Out Loud

Back in the early sixties, my mother tried on college with the intent of going to medical school.  She thought that she would complete her general education requirement at Defiance College in Northwest Ohio.

When I started college based on a dare (my manager at the time dared me to audit a literature class by a teacher she had loved), my mother informed me on the phone one Saturday night, much to my heartbreak, that she hated her literature class in college.  This was difficult for a writer to hear, but I was patient.  “Why’s that, Mom?”

“The professor always read out loud to us.  As though we couldn’t read for ourselves.”

Since my mother was the only one in our immediate family without a degree (my father went to a community college to obtain his boiler operator’s certification, my brother has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio State University, and I have an Associate of Arts from Ozarks Tech and a Bachelor of Arts from Missouri State University), I won’t be disclosing a spoiler here by saying that my mother grew increasingly disillusioned with college and quit.  I’m not sure if it was just the literature class; she heard of JFK’s assassination during a class, and there were other issues with group projects.  College isn’t for everyone, and her leaving it didn’t set her apart from the rest of us.

When they married my father asked my mother to quit her job--he was traditional.  She stayed home, took care of him, and nearly three years after their wedding I came along.  Almost two years after that my brother arrived.  My most prominent childhood memory was of my father coming home from work, and, while my mother cooked dinner (and she cooked it, too; my father didn’t allow us to have a microwave because he thought it would give us cancer.  Ironic, given my mother’s fate), he would read to her from the Reader’s Digest or from one of Patrick McManus’s outdoor adventures.  When my mother revealed to me that she hated to have people read out loud to her, I reminded her of Dad’s ritual.  “Yeah, well, that made him happy,” she said.

She lied.

In the last two weeks of my mother’s life, she would drift in and out of consciousness.  Some moments she would be weak but perfectly lucid, others, completely out and eyes half-closed.  She ended up in the last week in the second phase, but the first week I would still have time with her.

“What’s happening?”

What do you mean, Mom?  You want the radio?  TV?

“No.  Tell me with your voice.”

Well, Dad and Mike went for a walk out to the pond, Mom.  The sun’s out.  It’s cold.

“Let me hear your voice.”

You want me to sing to you, Mom?  (I won vocal choir contests in high school.  I could make her cry with my singing.)

“No.”

What would you like me to say?

“Read to me.”

What?  I had graduated from both schools by that point--the distaste she had for reading was tattooed in my memory.

“Read to me.”

I stared at her.  She blinked.  “Please.”

What would you like me to read, Mom?  A book?  A newspaper?

“Twain.”

Oh, great.  Dialect Man.  Which Twain, Mom?

“Any of them.”

How about “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”?

“Yes.”

So I read, out loud, to my mother, who either no longer had the means to argue me reading out loud, or who finally had found someone who could read out loud well.  It’s comforting to think I could share my love of literature, somehow, when it was most needed.

*****

My mother hated literature classes and loved literature.  She sheltered me from a lot of fiction growing up, but when I got to college it was my mind to corrupt, my heart to burst open...  

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free...  

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years...  

Either it was drizzling or there was a lot of dust in the air.…

I loved to hear and read and taste good writing.  I drank it, got drunk on it, all through community college and university.  For five years (six if you count the year off between degrees in Ohio) I overdosed on literature, showed up, listened to people argue language and plot and characterization around me, listened to people read well out loud, and eventually had to graduate.  I went to college for two reasons.  The first was sort of the same reason people who are native speakers of another language speak to each other in that language, even if they can speak English--it’s a relief for me to speak literature with others.  The other reason was to make me a better writer.  

Well, Jo, you ask, why didn’t you go to school for writing?  Because then I wouldn’t have gotten to read as much...

*****

Years later and miles from those classrooms, I still read passages out loud.  I listen to others read as well.  Once a month my writing group sets their pens aside, we meet in a clean, well-lit cafe in the Mission, and we read our works to each other.  If we get too nervous, other people read our work for us.  Last time someone read my poetry for me.  I was touched.

The need to speak and hear a passage still drives me to all kinds of megaphones.  I sit by the window that faces west in my apartment, reading by the winter sun... 

The tides came upon San Francisco four times per day, lifting and lowering the city’s skirt with impunity...

I read that slowly, once, in a voice well-traveled, tasting consonants, vowels, and pauses in the punctuation.  Then I can’t help it; the world must know, the world needs to taste this too, and I post it on GoodReads, which in turn posts to Facebook and Twitter.  Messages curl up in virtual bottles, closer to the size of test tubes, just the smallest and sweetest slices of kumquat, thinly sliced beef, a delicate sheet of cheese.  I have to no spouse to read this to, so here you are, dear reader...can you hear the music of it, can you taste the language?

Oh, listen to this one...

P.S. - Passages above, in order from top to bottom, can be attributed to the following works of literature:

• “Araby” - James Joyce
• “A Rose For Emily” - William Faulkner
• “What I Have Been Doing Lately” - Jamaica Kincaid
• “Going To See the Elephant” - Rodes Fishburne