Some people take a hot bath to relax. Some go for a long walk, take a nap, bake a cake or meditate. My escape, in times of stress, as you may already know, loyal reader, is to re-read the Anne of Green Gables series. 8 books, 8 great phases of a person's life, a romantic setting from the 1890s through the end of WWI.
The books are still a total escape for me - while also being completely memorized and comfortingly predictable. The world falls away and I'm simultaneously 10 years old, reading the story for the first time, and also 15, 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, and 29 - putting the stresses of those times on the back burner for the few minutes I have picked up the story that day, at whatever point I find myself.
Some of the religious overtones are neither for me, nor offend me - I read past calmly. But in the first, most famous book, one part gets me every time... Anne's best friend Diana has told her that Moody Spurgeon MacPherson told his mom she (Anne) is the smartest girl in school, and, Diana proclaims, "It's better to be clever than pretty." Anne retorts that is it not!, "feminine to her core."
Ten times? Twenty?... that I've read this book... and every time that line jolts the hell out of me!
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I dearly love Anne of Green Gables too, and so many people have not read the later books in the series. I think "Rilla of Ingleside" is one of my favorites of all of them, and Anne is really only a bit player in that one.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it's been many years--perhaps pre-parenthood?--since I read them last. I wonder if there are lines that would jump out to me now that I just read past when I was younger.