I’ve enjoyed reading Shadows On the Rock by Willa Cather during my half hour on the elliptical walker.  There is a nice shelf for a book, and the head bobbing doesn’t bother me.  Here’s a lovely excerpt from this morning’s read. Let me set it up. Cecile is a 12 year old girl who lives and helps her father, an apothecary.  She has run the household, since her mother died.  She spent two nights down the river, away from home for the first time.  The conditions were rustic, the bed she shared with four other girls was dirty (filthy) and she had a fit of homesickness.  She just returned home and is eager to prepare dinner for her father. The “dogs cooked with blueberries” refers to a dish the native Indians had cooked for one of Cecile’s friends. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

She put on her apron and made a survey of the supplies in the cellar and kitchen.  As she began handling her own things again, it all seemed a little different,–as if she had grown at least two years older in the two nights she had been away.  She did not feel like a little girl, doing what she had been taught to do.  She was accustomed to think that she did all these things so carefully to please her father, and to carry out her mother’s wishes.  Now she realized that she did them for herself, quite as much.  Dogs cooked with blueberries–poor Madame Harnois’ dishes were not much better! These coppers, big and little, these brooms and clouts and brushes, were tools; and with them one made, not shoes or cabinet-work, but life itself.  One made a climate within a climate; one made the days,–the complexion, the special flavour, the special happiness of each day as it passed; one made life. 

This morning I grabbed a book to read while I worked out on the eliptical machine.  The biggest requirement was that it would lay flat on the little stand.  A hardback would do better, especially one with a loose binding.  A quick check of the stacks of books waiting to be read made Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather my choice.  It is set in Quebec in 1697.  The main characters so far are the widowed apothecary and his daughter.

Many of you know that I lost my mom suddenly when I was 10 years old.  I read this passage with tender emotion.  I’ve abridged it here and there.

After she began to feel sure that she would never be well enough to return to France, her chief care was to train her little daughter so that she would be able to carry on this life and this order after she was gone.

Madame Auclair never spoke of her approaching death, but would say something like this:

      “After a while, when I am too ill to help you, you will perhaps find it fatiguing to do all these things alone, over and over.  But in time you will come to love your duties, as I do.  You will see that your father’s whole happiness depends on order and regularity, and you will come to feel a pride in it.  Without order our lives would be disgusting.”

She would think fearfully of how much she was entrusting to that little head; something so precious, so intangible; a feeling about life that had come down to her through so many centuries and that she had brought with her across the ocean. The sense of “our way,” –that was what she longed to leave with her daughter.

The individuality, the character, of M.Auclair’s house, though it appeared to be made up of wood and cloth and glass and a little silver, was really made up of very fine moral qualities in two women: the mother’s unswerving fidelity to certain traditions, and the daughter’s loyalty to her mother’s wish.

Isn’t that wonderful?  The last paragraph is so lovely.  Have any of you read Willa Cather?  My Antonia is my favorite, but this is perhaps the fifth book of hers that I’ve read.

Anna is one of the most thoughtful and articulate teenagers I know. She recently reminded me of one of my favorite “lifetime” books.  It had been at least five years since I had read Laddie, so I revisited it through the holidays.  What a treasure chest heaped full of sparkling jewels!  It is the story written from the perspective of Little Sister, the youngest of 12 children on an Indiana farm.  Laddie is her older brother, whom she adores. 

Here is a quote about her response to being taken out of school to be educated at home:

Think of being allowed to learn your lessons on the top of the granary, where you could look out of a window about the treetops, lie in the cool wind, and watch swallows and martins.  Think of studying in the pulpit [a fence corner] when the creek ran high, and the wild birds sang so sweetly you seemed to hear them for the first time in all your life, and hens, guineas, and turkeys made prime music in the orchard.  You could see the buds swell, and the little blue flags push through the grass, where Mrs. Mayer had her flower bed, and the cowslips greening under the water of the swale at the foot of the hill, while there might be a Fairy under any leaf.  I was so full, so swelled up and excited, that when I got ready to pick up a book, I could learn a lesson in a few minutes, tell all about it, spell every word, and read it back, front, and sideways. I never learned lessons so quick and so easy in all my life; father, Laddie, and every one of them had to say so. One night, father said to Laddie: “This child is furnishing evidence that our school system is wrong, and our methods of teaching far from right.”

In the days ahead I will share some more quotes from this wonderful book. Do you have a favorite book that you’ve read multiple times?