Well Read Wednesday: The Sound of Colors

The Sound of Colors: A Journey of the Imagination by Jimmy Liao

This is a picture book. Except that it’s not really a picture book—not in the sense that we’d typically define a picture book. At 80 pages, it’s a bit lengthy for a picture book and is leveled at a 9-12 age level.

However, this book is worth a read, for adults as well as children. The words are beautiful and poetic and the only things equal to the words are the pictures. They’re engaging and imaginative and gorgeous.

“The Sound of Colors” is the story of a young girl whose eyesight slipped away about a year ago. She travels from subway stop to subway stop imagining the world around her:

“I listen for the sound of the colors I can’t see,” she says as she moves through her mind’s eye imagining and searching for the place where all the colors are: “Home is the place where everything I’ve lost is waiting patiently for me to find my way back.”

I’ve heard that this book is even more poignant in it’s native Chinese, but the translation is touching, emotional even. I’ve also read that in Chinese it transcends the story of a girl in a subway station and is an obvious metaphor for life. I see, even in the translated version, that there is more at play here than a girl with a white walking cane. I mostly love that this book isn’t really about blindness, it is about color and light and hope and love.

Trust me, it’s worth read.

Well-Fed Friday: Eatin' of the Green

Here in Wyoming there are few signs of spring. I know the rest of you have crocuses or daffodils and blue skies and Easter decor up. We're a bit behind here. There is still frost on my windshield in the morning and the grass is still brown. But it was St. Patrick's Day and, as a farmer's daughter, I know spring will come. So I'm presenting my favorite Eatin' of the Green.

Here it is:

The easiest salad in the world: leafy greens (I like a spring mix), crumbled feta cheese, Real crumbled bacon, walnuts, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Oh, and cucumbers. I adore it with cucumbers too (we just didn't have any).

This salad is so very good.

Green is good.

Come Monday Morning

Come Monday morning I will take my son to swimming lessons. I will carry him into the building and hold his hand tightly as we leave. I will breathe the smell of him: boy and sweat and chlorine when I get him dressed. I will give him a peck on the cheek and he will hold onto me, for balance.

I substitute school. Why, on earth, I don't know. But I do. And I sort of like it--most days.

On Thursday, I was at the Junior High--a place I'd never subbed at before. It has wide hallways and tall lockers and students who were dramatizing about their new health unit on sex ed.

Halfway into 3rd period a 'stay-put' order was issued. At the high school, where I usually teach, that means the police are bringing in the drug dogs to sniff for marijuana and chewing tobacco. But then I heard something about someone being hit by a car in the parking lot. We waited. We did our assignment. We hung out. We started a movie 0n the Revolutionary War, I quickly changed it to the movie "Holes." Someone came to my door.

"We're in lockdown. Put on a movie. It could be two hours, maybe three."

I knew the only thing that needed a three hour lockdown from an accident in the parking lot was an accident with a fatality.

"What happened?" I asked.

They didn't want details released. They didn't want students to know. "A 3 year old was hit by a car in the parking lot." That's all she could tell me.

"What is a three year old doing in the parking lot of the Junior High on a school day?" I asked. But as I said it, I knew: "Oh, no, swimming lessons." She nodded. My heart sank.

I bring my son twice a week to swimming lessons. When I work, his babysitter brings him. The pool and the Junior High share a parking lot. It's not a wide lot. Not one where a car can even move very fast. But I knew, that my son likes to get away from me, that he twists his hand out of mine. I knew that it could have been him. I knew too, that it could have been me, driving when a small child darted -- excited for the hot tub and the warm water and to monkey crawl along the pool walls -- in front of my car.

I still don't know the details of the accident. I just know that it makes your heart hurt for whose child it was and for the one who hit her. I wondered how I could be in a classroom, not far away and not felt the whole world shudder at the loss of such a tiny precious soul. I don't know how one heals from such a loss. I don't know how a parent's heart keeps beating, but it does.

Come Monday morning I will take my son to swimming lessons. I will carry him into the building and hold his hand tightly as we leave. I will breathe the smell of him: boy and sweat and chlorine when I get him dressed. I will give him a peck on the cheek and he will hold onto me, for balance.

I'll hold onto him too.