In the Beginning

When I was little, I used to sit on my dad's lap in his big green La-Z-Boy recliner and read to him. We had (and actually still have) these gigantic volumes printed by Disney. They're big, beautifully illustrated anthologies of children's stories. I was little, mind you, and although the memories are vague I recall stumbling my way through them while my dad patiently listened. While a part of me is amazed at his patience throughout this (I mean really, listening to a little girl falter and stumble her way through a book, refusing to accept help and determined to figure out what the big words are all on her own...is that anyone's idea of a good time?), I'm quite certain he enjoyed every second of it.

It's funny, really, I always wanted to read to him. I asked on almost a nightly basis if he had time for a story before bed. And I'm hard pressed to remember him ever saying no, even if he was bogged down in a case that had him up to his eyeballs in paperwork. My twin sister would sit and listen, but only very rarely read. It's the same to this day, really, I love books and reading, and she's really not a fan. There's the occasional mindless chick-lit novel she'll read when she's bored, but I devour books by the likes of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Christopher Paolini, and Terry Goodkind. Books were my friends growing up, replacements for the friends I didn't have from school. When I read The Neverending Story, I could relate to Bastian. I know how it feels to prefer to hide from the real world, so lost in the story that it becomes your reality.

I've found books to be a constant in my life. Where everything else can be so uncertain, and terrifying, and change at the drop of a hat, the written word is safe. It is a constant companion, and gives you somewhere to go when the rest of the world turns its back on you. I find myself trying, time and time again, to write something, anything, that means something to someone. Even if it is just one person, I want to know that something I wrote made some small difference in someone's life. My journey started with those Disney books all those years ago, and while my taste in authors and material may have changed, their presence in my life has not.

So here I sit, in my dad's big green La-Z-Boy recliner. The difference is that now, instead of losing myself in someone else's writing, I'm trying to lose myself in my own.