Books are respite from current reality

We had a good Christmas this year. Lots of presents and no travel. Even though the cold weather was too much for the furnace, my brothers and their families came over for a chilly dinner and lots of laughter.

When it got too cold, they left for home. I wrapped a blanket around myself and curled up with a new book. Is there anything that smells better than a new paperback? OK, so a new baby doll smells better but I am too old for baby dolls.

It is pure luxury to devote an entire afternoon to the latest offering from Anne Hillerman. She continues the series of murder mysteries that her father, Tony Hillerman, began years ago. She tends to give the female characters more weight than her father did. She rounds out the characters by giving readers a peek into their private lives. 

The book had a satisfying ending. The bad guys were punished and the good guys won. I suppose that makes the novels predictable but I find it fascinating to see how the characters get from here to there. 

I am halfway through the second book I received for Christmas. This one is about a hockey team in Sweden. Whenever I think of hockey I remember that when my daughter was little, my first husband and I dropped her off at her grandparents’ and attended a hockey game in Fort Wayne. To this very day, I swear that puck was on the ice. Two players were fighting over it and somehow flipped the puck over the barrier and into the audience. It bonked me on the head and ended up in the last row where a lady caught it.

They took me down to a room where the team doctor stitched me up. The puck had hit me just above my eye. The doctor and his helpers were afraid my husband was going to faint. I requested the puck but the lady who caught it wouldn’t give it up. They gave me a new puck and told me to stop by the concession stand for a bag of ice. We went back and watched the rest of the game.

At the time my mother- and father-in-law owned a carry-out. My mother-in-law was talking to one of her customers about me getting hurt. It turned out that the customer was a veterinarian and also the team doctor. He was the one who stitched me up. This never happens in any book I’ve ever read.

When I am lost in a book, I am not worried about what is happening in the real world. The explosion in Nashville is a tragedy that I can’t fix or understand. I worry that having my family over for Christmas could have exposed us to the virus even though we kept our distance. Books offer a respite from reality and with all that is going on in the world we need a break sometimes, if only to gather the energy to keep going.

I can only hope that the upcoming year will be better than the last few have been. I don’t want any more phone calls telling me that someone is injured or in need of surgery. I don’t want any more messages telling me that someone is in the hospital and fighting the virus. I don’t want any more bad news. I don’t want to see any more cartoons that illustrate how intolerant this great country of ours still is.

We need more compassion, more tolerance, and less ugliness. We need to stop blaming others for anything unpleasant. We need to be the people we think we are.