Refracted

I woke up to a warm foggy morning with the light hanging like awkward gowns between the still naked spring trees of the back yard. The cat was nuzzled on my chest and I watched his rhythmic breathing move his furry coat up and down in almost comical little gasps. The birds were singing their euphoria at winter being gone, half a dozen different songs mixing in a delightful cacophony. I felt drawn in by the moment and without warning, I found myself thinking back on the year of my 16th birthday, when I had become enchanted by a book my father had recommended, Le Grand Meaulnes , the only novel written by French writer Alain_- Fournier, about the mesmerizing threshold from adolescence to adulthood, in a language wrought with magic and mystery. The book had a lasting and profound effect on me, a solitary, isolated teenager whose parents had a very busy social life but were completely oblivious to my and my siblings social needs. Two more books would have an equally deep impact on me around the same time, also both recommended by my father. If he was unaware of my social needs, he certainly compensated by amply feeding my intellectual and cultural curiosity. Joseph Kessel's novel, The Lion, which I read in the original French, blew me away, and started from the time I read it at age 14, until today and beyond, a life long passion and empathy for animals, large and small. The book by A.J. Cronin, The Spanish Gardener, which I read the same year in a French translation, equally impacted me very deeply, because of its heartbreaking focus on social prejudice and injustice, as seen through the eyes of a small child of wealthy parents who befriends a humble gardener in his parents' hire. The memories of all three books flooded me all at the same time, as the sunlight was breaking through the morning mist and filled the bedroom and my eyes with a bright white light. I felt like my mind was looking at a beautiful large crystal into which was being reflected three different streams of light, casting a rainbow into my memories, putting them on display like refracted theatre onto the white bedspread. The moment lingered far longer than I would have thought possible, it held a warmth and pleasure that surprised me. It was like time had been erased and I was 14 again, and 16 again, and now at 57, I still held those delightful memories and they were right there in front of me, dancing like rainbow crystals before my eyes. The minutes which seemed to endure into half an hour, made me smile, because they brought my father to mind, who passed away on the other side of the world, far, far away from me, in 2008. Perhaps it was a slow day in the spirit world, and this was his way to visit the time again when I was a teenager hanging on every word he taught me about books and the magical days he recommended I read Le Grand Meaulnes, Le Lion and Le jardinier espagnol. He reached up to the shelves of our voluminous books in our living room in Roeselare, and handed them to me , like handing over a treasure. I was so pleased he thought I was grown up enough and smart enough to read them in French, considering our native tongue was Flemish. It was one of the few times he treated me as an intellectual equal, and perhaps that is another reason why the memory is so dear to me. It also continues to fascinate me to realize he chose three books of the hundreds I was to read in my lifetime, with which I deeply and permanently fell in love.