100 Years and Just One More Chapter, Dad

In my day, books were these cool things with pages. They took space, but they were an attractive use of the space they occupied. Books are amazing. I’m not saying that E-Readers are sabotaging the magic of the written word. I’m an environmentalist and hey-my kids like anything electronic, so that’s something. Over a dozen years ago I visited Margaret Mitchell’s basement apartment in Atlanta. Ms. Mitchell set out to write the “greatest loves story of all times” and she did. In her tiny apartment, every surface was stacked with what looked like hundreds, if not thousands of pages. How many drafts? How many hours? How much love did she pour into every idea, character and composition before Gone With the Wind was finished? What alternate universe exists for Scarlet and Melanie, hidden in that apartment whether written and discarded or dreamed of and misplaced? It’s my opinion that there never has been, nor will be another love story like Gone With the Wind; a love born from competition, while another unfolds, unexpectedly and without warning. A selfish, naïve young woman, forced by circumstance into sacrifice and service. Is it at all possible that when Margaret Mitchell wrote Rhett’s famous farewell, she knew that she would be immortal? Tolstov, Hugo, Dickens, Alcott, all immortal. Over 100 years ago, they had an idea, they dreamed of a place, they developed characters that we treasure and created stories we will never forget. They poured it all out on paper, page after page and stack after stack and they knew it was special. I don’t know if they knew how special. They will live forever. We know these pieces of literary history, we all do. We’ve been to those places, we’ve met those characters. We laughed. We cried. Our hearts raced with anticipation and we’ve gasped with surprise.

Here’s my point; I hope, really hope, that our children get to visit those places. Is it just me, or is it really difficult to get children excited about reading? Maybe I just get too excited about reading. I remember spending entire nights immersed in a good book. Granted, I didn’t read a lot of classics, but I read nearly a book a day. My dad would come down and say; “Lights out”, usually more than once because I hardly realized he was there. “Just one more chapter dad!” He’d come down one more time, sometimes two, but he never forced me to put a book down and turn out the lights. I love him for that! I’d read scary stories, love stories, sad stories, intense stories, I couldn’t get enough. Clearly, I love to write, but creativity like that of the real literary geniuses, comes once in a 100 years-if that. I just hope that I have enough time to read all the great pieces, before the last 100 years is up!