Sometimes All You Want Is...

What would life be without books and mothers?

Well, besides the obvious.

Today, I would like to be seven again, not because seven was so fabulous, mind you. I do recall the second grade and my teacher, Miss Porter, a lovely woman who used to play the piano during sing along time. I really liked Miss Porter.

But I don't want to go back to second grade, really, as fun as it might have been.

What I really want is the comfort of my mom reading me a good story. I remember we would all pile up on the beds in my brothers' room. My mom would pull out a book. It was probably around eight in the evening, and the sky would still be light out, and we'd look my brother's front window. Out across long stretches of green fields and haystacks, the shimmer of a small pond in a pasture, far past the freeway and the roads leading to it, and on to West Mountain, where the sun would slowly be sinking, just the moments before twilight falls.

I can hear the gentle cadence of my mother's sweet voice, slightly soprano but not so high and delicate that she couldn't give us a stern talking to if needed. I can feel myself crawling up to her arm and cuddling close or curling up in her lap, the pages of the book spread out in front of us. All of use were quiet in those moments, listening and waiting.

Or perhaps it would be winter, and the sun was far past just going down. We'd be settled into our beds after family prayer and a kiss good-night from our dad. Mom would sit on the landing of the stairs, just between our two rooms with a book, illuminated only by the one light above her, the rest of the house so still and calm. I can remember crying in my bed, my sister next to me, weeping, too, at The Miracle of Miss Willy. Even my brothers were choked up in the next room, lying silently in their beds and taking it all in.

And really, of all my childhood memories, these are probably more comforting than any other I can think of. It isn't really any wonder, then, that I take so much joy in books?

And sometimes that is all I want, really. Just a good story and my mother's voice, reading.