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As the summer winds down, and thoughts of school loom larger ahead instead of shrinking farther and farther behind us, as they once did earlier in the season, my grandson and I have renewed our custom of shared, late summer reading. It's something that I wasn't sure we'd do this year, given the school's relentless promotion of hands-off parenting and sink-or-swim method of teaching, during the past school year.
But then, one day, just "out of the blue," the subject came up and we decided to go ahead with it. And I think it's still a good strategy, a conscious turning toward what lies ahead, a timely exercise, perhaps, in preparing for the coming seasons of a year and of a life.
So, shortly after this "meeting of minds," we made a trip to Barnes & Noble, walked to the kids' section all the way in the back, and perused the familiar volumes of history and biography long since left, it turns out, in the dust of now-surpassed reading levels. Still, in an apparent homage to those seasons of the past, Jason finally picked out a thin little volume on the life of Marie Curie which then spent the weeks that followed on the dining room table, unopened and unread.
Well, not completely so, since I did pick it up and read a few pages and wondered that we'd come so far that its text seemed so absurdly thin and childish and its narrative of an exemplary life so incomplete.
So we went back, a few weeks later, with a summer reading list from the Fairfax County (VA) Schools which I'd found on line. And found that none of the titles, which had seemed of interest, were available in the store. And so, returning home, we bought the online version of one of them, Candace Fleming's Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
We have it on both the Kindle, for portability, and on the computer, for ease of reading when we sit down together. And it's truly been an education for him, and a vivid reminder to me, in terms of what it says about the role of women at the turn of the last century.
So much so that I said to him, at one point, you know this is not so much about a plane lost at sea or even a female aviation pioneer but about a woman who defied every conventional belief, concerning what a woman was supposed to do and be, so that, even in the aftermath of tragedy, she endures as a role model for young women.
And thinking back to how things had been, in Earhart's time and my parents' time and my own, I thought about my mother and a childhood scrapbook she'd kept of the heros and heroines of the day, and about her own life burdened by convention. And how, at mid-life, she'd finally found an open space, drew a momentary breath of freedom, and sighted a possible landing place, before she and her vision of it suddenly, and completely, disappeared...
LPK
LiveJournal
7.31.2015 (a)
But then, one day, just "out of the blue," the subject came up and we decided to go ahead with it. And I think it's still a good strategy, a conscious turning toward what lies ahead, a timely exercise, perhaps, in preparing for the coming seasons of a year and of a life.
So, shortly after this "meeting of minds," we made a trip to Barnes & Noble, walked to the kids' section all the way in the back, and perused the familiar volumes of history and biography long since left, it turns out, in the dust of now-surpassed reading levels. Still, in an apparent homage to those seasons of the past, Jason finally picked out a thin little volume on the life of Marie Curie which then spent the weeks that followed on the dining room table, unopened and unread.
Well, not completely so, since I did pick it up and read a few pages and wondered that we'd come so far that its text seemed so absurdly thin and childish and its narrative of an exemplary life so incomplete.
So we went back, a few weeks later, with a summer reading list from the Fairfax County (VA) Schools which I'd found on line. And found that none of the titles, which had seemed of interest, were available in the store. And so, returning home, we bought the online version of one of them, Candace Fleming's Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
We have it on both the Kindle, for portability, and on the computer, for ease of reading when we sit down together. And it's truly been an education for him, and a vivid reminder to me, in terms of what it says about the role of women at the turn of the last century.
So much so that I said to him, at one point, you know this is not so much about a plane lost at sea or even a female aviation pioneer but about a woman who defied every conventional belief, concerning what a woman was supposed to do and be, so that, even in the aftermath of tragedy, she endures as a role model for young women.
And thinking back to how things had been, in Earhart's time and my parents' time and my own, I thought about my mother and a childhood scrapbook she'd kept of the heros and heroines of the day, and about her own life burdened by convention. And how, at mid-life, she'd finally found an open space, drew a momentary breath of freedom, and sighted a possible landing place, before she and her vision of it suddenly, and completely, disappeared...
LPK
LiveJournal
7.31.2015 (a)
