In Which I Dig a Pond and Hope for Ducks

I was born competitive. When I came out screaming, the nurse said I was trying to outdo my mother, the sounds of her labor having reached me in the womb and inspired throaty cries that made visitors cringe. Nothing’s changed - well, okay. I’ve stopped screaming for the most part, but I’m as still competitive as hell. Need proof? I race strangers to the door of the grocery store and don’t even TELL them we’re racing. One time, I was having lunch with someone I enjoy about as much as I enjoy stepping in water with socks on. He said “There’s no way you’re going to finish that,” and motioned at my food. He was right, until he said it. I finished it, much to the dismay of my stomach and the button on my Levis. Hey, I never said I was smart about it.

I saw the reading challenge floating around the internet somewhere. The word reading was already appealing to me. My mother homeschooled my siblings and me, and I can vividly remember every time we had a shipment of new books come in. The box would come in, huge and brown and labelled “curriculum”. To me, the books were so many other “c” words - companions, confidence, calming, cosmic. I’d secret them away before she had a chance to put them on the shelves, stowing them in various places around the house lest I end up more than a few feet from the bound pages that gave me life. Reading was involuntary, a reflex. Paired with a dare, I was all in.

The list was easy, too easy, so I made it harder. A book a week, for a year. For the first few months, it was breezy. It felt as effortless as the hours I’d spent in a tube on the lazy river the previous summer.

The thing about the lazy river? In the end, I ended up incredibly tired and blistered.

I didn’t finish the first year.

No, I don’t want to talk about it. Yes, I know aloe helps.

So, a glutton for punishment, I went for it again. New year, new me book challenge. I’m not kidding myself - I’m still the same competitive me I’ve been since I fought my mom over whether or not a character made from potatoes was named “Spud” or “Spot.” 

Again, I rose to the occasion and failed even more spectacularly than the prior year. (Listen. I had to outdo myself somehow, and I wasn’t seeing a lot of options.) I started school, something that startled me as well as those around me. As much as I love to read and as much as I love to learn, I do not like being told what to study or how to learn. It was a learning curve, and for this, I will not make a joke. I give myself grace for not completing that year’s reading challenge. That being said… I returned for another beating in the third round.

Bloody, bruises the shape of bookmarks littering my body, I greeted 2020 with the zeal of someone too stupid to know when to quit. It wasn’t a promising start, classics everyone said were a “must-read” weighing on my eyelids every time I opened them. I was slow, unmotivated, and going nowhere fast.

A few months in, after completing my first triathlon (another challenge), everything changed. Universally, a shift occurred that rocked the core of my world. Suddenly, I was staring at classmates through a webcam, my professor’s daughter interrupting our class apologetically to inform him that their lunch was on fire in the oven. News anchors recorded updates with their dogs barking in the background, the demand on postal services increased exponentially, and more outfits involving pajama pants and formal tops were worn than in any other year. (Don’t ask me to prove it. That’s a challenge, and I would rise to the occasion - in my superman boxers and interview shirt.)

Tired of the strife, the grief, the anger, the fear and overall hostility of the world around me, I found myself turning inward. Not surprisingly, when I looked closer, I saw the pieces I was made of, composed not only of my life experiences, but of the life experiences I had taken part in while reading. I identified them with excitement, pointing - there! That part of me grew up alongside knights at a round table! And in that corner, Jean Louise Finch had stood beside me while I burned my apathy and set the mockingbird free. I realized then that I might not have all the answers, and I might have more questions than anything else. But I had an answer, one that suited me. Once again, books became a sanctuary for the weary traveler that was my heart.

So, here I am, at the start of 2021, and I don’t know how many books I read last year, because I didn’t pause for breath, much less to count something that means nothing. I immersed myself. In the silence of my room, I heard a hundred war cries. From my couch, I saw a murder, and later, the retribution dealt out with passionate fervor. Lying on the grass under the oaks, I travelled. The Great Wall of China, with the sun glistening off the miles of structure. To Mill Valley, California, and a small bedroom with a drippy window unit. A pool hall somewhere in east Texas. To 1952. 2054. I was held back by nothing, even visiting a spaceship that hovered warily over an undiscovered planet. 

Suddenly, I realized this wasn’t enough. Have you ever heard the quote about how “the body cries because the soul cannot contain the joy?” Well, I write because the soul cannot contain the words. That’s right, write. (I’m still working on jokes. But if you wanna see a comic strip, you should watch me shower.) No longer can I keep inside what I’ve held so close for so long. Somewhere out there, someone like me is looking for an answer. I have no round tables, no mysterious items showing up in the holes in trees. I have no sword but the pen I wield, but by God I will wield it. 

So, I never finished the book challenge. Maybe someday.

Meanwhile, I’ve completed a challenge I didn’t know I’d entered in. For years, I’d simply written “Do what I need to do” on my New Year's Resolutions list - first in crayon as a child, then in cursive as a teenager, and now it goes in the notes app on my phone next to the takeout order from last week. 

I’m doing what I need to do. For me, for someone - for you, maybe - and for now, that’s enough.