A Little Light Reading

I love books! One of my fondest memories of growing up was curling up in the bed  reading Harold and the Purple Crayon with my Angel Face, along with Baby B, and Mr. Ted, that was her teddy bear that had one eye and a ripped up forehead because her dog Dump Truck got a hold of it. One of her dolls, Little Miss Echo, repeated everything she heard, so we always hid her in the bathroom because it made reading time quite irritating. Angel Face had lots of books and she used to tell me they were her "safe to go" place. I never quite knew what that meant until later, until we were separated forever. From that point on I always pictured her in her safe place, lost in a fantasy, alive, happy, and whole. 

Arly has lots of books too, and since Angel Face read to me so much, I learned to follow the letters so opening books and reading them comes pretty easy to me. I was a tad worried after all those years that  I would have forgotten, but nope, I still knew a "no" from a "know" and all the letters in between, which made me feel really swell! Two books on the same shelf caught my eye, "The Adventures of Super Baby," which I of course had to read, and "Frankenstein," by Mary Shelley.

The story of Super Baby made me laugh! It was about a little boy who came from another planet and had super powers, except if he got around a stick of Kryptonite, then he would be as weak as puppy water. It made me wish I would have had super powers a long time ago, so I wouldn't have ended up in a trash pile and Angel Face, well, she wouldn't be with the angels now. 

Frankenstein was different. For one thing, it wasn't a book for little kids, and it took me a long time to read. For another thing, it made me feel sad, and angry, and confused, because I knew how it felt to be different and I was scared I might turn into a monster like him. He was really a kind soul at first, filled with love, and he just wanted people to love him, but he looked different. He was 'ugly'. Now, I know he wasn't real, but his story, his heartbreaking story hit a chord with me and my heart hurt a little bit. Being different and made fun of changes a person, that is, if their heart and spirit aren't strong, and I believe mine are, at least I hope.

The idea of Frankenstein stuck with me all night. I knew about monsters, I used to live with one. I just couldn't wrap my fingers around how Frankenstein could start out with a loving heart and then change into someone so unrecognizable. It made me wonder. It made me wonder what happens to people to make them change, to make them turn into monsters and hurt people. I said a prayer before I went to bed. I prayed for Angel Face, that she was safe and happy.  I prayed for myself, and asked for courage to live in a world that would make fun of me for being different, and for the desire to love them anyway. And, I prayed for the monsters in this world, that whatever caused them to be evil, would go away, so that they would never hurt anyone like me, or like Angel Face.


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