Skip to main content

Where Have All the Reading Materials Gone?

The NaBloPoMo prompt for today is: When was the first time you realized that your home was not like other peoples' homes?

I recall roller skating in a friend's garage in kindergarten. We didn't have a garage, but that's not the memory that sticks out in my mind. Nor is it when I think about playing with Barbies at other peoples' homes, but not having them at home.

When I was in eighth grade, I went to spend the night with a friend and I remember her house looked totally different than either my (parents') house or other houses I knew. There was something odd about the place that I couldn't put my finger on for a while. Finally, we were dancing in the living room and I stopped and said, "Where are all your books?"

I was used to a house that had reading material everywhere. In the living room on shelves and by chairs. In the laundry room on the "brown table" that collected everything. By my parents' bed. Both sets of grandparents had many books as well.

This pristine house had lovely shelves of knickknacks and picture frames, but no books that I could see.

For me, it's just a house until I put my books all over it. Then it's home.

Comments

Bonnie Jacobs said…
When I was dating the man I would marry, I noticed there was precisely one book in his parents' home — the Bible — and it was on the lower shelf of the coffee table, dusted but apparently never read. He didn't grow up a reader, but he changed:

http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2011/06/from-his-obituary.html
November 28, 2011 at 9:29 AM
Bonnie Jacobs said…
I quoted part of this for my readers this morning, but some may come here to see what else you said:
http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2011/12/booking-about-sunday-salon.html
December 4, 2011 at 4:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Religious Holidays in Anchorage

You may have read in the Anchorage Daily News about a new policy regarding certain religious holidays and the scheduling of school activities. If not, a link to the article is here . The new rules do not mean that school will be out on these new holiday inclusions, but that the Anchorage School District will avoid scheduling activities, like sporting events, on these days. The new list includes Passover, Rosh Hashanah , Yom Kippur , Eid al - Fitr and Eid al - Adha . They are added to a list which includes New Year's, Orthodox Christmas and Easter, Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. The new holidays may be unfamiliar to some: Passover is a Jewish celebration, in the springtime, that commemorates the events in Egypt that led up to the Exodus. The name of the holiday comes specifically from the fact that the angel of death "passed over" the houses of the Israelites during the plague which killed the eldest sons of the Egyptians. Passover is a holiday
Post a Comment
Read more

Latibule

I like words and I recently discovered Save the Words , a website which allows you to adopt words that have faded from the English lexicon and are endanger of being dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary. When you adopt a word, you agree to use it in conversation and writing in an attempt to re-introduce said word back into regular usage. It is exactly as geeky as it sounds. And I love it. A latibule is a hiding place. Use it in a sentence, please. After my son goes to bed, I pull out the good chocolate from my latibule and have a "mommy moment". The perfect latibule was just behind the northwest corner of the barn, where one had a clear view during "Kick the Can". She tucked the movie stub into an old chocolate box, her latibule for sentimental souvenirs. I like the sound of latibule, though I think I would spend more time defining it and defending myself than actually using it. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure how often I use the
2 comments
Read more

When the Body of Christ is Fat

Bitmoji Julia enjoys tea Within a very short amount of time, two people whom I love were called "fat ass". One of these slurs occurred in the church building and the other occurred in the same building and within the context of worship. Both incidents were the result of a person with already impaired judgment lashing out at the person who was in front of them, perceiving them to be unhelpful or denying aid or service. Regardless of the "why", the reality is that the name was uncalled for, hurtful, and aimed to be a deep cut. The reality is that a person who is under the influence of legal or illegal substances and often displays impaired judgment can still tell that body shaming- comments about shape, appearance, or size- is a way to lash out at someone who is frustrating you. That means those words and that way of using them are deeply rooted in our culture. An additional truth is that when we, as a congregation, attempted to console and listen to those who h
6 comments
Read more