There are the moments captured by snapshots; then there are the moments that live only in our minds.
Of the many photos I have of my parents on Christmas mornings, at Thanksgiving tables… on vacations… dressed for special occasions… posing with families and friends at reunions and gatherings… what amazes me is that I rarely see a photo in which either of them is holding a book. But when I think of them, I can hardly remember a time when my mother wasn’t sitting in her favorite chair, legs curled beneath her, ashtray and coffee cup at her side, and a book in her hand.
And though my father might have the TV on, the only thing I can ever remember getting his undivided attention on the tube was football. More often, even if the TV was on, he’d be kicked back in his recliner reading. When I was in high school and had a boy over, we could sit in the living room alone. But Mother would be in the den next to us reading, and Daddy would sit at the kitchen table, just out of our direct sight line, also reading. Now and again, he’d clear his throat to remind us that he was there and could hear us.
I still love going to a bookshelf and pulling off an old book that belonged to one of my parents. Earlier tonight, when I was putting away some sewing stuff, I was wondering what this one was, so I took it off the shelf. It’s called The Bedside Tales, published in 1945, and has an introduction by The New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno. In it, he says, “…I have always believed that there are two things that it is presumptuous in one man to recommend to another. These are–a wife and a book…. This is a little new for me. I have promoted a few things before, but never a book for bedtime entertainment. After all, there are nights when a book wouldn’t do you any good whatever. Let it stand about the way I started. If it’s a book you want tonight, this is the one.”
Some brilliant writers here: Clarence Day, Robert Benchley, Damon Runyon, H.L. Mencken, Dorothy Parker, James Thurber, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck, Sherwood Anderson, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dashiell Hammett, William Faulkner… skewed toward male writers, but those were the times.
I think I’ll be taking this one to bed with me for a while. Nobody’d better surprise me with a camera when I fall asleep reading.
And I bet you the old book smells like vanilla.
If vanilla is a bit musty, maybe!
i don’t recall any photos of my daddy reading or my mother. But they did. Maybe the cameras only came out during “events” and books came out during “normal” daily relaxation times…
I can see your daddy sitting in his chair in the den with a book. And of course, your mother’s bags of books in the closet gave me many hours of reading happiness!