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.

Water For Elephants

Best Read so far of 2011: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I got sucked into this book by reading the preview thing they offer on Amazon where you can read the first few pages. I immediately fell in love with the main character, Jacob Jankowski, who is a feisty patient in a nursing home watching the circus come to town. We learn that when Jacob was in college he lost his parents in a car accident just before sitting his veterinary exams at Cornell. Rather than finishing his degree, he leaves and joins the circus where he's put in charge of the animals. He falls in love with the circus's rag-tag, decrepit assortment of horses, lions, a chimpanzee, and a later in the novel, one lone elephant. Oh, and he falls in love with another man's wife.

Sara Gruen captivated me first through the character, then through the setting, and then through the plot. I thought all elements were very well done. It is a lovely, enchanting, and engaging book. I couldn't put it down. It appeals to the part of us all that wanted (or still wants) to run away with the circus. We find a life there that is brutal, and base, and exhilarating all at the same time.

It's not a squeaky clean book. There are a couple of things (like a description of the circus exotic dancer/prostitute). So don't say I didn't warn you.

The movie is being released this summer. I, for one, always like to read the book before I see the movie. It will feature Reese Witherspoon and that creepy looking guy from the Twilight movies (maybe this will make me like him).

Me, I'm betting the book is better than the movie.

Today's the Day: New Year Take 2

Today's the Day: New Year Take 2.

Why? Well, I thought this year got off to a sort of rocky start for me. First, the kids were sick. Then I had a bad attitude. Then I just could not get motivated to do anything. Call it the winter blues or whatever I didn't want it setting the tone for the entire year. So I decided to declare a New Year take 2. I mean, hey. I can celebrate again and put myself in a position to expect a better 2011.

Why today? It just feels like a good day. The sun is out. The broken heater in the house is fixed. I'm having lunch with friends. I've already had a good workout today. Dinner is planned and should be easy. I've been cleaning and doing laundry. So far it feels like a good, productive day. The kind of day I want to fill my 2011 with. So there you are.

2011, I'm ready for you.

Now.

Worth a Read: for MLK Day

In honor of Martin Luther King Day allow me to share a book which I feel is worth a read:

"Song Yet Sung" by James McBride:

Read the review from Publisher's Weekly on amazon (see link above). It gives a good overview of the book's character's and plot. The writing of James McBride is poetic and rich and wonderful. So is this story and each of it's characters as well as the background information he gives in the author's notes. This book is well worth the time you'll spend with it. It's worth a read.

Possessions

When I was serving a mission for my church in The Netherlands I visited Palais Het Loo, a former palace of the Dutch royal family. The palace sits on acres and acres of forested land with elaborate gardens, stables, and palace rooms with displays of how the royal family lived. The possessions of the royal family were meticulously catalogued and displayed throughout the palace: dresses on dress stands, a silver handled brush, white gloves with satin buttons, a wooden rocking horse, and rows of automobiles. There were paintings and rich tapestries, elegant place settings at empty tables—the possessions of people who are no longer living.

I wonder how our possessions shape us. What our purchases tell about the kind of people we are and what we value.

I think about the few possession of my mother that I now own: a pair of Pyrex mixing bowls, a spatula, and the quiet book she made so we’d behave during church. I wonder where other things of hers went. What happened to the small silver jewelry box lined with red velvet that she let me use as a couch when I was duplicating the home of “The Borrowers” inside a shoebox for a book report? What about the homemade advent calendar that we used to count down the days until Christmas? The music she played on the piano? Her wedding ring that had been missing its diamond since I was a little girl? She had few valuable possessions, maybe none. We don’t mourn the loss of her things. We mourn her. We miss her and the experiences we could have if she were still here.

I think of the lives of people that pass through this earth forgotten and undocumented. I think of the Holocaust. Those images we’ve seen of roomfuls of shoes and eyeglasses that were kept while the lives of people who owned them were cast away, contemptuously. How many people live and die without the careful documentation of their existence, while we catalogue the hairbrushes and gloves and dresses and rocking horses of only the wealthy and important?

We all have possessions and there isn’t anything wrong with that. Humans have always had items they kept for useful purposes, emotional reasons, or for their aesthetic beauty. But let us also remember people and what shared experiences and relationships can give us. I believe that people are more important than things. Always.