The sad thing about reading a book is that you have to leave the old page behind when you turn over the next. You know it's a good read when there is a sense of loss and sadness as you close the back cover over the final page. Harper Lee’s "To Kill a Mockingbird" remains one of my fondest books for many reasons.
Scout captured my heart from the beginning, reminding me of a freckled tomboy I once knew. Her summer adventures with Jem and Dill conjure up my own childhood musings by the score: Fireflies and fleeting rainbows... Sunburns and soap bubbles...Cricket crescendos at dusk followed by 'night games'... The still, humid Indiana air announcing an approaching tornado long before the warning sirens or radio did.
"Hurry" was not a word known to any child on Iroquois Trail. The clock slowed to allow time to savor each penny bug and pollywog rescued from the ditch. It was "Leave it to Beaver land" and gloriously innocent.
The year was 1961 and I came to know the one 'different' little girl in our sublime suburbia. She had a pink coat, a wide smile, and dark skin. I didn’t care about that. She liked bike rides and Barbie, just like me. She never would eat my penny candy nigger babies, but we shared the same pixie stick. We played and laughed together each Saturday and walked different directions to school on weekdays. I heard new words like "prejudice" and "segregation", but I was oblivious to their meaning.
The pages of my early childhood turned slowly and joyfully and I'm grateful for my memories. They allow me to re-read my history which lessens the sense of loss from life's closed chapters.
Fast Forward-2009! A new page of history has been written. We have a newly-elected president. He is different than I am. He has a wide smile and dark skin. I don't care about that, but I do care about the book that is about to be written. I have to say I am uneasy about the ending. For the first time since learning to read "Dick and Jane", I wish I could read the last pages first to see if I'm going to like the story.
In "To Kill a Mockingbird", Atticus said, "Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand." (Chapter 9) I don't understand either. My fellow countrymen and the media is 'stark raving mad' right now. I hope the dust settles soon because people are not being reasonable or responsible! I love my country and the principles it was founded on. I want President Obama to succeed and I am going to pray that he will. I hope he wields the mighty pen of the United States President to write a history for the American people that will prove too good to put down.
It feels weird to say that my life is more than half over. I don't feel like I flip page by page anymore. Rather, I am living my daily life in whole chapters! I’d like time to slow down again and allow me moments to lie in the grass and make shapes out of the clouds, fly a kite, or (hmm) maybe even read a good book! But I can say, I know why you can’t judge a book by its cover. Life is all about turning the pages.
