Mrs Rachael Lynde is Surprised!

For our unit in realism in drama, some of the workshops, activities and conversations that we've participated in as a class have been exceptionally eye-opening and thought-provoking.  I have enjoyed every second of it so far, especially when we acted in pairs as newlywed couples the morning after their wedding, making breakfast in the kitchen, and reaching for things over each other, in clumsy, awkward, charming sweetness, but to say anything further on that topic would be horribly exposing if anyone I knew was to read it.  At times, I am grateful that the people I really want to read my blog don't.  Funny, isn't it?

Anyhow, for tomorrow's lesson, we have each been asked to bring in an object that is significant to us.  After much deliberation, I have decided upon my object.  I am bringing my copy of Anne of Green Gables. 

This book means a lot to me, and it has taken this little prompt to nudge me into the realisation of how important it is.  I was given it on my first birthday from an aunt who I really haven't talked to or thought about for the last five years. 

Until I was about nine years old, every year or so that we remembered, Mum would sit down and read the first page to me, so I could tell whether or not I was old enough to understand it.  I always found the first few chapter names funny.

Chapter 1: Mrs Rachael Lynde is Surprised

Chapter 2: Matthew Cuthbert is Surprised

Chapter 3: Marilla Cuthbert is Surprised.

For a couple of years, I forgot it even existed, enraptured instead with animal stories by every author.  When I was eleven, I took it up and read it, and enjoyed it, but attached no special meaning to it.  I read it several times in the next three or four years, and it became to me a thing of utter joy and beauty, and I sat and wondered at it.  I refused to read the sequels.  I was horrified lest the charm be broken by a sentence more than what I deemed perfect. 

A couple of years ago, I sat down with my dad and read Anne of Green Gables to him.  I was just young enough to speak Anne's voice with the same naive and glorious chatter and skip, and just old enough to lift shadows from every other character at the same time.  For me, it was the epiphany of my reading-aloud life.  It was my grand performance, and yet it was my grand experience, too.  It has stayed that way for me ever since.  My dad still talks about it.  He still says... "it was great, but not like that other one with the talkative girl.  What was it called?  I loved that one".  It marks for me several things. 

1. A milestone in my growing-up as a reader and a book-lover,
2. A moment when I realised that reading aloud to people made me happy,
3. A moment when I realised that I was good at something valuable, and
4. A beautiful experience that I shared with my dad.

Please, what is something you own that is important to you?  It's a lovely thing to think about, and it might just be the prompt to make you realise how much you value something or someone, just as it was to me.