Back Again?

Dear Mama and Daddy,

For the second time in my life, in this bedroom at y(our) house, I’m sitting up in bed, lights on, buzzed from reading Stephen King’s The Shining. And tonight, I’m sitting sated and licking my lips over how great that story was, and suddenly I’m remembering the pure visceral pleasure that I got from books as a kid. Not the satisfaction of reading that comes later – when you appreciate the way a sentence was crafted, the development of plot and character, the learning of new information… You know what it is – it’s the symphony before you can hear all the instruments, before you know to listen for them. It’s the first time you took me to the symphony in Houston and my little 4 year old butt wasn’t quite heavy enough to keep the chair folded down, and the orchestra warmed up and tuned and it was so rich and warm, otherworldly and unexplainable that I cried and tried not to show my tears. I didn’t know what it was, but I wanted more of it. I was hooked then. And that’s the same way I felt when I learned to read. Go Dog Go was just learning to tune, and I remember that it felt good to read it (Red dog on a blue tree!), and then that hungry devouring of that first Boxcar Children book (run Henry, win the race!). I was hooked then and forever.

            The first time I read The Shining, I was in eighth grade. It was late spring I think – after my birthday, maybe Dad was home from Zambia, true or not that’s where my memory places it. And it was the only only book that I didn’t tell you I was reading. I kept it secret, and that was part of its grip too. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d make me stop – I don’t know why, you’d always let me read anything I wanted, saying that you figured I’d stop or lose interest if it wasn’t right for me. But it was the first book that scared the absolute bejeezus out of me, and looking back, eighth-grade me thought that if a book could scare me enough that I thought you wouldn’t let me read it, then maybe I shouldn’t read it at all. So I read it in three nights – the only book I ever read under the covers, and then I had trouble going to sleep, and finally exhausted I copped to having read it, having been totally freaked, and Mom, I think the first thing you said was “Redrum.” You twisted sister – you knew it was a great book. You didn’t heat up milk and pat my tummy and tell me monsters weren’t real. “Redrum,” you said, and then you probably said that King can really tell a good story because that’s what you always say.

            A good story – not a morality tale, not one with a moral, or lesson – but a living thing that grabs you by the color and roars an amazing sound over you, licks you over and won’t let you go till it’s done, one that livens, one that quickens. That’s why I read it in three nights – I couldn’t put the damn thing down, even as it was scaring me, I had to keep the pages turning. The story chased me all the way through that book, and I missed things, I see that now, because I was moving so fast.

            It took me longer this time – about a week. I had to work, run, answer my phone, pack – be a “grown up”. But still I stayed up wake, and when I waked in the middle of the night, I picked it up. That’s the reason I’m the only one up in the house now – I woke up, and knew I could finish it, and though I know I’m going to miss this sleep later today, I can’t say it wasn’t worth it. Because when I finished it my brain was buzzing with WOW, and READING IS GREAT!!!!!!!! And I wanted to run downstairs as I used to, and wake you up and tell you about this GREAT BOOK.

            But I don’t now.

I’m older now, less impulsive. I give into the great urge to write as the next best thing to waking you up. Maybe when I am older yet and you sleep more deeply, I will be able to tell myself to go back to sleep, it’s only a story, but not tonight – I can’t do it yet.

            I think it was sometime early in my reading career that I must have expressed the idea of how sad it was to be done with a story, because then it was over. And I remember you told me that I could read it again – it wouldn’t be the same, but it would good, different, I could still enjoy the story because good stories stay good. And you said sometimes I’d like it again, or not, or like it differently, and suddenly I got all my favorite stories again. Funny how kids need to be given permission sometimes – I didn’t know if you could read a book again or not, if you just had to move forward and remember.

            So I read The Shining again – something I hadn’t done since that first time. Honestly, that first time the story was its own scared straight program – scary enough to make me swear to stay on the straight and narrow forward. I didn’t even used to like walking by it on the shelf in its silver cover. Was it fun? Absolutely. Did I want to ride again? Nope, felt lucky to get through the first time. But I’m 30 now, and I know think there are no monsters in the closet, that the shadow on the wall is just a tree. And King is one of my favorite writers. And he’s just come out with another story about Danny – grown up Danny. This wish we readers have, that we could have a little bit more story please, we got. He delivered. And good or not, I knew I would read it, and scary or not, I wanted to meet those characters again, so I downloaded the book, and started it again. I couldn’t put it down; I can’t pick up the new one yet – I got to let the pleasure of this one sit, and mellow.

            Between then and now: The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, True Grit, Woolf, and Eliot, and so much Faulkner. National Book Award winners, and Man Booker prize winners. Fluff and thunder. Meat and potatoes and cotton candy. I came back to the book different, that’s always so isn’t it.

            You’ll be up soon, I’ll go down and tell you all about it. We’ll drink coffee. Momma in her gown, and Daddy with his cup. (Her brown eyes will snap knowingly – a good story, and he – pretending he is not listening, will shake his head a little at his daughter, but the corners of his lips will turn up, then he will say, “See, Daddy was right, you should have written index cards,” – all the books I read, he told me this in second grade, write them down on a card – title, author, date, sentence summary, then when I was his age, think of all the books I’d have read, and I could go back and remember. And he will be right, as he usually is, and I will know only too late that this is so.)

            There were things I missed the first time. I missed the moments of grace that Flannery O’Connor wrote for, I recognized the grotesques in King’s words, appreciated what grace his characters reached – that moment of truth when they see themselves. I saw the broader themes, the motifs, the soundness of the story – skills I developed under Mrs. Merryman’s tutelage.

            It wasn’t perfect – no creation ever is – except maybe that very first one, but that’s another story, yes, but damn if it doesn’t come close. Was the end perhaps too pat and saccharine?  Maybe, but damn if I didn’t love it.

            You know why I loved it? Because it’s my favorite story, part of it at least, not one story, but THE STORY. The big one, the one with capital letters, the one we all tell each other. The one that all the great stories tell, the one that you have always told me:

            The world’s a hard place… It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain…The world don’t love you, but your momma does, and so do I…That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

            I got it, Momma and Daddy. I see you’ve done it. You’re doing it. Your love’s bright and alive, and I see how you go one. I get it now. The great stories are the ones you live. I’m coming right behind you.

Shine on,

Elizabeth