The Magic of a Good Book

     I know I've written about it before, but I just finished reading The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for the third time (or maybe fourth?) and I have all the feels all over again and one of the feels includes writing about the feels. Where to begin? First of all, I was just as skeptical as you undoubtedly are the first time I picked up The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I mean, what a corny cover, and what a cheesy title, am I right? It's just going to be a stupid chick flick book about some preteen girls and their magical pair of pants that just happens to fit them all despite them having different body types. Woohoo. I WAS WRONG. YOU ARE WRONG. This book...I have never found a more accurate portrayal of friendship (at least, my experience with friendship) than this series. Ann Brashares just gets it. She gets what it's like to be a girl, to be a part of a super close-knit friend group, and mostly to just be human. There's no frills or theatrics; she's just brutally honest. She takes hard topics--divorce, depression, sex, relationships, death--and makes them so real and so true.
     One of the things I love most is that Bridget, Carmen, Tibby, and Lena all have such distinct voices and personalities. Even though it's written in the third person, you know who's "talking" just from the way she writes their characters. I used to identify mostly with Lena, and I remember the first time I read the book obsessing over Lena and Kostos and wanting to go to Greece so badly. For me, Lena and Kostos and Greece was the main focus of the first book. After rereading it, I still do relate to Lena in many ways, but I feel like I also relate to the other girls just as much. I see pieces of myself and pieces of my friends in all four of them. Bee's fire and energy and crazy-high-to-crazy-lows, Tibby's sarcasm and acts-nonchalant-but-actually-cares-a-lot attitude, Carmen's sassiness and difficulty in accepting change, Lena's shyness and insecurity. They were me the first time I read their story, and they're me now. It's odd because even at 12 or 13 I could relate to these 15-year-old girls, and now at 19 I still can. They age with me. I know that sounds stupid, but it's true.
     Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is my "chicken soup for the soul". It makes me nostalgic in a way no other book can, because it brings back memories of so many summers before; hours spent lying on my bed in my cool bedroom with the fan whirring overhead while the heat reached oppressive temperatures outside, getting completely lost in Maryland, Greece, Mexico, and South Carolina...in Lena and Tibby and Carmen and Bee. I know how childish that sounds, but anyone who's read a book that's meant something to them knows what that feels like. Feeling like you're connected to a book in some way, and that every time you reread it you remember that younger version of yourself. I miss her. I miss her because she had all these big plans for me, all these places I'd go and people I'd meet and love and things I'd do. I still do have dreams like that, desires to go places and do things, but that same kind of childish excitement is hard to evoke these days. I feel like I don't get excited about anything anymore and it sucks because I used to spend hourssss just daydreaming about things I'd do one day and it used to make me practically giddy with excitement. For example, a year before the first time I went to Haiti, it was all I could think about most of the time. It was the highlight of my year. I spent hours learning Creole. I even memorized the whole Our Father in Creole and would say it every night before bed. Now I'm going back to Haiti again and am in charge of the English-Creole station, probably because I showed a great deal of passion for it two years ago. But that passion and excitement is gone and I just don't know how to make myself feel excited. It makes me sad because everyone else is so enthusiastic about the trip and I've barely cracked open my "Creole Made Easy" book. I know I need to. I know that it's my responsibility to make lesson plans and learn Creole and try. But it's so much easier when you're passionate about it.
     I think another part of it is that I've just become very self-absorbed lately. I sacrificed a lot of "me time" in college to do homework and write papers and read long, dull books and volunteer and go to church. I sacrificed that time and in the end, that sacrifice made me happy. I got good grades and I occasionally felt that rush of fulfillment from volunteering and I made some amazing friends from church. Now that school is over, I feel like I need to make up for my "me time" deficit by making every day a "me day", which consists of doing whatever I feel like whenever I feel like. I don't run anymore. Party Girl and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants were the first books I've read in months. Today I finally got around to repotting and watering my houseplants. And I remembered that I like these things. I like plants and books and running...I hate running but it's good for me and I need to do it. And blogging. I love blogging. But I just don't do it anymore.
     After I started slipping in college and stopped blogging every day, I let that become the new norm. I no longer felt the need to chronicle my life every day. But I think what happened is that I lost touch of myself when I stopped writing. Writing was my therapy. More than once I've used this blog as my journal, and when I stopped doing that and started seeing blogging as a chore, I knew something was up. I think I felt like since I'd stopped blogging every day there was no way to redeem myself. I'd had my three year streak and then I'd stopped. My days of daily blogging were over. I didn't get the itch to blog anymore. I didn't feel any particular sense of duty. No one texted me at midnight when I hadn't blogged that day. It was just expected. I blogged when I felt like it, or when the list of song recommendations was getting too long. For a while that was maybe every three days, then every five...seven...ten. And I'd come crawling back to the blog with this feeling of being a neglectful, guilty mother who'd abandoned her child. And then I'd start thinking, maybe that was just a phase in my life. Maybe that's what I'd needed then, but I don't need it now. Maybe we're all just growing up. But that's just not true. This blog is our sisterhood; it travels with us and it connects us in ways nothing else could. It's not a magical pair of pants. But it makes us brave, and it gives us hope, and it keeps us together. That's magic enough for me.

Quote of the Day; "What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens" -Carmen Lowell

Day 1286 Song Recommendation: "If It Don't Work Out" by Anthony D'Amato
Day 1287 Song Recommendation: "I've Got to Go" by The Wealthy West.
Day 1288 Song Recommendation: "Last Waltz" by Horse Feathers.
Day 1289 Song Recommendation: "Watering Can" by Liza Anne.
Day 1290 Song Recommendation: "Lost Springs" by Night Beds.
Day 1291 Song Recommendation: "I Wasn't There" by Nathan Hawes.
Day 1292 Song Recommendation: "Family and Friends" by Family and Friends.
Day 1293 Song Recommendation: "Temporary Love" by The Brinks.
Day 1294 Song Recommendation: "Silver" by Woodlock.
Day 1295 Song Recommendation: "Thirteen Sad Farewells" by Stu Larsen.
Day 1296 Song Recommendation: "Burn Away" by Patrick James.

-SE Wagner