Day 20

One of my favorite sounds is the thunk of the UPS guy dropping a package on my back steps. We order a lot of books from Amazon (and feel guilty for not patronizing our local bookstore). Bill and I used to joke that we are going to end up on the street somewhere with a sign that reads, "Will work for books."

I think that it is primarily loneliness that motivates me to read. The best books are those that serve as mirrors; I see myself in the ideas and stories. When I truly come to understand an author, I feel connected and understood myself. At times I even find a kindred spirit between the pages.

Imagine yourself as a child. Your mother asks you to clean out the garage. It is damp and musty and dust flies as you move the boxes of old record albums and clothing from long-dead relatives. You find an old trunk and cautiously open it up. Inside is a baby dinosaur. You rush into the house flushed with excitement and tell your mom.

"That's ridiculous," she says.

But you nag and whine until she follows you back to the garage. You open the trunk and there it is, the baby dinosaur. You smile smugly and look up at your mom. Your face falls when you see the confusion in her eyes. She doesn't see the dinosaur. You immediately start to think that you might be crazy. You tell no one else about the dinosaur although you occasionally sneak out to garage to take a peak.

When you are 18 you leave home and you decide to take the dinosaur with you. You pack him in a box and haul him in your old beat-up car to your new apartment along with your books and your Aerosmith poster and old diaries and the box of weed you kept hidden under the bed. The dinosaur lives quietly in your new closet for months.

You move a couple of more times over the next few years. You always take the dinosaur with you. One day you meet someone special and you decide to confide in him about the dinosaur. He looks confused. "A dinosaur? Are you crazy?" You don't want him to think that you are crazy so you never mention the dinosaur again. But you know he is there, in the garage with the old record albums and clothes that you inherited from your parents.

One day you make a new friend. Her name is Roseanne. You love the way she cackles at her own jokes. You invite her over for tea (wishing you still had that box of weed you used to keep under your bed). Over cups of Earl Grey she says, "You know, I have this dinosaur in my closet."

"A dinosaur? Really? Oh, we have to talk," you say with a sigh of relief.

That's what happened to me, well, kind of. Roseanne's new book was dropped on my stoop yesterday morning. By noon I was in love. In the introduction (before the post-introduction and the preface) she says: "After buying everything on earth that I can buy, visiting exotic places, and meeting princes and idols, all I found myself wanting was to be able to say exactly what I wanted to say when I wanted to say it."

Roseanne is a truth-teller. I am a truth-teller in training.