Reading Through the Winter
February is the longest month of the year when you live in northern Indiana. The calendar may say that there are only 28 days but my heart tells me otherwise. The cold that took over the world in early winter is now embedded for the duration and my body tries to fend it off as well as it can as my energy lags behind. This morning, as I take my first sip of hot coffee, I pull back the curtains in the dining room. Outside the window, the backyard lies there lifeless and anemic, looking like its lifeline has been temporarily cut. Not a shred of green pokes through the colorless ground, not a hint of growth on the tree branches where a lone leaf shivers in the wind. I turn my back on that dreary scene, grab a book and sit down to read.
This is the best time of year to get lost in a book. As I read the words on the page, I enter a new world where the sun is shining down and spring is in full bloom, where imaginary friends and enemies work out the details of another life. This winter, I’ve taken numerous trips in my head to the little village of Three Pines, in Quebec, Canada, where the characters speak French, ponder life and deal with the occasional murder. The writer, Louise Penny, understands my human tendencies. As her stories unravel on the page, I become a bystander, wrapped up in her descriptions and her fictional characters. As she pulls me along, I forget that it’s only the middle of February with still over thirty days until the beginning of spring.
Throughout my life, books have been one way to expand my world and my experiences. From the visual styles of children’s picture books to the small print of intellectual treatises, books continue to make me grow and take me beyond my place in the universe. Sometimes, as I start reading, I am not sure if I want to go for the ride. But once started, I accept the challenge even if it makes me uncomfortable. I want to question and analyze. I seek different views and paths. My favorite books are those that look at our human condition and find the good within it. And every now and then, it’s just fun to be entertained by a well told story, whether redeeming or not.
Recently, I pulled out a book that has been in my library for many years of my life: The Tall Book of Mother Goose. As a child, I was fascinated by its artwork, alongside its words. Its bold color, its size, its very human drawings and its ordered rhymes caught my attention as I paged through it carefully. I don’t know how it got into my hands but as a young girl, I thought it was perfect. And even now as an adult, I’m using it as a reference for some block prints I’m working on. Books can mark me in this way.
So, as the skeleton trees stand guard over midwinter, and the ghost fingers of the cold tug at me, I’ll sit by the stove with my book in my hand and head to other places and other times, far from the mournful days of February. And if I run out of books at home, there’s always the library!
