Tonight, Livy and I built a fire and read. This is possibly my favorite thing on earth.
I love to read aloud, and something about the fire makes it seems like we aren't in the modern world connected all the time, whether we like it or not, to everyone with all of our devices. The fire tricks me into thinking Livy and I are isolated somewhere, on the prairie or in the English countryside, with only ourselves for entertainment. We are quieter when the fire burns and most of the lights turned off. We aren't in such a hurry. And we pay attention to each other.
Tonight, I read 4 chapters of By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ox-Cart Man (my favorite picture book), Where the Wild Things Are, an I Spy book, an animal book half in Spanish, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and 3 Bob Books (Livy read these to me).
We do this all winter. Usually Aaron is here too. Our favorite selections are definitely Laura Ingalls Wilder books (perhaps because they seem so appropriate at the fireside), but we also read poetry, Greek myths, nursery rhymes, Aesop's fables, Beatrix Potter, Murray Rothbard, Jared Diamond, Edgar Allen Poe, L.M. Montgomery, and Harry Potter. Basically, anything anyone is reading is fair game.
Livy roasts marshmallows with a coat hanger and pokes the fire way more than is necessary. I read. Aaron listens and makes popcorn. They both come to look when there are pictures. Sometimes we spread a blanket on the living room floor and have a picnic supper in front of the fire.
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges
My paradise is a small room, darkish, warmed by a small fire, with the people I love most crowded around me, listening to me read.
