Kinda sad, I know, but I have NOT been reading lately.

The beginning of school always does this to me. Summer is full of time and good books, then September hits full force and I fall into bad "no time/no energy" habits, becoming a magazine slut. As October rolls in, I realize that I need some reading rehab, and each year help arrives, always in a different way. Someone gives me a book urging that I "have" to read it. Book group picks something that really sucks me in, or I get engrossed in a new book of my own discovery. Well, Mary Keefe gave me a book to read yesterday and then, as it ended up, to re-boot the reader in me, I friended Kelly Corrigan.

Yeah, big time memoirist of The Middle Place, and Lift is now MY friend! I have John Mayer too. Idina Menzel. Jason Mraz. That is something I just LOVE about Facebook, the messages that read...Cheryl Southard Howell is now friends with X celebrity.

Now, really, I got on Facebook wanting to friend Patricia MacLachlan as it was her book, the wonderful little children's novella Word By Word By Word, that jumped my reading battery. It was the story of the impact a visiting author has on five kids and their writing lives. I read it last night in one sitting...laughing out loud and crying at the beauty of it. After reading I got on the computer to order it on amazon, and Kelly Corrigan popped up. In that moment I perused her website as well, and then found her on FB, and finally, I am back to reading. I re-readLift last night...another shortie...and I am re-reading The Middle Place tonight.

In the book Lift, speaking of the amazingly temporary stage that IS raising our children, she says this...

"(I wrote this book because) you won't remember how it started with us, the things I know about you that you don't even know about yourselves. We won't come back here. I don't know when you'll read this. Maybe when you're a teenager? No, probably later, when you're on the verge of parenthood and it occurs to you for the first time that someone has been loving you for that long. Maybe (let's hope not) you'll read it because something happened to (me). No matter when or why this comes into your hands, I want to put down on paper how things started with us."

That quote explains, in part, why I write, constantly, to document, and in turn, to remember, for me, for others, for my family. It is, in part, why I keep this blog. It is a window into me. For me. For whomever. But probably, most importantly, for my kids. And it is a window into our lives, now, as a family. It is a window of my, and their, and our year on Earth.

If you are looking for something good to read, check her out...MY friend, Kelly Corrigan.