Categories
Life Lessons

Begetting Books

It’s been some three decades since I last watched them do it, and I can’t quite replicate it. I wish I could multitask like my parents, who excelled at the feat before it had a name.

There’s one round of activities of theirs that I envy. They could read mysteries and novels (Mom) or thrillers and novels (Dad) while watching prime-time TV series. I can’t even ignore TV while reading with comprehension, such as when My Beloved is watching something I have little interest in. Yet I try all the time.

This bypasses the first fact that multitasking is a myth, that there always is one primary activity and one or more secondary ones. There also is a Fact Two, that multitasking is not a myth so far as mothers are concerned. Dads can’t even swing intuitively many simultaneous efforts like moms do. But my dad was on a par with his wife in active reading while taking in Hill Street Blues or All in the Family.

Mom went to the library every week of her adult life. In her last two years, widowed and in assisted-living, the library in the person of a volunteer came to her apartment. In middle age, she’d get eight-nine books for the two of them, off the just-arrived shelves. Took her 15 minutes, including chatting with the librarian she grew up with, Anne Sims. Certainly she judged books by their covers — authors’ names and jacket design indicating the genre.

Mom and Dad did not read four books apiece every week. Just two or three. Neither hesitated to return a book to the counter in the breakfast nook after a few pages. Vertical if unread and lying flat if finished or dumped. Both vowed to me that they did read and did NOT skim those novels they did like. Until Mom returned them the next week to the Carnegie Library (now the KFSM-TV studio) and in the early 1970s to the new Fort Smith Public Library next to the city auditorium. (The library now is in a grand space by the great Creekmore Park.).

Two or three books a week. Both worked. And both watched TV from 7 to 11. Read while they watched. Then to bed and read another half-hour or hour. Talked. Read two daily newspapers (Fort Smith’s and Little Rock’s) and the weekly New Yorker and Time. Cooked dinner and washed dishes. Raised three kids. And I’m the only book reader among the trio.

After years of attempts I cannot read well while the television is on. I could go to a quiet room but I enjoy MB’s company. So I read all the way through one or two books a month, plus ingest about one recorded book a month in the car during commutes.

Yes, I have other reading, I’m not a complete idiot, not to mention reading is what I do at work, being an editor. I devour the Internet at all hours, a daily newspaper, The New Yorker, the back of the cereal box.

I could ignore the computer. But I do count all reading as reading. Another solution is to turn off the TV; MB can read while watching! Not satisfactory, not realistic.

I know, I could kick myself. Kicking myself, now there’s a win-win all ‘round.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email