usmcsis's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- a journey down klickitat street i was driving home from the bookstore a little while ago and i was composing this entry as i drove. i had a very strange feeling tonight. a feeling i haven't had in about twenty years. i came across a website yesterday dedicated to frank baum, the author of thirteen books about oz, including the most well known book, the wonderful wizard of oz. i was in the midst of looking for something else at the time so i saved it to my favorites and made a mental note to go back another day and have a look around. so i went back today and i realized it's been twenty years since i read the wonderful wizard of oz and the second book, the marvelous land of oz. so i decided to run over to the library, which is located less than a mile from my house, and check them both out and spend the evening in the land of oz with dorothy, scarecrow, tin man, toto and the lion. our library is kind of small and the children's area is tiny. when i was a kid, the children's area of the library my dad took me to was way bigger than the adult section and i always thought that was cool. at least until i grew up and had to go look up information for school reports and stuff and then it pissed me off. :) anyway, so the kids' section of our branch is teeny tiny but i started off wandering the rows just looking at some of the books. i was honestly surprised at most of the books i saw there. of course, there are new books that have been written in the past twenty years. and there are books out now by authors i read years ago that hadn't been written yet when i was a kid. but the sheer number of books on those shelves that i had read was shocking. i felt truly old for a moment. but only for a moment. then suddenly i was eight again. i read the names on the spines of those books and it was like finding long lost friends. every title brought memories. the cover art was a familar face. the weight of the book in my hands, while small and light to me at twenty-eight, brought the memory of a book larger than my eight year old hands could comfortably hold and heavy in my arms. i smiled as i read the titles on the spines, making my way slowly down the aisles. i touched them, every one, as i said the title in a whisper to myself and smiled as i remembered the anticipation of a little girl about to start a new journey, to a new town, a new school, to have new experiences. and i wonder about the little girl who read that book last. what did she feel as she turned those pages? what did she think, how did the story make her feel deep down inside? who is she? and more importantly, who will she become? will she wander down the aisles of some library in twenty years and remember the day she read this book? will it mean anything to her if she does? i learned how to play games i'd never heard of while reading books written the decade before i was born. i received my first history lesson about world war two by reading sally j. freeman by judy blume. i learned about the birds and the bees from judy too, long before my mother sat me down to explain it. she knew judy had already told me, through the mouthes of her characters, and it made it easier for her to talk to me knowing that. i remember sitting in my front yard in the shade of one of our pine trees as a kid and reading a ramona book. i loved ramona quimby. i wished we lived on klickitat street. i wanted to ride the bus every day and sit next to ramona and be her best friend. i wanted her sister beezus to babysit me on the weekends. i watched as my brother and his group of friends rode their bikes down the street calling out to each other, whooping and hollering, with our dog prince chasing along behind them. but i didn't see my brother and his friends and prince, i saw henry huggins and his gang of friends and his skinny mutt ribsy running behind. opening the pages of those books is like coming home for me. the texture of the pages in my hands as i turn the page, the sound of the spine creaking ever so slightly as i open the book, the smell of elementary school. the feelings, sounds, and scents of my childhood, alive in my hands. i felt so young. so alive. i've never felt like that before. it's like all the childish innocence and wonder came back to me. it came flooding back, spreading up from my fingers as i touched the books, up my arms to my head, to my heart, to my whole body, and i felt like i was that little girl again. with every possibility in the world open to her. able to be and do whatever she wanted. able to love and laugh and live without fear and without hurt. and i want to feel that way forever. more than anything in the world, i want to pass that feeling on to someone else. if i could only touch a child's life a fraction of the way those author's words have touched mine. 10:47 pm - 16 Aug 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||