Laughter Through Tears

My grandmother over the last few years of her life collected a list of a hundred books she wanted me to read. The list itself seems to be missing, and the bundles of books tied with brown rubber bands, which were stored in the closet of her spare room, added up to fewer than a round hundred. Some are missing, and some I chose to leave behind. A lot of them are immensely important classics, or recent winners of major awards like the Booker prize. My grandmother had highbrow taste... some of the time.

My brother and I went over the books and boxed the ones I intended to keep for sure. Of course I felt guilty over every book that curled my mouth, like refusing to read about the first synagogue in some distant town that I'd never heard of was an implicit rejection of who she was, what she valued, and her love and effort on my behalf. Then again, the harsh truth of the matter is I don't want to, and wouldn't, read those books. Whereas I might well enjoy Mrs. Dalloway or The Bell Jar.

Yesterday I picked up a new book from the post office and became almost immediately engrossed. It's a book about dragons, not exactly my grandmother's fondest ambition for me. She had pretty interesting ideas about how clever I was, too bad their scale was way off. Because part of me still wants to be that pretentious highbrow person, who can use all the award-winning books he's read as armor against the older, the higher-ranked, the more objectively important people of the world.

Instead all the armor I have is my own thoughts and ideas. And the dragons, there's them too.