On feeling infinite

There is a book that all of my children and myself have read.  Its pages are soft and slightly tattered.  It has been lent out to friends and upon return names of the various readers have been signed on the front page.

My youngest has reached the age where she would appreciate and at least understand most of it so hers is the most recent signature gracing the page.
Anyone who reads it is free to underline or make notations.  This is rare as most of us in the family treat our books like gemstones, some in the family would rather break a bone than a binder.
I came home from my usual dropping off at school and grabbing coffee and a Diet Coke to see the book on the table.

My youngest has finished it.

I have a world of things I need to be doing.  I need: to do laundry, pay bills, clean the kitchen, make phone calls, return emails, make more calls, check the cats for fleas, check my work schedule for today, figure out how and when to repair the A/C Unit (this is Texas and no air conditioning is akin to Hell on Earth).
I need to: figure out all the arrangements for my daughter's graduation from high school.  What family members are coming, what to plan as a meal. 
I need to: track what I have eaten thus far so I can remain in my allotted points.
I need to: move that damn last Christmas box to the garage, which leads me to need to clean the garage.

Instead, I picked up the book and began to read it again.  I am not one to normally re read a book.  There have been maybe three in my life that I have read more than once.  There is a certain danger to re reading books.  As I get older the memory of certain books become fonder and more sepia toned.  If I were to open that chapter and go back I may not feel the same way.  I may feel ashamed at my youthful optimism, or over eager enthusiasm on the subject matter.

If I read Are You  There God, It's Me Margaret right now I am certain it would mean something completely new to me, and erase its original feelings.  I would not be giggling with my friends, or reading it by flashlight under my blankets.  I would not come away with so many questions as I did at the first reading.

I have questioned what I will be writing about in this new adventure.  Someone told me that my last blog was redundant.  Actually she did not use that word at all, as I doubt she knew it.  I have thought about what she said and like re reading books, I do not go back and read what I myself have written.


Admittedly I can be a bit depressing, when I allow myself to wallow.

I was prompted to write today by one line in the book I picked up off the table.

"Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it's no excuse."

I disagree with the first half of that sentence.  I think everyone has their own sob story, no matter how it may be perceived by others.  To them it is their story of sob.

 I do believe in the second half.  It's no excuse.  I have a sob story.  I have told it.  My woes have been everything from the weight of my scale to the weigth of death.  I lived heavily in those weights for a long time believing they were my only identity.  For a time they were. 

No longer.

The other phrase that grounded me was, "...sometimes people use thought to not participate in  life."

I am guilty of this.  Over thinking everything.  Being on the outside and looking at people and life in a curious puppy head tilt way.

I look at the sky a lot.  At red lights, when sitting outside, when sitting with my girlfriend on her patio.  I look at the sky so much that she has taken to calling me her "Sky Girl."

I considered that and realized; that is the time when I do absolutely nothing but be.  It may for ten minutes or ten seconds, but for that time I am here and not here.  I am not in the midst of my sob story, or my never ending list of things I "need" to do.

It took picking up a book and re reading it to remind me to stop and enjoy the moments when I look up at the sky.  The moments when I do in fact feel infinite. 


(The book is "the perks of being a wallflower" by stephen chbosky)