all of the selves we Have ever been
This pandemic is getting long. There are days when I feel like my eight-year-old-self. Stuck in the middle of a long, hot summer with all of my friends on vacation, I would throw myself across the couch like a worn afghan, legs dangling like loose threads, and whine, “There’s nooooooothing to do!” Sometimes my siblings joined me in a chorus of that late summer song, but a busy parent didn’t care much for the number and warned, “Find something to do, or I’ll find you something to do.” My brother, sisters and I were bored, not stupid. We intuitively understood that whatever our mom or dad had in mind would be sure to take us from the purgatory of boredom straight into the fires of chore hell. We took our whining elsewhere. Sometimes we scattered and found solitary activities, other times we found things to do together. Staples of play that could be done alone or together were cutting out paper dolls, playing jacks, shooting marbles, and reorganizing collections of baseball cards, but the most reliable go-to was coloring. It would be a dull world without Crayola crayons. There is nothing like a little spring green or magenta to rub away the dreariness of a summer grown too long. Those waxy instruments taught children their colors and grew eye-hand coordination. They provided the life lesson and discipline of learning to stay within the lines. Coloring was therapy we didn’t know we needed--relaxing, shielding the mind from dread and worry. We occupied ourselves by creating art. As we got older and more sophisticated, we learned to outline in black or to mix colors. All children coveted the 64-pack with the built-in sharpener. All those colors! And the fresh tips standing straight up like soldiers in progressively raised rows! We longed for that flip-top box the way kids today crave a new iPhone. A fresh 64-pack put a youth in league with the Renaissance masters. A child could color alone or with others. Tear out pages or sit side-by-side. Rank and ownership were reflected in who maintained control of the coloring book. We poured over each page looking for the “good” one—an image we liked or could imagine complete with just the right colors. And the 64-pack made us aware of a growing palette of colors: burnt orange, lemon yellow, forest green, cornflower, periwinkle… I am happy to see that coloring has returned in adult form. I still have a box of Crayola crayons leftover from my children’s early elementary school days. It is only the 48-pack. No sharpener. I notice that after all of the years that have passed, there are still several crayons with pointed tips standing at attention underneath the flip-top lid. Melon, blue green, lavender, and sky blue did not get much of a work out. I will have to make that right… I read somewhere that inventor Thomas Edison’s laboratory burned to the ground in 1914. Edison was quoted as saying, “I’ve been through a lot of things like this. It prevents a man from being afflicted with ennui.” Now there’s a man who could not tolerate boredom! I am surprised that he is not the one who invented crayons. What would Edison be up to in a pandemic? It is not likely that we would find him stretched across the couch whining about nothing to do. I’m no Edison, but I am a grown up now. I am not bored; I am experiencing ennui. Coloring is fashionable again. I am busting out the crayons and throwing out the matches. I have something to do!
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Wishing can be dangerous. As a child, when I dared to voice a wish out loud, expressing the magical thinking of youth, my mother would say, “Don’t wish your life away,” or “Be careful what you wish for.” Of course, she had the perspective of age. She knew the risks of wishing. Mom was the daughter of hard-working immigrant parents, and she was a military spouse. By the time I was old enough to voice wishes, my mother had long outgrown the gentle garden of make-believe and was firmly rooted in the hard soil of reality. In spite of her many warnings, as 2020 drags on, I find my wish list growing. Among my big wishes: I wish this pandemic were over. In the meantime, I wish people would stop fighting about masks and start wearing them. I wish there were justice for everyone and peace on our streets. I wish the temperature would cool down. I wish the election were over. I wish I could hug my children. I wish I could get back to work I love. I wish for smaller things to keep me going: an email, a phone call from a friend, a letter in the mailbox, a cool breeze, a good book, and strength for a long walk. I think of all of the things I’ve wished for over the years chief among them, I wished for more time away from work, more time for myself…dangerous wishes indeed! I should have been more careful. I listen as older people confide in me, “Is this it? Is this how my life will end--bored, alone, and socially distant from everyone and everything I love?” They feel the clock ticking and a growing fear that there will not be enough time to get everything they want. There is regret at the years wished away while in a hurry to get to somewhere else. I hear these voices and feel the shift inside myself, the move from the garden of make-believe to the hard soil of reality, the mound of dirt my mother spoke from when I was young. I reflect on my knowledge of wishing. I learned to wish on birthday candles. Blow out the small flames. Don’t ever tell anyone your birthday wishes or they will be lost. There was the Thanksgiving turkey wishbone-wishing and wishing on stars. There was the “what would you wish for” from the genie in a bottle. The first time I heard someone say their first wish would be for more wishes, I realized then that I was not slick enough for this wishing game. I accepted my three wishes and tried to make wise choices. It made me a loser in the wishing game. Wishing is tricky business and not for everyone. The lesson that a person can destroy her wishes by sharing them seems harsh and lonely. Wishing for endless wishes seems greedy. Wishes are gifts given by magic, no effort required. Perhaps that is the big difference between wishes and prayers--something else I am more prone to in the current circumstances. When does a wish become a prayer? A prayer is more than a shopping list of unobtainable items. Unlike wishes, a prayer must be stated and shared. It requires effort and humility. It acknowledges fear, weakness, and weariness. It is asking for help not magic. A prayer is an acknowledgement that action is required. On the most difficult days, I borrow a prayer from Sarah Ban Breathnach, “Help me, Lord. And help me until you help me.” We won’t get out of 2020 by wishing, but if a genie does pop out of a bottle, I am ready with my three wishes. Give me radical faith in goodness, stubborn joy in moments of discouragement, and the will for thoughtful, deliberate action. With the Lord’s help, I can take it from there. I sure do miss the library. I am grateful for the recent curb service, but it is just not the same. There is no other setting that can compare with the atmosphere of a great library: quiet, gentle, respectful, happy. Great minds and voices whisper from the shelves. I feel a sense of reverence and pride to be among them. The library is there for every one of every interest and need. Public libraries are taxpayer supported and THE best example of redistribution of wealth. Who can complain about supporting a library? Libraries put the free in freedom. The services are entirely voluntary, and the books and materials can be borrowed at no charge. There is no better deal anywhere, especially during an economic downturn. Thomas Jefferson said, “I cannot live in a world without books.” Well, neither can I. Thankfully, during this long period of library closings, I have friends who have shared Kindles and mailed novels to me. My daughter grew into a book-lover too, and we’ve made some in-person trades. There are books in each room of my house and a few in my car. Often, if there is room, I can place something to read in my purse. While I was growing up, books lined the shelves of our dining room at home. Magazines covered the coffee table. My parents did not have time to spend hours stretched out on the couch reading, but somehow books mysteriously appeared on those shelves and magazines piled up on the tables. That area of our home became my first small library. I picked up and read books my parents were enjoying like Fail Safe about a Cold War nuclear crisis and Rebecca, a Gothic novel by Daphne Du Maurier. There were Reader’s Digest Condensed Books—a real bargain, several books in one. My mom’s heavy medical dictionary and books about microscopic organisms lay on their sides on the bottom shelves. My dad was a wonderful amateur photographer and loved National Geographic. Copies were scattered in our little library and all around the house. One never threw away a National Geographic. Ever! Each copy was like owning the original, Pulitzer prize-winning photographs. It was in passing from our kitchen to the dining room that I first heard gathered books silently whisper to me. They could not be ignored. No matter how many times I scanned or dusted the shelves, I was never bored. I could always find something new and interesting. I have a vivid memory of learning to read thanks to Dick and Jane, their little sister, Sally, and pets, Spot and Puff. Dr. Seuss made reading fun with silly, catchy rhymes and memorable imaginary characters. But it was Nancy Drew that made me and AVID reader. I spent a lot of lazy hours lying on my belly, nosed pressed to the pages sounding out new words like c-o-l-o-n-e-l. I craved each installment in the series. Nancy Drew and her friends, Bess and George, lived lives far removed from the mundane lives of Dick and Jane. Those amateur sleuths were smart and independent, not burdened by the normal dreary demands of my own school-age life. They faced fear and solved mysteries. They were average and yet heroic. I longed to live the Nancy Drew life or at least become her friend. Nancy Drew got girls reading and dreaming, a pretty heroic act in itself given the times. I don’t remember when I first entered a library. I do recall stepping aboard a book mobile in early grade school. It was the original Magic School Bus. It might also explain why I always keep books and magazines in my car. After the Book Mobile, that’s just how we roll. In the small village that was home to my grandparents and where we sometimes lived when my father was deployed on military duty, there was a tiny library, just a little bud by today’s standards. On the basement floor below was the village jail which my sister, my cousin and I explored during a trip to the library. We hesitantly walked down the concrete stairs and peeked in. There was no one in the jail and the door was open. We stepped inside for a better look. As I recall, there were two adjacent cells with iron bars. One cell had mattresses propped up on their sides--must have been the padded cell. Creepy. We didn’t stay long, and we didn’t go back. However, it did turn out to be more memorable than the library. In retrospect, it does seem handy to keep jail and rehab in the same location. Growing up, we stuck primarily with the school library as we lived in the suburbs and chauffeur services were limited. It wasn’t until college and graduate school that I had easy access to great libraries. By then community libraries were in full bloom. Today I live in an urban area with amazing libraries in every community. Public libraries contain so much more than books! Collections include films and music, computer access, digital services, newspapers, magazines, research assistance, help with your tax returns, classes, entertainment, daily programs for children of all ages, helps for senior citizens…And good libraries just keep reinventing themselves. Past, present, and future here unite. No matter how many times a week that I visit a library, the books still whisper to me. All the great minds that ever lived are immortalized somewhere there on a shelf waiting to be rediscovered. In this contentious time, libraries remain the great equalizer. Your freedom ticket is inside. Our public libraries are our monuments to the power of free speech and public education. May they stand the test of time and serve as a reminder that words do matter. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
April 2024
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