I had the pleasure of living 138 lives last year. I fell through the mystical rocks at Craigh na Dun and landed in 1742 Scotland during the Highlander uprising. I laughed and cried with Dear Sugar. I lived in 1916 France trying to maintain my family’s hotel, feeding German soldiers their rations while watching my sister and her children starve, spending my last days in prisoner camps. I hunted Lessers in the Adirondacks. I grew to love my younger half sister by forgiving the father that abandoned me. I went walkabout with an ancient nomadic Aboriginal tribe and learned how to live at one with the earth and myself. My biracial child was torn away from me at birth because it was against the law to marry the man I loved in 1930 Kentucky. I was cryogenically frozen and woke on a spacecraft in 2312. I went to a snobby boarding school in Paris. I hunted dangerous Fae with my werewolf husband. I was lead by an Alchemist to the Egyptian pyramids. My boyfriend and I attempted to break the Longest Kiss world record, 32 hours, while the town around us came alive in protest and support, my parents reacted to learning I was gay, and others were inspired to tell their own families. I took my math whiz daughter and teenage step son on a very comical road trip with a complete stranger. I learned the difference between guilt and shame. I fell in love with my crippled husband’s gamekeeper. I organized a shelter for women after my step father attempted to kill me. And I was the son of the wealthiest bourbon king in the South.
Reading is awesome! I get an inside view of lives that are very different from my own. It humbles me. It empowers me. It lets me escape AND feel more connected. I get to travel. Enjoy other cultures. The best part of all, it allows me to be at home with my loved ones, to cozy up with jl and his soccer game, chill with my girls, and enjoy as much of life as I can at the same time.
“Cram your head with characters and stories… Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it.”
Ramblings of a Dodo 