I Believe In Books

During one of my graduate courses for my K-12 Reading Certificate, my professor asked the class to write about what we believe in.  The title was "I Believe In ____."  She said we would have three minutes to get our rough ideas down on paper.  It took me barely a complete breath before I decided that "books" would fill in the blank.  I started writing and couldn't stop, even when our three minutes were over.

I think that most people would scoff at my choice of topic, considering that I could have picked "Jesus" or "World Peace", but I still stand by my choice.  Here's why:

My husband and I have three beautiful boys.  Beautiful might not be the right word for them, but I'm going with it.  They are rambunctious, gregarious, and full of all of the things that little boys should be full of.  But getting to the point where we had three beautiful boys wasn't an easy journey.  Carter Xavier was born on August 13, 2001.  When he was born, my husband and I looked at each other and agreed that we had to "do this again."  So, in 2002, I was pregnant again.  Unfortunately, I miscarried that baby, which my doctor told me is normal; it happens to almost everyone.  Eager to provide a sibling for our son, we got pregnant as soon as was physically safe for me.  In February of 2003, we were excited to be expecting again.  We couldn't wait!  Carter was going to be a big brother!  Then in June, I began my Master's program and shortly after that, I had the blood test to check for all the things that blood tests check for.  It was during class that the Ob/Gyn's office called and left a message on my cell phone to please call them at my earliest convenience. 

You know that "feeling" you get when something isn't right and that you are going to be dealt a blow that you aren't sure you'll recover from?  I had that feeling.  I left class, stood out under a maple tree next to the English building, and called my doctor's office back.  I was right.  A problem showed in the bloodwork and I had to go in for an ultrasound that afternoon.  We went together, saw the baby and the heartbeat, but the technician noticed a strange sound that she couldn't see with the limited equipment they had at that hospital.  So they scheduled an appointment for me with a perinatal specialist who could do a level 2 ultrasound at a specialty clinic in Minneapolis.  We prayed and hoped and hoped and prayed, but it was no use.  Our daughter had three chambers in her heart, underdeveloped kidneys, underdeveloped lungs, and a cyst running from the crown of her head to below her tailbone; all the result of a chromosomal abnormality called Turner's Syndrome.  There was nothing they could do.  Olivia Leigh was stillborn on July 11, 2003, roughly 24 weeks after her conception.  It was the most devastating day of our lives.  10 years later, I still think about Olivia every single day without fail.

We moved on, as parents do, picking up the pieces of our lives and our broken faith that everything works out the way it's supposed to.  The November after Olivia was born (no, we did not wait for the prescribed amount of time-we knew that if we didn't try again as soon as possible, we never would) we learned we were pregnant again.  July 8, 2004 might be the most amazing day of my life.  Camden Douglas arrived that day, healthy and beautiful and smiling from the moment he was born.  Four years later, on May 2, 2008, Collin Tate joined our family, full of mischief and spunk.

That has nothing to do with books, you might say.  Well, here's where it comes full-circle.  As I mentioned, when I was pregnant with Olivia, I started my Master's program.  I dropped out when I learned that we were going to lose her with no intention of ever returning.  I quit reading, I quit listening to music, I quit watching tv and movies.  I heard pain in every line of every song and saw it in every letter of every word of every story I read.  The only thing I still read was children's literature, but I put up a wall between my heart and the books. 

Fast forward to 2008, when Collin was born.  I decided that I needed to get my Master's degree.  I had been teaching long enough and it seemed all of my colleagues had theirs.  So off I went.  My first class was Teaching Young Adult Literature (because students in Curriculum and Instruction had to choose a class outside their major to fulfill all of the areas required for a Master's Degree).  We had to purchase something like 16 novels for the class, all Young Adult.  Our professor, truly one of the most talented and engaging teachers I have ever had, made us live, think, and breathe books.  We read at least two novels a week, she read to us in class, we did projects and activities, and we discussed books.  I had forgotten how much I love books.  Literally.  Forgotten. 

I had been a reader all my life.  Even as a child and a teenager, my parents would turn my light off, and after they went back upstairs to their bedroom, I would either hide in my closet with the light on or turn on my bedside light and read until the wee hours of the morning.  I was tired all the time.  But I had to know what happened!  I loved the characters, the excitement, the wondrous places in the stories.  After Olivia was born, that was lost.

During the course of Teaching Young Adult Literature, I found my way back to books.  Even though we read two novels a week, and even though there was homework and school work and housework, and even though my husband worked nights (and I had a second grader, a preschooler, and an infant), I started reading again.  I read the Twilight Saga in a week and a half (through final exams, even) and then started working my way back into adult books (Dan Brown, Janet Evanovich, and it spiraled out from there).

What did I find when reading these books?  That struggle is part of the human experience.  That loss makes characters in stories stronger.  That love transcends heartache in stories (even though sometimes that love isn't the kind you were expecting).  That children, yes children, are what give stories great hope.  That the characters I liked the least were the ones who let adversity defeat them.

Then I took a good look at myself.  I had been living for the last five years, but I had not been allowing myself a life.  I had my children and they were everything to me, but somehow, somewhere, I had lost me.  So bit by bit, story by story, I started piecing myself back together-or rather, building a new and better me.  The characters I truly loved became a part of me.  The stories that spoke to me began to infiltrate my life.  I started reading again, not just a little, but voraciously.  I read everything and anything I could get my hands on.  I remembered what I felt like when I fell in love with my husband, and yes, I fell in love with him again.  Instead of hiding my feelings about my children on a scrapbook page, I gave it to them full-bore in real life.  I allowed myself to live-to love, to care, to be excited and sad and scared and deliriously happy-and yes, even to hurt, because all of those emotions are part of what makes a life.

So, I believe in books.  I believe they have the power to connect us to something greater than ourselves.  I believe that sometimes we need to find the rawness of someone else's experience to realize that we are not alone in our struggles: that heartache is universal and that-most importantly-it can be overcome.