Reading comes to us in phases now. It's like craving a piece of chocolate cake. Once you see it, you gotta have it. No other dessert would do. But when you've had it, you can go for months on end without it.
Because life distracts and deprives us of this pleasure, it comes with full force. Binge reading.
We lie in bed for days with curtains wide open and legs entwined under the same blanket. We read. Book after book. Dylan more than me. The man can really get through books like I can get through a box of peanuts.
Sometimes we read multiple books at a time. Kind of how you'd watch the first episode of different shows to see which one you want to binge first or binge properly.
Sometimes I could let some books go. I don't take to everything. But Dylan rarely ever does that. Sure he'd have plenty of half read books. Marked by his quirky bookmarks, but you bet he'll finish them sooner or later.
The first thing the man does when he goes to any bookstore is look through the jar of those old $1 bookmarks and picks out a few. The last thing he does at any gift shop is the same. He'll spend a good 10 minutes before checkout in front of one of those rotating kiosks neatly stacked with postcards and magnets and bookmarks and carefully decides on this pick.
But the poor bookmarks never make it to his books. I know he has every intention to use them when he buys them. But it never works out. I do not know the fate of these bookmarks because I rarely see them again. And I have learned to not pick this battle with him. (Husbands could have far worse habits than bookmark hoarding).
Instead you'll find old receipts, train tickets, clothes tags, tissue papers, dried leaves (that were fresh leaves when first used for this purpose) and even airplane plane boarding passes being used as bookmarks. That's how you can tell my books apart from Dylan'. Mine are neatly decorated with vintage bookmarks, colorful, magnetic, stick on bookmarks, bookmarks with tassels, and bookmarks the point to the exact line of the text. He'll have the entire world's crap in his books marking his pages except a real bookmark. I used to offer him mine but after they met the same fate as his own, I not only stopped offering, I actively started protecting mine from him.
During our binge reading days, you'll find books everywhere. Half open, half closed, upside down. By our legs on the bed, snuggling by the arms, stray ones on top of the sheets, and finally the lucky one in our hands.
Our cat would come from time to time to check on us. Sometimes she would sit for hours on the other side of the bed giving us judgmental looks, sometimes carefully balancing herself on top of a book ensuring that her entire body including her tail sits within the four corners of that book. The lucky book would be her chosen throne for the day, which means it would be very inaccessible to us. Dylan says she's reading by osmosis. I think she's just telling us who's the boss.
Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night with something jamming into my ribs. It would be a book I'd forget to put away before falling asleep. An aftermath of staying up several nights, bingeing.
Because life distracts and deprives us of this pleasure, it comes with full force. Binge reading.
We lie in bed for days with curtains wide open and legs entwined under the same blanket. We read. Book after book. Dylan more than me. The man can really get through books like I can get through a box of peanuts.
Sometimes we read multiple books at a time. Kind of how you'd watch the first episode of different shows to see which one you want to binge first or binge properly.
Sometimes I could let some books go. I don't take to everything. But Dylan rarely ever does that. Sure he'd have plenty of half read books. Marked by his quirky bookmarks, but you bet he'll finish them sooner or later.
The first thing the man does when he goes to any bookstore is look through the jar of those old $1 bookmarks and picks out a few. The last thing he does at any gift shop is the same. He'll spend a good 10 minutes before checkout in front of one of those rotating kiosks neatly stacked with postcards and magnets and bookmarks and carefully decides on this pick.
But the poor bookmarks never make it to his books. I know he has every intention to use them when he buys them. But it never works out. I do not know the fate of these bookmarks because I rarely see them again. And I have learned to not pick this battle with him. (Husbands could have far worse habits than bookmark hoarding).
Instead you'll find old receipts, train tickets, clothes tags, tissue papers, dried leaves (that were fresh leaves when first used for this purpose) and even airplane plane boarding passes being used as bookmarks. That's how you can tell my books apart from Dylan'. Mine are neatly decorated with vintage bookmarks, colorful, magnetic, stick on bookmarks, bookmarks with tassels, and bookmarks the point to the exact line of the text. He'll have the entire world's crap in his books marking his pages except a real bookmark. I used to offer him mine but after they met the same fate as his own, I not only stopped offering, I actively started protecting mine from him.
During our binge reading days, you'll find books everywhere. Half open, half closed, upside down. By our legs on the bed, snuggling by the arms, stray ones on top of the sheets, and finally the lucky one in our hands.
Our cat would come from time to time to check on us. Sometimes she would sit for hours on the other side of the bed giving us judgmental looks, sometimes carefully balancing herself on top of a book ensuring that her entire body including her tail sits within the four corners of that book. The lucky book would be her chosen throne for the day, which means it would be very inaccessible to us. Dylan says she's reading by osmosis. I think she's just telling us who's the boss.
Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night with something jamming into my ribs. It would be a book I'd forget to put away before falling asleep. An aftermath of staying up several nights, bingeing.
It's been so many things. Through time and space. I don't always think about it, but I know this affair runs deep. My first memory of it was of dad drinking it, on cozy winter nights. It would have a lot of froth, and Beatles would always be playing in the background. For years later, every time I looked at coffee, Beatles would start playing in my head. Coffee had its own soundtrack. And the smell, oh the smell was heavenly - nothing more intoxicating than that cup, lying on the table in my dad's study with its own soundtrack, while he read from an old book. I wasn't allowed to drink coffee because "you are too young and it is an adult beverage" but sometimes, dad would give me a sip, and knowing fully well how awful it would taste, I'd fall for the offer every time, perhaps secretly hoping that it would taste better this time. But my baby taste-buds were not ready for it. I absolutely hated the taste of coffee! And I recall spending hours trying to figure out how something can smell so amazing yet taste so horrid.
My dad would be utterly amused.
It wasn't until the first year of college that I really started drinking it. Everyday on my way to class at exactly 8:50am, I would walk into the campus coffee shop, and Jeremy would know what to make. That cup was warm in the winters and soothing in the summers. Coffee kept me awake in class, gave me company through some very dark nights and many cheery afternoons. It has never been just a drink, but an experience. It's Beatles and my father's study. It's loneliness through the woods, it's happiness in the mornings, it's a reason to take a walk, and coffee is also love. Knowing fully well that I would never say no, Dylan still asks me questions like, Do you want some coffee? Why don't we go to a coffee shop? Let me make you some coffee? Will coffee make you feel better? I found a new coffee shop, do you want to check it out? And he'll make it, and he'll take me, and he'll taste it, and he'll give funny names to all the different types of coffee I like.
Perhaps I'll have a study one day and I will read, old, utterly complicated books late at night and listen to the Beatles, and my coffee would taste horrid to someone else.
I have come down with a cold. It's a strange kind of cold. Usually everything with a cold is supposed to be fuzzy and spaced out. But my mind has been functioning fairly reasonably as my body has gone weaker and weaker. I know I just need rest, and I’ll be okay. Perhaps these seasonal colds are reminder from nature to just slow down.
Dylan has been making me coffee and tea, and getting me soup and making sure I take all the medication on time. I have been alone for so long that I had almost forgotten how its liked to be taken care of. His incessant nagging and making sure I don’t move reminds me of my childhood and how it was like to be sick.
Do you remember it? How your mom would make a big fuss over a sore throat. How, before you even knew it, there would be a cold washcloth on your head? Somehow that washcloth is every mother’s remedy to every sickness. Do you recall the taste of that grape/cherry/orange cough syrup that came with its own plastic spoon? That was the worse. Do you remember your stuffy nose and your heavy eyes? Do you recall your family begging you to eat something and somehow everything they offered was just not up to par.
There was always an upside to it though – no school. And the off day came with zero guilt. You had a good justification to stay at home when everyone else had to go, and something about staying at home smack in the middle of the week makes the whole day looks so different, even if it through your heavy eyes. Do you remember lying on the couch all day watching VHS of Disney cartoons one after another? And realizing that its only noon even after the 12th movie, because time just seemed to slow down. Do you remember walking around the house in a blankie? Everything is acceptable when you are sick. I mostly recall passing out at the couch in the living room and waking up tucked in bed. If that didn’t make it all okay, I wouldn’t know what would.
It’s good to be sick sometime. Between the non-stop coughing and the pitiful groans, its good to know that at some point in your life, you were taken care of and if you are lucky, someone is taking care of you right now.
Dylan has been making me coffee and tea, and getting me soup and making sure I take all the medication on time. I have been alone for so long that I had almost forgotten how its liked to be taken care of. His incessant nagging and making sure I don’t move reminds me of my childhood and how it was like to be sick.
Do you remember it? How your mom would make a big fuss over a sore throat. How, before you even knew it, there would be a cold washcloth on your head? Somehow that washcloth is every mother’s remedy to every sickness. Do you recall the taste of that grape/cherry/orange cough syrup that came with its own plastic spoon? That was the worse. Do you remember your stuffy nose and your heavy eyes? Do you recall your family begging you to eat something and somehow everything they offered was just not up to par.
There was always an upside to it though – no school. And the off day came with zero guilt. You had a good justification to stay at home when everyone else had to go, and something about staying at home smack in the middle of the week makes the whole day looks so different, even if it through your heavy eyes. Do you remember lying on the couch all day watching VHS of Disney cartoons one after another? And realizing that its only noon even after the 12th movie, because time just seemed to slow down. Do you remember walking around the house in a blankie? Everything is acceptable when you are sick. I mostly recall passing out at the couch in the living room and waking up tucked in bed. If that didn’t make it all okay, I wouldn’t know what would.
It’s good to be sick sometime. Between the non-stop coughing and the pitiful groans, its good to know that at some point in your life, you were taken care of and if you are lucky, someone is taking care of you right now.
It’s cloudy outside and the house is quiet today. I make myself mocha and sit in the sunroom but don't hear a single sound. No neighbors, no traffic, not even the wind. It rained all night and now its just still. Still and wet. There is no sun in the sunroom, but what it has is my favorite light. That perfect-for-photography diffused light marred by the green trees that surround the room. It reminds me of the time when Dylan and I sat at 12,000 foot peak of Mammoth Mountain, eating energy bars and grasping the magnificent view of the Sierra Nevada Range at our feet. There was such stillness in the air, except that my eyes could not adjust to the layer after layer of mountains.
I rarely got a chance to sit in the sunroom this year. We were rarely home. We have counted eleven road trips so far and that doesn’t even include the air travel. I love it. I love it because I always have something to look forward to – driving through the coastal mist of the Pacific in the spring, and wading through buckets of snow of the Midwest in early summer, and driving by the Great Lakes for hours in July, and getting lost in the windy roads of Appalachia in August – has been incredible, and we are still only halfway through the year. It’s been intense and sometimes it is nice to just be back home and be still, but I am glad I have allowed myself to take advantage of the opportunities that life offered.
I am glad I didn’t wait. We wait for so long to go somewhere, to witness the world and life, and go to see friends and family we love. But we never really do it. The days pass us by and we think more days will come and while they do, they too pass on. I want to experience as much life as I can as soon as I can, because there will still be more life to witness. This world and its people are so expansive and vast that we cannot possibly see and experience everything in one lifetime. Perhaps it is arrogant of me to assume that it has all been put on earth for me, but while I am around, I’d be damned if I don’t travel from coast to coast just to gush over a tiny waterfall in the heart of the Cascades. Because what’s the point. What’s the point if we don’t enjoy the house we live in, the neighborhood we call our own, and the people we have cherished. What’s the point when all the nieces and nephew grow up and we only see them once a year, when we have no idea what’s happened to the best friend we once loved so much. What’s the point when the world’s most beautiful mountain ranges and the most awe-inspiring beaches are your neighborhood, and you never get to see them.
I am young, and I am full of zeal for this life, and this ever-changing world. I am not going to waste a minute of it not doing things I love, and not bearing witness to this world.
I rarely got a chance to sit in the sunroom this year. We were rarely home. We have counted eleven road trips so far and that doesn’t even include the air travel. I love it. I love it because I always have something to look forward to – driving through the coastal mist of the Pacific in the spring, and wading through buckets of snow of the Midwest in early summer, and driving by the Great Lakes for hours in July, and getting lost in the windy roads of Appalachia in August – has been incredible, and we are still only halfway through the year. It’s been intense and sometimes it is nice to just be back home and be still, but I am glad I have allowed myself to take advantage of the opportunities that life offered.
I am glad I didn’t wait. We wait for so long to go somewhere, to witness the world and life, and go to see friends and family we love. But we never really do it. The days pass us by and we think more days will come and while they do, they too pass on. I want to experience as much life as I can as soon as I can, because there will still be more life to witness. This world and its people are so expansive and vast that we cannot possibly see and experience everything in one lifetime. Perhaps it is arrogant of me to assume that it has all been put on earth for me, but while I am around, I’d be damned if I don’t travel from coast to coast just to gush over a tiny waterfall in the heart of the Cascades. Because what’s the point. What’s the point if we don’t enjoy the house we live in, the neighborhood we call our own, and the people we have cherished. What’s the point when all the nieces and nephew grow up and we only see them once a year, when we have no idea what’s happened to the best friend we once loved so much. What’s the point when the world’s most beautiful mountain ranges and the most awe-inspiring beaches are your neighborhood, and you never get to see them.
I am young, and I am full of zeal for this life, and this ever-changing world. I am not going to waste a minute of it not doing things I love, and not bearing witness to this world.
