Columnists
Thankful
Sorry to have missed you last week. I wasn’t feeling great. I wasn’t even feeling a little bit good. I’m still a bit messed up but want to say a huge “thank you” to the wonderful people who, together with the bricks and mortar and the complicated accoutrements of health care, make our local hospital what it is. We are a fortunate community. Let’s never forget how important our hospital is. Let’s support, always, our local health care providers.
So, while I’ve been unwell, I’ve had lots of time to read and to think about the finer things in my life. Reading has always been one of the finer things in my life. My mom was a firm believer in the bedtime story routine. Mom read to us even when we might have been too old for the treat. Personally, I never felt I was too old to hear a bedtime story. Some days, my mom only had to hint that our behaviour was about to cross the path to “no stories tonight” and we’d pretty well clean up our act. As a child, our home was always full of books. At least once every month, we went to the St. Lawrence Market and then to the used-book seller. We were encouraged to bring our old books to swap, and allowed to pick up enough books to fill the small cardboard book carton. Yeah, we had all the other stuff. We even became the proud owners of a television and a telephone in the fifties. But neither the telephone nor the television could trump the deliciousness of a person who loved you reading to you. It was better than chocolate milk or freshly baked cookies—or both—to me. Mostly, I remember our bedtime stories coming from a book of short stories, or “shortened stories.” It made no difference to me. I’d just close my eyes and let myself float away, spellbound by the adventures. I’m sure this is what Mom had in mind, to “hush them up and put them to sleep.” But even if that happened to be her focus, I never felt like she didn’t care about the shenanigans of the characters in those stories. Oh, the stories we heard. When I was in grade four, miracle of miracles, our classroom teacher was also a believer in the power of a well-placed story and would read one chapter to us, every afternoon. Be still my pounding heart. I believed I was going to marry that man. Four days each week, we heard chapter after chapter of The Enormous Egg, The Ship that Flew, Pippi Longstocking, The Borrowers, Charlotte’s Web and others. One day each week, we walked two blocks to the Weston public library and were given 20 minutes for selection and checkout. To make things even more divine, once, every two weeks, a bookmobile came to the public school parking lot in our neighbourhood (we lived just outside of the town of Weston at the time). The bookmobile driver/librarian introduced me to the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder and so many more. Ah, books. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Fast forward about 60 years and with the help of the books from our local library, good friends, LOML and the great staff at PECMH (we still call it that, right?) I might be on the road to recovery. Did I mention how fortunate I am? I am. And so are you. Show our libraries and our local hospital a little love. Visit the library. Take part in the events. Donate to the library friends. And while you’re at it, support our hospital. Thank a librarian and a health care professional. Be thankful you live in a community where these precious services are still available.
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