The Smell of
Books
I have always loved reading, at least I think I have. My
earliest memories of books are hazy images of warmth, security, and
a sense of peace and safety. The smell of books will forever
conjure up these feelings. The odd part is that even though I chose
to embrace books, I have never thought of myself as smart. Perhaps,
to better understand, we should start at the very beginning. I was
born toward the end of an age when women seldom had drivers
licenses much less college educations. Wives and mothers were
expected to stay at home, feed and clothe their children, keep the
house clean, and care for their husbands. My
motherwas a good
wife, but my father was not a good husband. By the time I was
one-year-old, mom and I were
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He needed to
study, so he took me to the university with him. I reveled in the
smell of the library. I would watch all those people hunched over
all those books. I would wonder what they knew and how I could
learn it too. He would sit for hours poring over his books, his pen
slowly underlining as he read. I was transfixed. I received books
of my very own to look at and paper and pencils to draw with. I
would sit in that big hushed library, surrounded by shelves and
shelves of unknown knowledge. I longed to be just like him. I would
carefully trace lines in ink under the words in my books, seeing
the ABCs, repeated over and over again. Soon, I began see patterns
and sounds, and suddenly the world exploded. I began to
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They wanted to
play games or play with dolls. I wanted to be at the library where
the smell of old paper called to me. I made friends within the
pages of stories. I reveled in the diverse worlds I discovered. I
read classic fairy tales by Han Christian Anderson and The Brothers
Grimm. I explored impossible worlds with Jules Verne, Jonathon
Swift, and Daniel Defoe. I learned to care about humanity with
Charles Dickens. I wept bitter tears of loss with Wilson Rawls. I
breathed deep the smell of the prairie grasses with Laura Ingalls
Wilder, I listened to the lyrical language of the South with
Margaret Mitchell, and I bathed, almost hedonistically, in the
sweeping worlds of Narnia and Middle Earth with C. S. Lewis and J.
R.R. Tolkien. I could lose myself in a story, hear the lines of the
book being read in my mind. I would feel the wind on my face, the
sun or rain on my head. I would laugh and cry. I completely
understand the words of
Eudora
Welty, There has never been a line read that I didnt hear. As
my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to
me (Welty 51). By the time that I entered high school, I no longer
felt lonely. I had so many stories in my imagination. The
characters, their lives, and adventures were constant companions to
me. I dont know why I didnt think I was smart, I just never
thought about it. Books were just a part of who I was. A part of
the
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