I Am A Reader - Having a Favorite Spot

I love to read.  In fact, I can never remember not being able to read.  I have loved libraries since childhood and possess library cards to 5 different libraries.  When traveling, visits to the local bookstores are always on the itinerary.  There is always at least one book title on my Christmas wish list.  I often have 3 or 4 books in progress and as I reach the end of an especially enjoyable one I have mixed feelings…not wanting it to end and yet, eager to venture into another book waiting on my to-be-read pile.  I have always felt there were two kinds of people in the world: those who read the backs of cereal boxes as they eat their breakfast and those who don’t.  I do.  From the time I was a small child, I have loved to bury my nose in a book and get lost in a fictional setting.  I also enjoy non-fiction but truth be told, I love a good story.

Jay and I live in a small home just a few blocks from the beach.  It would be listed as a three bedroom house, but we only use one room as a bedroom.  The second is our office and the third and smallest one is our “sunroom” named such because in the afternoon, as the sun is moving across the sky to sink into the ocean, it sheds wonderful light through the sliding glass doors and creates a sense of warmth and comfort.  One wall is filled with three bookcases that hold our favorite books…those that we cannot part with.  There is a love seat that opens into a single sized bed so when we have an overnight visitor, it becomes a guest room.  And it has a rocking chair.

I can read anyplace…in a doctor’s waiting room, in a moving car, on the couch in the living room, at my desk in the office, in bed at night.  But when I want to have a special treat, when I really want to settle into my book, I go to the rocker in the sunroom.  

My rocker is old and creaky.  I bought it when my first son was born.  Over the years this rocker has welcomed me.  When I couldn't sleep at night because of a head cold or a whirling agitated mind, I would sit under an afghan in the rocker and sooth myself.  When babies could not go to sleep, it was here I sat while singing soft melodies until they finally dozed off.   I remember rocking my children and grandchildren in it until their legs had grown so long they dangled off the sides.  The joints are not as tight as they used to be and over the years it has developed a comforting creak.  I remember one time while I was rocking a grandchild, my youngest son, Marc (then a young man) said if he closed his eyes, the sound of the rocker brought him back to the days when he was the child in my lap.  

How do you put a price tag on the things that assume such value in your life?  How do you explain the emotional attachment that makes an inanimate object something that contains part of the pulse of your life experience.  I laugh to myself when I imagine attempting to evacuate my house in an emergency, only able to take my most precious belongings out the door with me, and trying to managing getting the rocker out the front door and down the many front steps in a hurry!

So, the book on the rocker is the novel I began today...in the rocker...in the sunroom: The Unlikely Pilgrimage Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.