When I was younger, my mother had a set of rules. Some were ordinary and some, I believe, a bit arbitrary. I think of them as the "When You Grow Up Rules" because that's how she would preface each one.
"When you grow up and get a house of your own," she would say, "you can eat olives out the jar until they make you sick, but not here." Or, "When you grow up and get a job, you can stay out until the sun comes up, but tonight you'll be home by 11 or grounded for a week." And, one of my personal favorites, "When you grow up and make your own money, you can spend it on fancy labels and name brands but we're buying the generic and I better not see any pouting."
The one thing my mother never put rules on was reading. I was allowed to read absolutely anything at any time. The librarians knew me and knew that they had no power to censor my choices. One tried and it wasn't pretty. I was allowed to check out seven books a week from any section of the library and I read one each day, rationing them so I wouldn't run short and have to re-read something before our Saturday library excursion.
I think my parents figured that reading books was the least amount of trouble a girl could get into. As a result, I checked out insanely inappropriate books from the library and mined my mother's own bookshelf for more shocking material (Valley of the Dolls anyone?).
I was allowed to read at the dinner table -- not that we ate at the table so often. When the news reporters were up in arms about Amy Carter reading during a state dinner at the White House, my parents shrugged and said "good for her."
I was allowed to read while riding in the car even though it made me terribly ill. I was allowed to read in the dark though everyone warned it would ruin my eyes.
I was allowed to read past my bedtime, though I didn't discover that until later. Despite the fact that my mother possesses sonar-like hearing and actually does seem to have eyes in the back of her head, she never once busted me for reading Stephen King novels under the covers. I called her on it recently and she said she knew all about it. "I picked my battles," she told me. This was news to me as I was once grounded for two weeks because I came home two minutes past my curfew in high school. I was a senior and argued that someone just months away from leaving for college ought to be cut some slack for a two-minute infraction. My mother disagreed. I should have told her I was reading.
I even read through Christmas festivities some years, no small feat given the decibel level of my many cousins as they tried out their newest toys while running wild through my grandparents' small house.
Never once did my mother say to me "When you grow up you can read books instead of visiting with family/sleeping/eating/sightseeing, but for now...." No, she just let me read. I was rude on many occasions. I was carsick time and time again. I was groggy during early morning classes. Maybe someday I'll discover that I really did ruin my eyes. But you know what? I don't care. It was worth it and I don't regret a single minute I ever spent reading.
Now, my taste in books has changed and I'm a bit more discriminating at the library and the bookstore. I no longer read a book a day, but I do read every day. I still love the feeling of being so completely immersed in a book that nothing happening around me matters at all. The thing is, now that I am all grown up, I get that feeling less and less often. It's harder to carve out an entire day with no responsibilities except to the characters on the page. Maybe that's why my mother let me read so much when I was younger. She knew I wouldn't be able to when I grew up.
As for those other rules, she was right about going to bed early and eschewing fancy labels and name brands in most cases. She was wrong about the olives, though. I still think it's perfectly acceptable to eat them right out of the jar, preferably while reclining on the sofa with a good book.
Happy Holidays.
