Maybe five years ago or so, Harold picked up In a Sunburnned Country by Bill Bryson. After enough guffawing, I had to ask: "What's so funny?" The main character traipses through Australia, meeting all kinds of colorful characters and navigating a myriad of calamities. Bryson writes about them from an intensely humorous perspective. Harold agreed to read me a few passages. One thing led to another, and I started asking him to read it aloud to me every night before bed. It quickly became a nightly ritual, one that I think got us through an extended interior decorating phase.
We'd moved our bed into the laundry room so we could paint, patch, and refinish the walls in our bedroom. It was wedged in so that we could only lie down by crawling into bed from the foot. The light, a single exposed bulb, hung from a fixture attached to the middle of the ceiling. Mr. Bryson's levity transcended the whole situation, and we enjoyed many nights of laughter in those long, ultra-bright evenings.
These days he's reading Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain. More guffaws. Another request. More evening reading. Honestly, aside from marital relations, it's the most fun I think either of us has had in bed. And we can talk about it with friends, with Anne, with anyone. What a lovely way to spend the evening together. It gives us a rich shared experience.
Anne reads herself to sleep most nights. We used to read to her faithfully. Then she learned to read, developed her own tastes in literature, and well, one thing led to another. We hardly read to her anymore. The other night I insisted. We picked up Ginger Pye, and it'd been so long that we had to recap previous readings by skimming through the first seven chapters. Right now the Pye family is frantically searching for their missing dog Ginger. The best part? Kissing Anne goodnight. Her eyelids droopy, slight smile across her face, and obviously warm and cozy disposition gave me that inexplicable maternal satisfaction.
Reading Rocks!
You are just too cool lady!! :)
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