Reading for Content

The Bibliophile Gene is clearly inherited. To be a bibliophile is to be passionate about books, to love to read between the endsheets and between the lines. To be enchanted by the touch, the smell, the heft and size of a book.

I have the Bibliophile Gene. It came twisted in the spine of my mother's DNA. My sister has it, too. I've passed it down to my sons, particularly my younger son, who, like me, does not leave the house without a book and a spare, or maybe, two, because, well, you never know when you might need a book.

My mom inherited her copy of the Gene from her father. She dusted off a memory this morning, ensconced in her hospital bed. Her voice is tremulous but sure. When she was eleven years old, Gone with the Wind was published and she and her dad shared a copy, reading in tandem. He would read when she was at school. When she returned home at the end of the day, he would urge her to "hurry up and read", threatening to reveal what happened next if she didn't catch up to him!

In our rich, inner book lives, "what happens next" is the driving force behind reading tomes good and bad. Some of us peek at the ending, relaxed and knowing how things turne out are ready to read the book to the endpage. Some of us consider that heresy and shudder at the thought.

But life is different. How we wish we could simply flip a few pages to see what happens next, but the denouements are veiled from us as surely as a widow's tear-stained face.

So for today, I read aloud to Mom, page by page, as I follow her story, day by day. I look for clues as to how the story ends, as surely as if I am reading the best of mysteries, pouring over red herrings and likely missing major tip offs  Mom,  tucked up in blankets to ward off the institutional chill, listens as I read to her.  Her eyes are bright as pennies as she soaks up the short essays by Rick Bragg. Like a toddler at bedtime, she insists on one  more. The writing is full of southern lore and the life she has known: gardens, front porches, lightening bugs, family, church, kitchens, and kindness, all chapters of her own storied life.

I slow my reading down and fully taste each word as I find a pace and volume suitable for a hard-of-hearing 92 year old. I live in the space of that sentence, striving to admire it's shape, it's form, it's presence, rather than racing to completion. One day this story will reach it's end and I won't be able to read it again. But, oh, the Author must be so proud of how this one turned out!

Mom's Story:  https://clyp.it/ymlvcmok


For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12