Practicing Gratitude: Book notes

Some of my happiest memories from my childhood are of being curled up on my bed with a great book. Here are a handful of the books that I’m sharing with my daughter and the lessons I learned from each of them.

In the early afternoons, there atop my pastel butterfly and flower covered bedspread, I plumped my pillows, got cozy and reached for the book that sat waiting for me on my nightstand.

If left alone, I would stay there, flipping from front to back, side to side, on my bed and stay lost in the worlds and possibilities that lay between those covers.

The bright early afternoon sun turned to warm golden rays and then dusk with barely little notice.

There’s something magical about the feel of a book in your hands and it brings me so much joy that my daughter treasures books the way I always have.

I’ve collected a handful of the stories that I read throughout my childhood that I want so badly to share with her. I want to know that she’s visited those same worlds. And I love the idea that she will filter those words through her own experience and it will be similar, yet so different from my own.

What we’re reading now

I’ve already introduced her to the delightful Stuart Little, by E. B. White, a book that made me truly believe that a proper, precocious mouse could have human parents and an impressive sense of adventure.

What she’ll be reading in a few years

Waiting for my daughter on her bookshelf is the Little House series from Laura Ingalls Wilder. This series taught me about family, the importance of hard work and love. There’s beauty in the way a series keeps melancholy at bay when you close one book and you’re comforted by the idea that there’s another waiting for you.

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What she’ll read a few years after that

Class Pictures, by Marilyn Sachs, while not technically a classic, is probably the book that I’ve read the most times from cover to cover in my life. With lessons on friendship, staying true to who you are and practicing forgiveness, certain passages in this book are etched in my mind to this day.

There are many books that helped shape who I am. I love that I am able to share some of those with my daughter and I look forward to seeing which books become her favorites and what great books she finds on her own.

I love the thought that our experiences will overlap in such an important, tangible, yet intangible way.

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