Refueling Part I: Night-Time Train Travel

Reading is not actually my first love. It may seem shocking that this writer, who has dedicated her life to books, is actually most moved by music, but I am. My earliest memories have a soundtrack. Music was always a chance to dream and think beyond the world I was currently living in and a refueling station I have made many, many, stops at.

Music can spark so many different stories, and possibilities, and fill my head with colors. I’ve been creating vignettes in my mind that correspond with different songs for as long as I can remember, and its something I still do — The B Side.

Books, however, they are the powerhouses when it comes to refueling for me. Reading enables me to enter a whole different universe and when the book ends I’m still welcome to come back and visit anytime.

I was a late reader. In first grade, when all the other kids were sounding out words in picture books and early readers, I would turn the page and tell a whole different story than the words on the page. It drove my teachers, and my parents, and any adult reading with me, crazy. My story time antics led to me going to the reading specialist, Mrs. Dunne. After about two days, Mrs. Dunne looked at me and I at her. She called my bluff, I could read the whole time I just didn’t feel like it. I wanted to tell a story of my own, one that I wanted to hear. After a few battles she had me sound out the actual words of a book or two, and I realized that the words inside could be just as good a respite from my anxiety, as the ones I was trying to tell.

Reading became a whole new exciting source of happiness and relief! I couldn’t believe they let us sit and read during school. I felt like I was getting away with something, because this reading thing was way more fun than listening to the teacher. Soon, I was absolutely hooked and got my hands on everything I could.

Books, and literature, and writing, have been something of a respite from anxiety ever since those early days of D.E.A.R time. As I got older and the material started to be grander, reading also gave me a source of answers. When I read, I am able to confess the questions that circulate around my little mind and search through the words printed in front of me only to think of an answer for my overwhelming queries.

So right now, while I am looking for ways to refuel and heal during the emotionally draining 2020, I am looking to books. Since the beginning of 2020 I’ve devoured books and the ones that have impacted me and fueled me to fight and carry on are: Normal People by Sally Rooney, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis, In the Midst of Life by Jennifer Worth, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schafer and Annie Barrows, and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, as well as a rereading of Small Steps by Peg Kahert, and Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky.

All of these incredible books, have literally served as a source of filling my tank with knowledge, perspective, perseverance, and oomph. Yet, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society give me an extra notch of gasoline with one specific paragraph.

The novel is formatted through letter correspondence, and in one letter, one of the protagonists wrote a few lines that gave me particular hope; “Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war.”

Within these lines, the small moments of normalcy after war are noticed and there is joy found that was once taken away. While, I know i’m not living through a war of any sorts, there have been many pieces of joy that I took for granted that have been taken away. The notion that I will feel that joy again and will take in a special pause for how wonderful it is, is a few more drops of gasoline in my emotional energy tank.