READING

I used to be a reader. I think as soon as I could read well enough to read through a book - I did. I particularly remember 6th through 8th grade. I was a voracious reader. Because I loved horses and everything connected with horses - I literally (no pun intended) read EVERY horse book in the preteen section of the library. Having exhausted horses I went to dogs and read EVERY book in THAT section. There weren't many animal books left after that, at least not all together like a series - so I moved my interest to science fiction, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, to name a few.

I loved reading so much that it seemed logical to become an English Major. I didn't know that by becoming an English Major I made reading a job. Now I was reading because I HAD to. Not good. But after I graduated and got married - I still managed to get engulfed in some good books like the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, etc.

I am the kind of reader - that if the book catches me - I'm DONE. Nothing else exists until I finish. The whole outside world disappears and the unraveling story and I are locked until I finish and come out of my cave into the open light of real life. As a child I often got into trouble for reading into the night. I didn't care. I took a flashlight with me and read under the covers. I WAS A DETERMINED READER.

The responsibilities of life kept building and pressing itself on me and the new joys of children and play replaced my reading. Reading was no longer practical. No one could afford for me to disappear for two days until my book was finished. And somewhere in the back of my mind was my mother yelling for me to "Put that book down and do the dishes!" (or whatever task it was I was trying to escape through my reading). So, somehow, through the years reading got paired with guilt and dampened by the "work" of being an English Major.

I don't read much any more. I do read lots of books - but only occasionally do they grab me and pin me down for a day or so, partly because I can't find them - and partly because I'm not really looking.