When times are rough and confusion prevails, I’m bound to be found curled up under my worn cotton comforter reading a mystery novel. Mysteries are de rigeur because they have nice tidy endings, unlike life which is so much more messy. I usually bring some cheese puffs in with me and get crumbs all over everything, but I don’t care really. The kitties leap up on me and I can feel their rumbling purr through the layers. I scratch a vigorous pattern on their backs until they nip my fingertips. Sometimes they come under the blankets with me and we all share the warm dark cave broken only by little rays of light slipping through the seams. At times like this the world is at bay.

Reading has always brought me a bit of peace, although it can’t be just anything. Although I write mostly non-fiction, I don’t read much of it. In contrast, my sister can usually be found flipping the pages of a gardening or fixit book, but she never reads fiction. But can a how-to book heal a sad soul? I don’t think so.

It probably started back when I was a kid and daddy took me to the library every Wednesday at 7 PM. Daddy was just as organized as me, but he had a more developed sense of relaxation. He’d sit in the reading room for hours poring over the Wall Street Journal and laughing to himself at financial “humor.”Me, being the goal oriented type, grabbed the maximum ten books allowed and was ready to scoot in short order. Daddy was into process, I was into product. Despite my nagging, he’d just wave at me distractedly and I’d wander off. I usually ended up in the dark corners of the library, unearthing books like Playboy’s Year in Cartoons. Most of it flew right over my head, but the fact that it was verboten made it ever so thrilling.

Finally he’d be done and we’d march up to the “register”and sign out books on what was for the time a high tech machine, that flashed and spit out little “receipts”with the date due. It was only when we moved to less affluent towns that I realized how really cool that machine was.

Considering all this you’d think I’d be hanging around libraries more often, but it wouldn’t be true. Maybe it was all that racing from floor to floor researching college papers, or that I’ve been spoiled by the infinite choices of Amazon.com. Sometimes though, when I feel the need to crawl under the covers with a kitty or two, the local bookstore comes through with a mystery to keep the demons at bay, just a little while longer.

Copyright May, 1999

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