'Books are my life'

Many of you know about my buddy Chris, a “special” young man now age 24.

Chris travels with an armload of books he cannot read, and once told me, “Books are my life.” So, it’s appropriate that we met over a book.

I was sitting on my porch reading when a red-haired little boy with a big smile and a speech impediment came up and leaned over the porch rail to talk.

Chris, the son of my then neighbors, Teresa and Charlie, was 11 at the time. Getting to know him, I asked several questions, and I’ll never forget his answer when I asked him about Charlie’s work:

“He cuts people open and takes their guts out.”

It turned out, after my initial shock, that Charlie is county coroner, and Chris had given me a pretty apt job description.

From that moment on I have never underestimated Chris’ wisdom. I learned if I really listen, he makes a lot of sense.

And, we share a love of books. Ironically, he cannot read their printed words, and I can no longer see them. Tears ran down my cheeks once when I was cooking, and he was in the living room turning the pages of a book. I heard him say, “Once upon a time” as he tried to make his book come alive.

One summer on our weekly trip to the public library, Chris was interested in a display of prizes to be won in the summer reading program. If a kid read a hundred books, he could get it all: T-shirt, Frisbee, a certificate to frame and other assorted goodies.

So, we marched up to the front desk to enquire whether if I read the books to Chris, he could participate. Then, off we went with a sackful of children’s books.

That summer we sat under the trees and read, and what a gift it was – a chance to enjoy children’s classics – old and new.

I might otherwise have missed our favorite that summer, Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” and would have been the poorer for it.

Reading of Connecticut author L’Engle’s death last week at age 88 brought all these memories back.

This award-winning writer of some 60 books once told the Associated Press: “In my dreams, I never have an age. I never write for any age group in mind. ... When you underestimate your audience, you’re cutting yourself off from your best work.”

She did not like being labeled “the writer of children’s books.” She understood, as do I, that a good story is ageless and will find a reader sooner or later.

Read about this amazing woman’s life and death: LINK