max meekly asked for a lollipop and so we stopped at the nurses’ station. No lollipops. Seriously? What kind of two-bit hospital is this place that they can’t offer my 2 year old boy who has just withstood pain that makes grown men pass out a lollipop? We met up with the rest of the family and walked out to the car. Just as my stomach was starting to settle back down Max did something incredible. He used both of his hands and crawled up into the car, and then into his car seat. I got into the driver’s seat and he said in his sweet voice, “Mommy? I hungie!”

And just like that he was fine. The doctor was right. To say I’m proud of how he handled his little trauma would be an understatement. However, I’m actually more proud that I managed to keep myself together and neither burst into tears nor beat up the doctor.

I start every semester assuming that my students don’t like to read and don’t like to write. I figure it is good to have low expectations, that way they can only go up. Most semesters my students pleasantly surprise me with a smattering of interest in reading and rather average writing. However this semester I’ve seen outright anger at reading. I’ve had students say that reading is for those with nothing better to do with their time. That fiction reading is for those who lack true imagination. Ironically, while I was having these conversations with my students I found myself falling into the love pit with a book (“Twilight” see the review below). And all of this made me think about how I came to love books and why I so passionately love them.

My first true love was with “Alice in Wonderland”. I’m sure I had read other books up to this point but this was the first “grown-up” chapter book I remember reading. I loved Alice. I loved her logical approach to life and yet her willingness to go with the magical things that happened around her. Mainly, I remember the feeling of disappearing from the world. I eagerly jumped down the rabbit hole and I’ve never really returned.

After Alice, came thousands of adventures. I solved murder after murder with Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. I traveled into the future with Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. I cried with Jane Erye and I fell in love with Elizabeth Bennett. Then a whole parade followed of Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dickens, Wordsworth, Petrarch, Steinbeck, etc. I’ve spent endless hours with my nose stuck in a book and not once did I think I was wasting my time. Could I have found a more practical use for my time? Certainly, but never a better use of it.

People talk about drug addicts going on “binges” where they sit in a house somewhere and do drugs for 24-36 hours straight and nobody can find them. Although I have never done drugs that is the closest I can come to describe what it feels like to lose yourself in a book. Your reality disappears around you and the only world you really know is the one in that book. That is true escapism, it is the perfect drug. It is selfish, it is passionate, it is addictive, it is expensive.

When I finish reading a long, tasty, delicious book I emerge in a haze. The book world is somehow inextricably intertwined with mine and I’m left confused. Where does my world end and the other world begin? And like a drug addict it may take me a good 24 hours to “come down from my high”. When I reengage with the world around me I’m instantly looking for the next great book with which to fall in love. I could go on and on about the feeling of the pages in my hand, of the anticipation I feel in my stomach with each new page, the sound and look of the words on the page. It is glorious. It is the mark of a true bibliophile. My books are the security blanket that encircles me. Because for every problem, for every challenge, for every question I can find a book to meet it, to beat it, to make it seem common.

And now for the truth — I teach to support my habit. My book habit. My name is Beth and I’m a bibliophile.

Even though we live in Dallas, which is pretty far north, we get inquiries regarding our safety during hurricane season. As Ike approached we were told it would still be an official Tropical Storm or a Category 1 hurricane by the time it reached Dallas. This is pretty big news for us so we did what most normal Americans would do – nothing. Oh, I did pick up all the backyard toys and toss them into the garage so they wouldn’t blow away and I did casually ask David if he thought I should go buy water or something. He looked at me like I was crazy. And indeed the only part of Ike we got were light rain showers.

However, our family in east Texas didn’t fare so well. My in-laws were without power for three days and are still cleaning up the downed trees and debris in their yard and around their business. David’s aunt Mary, who lives in downtown Galveston (in a beautifully restored Victorian home), has not been able to return to her house yet. We are still waiting to hear if she has a house to go back to or not.

Thanks for all of your questions and concerns. We’re all good here. And you?