The dragons in the library

As close as I have ever come to being a nurse...

As our friend Linda says, downsizing is an ongoing commitment, so the other day I was going through my bookshelf to see what I could pass along. Even though I have never been a Marie Kondo fan, I do think her advice about taking everything off or out and putting back only that which one consciously wants is good advice. (And I’m sure her three kids are doing the taking out part for her often these days …ha ha.)

I’m happy to report that I did end up with a (small) pile of books that I gave away via my nearest Little Free Library, but my collection of favourite books from my childhood remained intact. These books represent so much more than just stories to me; they represent me at the time I first read them. Were I to give them away, I would feel as if I was giving away a very part of me. They take up only one shelf in my bookcase, but they occupy a large part of the ‘character library’ in my mind. The books and the characters and their stories live right in me.

I read a lot as an adult, and I have enjoyed many terrific reads, but none of the characters live in me the way the ones do from the books I read way back when in my childhood. It’s not so much that the books are my friends, as that the characters are. So how could I possibly give away any of these ‘best friends’, just because they live between covers? This is, in essence, what I wrote about recently for the writing group I am currently in.

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The two quotes below were the 'sparks' for the first week the writing group met, and spark me they did. 

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, Book XVII: The Red Angel (1909)

“One can learn from a glance at a person’s library not what they are but what they wish to be.”

Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d (2017)

The dragons in the library

There was a little girl who loved to read, because in her books she found worlds to live in.

In one world, she was surrounded by pointe shoes and tutus; in another it was all ponies all the time; in yet another world were doctors and nurses (and healthcare protocols from the 1930s that had new mothers on bed rest for one whole week after giving birth).

All these worlds were loved by the little girl, for she imagined herself the ballerina, the horse rider, and the young nurse. And it was fun and good.

A little older and the girl read about Emma, who went to live with her aunt in Edinburgh when her parents died — that was hard, but the story was good for Emma settled in and survived the sadness of her parents’ death, and she went on to have a boyfriend. The little girl liked that, even though she thought he was not quite right for Emma.

Now, the little girl is a grown woman and still she holds those worlds on her shelf. The top shelf of her main bookcase is the precious place for the stories of her youth. There are no dragons in any of them, but in many of them the children do great things like dance on the main stage, and run a stable successfully, and graduate as nurses who take care of those new mothers and their babies. And Emma ditches the boyfriend. Good.

Dragons come in many forms and, in the books the little girl read and loved and the grown woman still reads and loves, the dragons are always killed. And that is why those books still sit on the top shelf of the grown woman’s main bookcase.

...my writing tools are more sophisticated now, and I have my own desk. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.