On reading

Reflecting on childhood reads and books that were an escape from a strict household

My mother likes to remind me that she’s the reason I love books so much. Every night before going to bed, she would read to my older sister, and I would “listen in”, to the best of my toddler capacities. Fast-forward a year or two later at my uncle’s house in London. He beckons to my mother, saying “Did you know that she can read?” My mother goes “No, she doesn’t - she just knows stories by heart because we re-read the same ones every night.” He then, allegedly, made me read a sentence out loud from a newspaper or a random book. I managed to read the words; my mother was stunned (I think I was just shy of 4 years old at the time). Since then, she loves to tell this story about how I taught myself to read, and, more importantly, how I nurtured a deep-seated love for books thanks to her nightly reading sessions. She’s probably right. 

As you’ve probably caught on by now, books were an important part of my upbringing. When I was living in Bermuda, we would go to the bookstore every week to buy the latest Berenstain Bears book. I was obsessed by this grizzly bear family, made up of Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Brother Bear and Sister Bear; each book had a specific arc, and ended with a moral. 

They were the archetypal family, with a male breadwinner, a doting, pink-aproned wife and mother, and blue and pink binary mischievous kids. I won’t go into the gender dynamics of the Berenstain Bears because, let’s face it, most children’s books from the 90s are problematic to say the least. All I knew back then was that reading about this ordinary little family with their ordinary little adventures was a source of comfort for younger me - theirs lives were predictable and there was, always, a happy ending. 

One of the stories that stayed with me, and that I still think about til this day, is “The Green-Eyed Monster”. I was a sullen and jealous child, prone to tantrums and crying spells about almost anything (no wonder I want to be child-free - imagine being inconvenienced with a brat like me!) However, I remember reading this story and feeling “seen”. I could put a word on the emotions I felt when my sister received gifts and cake on her birthday, or when I saw my two best friends playing together (without me) in the school yard. I would feel a pang in my chest, and the “clouds”, as I called them, would rush over and blur my ability to think clearly. While I have been working on my jealousy and feelings of ineptitude for years now (thank you, therapy), I still think that “The Green-Eyed Monster”, in retrospect, is what first helped me acknowledge that my jealousy was an issue, and could become a bigger one if I didn’t pay attention. 

Books are wonderful. Beyond childish self-diagnoses, books were an escape, a fuzzy lull in my dreary life back home. Day in, day out, I was going through the motions; going to school, going to private tuitions after school, dinner, studying, sleeping, and back up again the next day. There weren’t many distractions back then, especially since my mother would dutifully switch off the broadband connection every night and would store the only laptop of the household in her room. I was rarely allowed to go to parties (if I did, they were negotiated weeks in advance, much like a Model United Nations simulation between the USA and Iran). You get the idea, my parents are Brown and therefore strict and I spent most of my free time in my room or in the yard with my dogs. 

I would read everything and anything. I worked my way through the Children’s encyclopedia (can’t remember the name of the edition), and I remember the letter “M” was my favourite. I would sometimes forgo sleeping to finish a book (I remember biting my nails to shreds whilst reading Out by Natsuo Kirino - not for the faint-hearted!). I would read so much that, come exam season, my mother would hide my Harry Potter collection away so that I could focus on my revision instead of re-reading the series for the nth time (it was a bi-annual tradition of mine, and it almost always happened during exam season). Once, she hid them at my grandma’s place; I’m not sure how I discovered it, but I remember me cajoling my grandma, convincing her that I needed to read the Prisoner of Azkaban to pass my Additional Math exam. My mother wasn’t happy when she found out. 

The only time I turned my back to reading for pleasure was during and throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. The pressure of deadlines and the long list of readings probably contributed to it (and so did 9GAG, Reddit, and the fact that I finally had a social life). It took me a while to get back to it, but I thankfully got my reading mojo back in the fall of 2018. Much like the Berenstain Bear family, I find tremendous comfort in the ritual of curling up with a good book. It feels safe; it feels like home.

Keep reading, keep looking for that book! It’s out there, somewhere, waiting for you. 

S., the Green Eyed-Monster