Memories are like Chow Chows

There are those of us who have the memory of an elephant.  My cousin can recall details of conversations that took place years ago with people she hasn't seen since.  My dad saw a guy in a mall in Los Angeles and recognised him to be someone he had gone to school with in grade1 or 2.  Stuff like that happens to people like them all the time. 

Then there are those of us who have the memory of a goldfish.  Someone-who-will-remain-unnamed (since she will most likely read this) that I have known my entire life has very few memories of her childhood, a few more of her teenage years, and has trouble remembering many events in early adulthood.  In this case there was no drug use or head trauma.  As far as she can recall......   That's just the way she is.

I am somewhere in the middle.  Special events, trauma and tears, moments of revelation, stand out clear and stark.  Rituals and habits that happened on a routine basis, but were not memorable individually, may have blurred and fuzzy edges but are solid undearneath.  You know, like a Chow Chow. 

One of these Chow Chow memories starts off with my sister and I vying for position on either side of mom on my sister's bed, her on the right and me on the left.  Cushioned by pillows and an army of stuffed animals we snuggled down.  Now I'm sure that many different books were read to us in this particular position, but most of them have been lost in the outer edges of my Chow Chow's fluff.  Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie retain the solid centre of my Chow Chow.  We were probably old enough to read along, but why read when you can be read to?  Why think when you can instead, drift.  So we drifted off in a sea of windswept grasses and shovelled six foot deep snow with Laura.  We lived the horror of teenage Mary discovering her blindness and were thrilled by Anne's nerve and quick-witted tongue.  We were ushered from the realities of life to the land of sleep.  Slow, warm words lulling two little girls, quivering with energy, into another world. 

I don't know when this all ended.  Is there an age where being read to at bedtime must stop?  An age when you become too old to cuddle with mom and listen as she reads?  Did I insist, suddenly one day, that I wanted to read by myself?  Did life get busier and bedtime stories become less and less frequent until they just petered out?  Perhaps it was when my sister and I got our own bedrooms, downstairs.  Perhaps it was when my brother, who screamed for months, was born.  Maybe it was when my bedtime began to eclipse my mom's.  Who knows.

Obviously this Chow Chow has an awful lot of fuzz.  But there's some good, solid substance to it.  And that substance has, well, substance.  Substance that gave reading warmth and love, much more than just education.  In a Chow Chow like this the details don't matter.  It's the fuzz.  An awful lot of fuzz.

My Dark Passenger

As part of my Reader's Advisory for Children class we have a journal portion.  Though journals are generally a private affairs, those who know me know that the line between private and public is pushed slightly farther back then perhaps some others'.  So I decided to use this assignment to continue on with my blog.  It really won't include anything more private then what I'd share with a chatty stranger on a bus...  But then again, my 'private line' may be in a slightly different position than yours.

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This journal entry is discussing my childhood reading life.  In the assignment the examples given are "avid reader, occasional reader or reluctant reader".  I'd like to rank those on a scale.  If Avid = 10, Occasional = 5, Reluctant = 1, then I'd say I was a 15.  Or maybe a 20.  I was more like Addictive Obsessive Compulsive.  I have coined a new term which I now dub AOC.  But why refer to my reading habits as my "Dark Passenger"? 

When I was engrossed in a book (which didn't take long) I no longer existed in real life.  It was nearly impossible to get my attention.  Standing and yelling my name in my face worked no better than calling me from down the street.  The only way to snap me out of it was by wrenching the book from my fingers.  I knew this and so did everyone else, so when I wanted to disappear into a story I would hide.  After all, you can't grab my book if you can't find me.  :)  Up in a tree, on top of the garage, in the playhouse, in my parent's room, in a corner of the basement, in the bathroom.  It became a problem.  I think that most everyone goes through a selfish stage at some point in their childhood or adolescence, and I really don't remember how old I was when I realised that my Dark Passenger sat too heavily on my shoulder, but I knew changes must be made.  So my addiction morphed. 

Instead of replacing things I should be doing, I decided that multi-tasking was the way to go.  I got very good at walking while reading.  After all, you only really need your peripheral vision to stay on a sidewalk, right?  Making gravy while reading, practising piano scales while reading, setting the table while reading.  It's amazing what you can manage when you really, truly love that Dark Passenger. 

But life, priorities and maturity changes and I can now say that my Dark Passenger has become more of a Happy, Light & Fun Passenger.  It no longer runs my life and only once in a blue moon does it darken a bit.  The arrival of a particularly good and particularly fat new book usually causes a bit of a relapse that often results in burnt supper and a 4am bedtime.

But now the question is why?  Why did that Dark Passenger grow so large in your life?  At the age of 5 I was diagnosed with asthma.  Not the "hey I just played soccer for an hour so maybe I'll use my puffer later" or the "I got bronchitis once so they gave me a puffer prescription" kind of asthma.  More like the "1600m run takes 45 minutes and puts me in the hospital", or the "hint of wild sage has me dreading grandma's house", or the "running half a block makes me feel like a fat man is sitting on my chest".  I lied to my doctor and told him I lost many inhalers.  He must have thought I was terribly irresponsible.  But he always told me that if it got any worse he would have to put me on a ventilator at night and above all I DIDN'T WANT THAT! 

So my life revolved around things I could do.  Baseball, because it involved very little running, piano, and reading.  Reading, reading, reading.  I'm sure I would have still loved reading, asthma or no asthma, but would probably have been a little bit less AOC and my Dark Passenger may have never developed.


I know that the reading proficiency gained through countless hours stuck in a book has helped me over the years more than it may have hindered me.  It distresses me when I see someone who's held back because of poor reading skills.  So my question is this; What reading programs are there to help older kids, youth and adults who missed the "window of opportunity" when it comes to reading?  You know, that window where everyone is learning and no one is particularly proficeint.  The window that eventually closes and kids are separated in groups and labelled with a title that tells future teachers how much they can expect out of them, academically.  What kind of programs are there that help to open that window a crack?  Where would a library direct that kind of reader?  And what kind of reader are you?

Heart and Soul - An Argument for History

"History is boring.  Numbers you have to memorize, names and dates and places.  Blah!"

Such was a statement I once overheard.  It was a father trying to convince a boy the benefits of Math over History.  Though I found this statement shocking and a terrible thing to say to any child, it is apparently more common a thought than I knew. 

To me history is an echo of a song sung by those passed before us.  Rows of headstones represent lives lived, not death mourned.  Those who came before us formed our beginning, whether directly in the form of family, or slightly less directly (but with nearly as great an impact) through the founding of the countries of our birth and the establishment of our laws.  The myriad of layers of paint being stripped off the trim of my century house tell me a bit of the families who lived there before me.  After all, what kind of person would paint all their trim light pink, then baby blue, then mint green?  And the girth of a giant tree makes me think of the hands that planted it so many years before. 

My grandparents had a farm in cowboy country in Alberta.  It was called the Lone Spruce.  There were a number of deciduous trees and shrubs that acted as a hedgegrow around the farm to dull the winds and shelter the yard, but there was only one coniferous planting.  A spruce put there by my great uncle.  That spruce stood like a beacon, taller than everything around it.  And do you know what?  Around the time my great uncle died that spruce began to die as well.  Am I saying they were connected?  No.  But perhaps a life can be measured by the things into which a person puts their efforts.  History is a record of those efforts that pulses with life and only when it is forgotten does its blood cease to flow.

Where am I going with all this, and when does the book review kick in?  History is alive.  Though certain textbooks may have taken lives and herculean efforts and dulled them into dry numbers and facts that require memorization, other books have the effect of bringing them alive once again.  Such is the effect of Heart and Soul : The Story of America and African Americans, written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson.  450 years of history is told through 100 pages of narration and 46 brilliant oil paintings.  It is told as a living, breathing story that makes the lives and efforts of a people, many of whom are long gone, real and current.  It shows how the actions of our ancestors affect us today and takes the average person through the fight for equality of African Americans in the United States.  Vivid illustrations link the faces of the past, and connect them to the reader. 

Confusion on the faces of slaves aboard a slave ship... 

Resignation in the expression of a slave cleaning cotton...

Dogged determination on the faces of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman...

A glimmer of pride on a Union Soldier, then Buffalo Soldier, then WWII soldier...

Relief etched faces of a family migrating North...

A gleeful Duke Ellington surrounded by his jazz band...

Persistent pride from the boycotters of the Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks...

It is possible to tell a story by faces alone, and Kadir Nelson does it well, though the narration connects the dots from past to present with a voice that is appropriately casual.  This could almost be called a memoir, so personal it seems.  This piece of history is no longer boring.  Memorization is no longer required.  Names are brought to life.  I hope it does the same for you as it did for me.

Find it at your local library.  Don't like to share?  Get your own copy.