#BehindTheScenes 65 - The Book Dragon

I love reading...as this #BehindTheScenes will tell you.

I am THE definition of a book dragon.

My love for it was drilled into me early on. My father always believed that being an academic was the best way to get through life and my mother agreed. After all, his father went through seminary school. It brought him to a comfortable position after years of struggling with a bad marriage and alcoholism. He and my grandmother (his second wife) lived in San Francisco for many years.

When I was younger, we were read to. Mostly, it was my father. Sometimes, we had guest readers. One of my father's closest friends, Burt, sometimes read to us. I vaguely remember him running through Green Eggs and Ham, Jesse Jackson style.

Eventually, as we learned, we read to each other and then by ourselves. We always had a reading time before bed, as a wind down, and it had to be equal to the amount o time spent on our home computer. When I was eight or nine, my father's boss at Stanley Works gave us our first, a 66-gig Windows 95 machine. My father would download games, wallpaper and more and transfer it to our computer via 3 1/2 floppy disk.

Yes, I am that old.

We had no gaming systems like Playstation. We weren't allowed to play video games. Our time on the computer was VERY limited anyway (20-30 minutes/day and we had to take turns). But our time with books was unlimited. We loved our weekly library trips and the few times we were allowed to go to the bookstore with gift cards and maybe some birthday money from our grandparents. Each of us had our favorites.

When he was younger, my brother liked sports books and action adventure. My sister and I shared the same tastes - science fiction/fantasy, with colorful characters, historical fiction (especially royalty) and the classics. I was introduced to mythology and legends, history and geography through the world of books.

A lot of parents will applaud how I was raised. It was structured and with a set routine. Every season was the same, every weekend filled with books or outdoor activities, every school day focused on learning my lessons. For an autistic person, it should have been comforting.

The unpredictable life of trauma sometimes made this activity a chore. My parents demanded book reports and got annoyed when we hyper-focused on one series or genre (I never understood why). They bragged to their friends about what we read and spoke disparaging when we missed the mark and failed. I remember my brother being picked on a lot.

As I grew older, I tried finding books that spoke to me. When I volunteered at the New Britain Library's Children Department, I hid a lot of my favorites from my parents. Chicken Soup for the Teen Soul, teen royal fantasies and stories of trauma appealed to me. I was searching for something, but I didn't understand what. In those pages, though, I saw myself figuring things out.

My autistic mind knew there was a world beyond what I had, but I was unsure of what and where it was and how to get there. I did not know who to turn to and what would happen if I found my voice and the right words. Even so, I justified that I had a good life and my parents were right. Later, I learned that this was childhood depression.

My mind went into overdrive. The stories swirled in my head. I picked my favorite scenes and acted them out in my head. I added my own input through an outside made-up figure, my character always helping in some way. Tragic past, needs to get better, let's help her sort of characters. Add fan fiction and you have a teen who figured out how to translate one part of her soul to another.

Because of the severe backlash from a sibling, I never told anyone about the stories in my head. I continued gobbling up more and more books, adding feats under my belt that most thirteen-year-olds could not claim - Stephen King's The Stand, The Book of Virtue, Frank Herbert's Dune series and much more. This was a point of pride with my father.

Books always stayed with me, and the stories never went away.

My collection grew over the years. I have inherited tons of books from my father and grandfather

and some have given me gifts of books. Many of them, I am using for reference when writing, inspiration that perhaps needs to come to light. All of them are treasures to the end. Each have a story of their own - the hands exchanged, the pages turned and the delight in the words.

Reading is still a pleasure to me still. Sometimes, though, trauma calls, and my mind balks at reading, remembering the chore-like abuse my parents inflicted upon us. Then, I calm myself. I am home. There is safety in whatever world I wish to jump into. There are no limits. I am not restricted.

My love of reading got passed down to my son. While he does not read like my husband and I do, he delights in what he sees and I help him when he allows it. I let him take out whatever he wants from the library and the bookstore and never had an issue with his choices, even if he took it out two weeks ago.

And that is what makes reading so much fun - picking out what YOU love.

Namaste, everyone! Have a great day!

#Reading #BookDragon #ReaderAndWriter #GoodReads #IndieAuthor