Cancelled Adventure

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The Native's are all tucked all snuggly safe and sound in their beds. It is that time of night when the house is all quiet, I'm in my comfy jammies, the lamp next to my bed gives off a warm glow in my bedroom, a sweet smelling breeze after a day of rain comes through my open bedroom window. I am content and ready to be whisked away as I snuggle down between the sheets and open my new book.

I've been anticipating this moment ever since I bought the book on recommendation. An Oprah book of the month selection. Normally, I don't buy into or care what Oprah's book of the month is but this book was highly recommended and I was told that it was Oprah's favorite book out of all the books she's ever read. It must be good.

As I open the first pages and smell the newness of the book and feel the cover protest at being opened I smile to myself and blame my mother and her mother for this habit of staying up late losing myself between the pages of a book. My mind wanders to an upstairs bedroom of a farm house in Montana where a little girl presses herself against her window trying to see the words on the page by the scant light from the yard light in the driveway. Many times her mother would tell her that she was going to ruin her eyes straining them so.

Often, when the little girl would get up in the night to go to the bathroom she would see a soft light on in her mother's room, her mother propped up against pillows, lost between the pages of a book...... and her mother before her......

I return back to the words typed on the clean pages of this juicy fat book and am ready to go on an adventure. Where ever the book will take me. I've surrendered myself to it's pages.

I begin to read. Anticipation. The first page starts to give me an itinerary of where we are going. The second page, a view that is ugly. Can it be over looked? Maybe just a pit stop that I can ignore getting to the destination. The third page, the realization of what the entire trip is going to be. Ugly. Offensive. Repulsive. Vulgar. Vile.

I close the book and place it on the night stand next to my bed. Disappointment washes over me. I am angry. Brilliant this book is not.

My sister wrote a blog post the other day that is, in fact, brilliant. She said it far better than I ever could. Click here to read.

Thankfully, there are many adventures left to go on. As my brother in law tells his kids, "You don't have to lay in the gutter to appreciate the sidewalk."

I've shelves upon shelves full of books just waiting for me to crack open their covers and lose myself between their brilliant pages safe and far from the gutter.