personal essays
Life, family, joys, sorrows, books
__________
words, words, words ¶ family life
At its core, my story is probably similar to many of yours. Books, books, books as a kid, a teen, a young adult.
You, me, to some extent we are all palimpsests of our lives.
Flash nonfiction.
There are days when I grow weary of the seemingly endless mandate to sell, sell, sell. It’s not my happy place.
This past week, I was given the opportunity to wear a pair of eye-tracking goggles (and an EEG cap and a heart monitor) while attending a conference session, as a live demo of the way in which attention and engagement, which are the precursors to memory, are monitored in the moment.
There’s been a Facebook challenge running around in my circle lately: post the covers of seven books you’ve loved, one cover a day, with no explanation. Each day, nominate someone from your network to do the same.
I’ve lived my life buoyed by books.
When I was growing up, my most beloved gifts were books. Birthdays and Christmas, that’s what I asked for, that’s what I most anticipated — along with the bike that appeared one year, naturally. That was pretty special too.
The real injury does not have a specific date, not one you can mark on a calendar, unless of course you consider it to be the day she was born, as we in her family now do. My mother knew during Arden’s childhood that she was somehow very different from the rest of us and from other children. My mother didn’t realize then how deep the trouble went.
We bundle the dog into the car, my husband and I, and fill up the trunk: books for one sister, the teapot my mother wanted, an article for my father, something for the baby. The trip down will take us two hours, three in heavy traffic, and the familiar terrain—the cattle on the hillsides, the billboards, the iron-worked toll bridge—slips by as we play our versions of Botticelli and Ghosts.
