We Are What....

"I am a part of all that I have met."

                                                                                       Alfred Tennyson

I believe I have mentioned I receive a quotation through my email each morning.   It is the first thing I check as I slip out of bed and begin on my morning path.   Sometimes I am given a chuckle, sometimes I am delivered something to think about, and sometimes I am given a line that sends me off to the place where I store my memories...my heart. 

And so, with those ten words Mr. Tennyson handed me all three.

via
(you may find the poem, "The Lady of Shallot"
 and other beautiful illustrations on this site)

My daughter has alway loved books.  This shouldn't have come as a surprise as I actually began reading to her before she was born.  I loved Beatrix Potter and many nights would read Peter Rabbit along with her other creations aloud.    I decorated the nursery with all things Beatrix Potter (and  lots of rabbits) long before I knew if I would bring home a boy or a girl.

via Wikipedia

Once she arrived Roger found joy in reading to her each night.  It became their nightly ritual.  Books were always found under the Christmas tree, among birthday presents and in in Easter baskets.  Her love of books grew as did our book population and her vocabulary.

When she was four one of the preschool teachers mentioned how proud I must be of my daughter.  "Well yes, I am always proud of her."  I must have had a bit of a quizzical look on my face as she added, "she has read everything in my room this afternoon".  I was stunned!   She was reading?  I am her mother, how could I not know she was reading?

When we got into the car, I ask her why she hadn't read for me.  She said, "because I was afraid you wouldn't read to me anymore".  We began a new ritual... we began reading to one another.



Just as I had devoured The Oz series, every Nancy Drew book in the library, Little Women and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I watched her plow through Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women as well as other wonderful books.  Halloween costumes were stitched on my sewing machine, but must often spun from inspiration she first found in a book.    I can still remember her standing at the top of the stairs with hand against a furrowed brow declaring, "I am in the depths of despair".  And, she would have fit in quite well upstairs in the March attic writing for "The Pickwick Papers".

During a parent/teacher conference her fifth grade teacher ask me how I would describe my daughter.  I said, "she is a little bit Laura Ingalls, a little bit of Anne Shirley, and a little bit of Jo March".  I can still remember the teacher's face as she said " That's wonderful!"



I always loved my daughter was influenced, at an early age,  by the characters she found while reading.   I was not in the least surprised when she came home from playing at a friends house with red lipstick on her blouse.  When I ask how she got it on her, she simply said it was blood.  "A. killed me and said 'et tu brute' ".   "Why?"  "We were playing Julius Caesar!"  Silly me, don't all third graders play Julius Caesar?  Yes, I've always thought she had Laura's spunk,  Anne's love of drama and Jo's drive and creativity.  She is all this, and so much more, blended into the her perfect self.

I shared the quotation and my thoughts with her Tuesday and  ask if she remembered spending an afternoon (twenty years ago) searching for a book with Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shallot".  (It was one of Anne Shirley's favorite poems)  Could we have found it in the States?  Absolutely, but what fun we had finding it in England.

It is still upstairs in her room, a bit tattered and worn.

So...

Lord Alfred Tennyson, sir, you have entered my life once again, 

and I must agree, 

we most certainly are a part of all that we meet, 

especially those we spend time with between the covers of a book.

Happy Reading!