Better than chicken soup

WITH the comforting warm hues of burnt oranges, reds and golds glowing all around and tucking us deeper and deeper into the indoors, there is a comforting sort of ritual. Over the years it has evolved for me and goes hand in hand with this time of year, the same as making a path through those crisp and crackly carpets of copper leaves, or eating that slice of austere, sweet yet spicy pumpkin or sweet potato pie.

The ritual is the re-reading of old, favorite books — it’s part of that autumn scape for me, too.

Like slipping into a well worn pair of comfortable slippers, like seeing old friends again, or cupping a hot mug of steaming hot pudding chocolate, it is a true pleasure and comfort to open those by now thumbed through, worn-for-their-wear-with- little-tears pages. Sometimes those pages of beloved favorites are now held together by the stickiness of tape.

For the most part, these books are gathered in one bookshelf where I make an effort to take good care of them. But there are limits when you have re-read some of them as much as I have. Now those frayed pages are part of the charm of the books.

When I sit by the amber fall sunlight, cocooned in bed, or my body molding to the soft leather of a sofa I have been sitting in for so long because I can’t put the book down, I am, in a way, revisiting with friends. Through the years I have come to know these people so well. I have gone through their trials and tribulations, wondered with the tension of a clamped heart who will die and who will survive, held my hope for a particular character’s chance — however fleeting. I have been with these people through thick and thin!

When I have the pleasure of re-reading these treasures, I have the opportunity of no longer needing to focus just on the plot, because I know what will happen. I now have  the opportunity to indulge in taking notice of the writing — the nuances, the dialogue, the favorite quotes.

PERHAPS this is because I am accustomed to our tradition of repetitions, of the weekly Torah portion read aloud on Shabbos, week in week out. Perhaps this is because of the personalities in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) who I have come to feel that I know and love. My heart still stops and stands still every year before Joseph reveals himself with the briefest, most chilling of revelations: “Ani Yosef. I am Joseph!” And Saul, Jonathan, Jeremiah and Amitai — among many others. These are my people!

So it is, as distinguished from the sanctity of Tanach — Dicken’s Oliver Twist’s Oliver and the Artful Dodger; Steinbeck’s East of Eden’s brothers Adam and Cyrus Trask and beloved Samuel Hamilton; Scarlett and Rhett and Melly in Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy — oh! that Darcy — Elizabeth, Bingley and Jane; E. M. Forster’s A Room With A View traveling through Italy with Lucy Honeychurch, Charlotte and the Emersons. . . Oh! but there are so many, Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Joyce’s The Dubliners. . .

But my truest joy and pleasure? Taking out those feminine girly worn childhood favorites. I re-read some of them about once a year. Little Women. A Little Princess. All of A Kind Family. Anne of Green Gables. The Beverly Cleary books. And the Little House On The Prairie series.

Then there is my sisters Shana’s and Riki’s — as well as my — favorite (our little bond): the Betsy-Tacy books. These are in a league of their own.

These I’ll read any time I find myself sick in bed — better than chicken soup, I tell ya!

Oh yes — and how can I forget the Gordon Korman obsession of theirs that they introduced me oh so playfully to.

So, yeah . . . re-reading those old favorites of childhood is a reconnection to a time in my life. Coming of age. These personal voices, these saints and villains and curmudgeons and conflicted personalities, these all too humble human beings with foibles just like you and me, sometimes insecure, sometimes arrogant, sometimes impetuous, reflective, sorrowful, fun or glad, and, of course, the quirky ones!

Most often they are complex characters with composites of many of these qualities finding out who they truly are, and sometimes they are simpler, reminding of one simpler time gone by — they were there with me all along.

It’s nice to spend some time visiting with old friends, visiting an old favorite haunt, enjoying a sleepytime comfort . . . in the golden fall.