It's the stories I cherish...

Yesterday, my husband reluctantly took me to the movies.  We have VASTLY different tastes in movies.  My husband is an amazing person; he is one of the most kind-hearted, patient, silly, GOOD, manly men around.  He loves silly, ridiculous, gross-out comedies, action adventures, and scary, scary—why would you do that to your psyche— scary movies.  I can watch a gross-out comedy and appreciate it, I love superhero/action movies, but I cannot ever EVER watch scary movies.  It goes back to that over active imagination business.  But, more than anything else, I love a good, thoughtful STORY.  I cherish stories.  I love sitting in a dark movie theater and crying my eyes out, not because the movie was horrifically sad, but because my heart was tremendously moved.  My husband puts his arm around me and tries not to laugh at me.

We saw Philomena, and I can’t give you a summary, because it will sound ridiculous (google it).  My husband saw a cast list filled with people he had never heard of and the BBC endorsement and said it sounded like an uppity British movie that he would hate.   He didn’t want to go.  He said he would take a nap.  But, when we got there, and the story started to unfold, and the stillness came over the small audience, and we began to learn what the story was really about—I loved every second of it.  It’s a story, an unbelievable story, about two people who have both lost something, unthinkable cruelty, and ultimately forgiveness.  He didn’t want to go.  He said he was going to take a nap.  He loved the movie!

I cherish stories because they show me all the possibilities.  They allow me to discuss the possibilities with other people.  I teach high school English, and I have seen the power of stories in helping someone feel a connection, feel vindicated, feel challenged, feel the humanity found in fighting injustice, feel HUMAN.   As a teenager, I read voraciously.  I remember feeling everything through the stories I could not live without.  I truly believed no one understood me, I thought I was alone and I felt so frustrated.  But, in stories I connected with friends who triumphed (or didn’t triumph) but dared to live in their worlds. 

As a teenager, my favorite stories involved people in impossible situations who overcame horrible situations.  I loved A Tree Grows In Brooklyn with all my heart.  I read Gone With the Wind and walked around sighing and imagining that I would just think about that problem tomorrow.  I dreamed of a love that would transcend the grave as I devoured Wuthering Heights.  I read A Time To Kill and I remember after the first page and not getting up until Tonya Hailey was avenged in the only way that could have been possible.  As a grown-up (sorta), I haven’t changed. I still LOVE the story.  I travel down the river each year with Huck, cheering for him and Jim and for a friendship that is impossible.  I cry unabashedly when I read Jefferson’s diary in A Lesson Before Dying.  I cannot contain myself when Death watches a normal little girl live through unspeakable conditions during World War II in The Book Thief.

One idea I have for this blog is to, once a month, review a new book that I am currently reading.  I read a lot of Young Adult fiction, so that would be the focus.  I’m not really sure if that’s where I want to go, but it's an idea I'm thinking about.   If you are interested, let me know.  The first book I would want to review is an amazing book I am reading right now by one of my favorite authors, David Levithan.  I loved Every Day, The Lover’s Dictionary, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  But his latest book was one I thought might not be for me.  It’s titled Two Boys Kissing and I just kept passing it by.  However, it kept coming up on the best books of 2013, so I’m reading it, and I am so glad I am.  Let me know if you are interested in book reviews by me—but regardless, I will always and forever CHERISH stories.