Pages from the Book of Life

Best of 2009 Book. What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?

I start this post with a confession. I haven’t read a book from cover to cover in over 20 years.

It’s not that I can’t read. It’s that I can’t read.

Some of my first rehabilitation after my brain injury (sustained in the preschool classroom where I was teaching) was reading the front page of a newspaper with my therapist and trying to remember even a small piece of news 10 minutes later. I failed miserably. For years.

My short-term memory has improved mightily since then. But still not enough to read a chapter, put it down for a day, and pick up where I left off.

I buy books so I can have them forever, and especially so I can underline in them. Underlining doesn’t help me remember. When I pick up a book every word is new. I’m touched by the brilliance and the language and the poetry. I swoon over the magnificence of the written word. Why haven’t I read this book before? Then I come across a thin trail made with my mechanical pencil. Oh. I have been here before.

I’ve never finished a book. I dive in and come away with one precious thought that I try to hold onto until it slips away or is replaced by the memory of the moment. It’s just the way it is.

There is a book I have read and recommended across the years. I’ve dipped in repeatedly enough that some words and stories are finally familiar. They’ve made the precipitous leap from short-term to long-term memory. So here is a recommendation of sorts: Writing For Your Life: A guide and companion to the inner worlds by Deena Metzger.

One of my favorite stories is the one that closes the book. It tells of a young man required to interview someone as part of a university course. The assignment stipulated that he choose someone very different from himself with whom he would not normally speak. Apparently he lived such an insulated life he was having difficulty finding a subject and almost dropped the course. However the day the paper was due, he arrived in class ecstatic.

“I was at my wits end,” he said “when it occurred to me to interview our Guatemalan housekeeper. Naturally, I was very nervous because I had never really spoken to her, and it was rather late at night. But as I had to do the paper, I went to her room and knocked at her door. When I entered, I explained my need, asking if it would be a terrible nuisance for her to tell me something about her life. She looked at me quite strangely and my heart sank. After what seemed a very, very long time, she said quietly, ‘Every night before I go to sleep, I rehearse the story of my life, just in case someone should ever ask me. Gracias a Dios.‘”

Twitter, blogs, and blog comments are my books. They’re the places I rehearse the story of my life, and manageable enough for me to learn the story of yours.

It’s night and there’s a knock on the door. Will you kindly tell me something about your life. Here? Now?

Tagged as: brain injury, precious human life, stories