Member-only story
Reading, Alone
A lifetime of books made me who I am, for better or worse
The day before they left, my wife and I found a brief, quiet moment to share an embrace in the kitchen. I told her how much I would miss her and miss the kids, how sorry I was that my work schedule meant I couldn’t accompany them on their spring break vacation, how lonely I would be without them around. Ten days. Ten long days. What would I do with myself? My wife said, “You’ll be fine. You’ll be happy being alone. Alone with your thoughts.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t try to counter what she was saying or feign a halfhearted denial. Instead I just hugged her body against mine, tight, tighter still, as if I could press her into me and through me.
The older I get, the stronger I feel that solitude is a measure of a life. Who are you when you’re alone? I’m probably reading, I think to myself, though I know this doesn’t quite answer the question.
A lifelong reader should, perhaps, be able to recall the first book they read. I don’t. I remember a tattered hardcover, all browns and yellows on the cover, a cowboy hat, horses, a fence — a western for young readers of some sort. I stretched out in the bottom bunk and invented a story aloud as I moved my eyes across the cryptic marks on the page, because that’s what I saw everyone else in my house doing, and I wanted to be just like them. As I moved my eyes and heard my voice, I was. I felt safe and snug lying there alone, connected to the family I loved. Not really reading. Just pretending.
I have a photo in which I’m just a few years old, looking up from a Richie Rich comics digest. Again, I’m probably too young to be reading in the truest sense of the word — I’m likely just looking at sequential images, doing my best to patch together a narrative of my own design. Just pretending. My family was at our summer cottage, where we spent the happiest days of my childhood, days that still coil like smoke through my memory, filling me with ghostly warmth. I see happiness in my sun-kissed face and sun-bleached hair, in my relaxed posture of contentment, and even in the bandaid on my forearm marking…
