An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (1987)

Summary: Dillard describes her childhood. She is an explorer, a collector, a drawer. Her feelings of living involve tales of snowball fights, sisterhood and the strange antics of her parents. She confides in the reader her most desperate moments of rage and the strange claustrophobia of being a live wire in a small town with Sunday church-goers and school uniforms.

Review: This book took some time to read because every few pages I would be stalled with a childhood revelry of my own. Her exuberance is familiar. We’ve all had those moments where we marveled at something. Was there an interesting pattern in the Cliffside? What do teenage boys sound like? How does an adult look to a child? We let our minds wander over everything as kids, taking it all in and connecting things that seem mundane to an adult, but quite right to the young new traveler of the world. Dillard is very conscious of that feeling we all have about wanting to remember the best parts in life. We all fear that on our deathbeds, we blink a hard blink and think, What was that?

Rating: 9 pencil studies of a baseball glove

Favorite part: “Later she touches one palm to another and tries for a gane to distinguish each hand’s sensation of feeling and being felt.” P.44

Wine-pairing: I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. He mourns is wife while reminding himself that the soul, the essence of a person is their hopes and dreams, their thought processes and by being involved in her hopes, her dreams, a part of her becomes a part of him. A slightly more psychological understanding of the self that puts a great deal into perspective, emphasizing the point of an enriched interior life.