We were standing in that Swedish farmstead yard when the thought came to me that we needed to read My Antonia this April. I recorded it here, and having just searched for it, so as to link it, I sit here stunned. Six months ago. April was on the other side of the world then, and now there's just one day left of it.
I tried to get the kids excited about it, I really did. The problem was the competition. I was trying to read it simultaneously with The Dad's reading of Swallows and Amazons (in anticipation of our upcoming trip to the Lake District). They were smitten by The Dad's choice (understandably -- Ransome could not have written a more charming book), and so became increasingly icy with me every time I suggested a break in order to read some of Cather's novel. Finally, we hit on a compromise -- I would silently read of Jim Burden's consuming of, and longing for, his Bohemian girl (and Cather's similar intimacy with Nebraska), and when I came to a passage that they might like, they would graciously allow me to read out loud.
It only kind of worked. Once I became submerged into the world of grass the color of wine, and an independent girl tripping along in striped tights, and the intoxication of living ... well, I kind of forgot to think about what smaller parts could exist and mean something away from the whole.
What I did read to them:
"All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first glorious autumn. The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children they had the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs's story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom."
"The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept starting up all about us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing a game of some kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the grass were all dead -- all but one. While we were lying there against the warm bank, a little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfully out of the buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of bluestem. He missed it, fell back, and sat with his head sunk between his long legs, his antennae quivering, as if he were waiting for something to come and finish him. Tony made a warm nest for him in her hands; talked to him gaily and indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us -- a thin, rusty little chirp... When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow shelf of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill came on quickly when the sun got low, and Antonia's dress was thin. What were we to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to life by false pretenses? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head and carefully put the green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchief down loosely over her curls."
"When spring came, after a hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only -- spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind -- rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted." [OH! The English teacher in me thrills at that sentence -- the craft mirrors the content! A sentence that uses punctuation to sustain itself, so it can continue to rush forward, and ebb and flow without being stymied... I am clasping my hands to my heart.]
"There was a basic harmony between Antonia and her mistress. They had strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked, and were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children and animals and music, and rough play and digging in the earth. They liked to prepare rich, hearty food and to see people eat it; to make up soft white beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating."
The funny thing is that I didn't even share with them THE part of the book that makes it a necessity to read in April (book three, section three -- for those of you wondering). And I've decided to be okay with that. The scheme has been about compromise and gaining wisdom -- realizing that very few things happen, or are learned, all at once and for keeps. Rather, it is about layering. A layer has been established. Someday they will read the book in its entirety and another layer will be added. Then someday he/she will go to a play with the right person and walk out in the rain on an April night and there will be lilacs -- another layer.
For now I will content myself with a memory I have of one of my favorite literature professors. She brought up a book and with snapping eyes said: I am jealous of those of you who get to read it for the first time.
We didn't read My Antonia as a family, but I get to be jealous of my kids, for there's still that first time for them... for the book, for other books, for lilacs in the rain in April...
