“The list has come,” my mother announced, waving two pieces of paper at me from the desk under her bedroom window. I was lying on the floor watching dust motes dance in a shaft of sunlight, an activity that fascinated me as long as I could remember. It was not considered a useful endeavor by most of the adults in my life. My grandmother didn’t mind discussing the motes with me occasionally, but no one could get as lost on that pathway of light the way I could. I wondered if the dust knew where it came from and where it was going.
“What list?” I muttered, never taking my eyes off the action I’d been following from the window to the floor. The question had merit. My mother wasn’t compulsory about lists but she did rely on them to complete the things she considered fundamental. She was always good about homework, so my grandmother told me, unlike her youngest daughter; me. So the list might have been the morning shopping headed up by ‘three lovely lemons’ and a pound of ‘sweet butter’; but wasn’t.
“Your summer reading requirement came from school,” my mother informed me. Her voice held that tone meant to solicit both attention and acceptance from me at the same time, so I looked up to see two pages, both covered from top to bottom with lines of black letters and very few white page breaks. Not a good sign.
“All those?” I howled. I could see by her straight back and firm eye that Mummy was steeled for my breakdown. That meant the list was even worse than last year’s.
“Just eight,” she said quietly; “and five different groups to choose from. Then you can take five more of your own from the library. I remember some of these.” She pointed to the top page, her voice held down with a forced calm I knew was meant to disarm my explosion. Well, she needn’t have tried. I was already so crushed by the thought of the hated reading list from school I had no ammunition left for protest.
I think now of that near-fatal allergic reaction to prescribed reading at the start of every summer and wonder what my problem was. I loved books and stories of all kinds, even poetry, and thrived long and well on my grandmother’s voracious reading habits that nurtured a love of narritive . Why then were hysterics the norm at the arrival of the school list for summer reading? I hold the thought of more time to read in the summer close to my heart now, so why not then? Possibly the fact that I was always a slow and inferior reader for my age affected my ability to enjoy the product; and probably the extra effort it took me to get through a book myself made it a pain instead of a pleasure. But it was so much more than that, I think.
I had a sympathetic ear for language and music as well as a sympathetic eye for color and an empathetic heart for feelings. The ear told me when things didn’t sound just right, the eye pulled me to dress in the colors of nature around me and the heart to adjust the sounds of the ear and colors of the eye to lift people’s spirits (as well as my own). As a result, I preferred to read about the things that reminded me of summer, and the things I chose for myself. Had the school reading requirement been to read anything I liked and tell them why I liked it at the end of the summer, I’d have immersed myself in books as I did in water, sand and sun. I well remember feeling the need to cut loose for a few summer months and find adventure for my spirit to free my controls. I wanted exploration in my reading just as much as my living and I guess I still do.
Warmer temperatures and nesting doves outside my New York apartment’s window remind me that summer is going to come again this year. In that state between sleeping and waking, I start to review the list of books I’ve meant to read, downloaded on my Kindle to enjoy, and promised myself to get to at last. They may not pile up in a stack next to my bed in quite the way they used to, but they pile up on my reading device or computer just the same. I owe them my attention, so why wouldn’t this summer be the time to do that catch-up homework reading? Because, it’s still a list; I’ve made it compulsory, fool that I am, and the adventure is all but gone. My sympathies are still with the lighter, warmer air filled with birdsong, so I want to match my reading to the buoyancy of the season. My heart is still longing for the adventure of the unknown pleasure; unexpected and uncalled for, so I need to travel those uncharted roads in my books, too.
Granted, I have a small homework assignment to complete, involving a rereading of a book written by my future teacher of fiction at the Southampton Arts Program in July; but after that’s done, I’m going to ignore the list on my Kindle and follow my heart, just as I used to between school grades and before I was reprimanded for not doing my homework as directed. If you have any reading suggestions for me, I’ll happily consider them, though I can’t promise I’ll take them. I need to put a lighter touch on the controls and lift off for summer; don’t you?