What We're Reading: March 2018

Breakfast & Bath: (Picture Books)

L still needs to be read to mostly when he is contained, although he is starting to pay attention to what he sees on the pages and occasionally point to things or laugh and smile at the illustrations. Cute animals especially delight him, so cute animals it is! And if it’s cute animals you’re wanting, search no farther than Emma Dodd’s Love You series.

When I stumbled across these books at the library, I truly felt like I’d found a gold mine. I firmly believe that reading to children works best when the parent (or whoever else in their life is reading to them) genuinely enjoys the book being read. Enthusiasm, interest, and delight are catching. It’s also hard to fake those feelings, at least for very long, so when I’m picking out books at the library, I try to pick out books that spark something inside of me, hoping that then I’ll be able to share that spark with L. 

There are many different things I look for in picture books, but, after scores of hours spent in the children’s section of the library, I know for certain that there’s hardly a book I will pick up if I don’t like the illustrations. I know that might not be fair, to judge a book by it’s artwork, but with picture books the illustrations make up so much of the story and they set the tone for the entire experience of the book. So I have to like the art. Emma Dodd’s illustrations take my breath away. I’m always eager to see what’s on the next page. The illustrations are simple, but beautiful and mesmerizing in their simplicity.

The words of these books are also simple, but powerful in their simplicity. They are about a parent’s love for their child, and I love them because they always take me back to the almost primal emotions I had when L was first born, and the emotions I still have whenever I set aside my distractions and look at the beautiful and precious child before me: Love such that I cannot comprehend. Wonder and tenderness and vulnerability and being swept off my feet, head over heels in love. What wouldn’t I do for this child? I count the days that we get to spend together like pearls on a necklace. Treasure. 

Husband’s Reading: (Audiobook) 

S has been listening to a biography of George Washington by Ron Chernow (of Hamilton fame) on his commute, which means that he and I have spent a considerable (an embarrassing?) amount of time lamenting the loss of George and Martha Washington’s entire correspondence, which she burned after his death!!! How could she?! Those letters would be a national treasure! It’s prompted Sean to say (multiple times), “Now that’s something I would jump in the DeLorean and go back and save!” IF ONLY.

Driving: (Audiobook)

I’ve made it to the twelfth and final book of the How to Train Your Dragon series. The books really mature and grow in depth as the series progresses, while still delighting me with their humor and quirkiness. I’m a bit sad to be off for Spring Break right now and not driving very much because I’m dying to hear how the story ends. 

As I’ve worked my way through this series and enjoyed it so much, I’ve realized that some of the joy it’s brought me has come not so much through the narrative, but through the simple joy of being able to sink into a story. When I get into the car before or after work, there’s always this deep exhale as I realize I get to mentally relax into a story and stop having my life be so Rush, rush, rush, me, me, me, do, do, do for just a bit. It’s an escape from myself, and from the—at times—very narrow cage of my mind. It also puts me in touch with my true self: the person who loves what is Good, and True, and Beautiful. The person who values story-telling, and courage, and joy, and laughter. The person who has time to smile, and breathe deeply, and listen, and laugh. 

A few weeks ago I walked into church—a few minutes late, the service had already started—and I experienced this exact same feeling of being freed from the tiny, narrow version of myself and relaxing into the Great Story: the story of God, the World, His People. I felt myself peacefully sinking into the words and the story-arch of the liturgy. What a freedom to know my place in this Universe, to know Love and be Loved, to live and wait in Hope for the Resurrection of the dead and Life of the world to come. What a gift that the Story is not about me, but to be graciously given a place in the Story where I can be the true version of myself that I was created and designed to be. 

Lenten Reading: Non-fiction

Lent is a time of turning away from some things in order to turn toward other things. Perhaps the things we turn away from are not bad at all, but occasionally we need to take breaks from even the best of distractions and turn towards focus, self-discipline, and a re-evaluation of how we are spending our days and therefore, our lives. 

This Lent I took a break from all the “pleasure” reading I do (meaning reading whatever books I can get my hands on about France, the ocean, Ireland, writing, traveling, California, Nature, New York City, and oh, anything else that strikes my fancy) and decided to do only spiritual reading in my free time. 

One of the books I read during Lent: Barking to the Choir by Father Gregory Boyle. His first book Tattoos on the Heart is one of my all-time favorite books and was very instrumental in helping me to heal from perfectionism and learn to experience God’s love as a living, breathing reality and not just an intellectual fact. Father Greg is a Jesuit priest living in the heart of Los Angeles who started the largest gang recovery and rehabilitation program in the world. Reading his writing always brings me into a place of spaciousness, of abundance, where I feel surrounded by the vastness, the sheer gratuitousness of God’s love for his beloved children. 

I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but of what book isn’t that true? And like all great writing, he leaves me with questions to turn over and over in my mind, wonderings that I cannot easily dismiss. In addition to comforting me, his words haunt and disturb me in important ways. I keep turning over the quote he cites from Dorothy Day, (which I am paraphrasing from memory because my sister is borrowing the book), when she was asked how to keep the faith and responded, “Stay close to the poor.” As someone who lives in perhaps the most affluent part of the United States, I am wondering how to stay close to the poor in Silicon Valley. And I’ve also been reflecting on the different ways there are to be poor: poor in money, of course, but people can also be poor in peace, poor in time, or poor in the experiences of love and beauty. These questions and meditations do not bear answers easily, but must be wrestled with over the course of my days, months, and years. 

I suppose this spiritual reading is parallel to what I described above about being saved from myself by getting lost in a story. Here I get to be saved from myself by encountering the true needs of both myself and others and seeing God’s passion for loving and saving His children. 

What We're Reading: February 2018

Breakfast: (Picture Books)

I can remember a time, before I drank coffee and before my son was born, when I didn’t like mornings. Now when I’m woken by a chubby, blond baby boy patting me, smiling, and saying, “Eh! Eh!” excitedly, I find mornings irresistibly joyous. Our morning routine, when we’re not working, involves installing L in his high chair, making toast and coffee, and reading, sipping, and eating for as long as we possibly can. L is not of the age yet to sit still with me and enjoy books, so I read to him when I have him captive: strapped into the highchair and distracted by food. Eventually he’ll learn to listen, but for now I just want him to hear stories, words, vocabulary, poetry, and to see glimpses of beautiful pictures on page after page….

I’m absolutely enchanted by this series of three books by Laura Purdie Salas:

A Leaf Can Be...

A Rock Can Be...

Water Can Be...

The illustrations are dreamy, and magical…and I love the wonder sparked by looking at ordinary natural objects through new eyes. I put off returning these books to the library for as long as possible, and read them to L over and over. 

Driving: (Audiobooks)

L and I have a new commute that involves the world’s best freeway: 280. When we lived in LA, S would always wax on and on about the great 280, and I always wondered privately what was so very special about it. But now I live here, now I know, and now I am the one to rhapsodize the glories of driving on this curving river of a road that wends its way from San Francisco to San Jose, hugging the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains and providing alternating vistas of the gleaming San Francisco Bay, the golden East Bay hills, and the green woods of the peninsula. 

Well, anyway, we drive the 280, our spirits soar in the open spaces of sky and mountain, and—of course—we listen to books. Right now we’re working our way through the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell. It’s not a series I would’ve ever picked up on my own, but it came highly recommended by my youngest sister who has never steered me to a book I didn't like.  Also in its favor: the books are brilliantly and comically read by David Tenant of Dr. Who stardom. There’s some middle school boy fart/snot/body humor, which is not my favorite but remains surprisingly tolerable, and I must admit, I’ve grown quite attached to the unlikely hero: a scrawny Viking named Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III with a fondness for natural history. As a plus, every book has managed to make me laugh out loud at least once with an unexpected situation or an unusually clever line. 

There are twelve books, we’re on the fourth. We’ll see what comes….

France: (Non-fiction) 

I have an incomprehensible (to me) obsession with France. At times I’ve even been tempted to hire a psycho-analyst to explain to me why it is that I love France so devotedly. Whatever the reason, I read everything about France that I can get my hands on, and I finally stumbled across a copy of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong at the Friends of the Library Bookstore. It was the book I didn’t even know I needed—reading it has been like picking up a guidebook to your favorite topic and suddenly have the scales fall from your eyes as understanding dawns and mysteries are unraveled. Here we find the ancient and mysterious French people and culture explained, clearly, charitably, and not with any heavy-handed attempt to justify or critique cultural differences, but strictly to present the facts objectively in an effort enhance cross-cultural understanding.

When we were in France in 2015 we were absolutely appalled by what we perceived as a complete lack of customer service in every store we entered. The authors, Barlow and Nadeau, explain that in France, the public and private dimensions are drastically different than those in North American culture. French culture experiences the store as a private domain, belonging to the owner and the employees, and when a customer enters, it is similar to entering a person’s home. Well, we would never barge into someone’s home without saying hello or begin a visit by asking for things or making demands. The French custom, therefore, is to enter an establishment respectfully, to call out Bonjour!, thereby acknowledging that you are entering someone else’s personal space, and then—chances are--customer service will be similar to being entertained politely in the home of a friend or acquaintance. Of course, it goes without saying that in North America the store is a public domain, the space slanted much more in favor of the customer who is “always right”. The point isn’t to argue which system or mentality is better, but simply to acknowledge that this difference exists and to behave accordingly. When we’re in France this summer, I will make the effort to say Bonjour (something I seem capable of uttering in French without horribly mangling that elegant language) and when I walk into an establishment I will remember that, in essence, I am walking into someone else’s private space.