Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Lisa Romeo: Reading What I Want To in New Jersey

On Sunday mornings, I make a list of all the things I can get done, while my husband and two sons immerse themselves in the New York Giants, NASCAR, screaming at the television, and chips. I am on my own, and think about all that could get done – the cluttered office, the jumbled laundry room, how great it will be to really get in there and sort, toss, decide.Bliss to spend a few hours in my closet, too, finally dumping the impulse buys that fit neither my body nor my lifestyle. New recipes to try, gardens to plant, correspondence to catch up, chick flicks to watch, baths to take. My lists are always both productive and slothful.

None of it ever gets done.

Because the truth is, what I usually wind up doing on all those stolen-time Sundays is read – I read for hours and hours, anywhere I want, anything I want to read. First I plow through the Sunday New York Times; every section is interesting to me. I love it all. Then, I tackle any leftover sections of the weekday Times. Next, I move on to the magazines that arrived and are still stuck in the mail pile – anything from Vanity Fair to Guideposts to Smithsonian, Food & Wine, Bazaar, and People (I am an equal opportunity reader).

Sometimes I read my kids’ magazines too, Boy’s Life, Discovery for Kids. I luxuriate in a few chapters of a novel — during the NHL playoffs it was In Revere, in Those Days by Roland Merullo (read it, you will get the ironic connection). I polish off a good chunk of the half-dozen memoirs or essay collections I am always in the middle of – last month I prayed the Yankees doubleheaders would go on forever so that Meredith Hall and I could get lost Without a Map, and then spend more time with Peggy Orenstein while Waiting for Daisy. (When my husband watches Sopranos reruns, I sneak off to read Italian American Writers on New Jersey.)

Sometimes the tottering pile of literary journals calls to me; other times I only want to read my writer-friends’ columns, zines, short stories, essays, and works-in-progress. I read the books my boys have picked for their book reports, and so I have had a real Hoot! lately, played survivor with a Hatchet, and gotten chummy with a mousy journalist named Geronimo Stilton.

The men folk leave me be and will even get their own snacks, improvise a dinner of sandwiches and apples. We let each other be – TV trays and testosterone in one room, newsprint fingers and lit for grown up chicks in the other. Passing the day this way, I am sublimely happy. Surrounded by newspapers, books, magazines, and the occasional Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and French vanilla decaf, is my own personal idea of nirvana. During the week, when I am frazzled and fed up with graduate school deadlines, laundry, to do lists, and when my own writing is going nowhere, I glance over to my reading pile and take a breath. Sunday is coming.

I am often surprised – journalism school notwithstanding – that I grew to adulthood with my love of reading intact. “What are you doing?” my mother would yell from the laundry room. I was ten, or 13 or 16, and invariably, alone in the quiet living room, and reading. Peeking around the corner, she would snip, “Sittin’ on your ass reading again I see.” I always wondered if sitting on my ass watching TV, or dressing and undressing Barbie say, would have been a finer use of my time.

When I had my own children, bookshelves were the first piece of furniture I selected for their nurseries. From infancy, my boys were inundated with books and reading. Barnes & Noble was a destination more exciting than Funtime Junction, and at ages nine and 13, it still is. When I find my children reading – and this happens on an amazingly frequent basis, considering we also do own three TVs, two computers, and two Gameboys – I smile, perhaps tousle their hair, and quietly back away. Sometimes, even on a weekday, when I should be ironing or e-mailing my faculty advisor, I even stop my spiraling busyness, pick up a book, and I sit right down on the couch alongside them, and do what I love best, with the people I love best, who understand, and love me anyway.

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Writer bio:

Lisa Romeo writes personal essays, memoir, feature articles, humor, and poetry. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, O-The Oprah Magazine, Quay, and many other publications and anthologies, including Special Gifts: Women Writers on the Heartache, Happiness and Hope in Raising a Special Needs Child. She is the assistant editor of Wooden Horse Publishing, a newsletter and website about the magazine industry. Lisa lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons and is completing an MFA in creative nonfiction through the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program.

www.LisaRomeo.blogspot.com

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