The Original Transformers

With a wee bit of hesitation, I'm hiking up my skirt and jumping on the Meme Wagon.

While going through the frustrating nightly ritual of attempting to drop off to sleep, my noggin swirled with thoughts about the last blog I'd read. Bloggy Friend, Reya , wrote a lovely post about a transformative moment in her life. It was one to which I could completely relate as I'd had a very similar experience in my childhood. But, every time I thought of a moment that I felt had transformed me, the naysayer that always resides on my shoulder shot it down as being too boring or not really transformative enough.

In putting my thinker to work on determining which moments in my life had truly transformed me, I quickly realized that books were a recurring theme. I have books on the shelf in my office that have my handwriting inside the front and back flaps. As I read some of those books, epiphanies would zing about me like little lightening bugs and I would hurriedly catch them and scribble them down before they escaped my grasp. Occasionally, I will pull those books off the shelf and open them and read those thoughts which I felt so inclined to record at the time. Most of them still resonate and I am reminded of the lessons learned at those times in my life.

So, after thinking and thinking and straining more than just a bit to come up with a moment which transformed me, I must tell you that I couldn't do it. All I could think was that my life has been a never ending series of moments which have transformed and changed me into the human I am today.

In an effort to be true to the Meme, I will go back to the beginning and tell you what I feel was the genesis of all transformation in my life.

In the beginning...there were books. Books I could not read.

My parents and teachers thought that I was learning disabled as a child. I was made to sit at the front of the class because it was the only way for the teacher to try to hold my attention as I was always looking down at my desk, or staring off in the distance, lost in my own world. I wrote with my face almost touching the paper and couldn't write, read or spell up to grade level.

One day, when I was about six, my mother and sisters and I were all in the bathroom at our house. My mother dropped something on the floor and asked if I would pick it up. I searched and searched and told her that I couldn't find it. Slightly perturbed, she exclaimed, "It's right there!" I got down on my hands and knees and searched and still I couldn't find it. My mother looked at me and said incredulously, "You can't see it?!" When I responded that I couldn't, it hit her like a brick. Her daughter couldn't see.

An eye appointment was scheduled, a trip was made and glasses were ordered. I remember my mother crying in the optometrist's office when she realized that I couldn't even read the big "E" at the top of the eye chart. I'm sure that countless memories of her chastising me to "pay attention" ran through her mind and made her ashamed.

The day arrived to make the trip back into town to pick up my glasses. After they'd been properly fit to my face, we headed back home. From the back seat of the car I stared in amazement at the world around me. I shouted to my mother, "What are those?!" She couldn't figure out what I was talking about. "Those green things! What are they?!" It took her a moment or two to realize that I was seeing the individual leaves on the trees as we passed by them. It was the first time in my life that I was actually seeing each leaf instead of a fuzzy green blur stuck on top of of fuzzy brown trunk.

From that moment forward, I became an excellent reader, practiced penmanship constantly and won more than a few spelling bees in school. I excelled in my studies and became a chatterbox who always made good grades, but whose teachers wrote, "Talks too much in class," or something of that nature, at the bottom of my report card.

It seemed I couldn't get enough of books. I spent countless hours of my childhood reading under trees, on my bed, in cemeteries, in the car or on a mound of grass in the middle of a stream. When my family finally moved into town for the first time when I was about eleven, I had a library at my disposal. Katie bar the door! I helped Nancy Drew solve every mystery that ever came her way, knew every single move that Laura Ingalls Wilder ever made and went on exciting and wonderful adventures with Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

As I grew, I began to question and wonder about the world a bit more and that, coupled with my rebellious streak, led me to begin reading books that had been banned by schools or libraries. I wrote a letter in protest to the local paper when I found that my beloved Tom Sawyer had been pulled from the shelves. I read Vonnegut, Salinger, Golding, Faulkner, Tolstoy and Trumbow.

After marrying at the ripe old age of eighteen and having my first child at twenty, my misery was palpable and I began to search books in the quest for answers as to why I was so unhappy. The religion in which I'd been raised wasn't providing any answers, only raising more questions, so I poured through books on world religions and philosophies. The first time I read Siddhartha, was most certainly a moment which transformed me.

Life moved forward, dragging me with it and still I searched. Books led me to finally seek out a Buddhist therapist who led me to believe enough in myself to end a disastrous, painful and damaging marriage. I had fought and struggled and inflicted pain both to myself and those around me and I had endured more pain than I felt I could bear.

As I stepped tenuously out into life as a single parent, I continued to read and it was during this time that epiphanies struck me with startling frequency. It was as though I'd been walking in darkness my entire life and suddenly, someone was pulling up the shades and throwing the windows open to let in the sun.

At this point in my life, I have found my path to peaceful and joyful living. My reading now consists mostly of books about history, government, politics and biographies of those who have gone before. I break it up now and again with a novel or writing by someone I find humorous enough to make me laugh and remember that the world is not always the frightening place I read about every day in the news.

My books keep me informed, they educate, enlighten and remind me to keep questioning and always learning. Through the written word of those brilliant and beautiful minds who saw fit to put pen to paper, I have indeed been transformed.