Living Quietly in a Loud World

“Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.” ― Criss Jami

I always get the same result on the Myers-Briggs personality test.  INTJ (Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judgment), scoring really high on the introvert scale. According to the Wikipedia article, INTJs are one of the more rare of the sixteen possible combinations of personality types on this test, accounting for about one to four percent of the population.  Which makes me either crazy or really unique, or maybe a little of both.  Apparently we make really great scientists, but that’s something I never pursued.  At any rate, I really don’t like parties or any social gathering involving more than a few people.  I endure them. Sometimes I end up having more fun than I thought I would, but that’s about the most positive spin I can give it. 

As a shy child and introverted adult, I’ve always preferred to be on the sidelines.   I much prefer writing to speaking.  Not that I’m completely anti-social:  I’ve always had some friends, and I’ve always had the ability to get along with just about any personality type.  At work, I don’t mind sharing ideas and contributing in small groups or meetings that make sense to me, but being forced into group work in school, then in the workplace, is a lot for most introverts to handle, especially if it’s something that we perceive as silly.  Most of us manage to do it, but it becomes tiresome after a while, draining us of energy that we feel we could use for other things.   I recognize kindred spirits when I’m out: the gentleman sitting quietly in a corner in Starbucks on his laptop; the woman dining alone for lunch (as I often do), a book in one hand, a fork in the other.  Sometimes we introverts want to be where we can see and hear other people, we just may not want to interact directly.     

Many of us are made to feel that there’s something inherently wrong with being how we are.  We’re told we’re supposed to be more extroverted, more assertive, more like the “life of the party” type. 

From a report card of mine in elementary school:  “A good student, but she needs to participate more in class.”

From a performance evaluation at a former job: “Has a sharp mind and could really get ahead if she would just be more assertive.”

And even from assorted family members and family friends during my childhood: “She really needs to come out of her shell!”; “Wow, she’s really a bookworm, isn’t she?”

Recently, I read the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.  In it, the author discusses the emergence of the different personality types in infancy and childhood and discusses why there is a need in society for both personality types.  One of my favorite examples she used was the unlikely pairing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a powerful public speaker and extrovert, with Ms. Rosa Parks, a quiet, unassuming, middle-aged lady who managed to change history with one action.  From the book:

“Montgomery, Alabama.  December 1, 1955. Early evening.  A public bus pulls to a stop and a sensibly dressed woman in her forties gets on.  She carries herself erectly, despite having spent the day bent over an ironing board in a dingy basement tailor shop at the Montgomery Fair department store. Her feet are swollen, her shoulders ache.  She sits in the first row of the Colored section and watches quietly as the bus fills with riders. Until the driver orders her to give her seat to a white passenger.

    “The woman utters a single word that ignites one of the most important civil rights protests of the twentieth century, one word that helps America find its better self. 

     “The word is ‘No.’” 

Cain goes on to describe the arrest of Rosa Parks and subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott, where a fiery Martin Luther King, Jr. took up the fight and allied his charismatic personality to the voice of the quiet woman.  She had done her job, now it was time for him to do his.  Cain continues:

“I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers.  But when she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature.  They said she was ‘timid and shy’ but had ‘the courage of a lion’.  They were full of phrases like ‘radical humility’ and ‘quiet fortitude’.”

Cain even goes on to speculate that the Civil Rights movement itself seemed to gain a critical momentum at the moment that King partnered with Parks:

  “As with other complimentary pairings…..humanity would be unrecognizable, and vastly diminished, without both personality styles.

“Take the partnership of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.: a formidable orator refusing to give up his seat on a segregated bus wouldn’t have had the same effect as a modest woman who’d clearly prefer to keep silent but for the exigencies of the situation. And Parks didn’t have the stuff to thrill a crowd if she’d tried to stand up and announce that she had a dream.  But with King’s help, she didn’t have to.”

In fact, Cain surmises, the very lives of our early human ancestors depended upon the existence of both the cautious, thinking, introverts and the bold, risk-taking extroverts, which is why both personality types likely survived in modern humans.  Mythology and history have many examples of both personality types, sometimes working in partnership with each other.  Another famous historical partnership is Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt.  He was the exuberant, charming politician;  Eleanor, quiet and more introspective, was his compass for the many pressing social issues of the time.  Together they changed history. 

The section of the book on school-aged introverts really hit home for me, bringing back a lot of uncomfortable memories.  Cain states:

“The truth is that many schools are designed for extroverts. Introverts need different kinds of instruction from extroverts, writes the College of William and Mary education scholars Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. And too often ‘very little is made available to that learner except constant advice on becoming more social and gregarious.’”

“The school environment can be highly unnatural, especially from the perspective of an introverted child who loves to work intensely on projects he cares about, and hang out with one or two friends at a time. In the morning, the door to the bus opens and discharges its occupants in a noisy, jostling mass. Academic classes are dominated by group discussion in which a teacher prods him to speak up. He eats lunch in the cacophonous din of the cafeteria, where he has to jockey for a place at a crowded table. Worst of all, there’s little time to think or create. The structure of the day is almost guaranteed to sap his energy rather than stimulate it.”

I remember feeling this way as a child, and thinking there was something abnormal about me.  Turns out, I was reacting exactly as I should according to my personality type.  I remember a conversation with a friend years ago – every weekend she and her husband entertained, inviting a lot of people to their home.  I asked her how she could stand it all the time, especially since she also worked full time, like I did.  Weekends, for me, were “downtime” from work, when I could be with my family and spend quiet time reading or gardening.  Being around a lot of people energized her, she said.  And there lies one of the main differences between introverts and extroverts:  most extroverts crave company, being around other people.  Introverts like me are fine interacting with other people and even socializing now and then at parties and other activities, but we need time away from it as well, time to recharge.

Many introverts consider “small talk” a waste of time and therefore we are not very good at it.  However, when participating in discussions about a hobby or interest, or a social issue we care deeply about, we can talk at length and be perfectly comfortable doing so.  Many of us consider the “team building” exercises in which we are forced to participate in the workplace a silly waste of time.  But when we’re in a meeting discussing real problems and issues, we often have the ideas that will work to solve these issues, providing we aren’t out-talked by our more exuberant peers. 

Cain suggests the rise of what she labels the “New Groupthink” and “Extrovert Ideal”, from Dale Carnegie’s publication of “How to Win Friends and Influence People” first published in 1936, to Tony Robbins’ more modern energy-filled motivational seminars,  has led people to believe that extroversion is the “correct” way to be.  Many of these campaigns such as “team building” encourage group work at the expense of working in solitude, trying to convince those of us who choose a quieter, more introspective way of life to turn ourselves into high-achieving extroverts, and making us think that we’ve fallen short of some kind of universal goal if we don’t achieve that - or worse, don’t even want that -  for ourselves.  

Cain discusses cultures such as those of Japan and China where being  more “quiet” is an asset rather than a liability, and explains how some Asians attend classes on how to be more assertive and fit in better with the more boisterous American business ideal. 

I was lucky enough to be raised by parents, quiet people themselves, who appreciated me for who I was rather than try to turn me into someone they wanted me to be, so I was essentially left alone to read, play, or just sit and think as much as I wanted.  Some kids are not so lucky, and the childhoods of some introverts can be especially traumatizing, many not finding a niche until they’re older and out on their own. I think the tide might be turning, however, on public perception of people like me.  Some schools are beginning to appreciate the attributes of introverted children as well, and many teachers are recognizing that, as Cain stresses in the book, introverts are not smarter than extroverts, but they do learn in different ways. 

Introverts, in our own way, are beginning to become more assertive and demand our rightful place at the table – just not always vocally, for some of us.  Many more progressive workplaces are making adjustments for the different personalities of their employees.  New technology has made different kinds of communication possible, some companies even ask employees if they prefer to work in a team or work in solitude, and “team meetings” are not always held around a table where the more vocal people talk over the quieter folks.  The internet and social media are wonderful outlets for introverts, since it gives us a totally new way to communicate.  We sometimes have a lot to say, for those who will take the time to listen. 

Below is a link to the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352145

And here's a link to the Myers-Briggs test (also called the Jung typology test, since it's based on research done by famed psychologist Carl Jung) if you wish to see where you score yourself:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

My Favorite Workout

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”  Marcus Tullius Cicero


No, I haven’t embarked on a new fitness plan, unless you consider it “fitness for the soul”.   I have a friend who runs marathons and I admire her very much. (No, really, I do – if running’s your thing, have at it!)  However, while I do enjoy walking and hiking, a recent statement I noticed on Facebook fits me more:  “If you see me running, call the police.”    

 My favorite workout is a true workout, nonetheless.  In fact, it actually burns calories!  Every year, when spring arrives, I suddenly have the urge to lug around fifty-pound bags of topsoil and mulch, numerous pots of plants, and move mounds of soil around with my little shovel.  I get really grubby while doing it. I’m not one of those picture-perfect gardening women you see in the gardening magazines wearing a straw hat and a summer dress with perfectly clean gardening gloves and a pair of little snips in her hand.  I crawl around in the dirt on my hands and knees.  I’ll end the day filthy, sweaty, and exhausted, but extremely gratified.  I’ve been bitten by fire ants, stabbed by thorns, cut with rusty tools, and once nearly knocked myself out on a concrete walk when I flipped over backwards after finally winning a tug-of-war with a particularly stubborn daylily I was dividing.  I leave little trails of gardening debris around the house when I walk inside.  My husband looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind and wonders why I put myself through all that.

 I don’t have a large garden, because I don’t have time or energy right now.  If I ever stop working full time, everyone will know because my garden will probably expand by leaps and bounds.  And maybe someday I’ll have the garden of my dreams, but I certainly don’t have it right now.  I’m jealous of the people with beautifully landscaped and manicured yards.  My yard is rocky and has terrible soil, so I’ve learned through trial and error to make raised garden beds.  I have a few of these raised beds around the yard, and the last few years I’m also doing more container gardening, since it is much less labor-intensive.  I grow mostly flowers and herbs – annuals and perennials -  with a few vegetables now and then.  When I was a child, my parents and grandparents always had large vegetable gardens.  My mother never really liked gardening, but my dad did (his favorite plant was hydrangea, which he called “high geranium”), and both my grandmothers were talented gardeners.  My grandmother Anna loved irises, and my grandmother Zell favored roses.  I grow both.  My roses are from cuttings I obtained from the side of a rural road a couple of years ago – an old fashioned pink “Seven Sisters” rose, a climbing rose that I’ve grown in pots the last couple of years until the cuttings rooted well, then planted in beds last fall.  I’m also growing geraniums and hydrangeas from cuttings – it’s actually a very easy process now that I finally had the courage to try it and quit procrastinating about it.  It’s a wonderful way to multiply plants without purchasing more, if you have the patience.

 My gardening has also led to related activities such as feeding birds, adding bird houses and hummingbird feeders to my yard, and learning the difference between beneficial insects and destructive or harmful insects.  I don’t use pesticides, and I now have a healthy population of ladybugs (actually beetles) around my plants, and last year there were several of the large black and yellow garden spiders that built magnificent webs and stayed until late autumn, when they completed their life cycles after constructing their egg sacs.  I haven’t seen any of their offspring’s webs yet, but I suspect they are still too small and I’ll see them soon.  I’ll look forward to that day.  I'm probably the only person I know who isn't terrified by the sight of a praying mantis.  In fact, I love seeing them, because that means my garden is a wonderful habitat. 

 As I’ve grown older and more experienced after some 25 years of gardening, I also sometimes force myself to refrain from giving unsolicited advice to would-be gardeners.  Not that I’m anywhere near an expert, but some things just drive me nuts.  I read a story one time by one of my favorite gardening writers, Cassandra Danz (aka “Mrs. Greenthumbs”) who, sadly, died from cancer while she was still in her 50’s.  I highly recommend her books as she gives practical gardening advice tinged with a healthy dose of humor.  In one anecdote, she described a friend of hers who was something of a “gardening bandit” -  if someone was doing something terrible to a plant, like pruning a flowering shrub such as forsythia into a hedge-like ball or square, this woman would leave anonymous notes in the offender’s mailbox at night:  “Please don’t prune your forsythia into those horrible balls!  They’re meant to be free-flowing, and you’re cutting off next year’s blooms!”, and “Please don’t plant your hostas in the blazing sun – you’re murdering them!”.  I’ve had to fight the urge lately to leave a similar note at a certain house that states: “If you can’t or won’t grow real flowers, please don’t stick artificial ones all over your yard to make people think you do.” 

 For the most part, gardeners I’ve met are usually practical, common-sense people.  Gardeners understand patience, and we also seem to have an understanding of the basic cycle of life that some people don’t have, and most of us understand our place in that cycle.  Most gardeners also understand the fragility of the planet and eco-systems, and try to do our part to help protect the environment during our time here. Gardening doesn’t even need to be done on a large scale -  if you don’t have outside space,  some pots of herbs on a bright windowsill or a few houseplants to care for can be a very gratifying experience.  The main thing is to get your hands dirty. 

Gardening grounds and calms me in a way that nothing else can do (not even reading!). There is something about the smell of earth and the sight of flowers, and green things like moss and trees, that is very soothing to my spirit. After a stressful day, sometimes doing something as simple as repotting a plant at the potting bench that my late stepfather built for me is all I need to once again be at peace. Places to sit in your garden are also important - I love taking a book outdoors to one of my benches where I can sit and read, looking up now and then to gaze at the flowers or trees.  Scents are also important in the gardening experience; there is nothing like the scent of a rose, or the fragrance of honeysuckle from the edge of a nearby woodland to suddenly transport you back to a moment, a person, or an event in your life.  This morning, as I stepped outside my door, I was greeted with the honey-like scent of Sweet Alyssum, blooming in pots in the wire baker's rack at the entry of my home.  It's a cool-weather plant, and I planted it last fall with pansies, not expecting it to survive the winter.  To my delight it did survive, and now I inhale the lovely fragrance anytime I leave or enter the house.  Moments like that are the reason I still love gardening after all these years.  It is not a hobby to be tossed aside when it becomes boring, because gardening inserts itself into your very soul.  No matter how bad I feel, or how hectic or stressful my life becomes, the plants are always waiting. 

                  A house wren built a tiny nest and raised a brood in one of my containers last year - needless to say, it was interesting keeping the plant watered until the babies flew!

Roots, Shoots, and Spookin' the Graveyards

The TV series “Who Do You Think You Are” has a lot of people interested now in genealogy research.  I confess I’ve been a gen-geek for many years.  I started when I was in my 20’s, back in the 1980’s, back when you still had to travel and schlep through dusty tomes in old courthouse record halls and burn out your eyeballs staring at endless streams of microfilm. 

I didn’t get very far into the research, then my children were born, and I’ve always held a full-time job, so my ancestry research took a backseat to my very own live descendants and general “busyness” of living life for a while. 

The advent of the internet helped re-engage my interest in my ancestors, then with the launch of Ancestry.com, and access to that incredible database of information at my very fingertips, I was off again.  What I’ve found has been exciting, sometimes funny, sometimes incredibly sad, but always interesting: 

A fiery Puritan minister with coal-black hair and fierce dark eyes, who spent time in prison in England because he refused to stop preaching his beliefs.  He finally died in his thirties in 1668 because he was so “worn down”, it is said.  He is buried in the parish church of St. Mary Magdalene in Taunton, Somerset, England.  He was very influential in the movement, published several works before he died, and was looked upon with great respect in the Nonconformist community.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alleine)

An ancient family seat called Denne Hill in Kent, Canterbury, England, that dates from the time of William the Conqueror.  It passed out of my direct line many, many, years ago – my ancestor was a third son, not the oldest -  but the estate is actually still in existence, open to the public,  and now operates as a dairy and cattle farm and corporate retreat.  If I ever make it to England, I’m planning to visit. 

A clergyman/soldier who stayed to help defend the city in the Siege of Derry, Ireland,  when the mayor and other officials escaped in the dark of night, and was considered a hero by the English but hated by Irish nationalists to the point that a statue of him was blown up by the IRA in the 1970’s.   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Walker_(soldier)

A storekeeper in Virginia who came to the colonies in the 1600’s, not as an indentured servant, but with a group of fourteen or so other young men in their teens listed as “orphans” who all emigrated from England as wards of a wealthy widow in her late 30’s (and who apparently liked to be surrounded by young men).   She had purchased land and stated that she needed their help to establish her farm.  Needless to say, she and her entourage of young men were the talk of the community.  

Brothers, members of an ancient Scottish clan who, during the Jacobite wars in Scotland in the late 1600’s -  along with about 100 others - were held prisoner in the dungeon of Dunnotar Castle for nearly a year when they refused to refute their religious beliefs.  Their release was eventually negotiated by a wealthy sympathizer who immediately booked passage for them on a ship to America before their captors could change their minds. 

A man-of-all-trades, Swiss by birth, who worked as everything from a blacksmith to a swineherd for twenty years journeying through the Rhine River valley in Germany, until he reached Amsterdam and purchased passage on a ship to America for his family and his son-in-law’s family with the money that he had saved.  He became a successful farmer and businessman in 1700’s North Carolina with a farm, orchards, and tannery. 

A patriot woman whose cabin was near King’s Mountain, North Carolina and who helped tend some of the wounded from that Revolutionary War battle, was held hostage in her own home by Tories who were looking for her husband and sons,  and rescued by one of her sons who spirited her over the mountain to safety.  The Tories were hung.

A Scotsman who married a half-Cherokee woman in Tennessee -  they were reasonably well-off for their time but that didn’t matter when the Cherokee were all forced to move to Oklahoma.  He accompanied her, they lived to ripe old ages, and they are buried in a Baptist Mission cemetery in Adair, Oklahoma, near tribal lands.  Their grandson, my third great-grandfather, fought in the Civil War and died near Piedmont, Alabama in 1904, and is buried in a cemetery there.

A tough frontier woman who left her moderately well-to-do family in North Carolina and moved with her husband to the (then) frontier of north Georgia, lost one son as a teenager, her other son died in Mississippi in the Civil War, lost a daughter and daughter-in-law in childbirth,  then lost her husband, and as a widow raised her orphaned grandchildren while keeping their farm running.  The only child who outlived her was my direct ancestor, her youngest daughter - my third great-grandmother.  They are all buried in a family cemetery in Ranger, Georgia. 

A mountain man from Union County in the Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia, one of my great-great-grandfathers, who spent time in prison in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s.  I’ve managed to learn of three different stories as to the reason:  one was, of course, moonshining  (his story was that he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time: it wasn’t his moonshine still, he came upon a fire and was just trying to get warm when the sheriff suddenly arrived).  Another version is that he could possibly have been practicing medicine without a license (he was a folk healer who often travelled deep into the mountains at times on “doctor calls”).  The last version,  which was my great-great-grandmother’s story, was that she had him arrested for bigamy charges.  Apparently he spent a great deal of time in the mountains with one of the women he was treating for an “illness”, enough time that she could have been considered his common- law wife.   It could have been a combination of all those things.   At any rate, it caused a rift in the family that never really healed -  he and my great-great-grandmother never divorced but didn’t live together the last thirty or so years of their marriage, and their six children were split down the middle as to whose side they took. 

These are but a few of the fascinating stories I’ve uncovered while doing this research.  It has made my ancestors more human and more real to me, learning some of their stories – the heroes and even the scoundrels.  I’ve also met new friends and distant cousins -  one from whom I borrowed the term “spookin’ the graveyards” (thank you, Mr. Gray), a sort of offshoot hobby of genealogy.  Once you learn about these people, and learn their burial places may not be too far away, it’s only natural to want to visit and look for the graves. Looking through old cemeteries may seem morbid to some, but I’ve always enjoyed it, and it’s even more interesting when I know my ancestors are buried there.  Locating a cemetery or the grave of an ancestor is a little like searching for treasure. 

My roots lie very deep in the Southern United States.  In my research I haven’t found any recent immigrants whatsoever; most of my ancestors came to America during the 17^th and 18^th centuries,  most of them arriving in Massachusetts, Delaware, and Virginia,  migrating ever southward as more land opened up, and eventually settling in north Georgia and Alabama. 

Some of the websites that have been very helpful to me in my research:

Ancestry.com  (of course)  - different levels of membership fee for that one, but the roughly $17 per month is well worth it, if you’re a genealogy buff.   You can find out a lot on the two-week free membership, but if you want to construct and maintain your trees, it’s best to join as a member.  You’re also given the option of publishing your research at fairly reasonable costs. 

Findagrave.com -  I stumbled upon this from another link and find it invaluable now, and it's free.  There is a lot of information; some people have even posted photos and stories. 

Hopper Family Cemetery in Ranger, Georgia.  Elizabeth Angel Hopper (my fourth great-grandmother) settled with her family in Northwest Gordon County in the early 1840's.  She raised her orphaned grandchildren and kept the family farm running after losing her husband and all but one child.

Local county genealogical societies can also be a wonderful source.  Bartow County, Georgia, where I live, has a great genealogical website - they’ve done extensive research and catalogued just about all the cemeteries in the county, even the private family ones.  That’s how I found an old family cemetery from my paternal grandmother’s side of the family, and learned they were some of the early settlers in the county.   Sometimes just “googling” a name can yield results.  That’s how I found the King’s Mountain story and my ancestors’ roles in that.   And of course, social networking makes contact with distant relatives or others who might hold another piece of the puzzle possible, and that is invaluable.  I created a Facebook page for my mother's side of the family, and I’ve made many new friends and learned not only tips on researching from them, but many interesting stories as well.   I’ve also corresponded with several people through the message center on Ancestry.com. 

It has been a spellbinding journey, this research.  And I’m not even finished yet. If you choose to go internet and graveyard crawling for your family roots, and need my help or advice in any way, please let me know.

Elizabeth Angel Hopper, 1803-1879 (my maternal grandmother bore a striking resemblance to her),  my fourth-great-grandmother.  Settled in Ranger, in northwest Gordon County, with her family in the early 1840’s.   

Of Cats, and Life Journeys

"All diseases run into one:  old age. "   Ralph Waldo Emerson

I met a fellow cat lover at the nursing home yesterday morning.   Her name is Mrs. Hopkins.

The old lady sat in a wheelchair in the corridor, stroking a stuffed animal  - a gray cat -  that lay in her lap. 

“Hey!”, she exclaimed as I walked by.

“Hey!”,  I said, and stopped walking, smiling at her. 

Mrs. Hopkins eyed me for a moment, sizing me up while still stroking the stuffed cat, then asked, “How much did you say you wanted for your car?”

I explained to her that my car wasn’t for sale, but that I really liked her cat, at which point she smiled broadly and offered it to me to pet.  She loved cats, too, she said.  I told her about my cats, Lily and Alice, and told her I would love to bring them for her to see, but unfortunately they weren’t as calm as her cat and I’d hate for them to run amok in the nursing home.  She grinned at me and chuckled, then returned to petting her stuffed cat, once again lost in her own memories. 

I was in the nursing home because my stepfather moved there this past Monday evening.  January has gone by in a blur of his hospital stay and now, the move to the nursing home.   He was admitted to the hospital on January 10^th with a severe case of pneumonia.  After the first night in the hospital, he deteriorated into a state of dementia from which he will likely never recover.   He’s been battling COPD and even a bout with cancer the last several years.  Last fall, we noticed he had started to have a little trouble recalling words in the middle of a sentence and had begun to repeat himself somewhat.  At the hospital, he rapidly lost his ability to remember and even for a time was unable to feed or do much of anything for himself, although he is improving some and able to feed himself now at the nursing home.   One of the doctors said that he’s gone through stages of dementia in two weeks that many people take months or even years to reach.   

It’s been very hard for us to watch this happen to this man who could do anything from fix the brakes on a car to roofing a house.  He has always treated me and my children as his own, and he’s helped me more times than I can count with numerous things.   He even kept the used Plymouth I bought when I was single running as long as he could, joking that “one day it’s just going to lay down and die”.  Which, of course, it eventually did. 

Needless to say, it’s been devastating for our family; at the moment we’re just taking it day at a time.  One very important thing this has reminded me of is that you never really know, from one moment to the next, what life is going to hand you.  That’s why it’s so very important to appreciate every moment.  Money cannot buy your health, nor can it buy your mind back, or your youth, once it’s gone.  

I think about that as I walk the halls of the nursing home.  A clean, bright, place, with a kind staff.  Much better than some of the ones I’ve entered in the past, thank goodness.  But still, it is what it is.  I smile and speak to the residents as I walk past, and I wonder what they were like when they were young, and middle-aged.  I wonder what their hopes and dreams and worries were, and how many times, when they were young, they hurried past an old person without speaking or even acknowledging them, not thinking that they themselves would be there one day.  Aging is something that only death will stop.  So make the most of your time, no matter how young - or old - you are.  If you woke up and were able to move, and think, and recognize and communicate with those around you as you go about your normal day,  be grateful, and be kind to others along your journey.  For we are all really on the same journey, just at different stages. 

I'm trying to make something positive come out of something negative, though.  I saw a dog at the nursing home on Friday and I'm going to check next week and see if they have an animal therapy program.  I would love for Mrs. Hopkins to be able to pet and cuddle a real cat now and then.  I'm sure she would love that.

The Best of Both Worlds

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”
Maya Angelou 

I received a Kindle Fire from my husband for Christmas this year.  It was supposed to be my gift for Christmas, 2010.  I stopped the purchase at the last minute last year.  He bought one this time before I could stop him and gave it to me.  It languished around a bit from December 25^th until January 4^th, when I picked it up and finally began to use it.   I’ve now read two books on it in three days.  

I had long resisted an e-reader.  I’ve loved books since childhood,  and to me,  obtaining a Kindle smacked of a betrayal of that most precious thing: a printed book.   

Reading is one of my “deep and continuing needs”, to quote Ms. Angelou.  Some of my best childhood memories are of books, and the library.  In my hometown of Cartersville, Georgia, the first public library I entered around the age of six or thereabouts was an old two-story house that sat in the shadow of the historical courthouse, surrounded by hundred-year-old oak trees.  The house was a sprawling old Craftsman-style with lots of dark wood.  Not really all that inviting on the outside, but the inside was a magical place.  Inside were towering shelves of books, a beautiful marble floor that was enticingly cool on hot days, and a lovely bronze statue called “Pandora” that fascinated me as a child and is still on display in the new library.   And the smell!  I learned to love the smell of books and libraries before I was ten years old.

I was a painfully shy only child who took refuge in books from an early age. My mother and I would spend many hot summer afternoons in the library.  I devoured J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan,  L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and delighted in the antics of Astrid Lindgren’s wonderfully eccentric Pippi Longstocking.   

My interest in mysteries was awakened reading about the adventures of Jupiter, Pete, and Bob in Robert Arthur Jr.’s “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators” series.   And, of course, I read all the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden mysteries I could get my hands on.  My third grade teacher read E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web aloud to our class, and it became one of my favorite books of all time. 

An elderly neighbor, a retired teacher, gave me a beautiful copy of Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales for my seventh birthday.   I read the stories of “Thumbelina”,  “The Ugly Duckling”, and “The Little Mermaid” over and over.  It’s tattered and old, but I still have that book.  When I was in fourth grade and terribly sick with chicken pox that winter, my father brought home a copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which I’ve re-read countless times.   A fifth-grade teacher introduced me to the world of Laura Ingalls with the Little House series, and Mary Norton’s fantasy series for children, The Borrowers.  I still love The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett as much now at age forty-eight as I did at age eleven.  As a young teen I read J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley,  Jules Verne and many others, and my love of Sci-Fi/Fantasy was born.

You see, I love reading, and I also love books.   I love the feel and smell of new books and old books.   I have a modest collection of vintage detective novels from the 1930’s and 40’s -  works of Agatha Christie,  Mary Roberts Rinehart,  Dashiell Hammett, and others.  I love reading inscriptions in the old books (one says: Happy Birthday with love to Edwin from Mary, 1937).   I imagine Edwin reading the book – did he like it?  Were he and Mary married?  Lovers?  Brother and sister?   I love browsing antique malls and used book stores for great deals on old books, and I love book stores, and the new, even more modern, library.

I also love technology, and all the new things it has brought us.  I feel very lucky to be alive in this time period.  It must be similar to what it was like for the people who were living during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and all the wonderful inventions that changed life so much back then within the time frame of forty years or so.      

So I now have a Kindle.  My favorite thing about my Kindle Fire is the self-illumination:  if lighting is poor, you can still read!  What would I have done with one of these as a child?  It would have been much easier than smuggling one of my dad’s flashlights in my room so I could sneak and finish a book (even though it was past my bedtime). 

I won’t give up my printed books or my love of them.  They are as much a part of me as my skin, it seems.  I will still get up on Saturday mornings and make my library trips.  I will still scour antique malls for great finds, and I will still delight in the discovery of a wonderful independent book store like the Winder Binder Gallery and Bookstore in Chattanooga’s quirky North Shore area.   I will continue to sit outside on my garden bench on bright spring afternoons with a book in my hands and the sun warm on my shoulders, and read while I listen to the bees working the flowers. 

I look at my Kindle as another tool to augment my love of reading.  But it doesn’t take away my love of books.