Hoo boy. When I started the Year of She-roes in January, I knew I needed to add some uplifting stuff to my reading list. What I did not realize was that the world was going to go full-blown apocalypse/contagion and that the sort of “oh hopeful stuff is good,” turned into “absolutely cannot read anything at all realistic/depressing/sad.”
Plus, my February was completely occupied by finishing my thesis. So, not only did I miss my book of the month for February, but I also somehow skipped one of the only two good months of this year? How is that even possible?
By the time we made it to mid-March and Alabama got the official orders to social distance and thus my daytime teaching job went online, what followed was a symphony of cancelations and endings, something I’m sure you’re all probably dealing with as well.
The time between Christmas Break and Spring Break is often the most difficult for teachers. Everyone (students and teachers alike) are burnt out. There are very few scheduled days off, but there’s tons of work to be done before testing season begins during the fourth quarter. Desperate for a vacation, I was one week away from spring break when the severity of COVID-19 became glaringly obvious to everyone (including even the hoaxer in charge). Spoiler alert: we did not go on vacation. 3 days after canceling our trip, I successfully defended my thesis, which I’ve been working on for literal months. 3 hours after the defense, my university canceled graduation. After so much time spent writing and working and throwing myself into being productive and believing that my productivity somehow made me who I was, it became obvious that all of my effort and work was and is, at some weird level, completely meaningless.
See? No sad books here. I have enough sad all by myself.
By mid-March, I was desperately grasping for any sort of comfort, as I’m sure many others were as well. So, I went back to an old favorite book series—Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. For whatever reason, this series wasn’t as popular in the states as it was in the U.K. But, if you’re a LOTR, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, etc. fan, this middle-grade series is an excellent addition to your collection. Here, I’ll just preview the first book:
Over Sea, Under Stone — Susan Cooper
Susan Cooper is an English author who moved to the U.S. to be with her first husband. Before leaving the U.K., Cooper’s family moved to Wales to be with her grandmother in Aberdyfi. Cooper’s grandmother’s home in Wales inspired her to write The Dark is Rising series after she had already published Over Sea, Under Stone as its own novel before coming to the U.S. Additionally, her experience as a young girl hiding in air raid shelters during WWII inspired her to want to write about the forces of evil and darkness in the world. She wanted to inspire children to see how they can bring light and hope to that darkness.
The plot of Over Sea, Under Stone revolves around fighting that darkness. Set in Wales, siblings Simon, Jane, and Barney must find the Holy Grail hidden by one of King Arthur’s knights. A little Disney-esque at times, the bad guys are predictably bad. Good and evil are largely felt within the hearts of the three main characters. Yet, there is a truth to that sort of simplified understanding of the universe. We know in our gut when something isn’t quite right. And we often find that we get in the most trouble when we ignore our deepest instincts.
In that way, I suppose, our society—the workaholic, capitalist productionist part of it—teaches us to ignore those deeper feelings. Instead, we put our feelings aside to do more, be more, produce more. And when that productivity leaves us, which it inevitably will, whether through a global pandemic or simply by aging out of work, we feel that we have not only lost some important part of our lives, but that we have lost ourselves entirely. Perhaps then, this time of waiting is an opportunity for us to explore what makes us who we are. We are not what we do. My instincts are still sharp enough to know that. But what are we then? What do our deepest instincts tell us about the truth of our own identity? The truth that lies in our hearts, not simply in our work.
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