For the love of books

Ilove to read. Anyone who knows me is crystal clear about my need to read. I read every single night at a minimum and as much as I can squeeze in throughout the day. Apparently, I am an anomaly among my friends with kids.

I surround myself with book people and only a few of them are still reading with any regularity and this saddens me to no end. It is the easiest thing in the world when you become a parent to forget to make time for yourself and I completely understand how your own hobbies are the first things to get dropped in a busy family life. However, there is no excuse for not reading. If you have time to play Candy Crush, you have time to read a few paragraphs before bed.

I do not have a data plan on my phone so the option to scroll endlessly through Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram is not an option when I am waiting somewhere.

I am in the minority. When I get the opportunity to pick up my kids from school, I usually end up parking a thousand miles away from the school because I am late for everything. As I walk up the parking lot, nearly every single car has a parent inside waiting for their kids. Every single person is looking down at a smart phone. Only one time did I see someone waiting in the car, reading a book.

Last week I had to take my daughter to the walk-in clinic and, again, every single person in the waiting room was hunched over their phones. I didn’t bring any toys to the waiting room but I had a notebook and a pen and my daughter and I drew shapes and practiced our letters while the rest of the people tuned out to the world around them.

I think that as a species, smart phones have caused us to have bad posture and to forget about books.

The next time you are out and about and stuck waiting somewhere, pause a moment before you take out your phone and look up at your fellow humans. How many people are on their phones, unable to sit quietly and just be? Like half the summer spent with fires burning our province, this is the new normal – disconnection and impatience.

I always thought that I would love teaching my children how to read. I would introduce them to the joy of making lines on a page turn into pictures in your head and we would spend countless hours sitting beside each other, reading. As it turns out, I am far too impatient to really enjoy the initial stages of my children learning how to read. I want them to be able to read now, not later.

I am impatient for them to open the doors of their mind and read everything they can get their hands on. If there was an app to make my kids learn how to read immediately, I would download it in an instant. I want so badly for them to experience the magic of being transported to another place, another planet, into another person’s mind.

For my friends who have not found the time to read in the last few years, since they had kids, or since their lives have become too busy, I say to you, stop making excuses and start reading again. Not making time for reading is like saying no to a world made of magic.

“Magic? No, thank you. I prefer to live a perfectly normal life in a world where there are no flights of fancy.”

Bah. I choose magic and so should you.

Read a book – it’s good for you.

I do not have a data plan on my phone so the option to scroll endlessly through Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram is not an option when I am waiting somewhere.