It’s funny-how the memory changes with time, experience, and medication.
When I was in third grade, I had the best reading book. It was so amazing and comforting to me, that I often read ahead of the assigned pages in the hardcover, colorful book. Reading was an enjoyable activity for me, as marathon reading sessions were held in my family home almost every night. Stacks of books surrounded us, and the unfortunate required television was surrounded by volumes of texts. Great books, biographies, autobiographies, non-fiction, fiction by bestsellers, up-and-coming novelists, stage plays, and one of my favorites-the MGM faces book. I’d spend a long lingering hour just browsing the featured actors-I thought Ned Sparks was hysterical, and when I asked my playwright father who Sydney Greenstreet was, he’d respond with his best impression of Mr. Greenstreet’s signature laugh.
Among my other favorites were the world atlas, the space atlas (according to my mother, one of the first books from which I recited on demand at the age of two-and-a half when she wanted proof that my sister, eight years my senior, taught me to read.) and Peter Freuchens tome about the seven seas. One night I absorbed myself in his personal accounts of the Atlantic while taking breaks to chase the lightning bugs outside. Mom and Dad were not big on me constantly running in and out, but they’d make an exception with their noses deep in a book. (They didn’t notice.)
But my favorite was that little blue hardcover reading textbook full of playful and innocent stories tuned to my wee active mind. It was called “Together We Go” published for schools by Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich. I loved it so much I kept it in my toybox which my grandfather, Papa had made for me. I read it during my vacation break, until I was told I had to return it to school. (This wasn’t the first time I got into trouble over a book.) And the memory was so clear in my head of this slim volume, so desperately seeking my attention to re-read it again, that I found it on that marvel of marvels, Ebay, and I squealed with glee as my fifty-two year old fingers typed in my credit card numbers to acquire it.
Seven days later, it arrived.
And although the stories in it have become something less familiar to my middle-aged mind, it’s still glorious.
Sojourne 