Where do you land with a good read?

While my daughter finishes up the last preparations for our family dinner, my three-year-old grandson, DJ, and I slip into his bedroom to play. DJ heads straight for the toy shelf stacked with miniature cars, trucks, and diggers, while I plop into the soft chair in the corner of his room. I spy a stack of books on the nightstand by his bed. 

“What books did you find at the library this week?” I ask my oldest grandson.

DJ shoots over to the stack of picture books and hands them to me. He wiggles into my lap and rifles through the titles.

“Do you want to read this one about construction trucks, Lulu?” DJ’s eager, brown eyes melt my heart.

“Of course, I do,” I say. 

As I flip the hard cover book open to the first pages chock full of cranes, front loaders and cement trucks, my mind resurrects a memory. A moment from my own childhood when I was but a few years older than DJ. As a child, I resembled my grandson. I fell easily under the spell of a good story, but unlike DJ I did not have my own room in which to read uninterrupted. 

In the house in which I grew up, I shared a small bedroom at the top of the front stairs with my twin sister. Cohabitating with my sister was not a matter of choice. Because there were six of us living in our three-bedroom home, everyone had a roommate. And even though the bedroom I shared with my identical twin was cozy, comfortable, and cute, I often yearned for a quiet space of my own. 

Through trial and error, I found the perfect spot to read my treasured library books and to think my girlish thoughts. My refuge was not far from the bedroom I shared with my twin. To get there, all I had to do was slip down the front staircase to the entry foyer undetected, and then sneak left into the plushily carpeted front room. The minute I snuck in there I could hear my eyelashes flutter. In the quiet of the front room, I mused about my place in the world without my mother barking out chores, or a younger sibling howling an urgent need. Deliriously alone with my books and my ideas, anytime spent in the living room was a luxury more prized than a trip to the shopping mall.

Like most front rooms in the 60’s, it was a space reserved for company and special occasions. Toys and food had restricted access, as well as, pets, schoolwork and sports equipment. The off-limits parlor greeted the adjacent street traffic with a stiff arm while simultaneously muffling the chaotic noise from our kitchen, family room, and mudroom. Stiffly formal, the living room’s tight floor plan consisted of a rust loveseat flanked by walnut end tables and cream lamps, two club chairs that guarded the fireplace, and a game table that overlooked our beloved park across the street. 

The low, downy-cushioned club chairs were smothered in a mossy green velvet damask. Drawn to the chair that faced both the window and the doorway to the foyer, most afternoons I landed there with my reflections and prized reads. As I nestled into the luxurious chair, I was mindful to protect the nappy fabric by placing one of the arm-protector swatches under my light brown hair. And when I was forced to escape my refuge, I plumped up the seat cushion, erasing the dent which my narrow hips and bottom had left. In that green club chair in the living room, I graduated from Nancy Drew’s to mystical fiction, and from teen romance novels to literature and poetry.  

Like the chair in which I find myself reading with DJ, or the one in which I recline and read at home, I’m grateful for both the time and space to read. To me, there is no greater luxury than the gift of losing oneself, uninterrupted, in a topic or tale that piques one’s interest. To satisfy that need or desire is pure decadence and to foster the love of knowledge in others is a vicarious pleasure claimed by special people like librarians and grandmothers.

What are you reading now? And where do you land with a good read?

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