We turn our clocks back one hour on Sunday.
What will you do with that extra hour?
I will not spend it running errands, putting away garden furniture or cooking for family or friends, sorry all. The leaves are glorious but I won’t be looking up. Nor will I jump on my work pile with gusto which would be a sensible choice.
Screw sense.
I’ll be reading, thanks.
Scientists have recently suggested that people who read literary fiction are getting a “cardio circuit for the bleeding heart”. Reading makes us nicer, says a new paper in the journal Science.
I’m not sure about that. If you interrupt me when I’m deep in the pages, good luck to you. I don’t care what the research says, although it will come in handy when my books come out. Look for” Read this and be a better person” sticker on my future publications.
I read for sanity. I don’t know if it makes me smarter or nicer but it does mean I am never as loony when I’m in someone else’s narrative. It is the great link to the human condition. Alice Munro is in my bag ( Who do you think you are?) and Maria Semple in my car ( Where’d you go, Bernadette?). They are my kill time joys.
There are stacks in my office, beside my bed, in baskets in the bathroom and by the couch.
There is a teensy room upstairs that is overrun with kids books and novels and I don’t care that we’re speeding towards an empty nest: they comfort me.
But I am losing time. In the great sleepless stage of waiting up late for teens to come home while worrying over aging parents, reading is a lost pleasure. Technology’s blinking presence stomps all over my scattered shots at books. I am lucky if I can finish my monthly book club’s choice. ( The Orenda this month, The Language of Flowers last month).
I know turning back the clocks means less sunshine. But I’ll take it if it means I can pull up the blanket and sink into stories.
Now I have science on my side. So leave me alone for the hour because it means more hugs and I’m pretty good at those on a good day.
