World Prematurity Day

It's World Prematurity Day, and rather than talk about candy or books, I decided that today it's time to raise awareness.

As many of you know, my first granddaughter was born at just 27 weeks. She was 14 1/2 inches long and 2 lb 9 oz. While in the NICU, she had NECK, sepsis, pneumonia, E-coli based meningitis, seizures, apnea, and a brain bleed. I don't mind telling you, those first few weeks were terrifying. It seemed like every day we got some new piece of frightening news. 

We were told she was going to have trouble keeping up with kids her own age, she would be slow to learn, walk, speak. We were told for the rest of her life she would probably have trouble hearing, talking, seeing and that she would struggle in school.

I remember sitting in the doctor's office, listening to them talk about what her future would probably hold, and feeling overwhelmed by the panic. Was I strong enough to help this child? What could I possibly do? Every touch from another person robbed her tiny body of the energy she needed to develop parts of her body she would need. I remember vividly the day my daughter was first able to hold her baby. I remember desperately just wanting to hear the baby cry, which we couldn't because of all the tubes and other equipment. 

At some point during that visit with the doctors, I asked what my other daughter and I could do to help. Since we couldn't even touch her, rocking her was out of the question. She couldn't swallow, so feeding her wasn't on the list. The doctor told us one thing we could do to help: read to her. It didn't matter what we read, he said. Just read. I can't give you all of the scientific reasons why reading helps premature babies develop. I just remember feeling an immense sense of relief that there was something I could do. 

And so we did. Day after day, for hours at a time, we read aloud from children's books, like he Baby Blue Cat Who Said No, and Mama, Do You Love Me? We read Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport and Minerva Louise. We read magazines and books about Egypt and the Romance Writer's Report. 

My two nieces were also born prematurely, and both faced their own set of challenges when they were first born.

Thanks to the prayers of friends and family and the knowledge of the nurses and doctors in the NICU, all three of the premature babies in our family grew up healthy. All three dodged all of the things we were told could be challenges for them because they were born so early.

My nieces are adults with families of their own, and The Princess is a happy and healthy 9 year-old who not only keeps up with the kids her age, but consistently hits the honor roll and helps other kids when they have challenges with their lessons. She loves to read and writes stories of her own. I don't know if she inherited her love of stories from me, or if she developed a love of stories in the NICU, but it doesn't really matter. Wherever it came from, I'm glad she has it. 

Not every family is so lucky, but every family deserves to be. Please help support the effort to raise awareness and get the kind of care premature babies need everywhere. And if you find yourself with a premature baby inside your sphere of influence, read. Read, read, read. I promise you, it will help. 

Heaven Is a Book Store

I really appreciate the convenience of ordering books online, and I'm always thrilled when I can send readers to online booksellers to find copies of my older books, but there's still nothing like a flesh-and-blood book store.

It's been a while since I let myself walk into one because they're dangerous places for me when money's a little tight. Maybe I could resist the urge to buy books if I absolutely had to. I'm not sure. It's never actually happened.

While shopping with my youngest daughter one day, I actually had a conversation in which I listed food as a frivilous "want," while books fell on the "need" side of the list. It took us both about 20 minutes to realize what we'd done. Even then, we didn't move books to the "want" side. We just realized that we're kind of weird, and that some people might have issues with our priorities.

After a prolonged absence from the book store, walking into one is . . . well, it might sound sacreligious to some, but it's almost like a religious experience. The smell of books represents both safety and adventure to me. It's part of countless wonderful experiences beginning in early childhood and continuing right on up to the present day. I can still close my eyes and imagine walking into the Bookmobile as a little girl, inhaling that incredible smell, and then wandering through the shelves to pick out the stories I wanted to read.

When I was a young married woman and my mother-in-law came to town for her once-a-year visit, the two of us always stole away to the book store. My mother had introduced me to some great authors whose books I still love to this day, but my mother-in-law had different reading tastes and she opened a whole new world to me. I have books on the shelves in my office that I bought decades ago on book store trips with Kathryn, and all these years later all I have to do is look at the cover and I'm transported back in time.

This morning, I had to pick up two non-fiction books for various projects, so after visiting the dentist and stopping at the grocery store, I headed for my local bookseller. Halfway there, I realized that I needed company, so I rounded up my daughters, and the three of us headed into booklover heaven. I'd say that we spent way too much, but really! How can you spend too much on books? It's just not possible.

How Did It Start?

For the past few days, I've been trying to figure out where my love of mysteries first began. Yeah, I know. Too much time on my hands. Except that's not entirely true. I don't have nearly enough time for everything I need to do, I'm just really good at procrastinating.

But I digress. . .

I can't remember how old I was when I read my first Nancy Drew mystery, but I know I was younger than 11. Much younger. I was still living in Montana then, and my mother signed my sister and me up for some Nancy Drew book club, which meant that two Nancy Drew mysteries were delivered to our front door every month (or something like that.) I remember sharing the books with my sister, but I don't remember how we decided who read what, and when. I'm guessing when I say that she read the books first and then passed them on to me, but it seems like a logical guess since she was three years older and, naturally, bossy.

At some point, my mother decided to sell off my Nancy Drew books (without even mentioning her evil plan to me) so she could buy the Hardy Boys series for my brother (who doesn't read and so never did appreciate the depth of my personal sacrifice.) I wish I could report that I'm so emotionally healthy that the loss of my beloved Nancy Drew books was merely a blip on the radar screen of my childhood, but I can't. I'm still miffed, but I feel a little better because my mother (perhaps recognizing the need to make serious amends) gave me the entire set of story books that she used to read to me from when I was very young.

My favorite story of all time, TOM TIT TOT, is in those books, and I clearly remember the delicious shivers that raced up my spine when I listened to that story. I wasn't much older when my grandmother gave me a Readers Digest condensed version of Victoria Holt's MISTRESS OF MELLYN to read during a family camping trip. I might have been 12 or 13, but I might have been 10 or 11.

What I do remember is sitting in the shade for days, enjoying those familiar delicious shivers as I read. After working through every Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney gothic I could get my hands on, I discovered Agatha Christie, and spent the next few years reading British mysteries, almost exclusively. In my head, a mystery wasn't a mystery unless it was a cozy set in a small English village.

 I can't remember when I finally began accepting Settings Other Than British and Mysteries Other Than Cozy into the fold, but at some point variety became the key to my reading experience. I read everything and everyone, but rarely do I read two books by the same author, or two books from the same genre or subgenre in a row. But that's just how things stand now. My reading habits will probably change again one of these days. Seems that the only thing that doesn't change is the fact that things are always changing