At the end of last year, a friend announced she was going to spend 2017 (yes, this year) re-reading her collection of books by LM Montgomery. As I am a huge fan of that author too, I decided I would do it as well. Needless to say, she went through with her decision & I did not. I started to but got busy & distracted & just never got back into it. Until this summer when I started it up again & read it to McKenna, who had started it as well but never went beyond Gilbert calling Anne 'carrots'. It took us all summer because we would forget or get busy but we finally finished it on Thursday evening of this week. 3-5 chapters every time we sat down together. I read while she worked on her artwork or sewing. She's not comfortable reading out loud, my shy quiet girl.
I must admit it has been years since I sat & read the books. Before I got busy with raising my family I read them every fall. I have a nice LM Montgomery collection, not just the Anne books, although I am always looking for more. I especially want to focus on getting more volumes of LM Montgomery's personal journals.
But Anne is my favorite, most likely because it was my first LM Montgomery book. I voraciously read my way through the series & then absorbed the Emily books, followed by Jane of Lantern Hill, & then the Story Girl. When the Disney Channel aired the Kevin Sullivan mini-series of Anne I was approximately 12 years old. I had seen the commercials for the show but never paid any attention to them. One day while in a bookstore with my mom, I saw the book & I recognized the name of the book, as the same one as the show I had seen in the commercials. I picked up the book & read the back cover & found myself thinking this could be good. After asking my mom to buy me the first book, not even realizing it was part of a whole series of books, I took it home & devoured it. It was summer & I had nothing better to do than reading. But also I couldn't put it down. From the very first flowery description, I was entranced. Up to that point, my personal library consisted of 'Sweet Valley Twins', Nancy Drew, and 'The Babysitters Club', basically anything found in those Scholastic flyers that were sent home from school, from which your parents could order for you. But this Anne-girl was something entirely different & I fell in love with the whole Prince Edward Island world through Anne's eyes and LM Montgomery's descriptions. Most of my friends had not read the books & had no idea why I liked such a long book until they saw the miniseries on Disney. Then a few of them couldn't wait to read the books too. I was ahead of the crowd on this score...something I had never really been able to claim before. How many of them read the entire Anne series or any of LMM's other books I have no idea. I just know, for me, she became, in that one summer, my favorite author.
Re-reading the series with my own daughter, who is herself 13 years old, has been a privilege & a joy. Laughing with her over Anne's reactions to both Mrs Lynde & Gilbert Blythe calling her 'carrots', or when Anne set Diana drunk or dyed her hair green are now among my most treasured memories. And while McKenna didn't cry like a baby, as did her mother, when I got to Matthew's death, she didn't bemoan my pitiful crying as I read the passage when Anne & Marilla comforted each other the night he died. She hugged me & showed true maturity by not laughing at me or mocking me, as she could have. For that this big blubbering baby is grateful.
True story:
The first time I read Matthew's death I wept horribly as well. It was summertime remember, and my mom came home from work to have lunch with me & found me sobbing at the kitchen table. As I had never cried over a book before she thought there was something very wrong & tried to get me to tell her. All she could understand was that I was prostrate with grief because Matthew died. Having no idea that Matthew, in this instance, was a character in a piece of fiction. I should also mention, at the time, my sister, who is 8 years older than I am, had just had a baby, the previous December, a little boy, she named my nephew, Matthew. You see where I am going with this, right? My mother in all the confusion & crying misunderstood me & thought that I was in hysterics & sobbing because my nephew, Matthew had died. Obviously, she went into an intense panic mode. By the time it was all figured out, I was lectured about being too emotional over a fictional character & to be more careful in the future. Looking back it was a very Anne moment in my own life...to allow myself to be so carried away by a story that I reacted so strongly & scared my mom with my hysterics. I can laugh about it now of course but at the time it was, as young Anne herself would say, very 'pathetic' and 'tragical'. ;) I just felt no one understood how much I loved Matthew Cuthbert & that she was being very unsympathetic to my young heart.
My daughter is thankfully much calmer than I am & while she was sad to hear about Matthew dying kept her wits about her & didn't melt into a puddle of tears. She's also very good at keeping her feelings & thoughts to herelf, which has had me doubting myself, several times, throughout this whole book reading experience. I was never sure if she was actually enjoying the book or not. Maybe she was only putting up with it because she is thoughtful & recognized how excited & happy I was to share my stories with her? I kept asking her questions & she'd give me the typical nonanswers you expect from a 13-year-old girl... mostly in grunt form. But she kept allowing me into her inner sanctum & listened while I read. As we completed the final chapter I sighed a big sigh & asked if she liked the book? Her simple answer was, "yeah, it was good." As I left her room & headed to put the book on the bookcase, I told her there were more books about Anne. And if she wanted to we could go on and read the next in the series if she was at all interested. She came over to the bookcase & picked up the different Anne books, reading their descriptions on the back covers as I had once done & then handed me, Anne of Avonlea, & said, "we could read this one next." Her simple declaration has my heart hoping she really is enjoying the books as much I am/do. But there could also be the chance that she really is just enjoying my company & spending time with me. Either way, I think we are both winning.
Sending love out into the ether tonight. Wishing you all the most 'romantical' night. :)
Jess
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| Jess at 12 years old |