P is for Persistance

Persistance: the quality that allows someone to continue doing something or trying to do something even though it is difficult or opposed by other people

: the state of occurring or existing beyond the usual, expected, or normal time

Dr. Seuss was my first love. Weekly, I went to the library with my mom. She left me in the children’s section of the library where I’d find Horton and the Cat. My mom hated the good doctor and refused to checkout his books. He was my secret, guilty pleasure. Eventually, I went to school and read about Narnia, Oz and Green Gables.

When my mom grew too sick to visit the library, a friend brought her a stash of romances which she kept in a big box beside her bed. Weekly, this good friend replenished the box. My mom didn’t know I read her books; it was like the Seuss affair, only sexier. Reading became my escape from a horrific and scary situation. Immersed in a story, I didn’t have to think about the life and death drama taking place on the other side of my bedroom wall. Books were my hallucinogenic drug of choice. While my mother slowly died and my father grieved, I read. I had siblings, but they were older than me by at least a decade, and so while my own home fell apart, they were busy with their own children and marriages.

In junior high, I loved mysteries and set a goal to read all of Agatha Christie's 80+ novels. Which I did. During those years, I also read all of the Jane Austin books, and everything by the Bronte sisters--which frankly, sort of surprises me because now I find the language difficult. I don't remember ever struggling with it back then. I just loved them.

In ninth grade I read Gone With the Wind in about a week. I would stay up late reading, wake the next morning too tired to move, complain of being sick, and spend the day (and the following night) reading about Scarlet and Rhett. A friend's mom told me that she thought the book was too mature for someone my age, but really, it was nothing compared to the books in the box by my mom's bed. I bought Clark Gable pictures and hung them in my room, and when Gone With the Wind came to a local theater, my brother took me. I loved the movie then, although I remember seeing it years later and thinking it melodramatic.

My mother died when I was fifteen. My dad remarried a few months later. I joined the high school newspaper, eventually became the editor and sometime in that messy portion of my life, my writing moved away from diaries and secret poems to something more public.

In college, I studied literature and fell in love with Elliot, Willa and too many others to mention. (This had no similarity to my dating life.) My own writing was mostly all about other people's writings.