Author: Belinda O

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Let It Snow!

I lived in Minnesota long enough to find snow annoying, dreary and burdensome. And I’ve lived in Arkansas long enough to appreciate the northern states’ prompt and thorough response to winter weather. To make my point clear, it’s a lot easier to get — and stay — snowed in when you’re living in southern states.

But I love winter weather. I’ve said it before, but on this day when my car doors were nearly frozen shut as I helped a neighbor get ready for Christmas, I am compelled to say it again. Some of you wondered back in November when I was griping about the endless warm weather if I’d truly be happy when the temperatures dropped. Tonight we’re hitting single digits.

I’m happy.

Wondering, as I am so emphatic, just what it is that makes this miserable weather so desireable.

I confess I’m halfway hoping I’m snowed or iced in tomorrow so I can justify staying home and knitting, reading and snuggling with the cats. I have plenty of cat food, Oreos and Diet Coke, as well as more nutritious food and a shelf full of books I’ve been dying to dig into, all while wrapped up in a cozy quilt.

This is a challenging time for me, and I’m a bit stressed about the next few weeks. For whatever reason, snow is a comfort to me today.

So let it snow.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

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Any Good Book

When I was young, I would hurt sometimes so badly I would panic, then hide in my room, wrapped up tight in protective clothing, deep beneath the covers. I fled the pain I could not bear by burying myself in the stories told in multitudes of books.

Some stories so deeply resonated with me I read them over and over, and I realize now these tales provided a solution to the same loneliness and isolation I was feeling. It was fiction, of course, and I couldn’t follow the same path my erstwhile heroine would, so I lost myself in fantasy.

It was a lonely life, but a safe one.

Today I still like to lose myself in novels, but it isn’t the same. Life has taught me certain realities, and one of them is that rarely do events follow in a logical progression as they do in storytelling. Nor do problems resolve them in a straightforward manner.

Yet if the books don’t provide some sort of conclusion, I’m frustrated.  I still want to end with resolution. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending, but it should be a logical one. The story should be told.

I cannot flee my pain, but I can find respite from it in certain escapes, and I look for particular qualities in those methods of safety.

Read any good books lately?

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Flee

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The Threads of You

I finished unpacking last night. My house is a home, but the one thing missing is you. I hear your laugh, see your smile, admire your new haircut in the faces of strangers. I can’t stop for a gallon of milk without recognizing your loping walk in another. The weight of my loss holds me in place, and I silently protest the need to make dinner, open the mail, prepare for bed.

The phone rings, and my heart leaps. It isn’t you, and I let the call go. I don’t have the strength for a  conversation. I can’t explain one more time why. I might have to scream I don’t know.

You were woven so tightly throughout my life, and the threads of you reach farther than I imagined. I’m trying to patch the holes, but the pain stops me short.

I know you’re not coming back. I know it’s better for you now. I want the good times back and all the love those moments carried.

I’m missing you.

Multicolored Thread On A Weaving Loom Taken Closeup.

Image Credit: © Bigstock

Missing

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Where Did You Go, My Sweet?

cinnamon-roll
Call the authorities! The cinnamon rolls have vanished!

Perspective

The other day I was bemoaning how quickly I’d eaten a fresh-baked batch of cinnamon rolls.

“That’s the problem with living alone,” I said forlornly to my friends as we sat knitting.

“No,” replied Heather, the sharpest of the assembled group, “that’s the privilege.”

Vanish

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Lost Library

wind-in-the-willows-1
The Wind in the Willows, illustrated by Tasha Tudor

Over the years I’ve owned thousands of books, so many that if I still owned all of them I could start a small library. I’ve kept a few precious books from childhood, including The Wind in The Willows (from which I would, as a child, frequently quote a poem by Ratty [“Duck’s Ditty”]), some picture books, and a volume of The Complete Poetry of Robert Frost.

There’s also On City Streets, a slim, quality paperback of poems about urban life by poets such as Langston Hughes. Based on the copyright date, my parents gave that to me when I was about nine or ten. It intrigues me that they saw a healthy interest in me about other cultures here in our own country, worlds outside of my white suburban home.

go-ask-aliceI kept few of the dozens , if not hundreds, of books I collected as a teenager, except my 40th anniversary edition of Gone With the Wind, a favorite of mine and surprisingly, many of my friends as well, who generally leaned to more contemporary literature. Of course I owned a copy of Go Ask Alice, well-worn and clandestinely loaned to some of my friends whose parents wouldn’t let them read it. You can still find Go Ask Alice, and the cover is identical to the book I bought more than 40 years ago.

dorothy-parkerAs an adult, I’ve donated then re-purchased several books, including To Kill a Mockingbird and Rebecca.  I save very few, but still have The Portable Dorothy Parker (such wonderful short stories!) and several of Anne Tyler’s novels (I keep watch out at the nearby used book store for hardcover  editions of Breathing Lessons or Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.) Many of the books I buy today I forward to my mom after I’ve finished reading them. In fact, I frequently scour that same used book store for something I think she’d like. She’s always looking for a good book.

I think of stories long out of print that had an impact on me, such as Garson Kanin’s A Thousand Summers. I wonder if I’d find it just as engrossing today.

I wouldn’t have room for all the books I’ve owned over the years, and perhaps it would be selfish to hang on to them anyway, when so many others could be enjoying them. Still, I’d like the opportunity to peruse that “library” and pick out a few to keep today.

Panoply