The TV show “CBS Sunday Morning” is one of my favorite viewing options, one I seldom miss. On a recent Sunday, after seeing the tribute to the African-American mess attendant who, despite being barred from that particular duty in the Navy, manned a gun while his ship was being bombed at Pearl Harbor, I ran upstairs from my basement bedroom to get a book. I returned just as a list of books flashed on the screen, with A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats at the top. I climbed back into bed with my book to look for pictures by Claude Monet, the artist in the next feature on the show. I glanced at the “not me” side of my bed, and decided that Impressionism, a 6-pound, 11” x 12” tome, was not going to come to rest there.
At the beginning of this writing, the census of the right side of my bed accounted for these things: The Given Day, a novel by Dennis Lehane in hardcover, wrapped in a black cloth book cover; the paperbacks, Blonde Faith, by Walter Mosley, A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler; The Glass Rainbow, by James Lee Burke, and Our Souls At Night, by Kent Haruf. Back issues of the Weekly View and The New York Times were commingled with the books, along with the journal, Next Indiana Campfires: A Trail Companion. There was also a copy of the routes for two of the buses I ride most frequently. I had cleared the spillage from the floor, the natural result of the gentle cotton waves created by my dives into and emergences from, the sheets and comforter.
My weekday ends when my daughter comes home and takes over the care of my granddaughter. I retire to the basement, where I have set up a bedroom, sitting room and art studio, complete with a futon, a drafting table, drawing table and eight bookcases. And a bed. When you do not have a close personal relationship that includes another human, someone with whom to discuss the issues of the day and the heartaches of the hour, then — at least for me — there are books and papers and notebooks on the other side of the bed, that will lift and comfort you.
My mother, who held her own counsel with regard to the wreckage of her children’s childhood, was quietly listening to me and my sister talk about our passion for reading. Neither of us could remember having our parents read to us when we were young, but despite that, we were both avid readers. I openly mused about what drove us to books, and my mother startled her two children by raising her head from her own reading and saying, “Escape.” And escape we did, away from our father’s brutalities and into the wonderful world of books.
My friend Steve Nicewanger (this paper’s sports reporter) involved me in a social media game. For seven days, one was to post a photo of a book “read and loved” and each day, tag another person. I posted mine (though I did not tag anyone else) and all seven of them were from my personal library and have spent some time resting on the other side of the bed. And whether in despair or out the sheer joy of living, I have turned to them, and they have never failed to lift me.
Whether to start my day or to end it, the books and papers that rest in a jumble are waiting for me to join them on the other side of my bed.
cjon3acd@att.net