So This Is The River
The name of this blog, Reading the River, bubbled up from a
deep place of personal meaning. I have had the feeling that the river was my
own deeply encoded personal metaphor for much of my life, and I have gone about
for a long time collecting river rocks and river poems and occasionally falling
into rivers and having my life changed.
One reason this is my metaphor dates back to my childhood,
and my funny dear deep semi-mystical Mama, who read to her children constantly
and consistently. Part of our annual calendar of rituals involved the reading
aloud of The Wind in the Willows, a
book that has a river as its spine. I say she read it, but that word is no
match for what she made of it—she performed it, giving life to the voices and
spirit of the characters. On long trips to visit our Alabama relatives in the
ancient days before audio books, she was the audio and the book and the
characters and the author: my mother incarnated this book, even inventing tunes
to go with a few songs that are part of the narrative, like the Christmas carol
performed by a chorus of field mice.
The characters in this book are all animals: the shy but ardent Mole, the rich vain Toad
of Toad Hall, the dashing Water Rat, assorted bad guy stoats and weasels. It
sounds simple, but hidden in the charming descriptions of the English
countryside and Edwardian gentlemen beasts who wear velvet smoking jackets is a
book that contains serious stuff: a hero’s journey, valor and faith in a
spiritual awakening, and a true, deep, life-changing friendship. For my family, this was our book, almost as
much as the Bible was, and like any sacred text, it had several functions. Its
story showed the good and negative sides of the characters to instruct us in
proper behavior. I learned from the flighty and irresponsible Toad not to be
like him—one day in love with boating and then, when he flopped at sculling, to
act as if he had never seen the inside of a boat, on to the next shallow
enthusiasm. But I also learned from Toad what happens when one finds the real
thing from his reactions when he found his one true thing, the thing that made
him so possessed with joy he was willing to steal for it, lie for it, be
disgraced for it. Mostly I learned from the relationship between the Mole and
the Rat, who meet each other at the river, where Mole confronts the powerful
call to a wider life than his dark tunnels, and Rat befriends him as a river
guide, travel partner, and boon companion.
For a lot of my life, I thought of myself as the Mole, the
introverted rather shy fellow who wants to explore the wider world, but
quietly, noticing the way the river is always changing and what sound is made
by the wind in the willows. Like Moley, I spend a lot of dreamy, gazing-around
time, a lot of solitary time. I like solitary pursuits, reading and writing and
puttering around in a garden.
But I also have a bit of Ratty in me. He’s the bolder of the
two, the one who loves to go off on adventures. He isn’t afraid of tipping over
in his boat from time to time, shaking it off with “what’s a little water to a
water rat? He is willing to push, to argue, to insist, to confront, and when I
have to summon up that spirit on behalf of justice, I hope to do it with the
bold genius of the crusading Rat.
Ratty rescues Mole from time to time when Mole gets himself
lost in the woods (though let it be noted that Mole rescues Rat from some of
Ratty’s more outlandish ambitions). When Mole gets overwhelmed with a task and
wants to lie on the couch and moan it’s all impossible, Rat pulls him together
and helps him see how truly capable he is and what remarkable things can happen
if he can stop fearing the unknown and trust his sense that the river will
carry him.
So here’s the thing. I wrote a book. It’s a Mole kind of
thing, sitting in the quiet while my friends went off to movies and parties and
spa days, grinding my little wheel of words, editing and whittling and
searching for the right way to say what was in my heart. It was challenging and
fun and sometimes impossible, and I did from time to time lie on the couch and
moan, and luckily I had a water rat friend who would come along and take me off
on a walk to clear my head. (Thank you, Laura.)
Eventually, the book got done, and my dear friends at the
publishing house let me know that my job as a writer was not over when the last
disputed comma (thank you, John) had been resolved. No, part of my job as a
writer is to—oh, dear—sell the book.
I do not like selling things very much, was never the top
Girls Scout cookie saleswoman, cannot force myself to do phone banks, even for
causes dear to me, because asking people I know for stuff is hard enough but
asking strangers is impossible. I have never gotten over this, even though I
have at times in my career worked in marketing, even though I know how matching
up a person with a book they will love is a lovely kindness, a gift.
Still, I have been so vague and tentative and surreptitious
about this that some people near and dear to me have no idea that I have
written a book or that it has been published or that you could, like go into a
store and get one. (You can, if you are still lucky enough to have a bookstore
near you.) So I have decided to invite the Water Rat to help me out with a bit
of invented dialogue to get the party started.
Ratty: Tell me this:
if one of your friends finished years of working on a project and wanted to
throw a party to celebrate, wouldn’t you be hurt not to be invited?
Me: Well, yes, but—
Ratty: And haven’t you been going around saying you have
been working on this incarnation thing for 20 years—is that true?
Me: Maybe closer to 30, really. Yes.
Ratty: So how could you possibly object to the notion of
telling your riverbank friends what you have been doing all this time, and why
it was worth all that doing?
Me: I certainly don’t object, it’s just that—
Ratty: Excellent. So you just stand right here by the river
and I’ll go shoot off the fireworks.
So, thanks to some Water Rat stalwart friends dragging me
along by the collar, (Thanks, Janice) I have managed to set up two fun book
release events: First, with the Columbia Seminary Bookstore October 9, during
community coffee hour at 10:30 a.m. in the refectory, and then at Charis Books
and More, November 7, at 7:30 p.m. If you are in town, do come by and say hello
and celebrate with me. I’ll be the one in the smoking jacket, looking a little
embarrassed, and fiercely pleased.
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image: Ernest Shepherd illustration from Wind in The Willows
