Childhood Memories with Susan J. Bigelow
Hi everyone! Today I have Susan J. Bigelow, author of Broken here with a guest post. She is sharing with us her favorite book memory from her childhood. Let’s see what she has to say shall we?
I have many wonderful memories of books from when I was young, because my childhood was full of them. My mother made sure that both my sister and I had plenty of books to read, always. We were one of those families that instituted a “no reading at the table!” during meals rule, because otherwise we’d read instead of talking with one another!
If I had to pick a memory, it might be this: A spring day, probably a Saturday, my room full of sunlight. I’m lying on my bed, reading something. It’s a book I love, it could be The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis, or Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander, or Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell. For a while, I’m lost in another world; I’m in the desert with Shasta, walking the woods with Taran, surviving alone on an island with Karana. The sunlight slants through the window, pooling in a warm square on my bedspread.
There’s a rustle, and a weight at the end of the bed as one of our three cats jumps up. “Hey,” I say, scratching her neck. She leans into my fingers, purring, and drapes herself over my legs, or curls up nearby, to sleep in the sun.
We stay that way for hours, until it’s time for dinner or I feel like heading outside to wander the swamplands behind the house, lost in worlds of my own making. I could come back again the next day, though, and it would all still be there; the cat, the bed, the books.
There were thousands of moments like that, so many that they all run together in my head now. It was the kind of thing I loved best back then.
