It's just past noon on this Saturday in mid-August in this mild 2013 summer of our upper Midwest. I've just read more of My Antonia to Sean and Ryan, and then two poems that I love by Audre Lorde: "Coal" and "From the House of Yemanjaa." Now I'll return to getting everything ready for the class I'll teach in the fall, and coming up with a proposal or two for classes to teach in the spring. It's only exuberant happiness that makes me want to write something here, and I know I can get myself into trouble when that is the force driving me to write - not big trouble, but just committing the sin of aimlessness - the sin of wasting time.
I don't know what I'll do if I ever reach a point in which there is no one to read to, because I've been reading to my kids for such a long time. We meet in these stories or poems or various nonfiction books, and there has always been something steady and steadying there in our meeting place. My voice has to speak there, and it has to express words from out in the world, brought into our small space, for us to listen to, repeat, agree with, argue with, and merge with our own words. Reading to them makes me into a storyteller, even when I'm not a storyteller. Reading makes me share wisdom with them, even when I don't feel wise.
There is still something magical to me, even after all these years, in this invention of humans to put words down to be carried across space and time and then to become thoughts in other people's minds or reconstitute into spoken words again. I've never quite gotten over how wonderful this is.
How else could I ever say this to Sean and Ryan (from "Coal" by Audre Lorde)?
Some words live in my throat
Breeding like adders. Others know sun
Seeking like gypsies over my tongue
To explode through my lips
Like young sparrows bursting from shell.
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