What’s your bookshelf theme?

Tags

Bedroom, Books, Bookshelf, Dave Pelzer, eBay, Frank McCourt, June Goulding, Lindy Chamberlain, Patricia Hughes, Theme

For the last five weeks I’ve inhabited my parents’ spare bedroom.

It’s not a very large room. It has two beds with floral bedspreads and Queen Anne bed heads. A large gold/gilt rectangular mirror looms above them. In between there’s just enough room for a bedside table with four drawers decorated with faux antique handles. All of this was purchased on eBay.

At the foot of the bed against the window is a medium sized bookshelf, wedged in against the double wardrobes.

This is my mother’s bookshelf, and not my father’s in any way.

It’s full of her recently acquired books and a handful of photo albums from the time when people still did that. There are plenty of new additions to the bookshelf because just over sixteen months ago my mother smashed her arm to smithereens. I mean it – she broke her arm in two jagged pieces just above the elbow in a freaky fall. Mum’s had three surgeries and two bone grafts in this time and now sports a hefty plate and a whole bunch of screws to keep her arm in one piece.

So, she’s been rather housebound, not able to drive or do very much for herself. It’s only in recent months that she’s started to see real healing occurring. There’s been little she could do except read and spend time surfing the interwebs. So eBay became her virtual shopping mall, and for a voracious reader such as she is, it was a blessing and a lifeline.

And once I’ve said good night I close the door and prowl the contents. I’m not sure when it started but this curiosity was born of the lack of things to do out here in Suburbia-urbia.

They’re not all to my taste, so it’s a hunt to find things I’m interested in. Not everything I read worked for me, but I’m kinda bored so I read them anyway.

The first book I picked up was Dave Pelzer’s “My Story” as discussed in a recent post. The next was called “Light in the Window” by June Goulding. The third was “Daughters of Nazareth” by Patricia Hughes. Next was “Angela’s Ashes” and “Tis” by Frank McCourt (no I hadn’t read them before). I’ve just picked up Lindy Chamberlain’s “Through My Eyes“.

You could say I started noticing a theme: children lost or stolen; bad mothers; bad parents; wronged women; anguish; grief.

The story of my mother’s life.

In the 1960’s and 70’s in Australia, New Zealand and UK, if you were unmarried and pregnant you were in huge trouble. Most young girls in this position were sent away so their families weren’t disgraced. Once the babies were born they were forcibly adopted out from the mothers, usually under duress. Or they were just plain stolen.

This is the story of my mother’s life. But more on this another time.

Finding so many books along this theme made me think about my own books, and how I’d sum up the overall contents of my skinny, tall, pale-wood bookshelf.

And it’s this: yoga; meditation; Tantra; philosophy; mythology; runes; biographies; taking care of your health.

What theme does yours hold?

~Svasti

Book review: My Story by Dave Pelzer

Tags

Abuse, Assault, Child Abuse, Dave Pelzer, Recovery, Reviews, Starvation

I’m really freakin’ cranky today. I’ve had this cold for the past week and now I’m losing my patience.

My voice sounds like fingernails against chalkboard (when you can actually hear it), my left ear has blocked up and my hacking coughs produce either large wads of gooey phlegm or hard, nasty pieces that were probably once caked on to the inside of my lungs.

So I’m not feeling that well. I’ve been gargling, cleansing my sinuses (thanks neti pot!) and drinking enormous amounts of fluids and I’m sloooowly getting better. Grrr.

Anyhow, I digress. I’m taking a leaf out of Shiv’s blog and posting a book review. Not that I plan to make a habit of it, its just that this particular book really affected me.

The book is actually an amalgam of three books into one larger one. “My Story” by Dave Pelzer is a heartbreakingly painful story of a derranged, alcoholic mother who singles out one of her sons – Dave – for outrageously cruel and almost fatal treatment from the ages of around five to twelve, when he was finally made a ward of the state.

The first book (A Child Called It) details his life of pain, suffering, humiliation and degredation by his mother. She starved him and beat him. She made him sleep in the garage and work as a slave for the rest of the family. She burned him arm and would feed him ammonia. And much more. Dave’s father stood by helplessly wishing he could help. All the while, this small boy tried to understand what he’d done to deserve this treatment and why his mummy didn’t love him. Reading this story made me cry often and when his teachers and school nurse finally took action to take him away from his mother my relief was palpable.

The second book (The Lost Boy) looks at Dave’s time in foster care and trying to adjust to living a relatively normal life after years of torture and seclusion. It wasn’t easy for him or for his foster parents and even though he was away from his mother, she still did what she could to ruin his life further. Its a very interesting look at the inside world of foster homes in 1970’s America. Its also fascinating to read of Dave’s tactics for survival in a world he didn’t know how to relate to.

The final book (A Man Named Dave) details his rise from the ashes of his childhood life. Dave joins the airforce and becomes sucessful in the world. But ofcourse, he still has 1,001 demons and issues to deal with. What’s admirable about Dave, is that he goes after it all. He might hurt, he might not understand – but he never gives up, never stops trying. Dave also eventually falls in love and finds meaning through his relationship with his son. And somehow, he manages to find it in his heart to forgive his mother.

Dave’s recovery and deep-filled desire to help other “at-risk” children is awe-inspiring.

Whilst reading this book at this time in my life was a little bit… dicey for my internal emotional world, I couldn’t stop reading it. It was literally a page-turner of the best kind, despite the horrific content.

I’m still not sure where I’m at right now, given the weight of the book. But am I supremely glad I read it. He’s just another example of the kind of person we can all choose to be – someone who rises high above the past and strides with purpose and strength into a much brighter future.

~Svasti