an english assignment

I guess I could say the meaning of my life comes from my religion, I'm sure that's true for lots of people. I think that would be boring and barely scratch the surface though.

For me meaning comes from things that even the people in my family find weird. Such as from the sound a hardcover book makes the first time it's opened. The insane excitement I feel when I open a book I've been waiting for for months or even years. It's the incredible sense of loss when that book ends and I know there's at least a two year wait for the next one. The way really old books smell like wonderful memories and time well spent. It's found in the way it felt to open my twenty five cent copy of Pollyanna and find an old, old four leaf clover and the author obituary and the hours spent thinking about the person who put them in there.

It's in the satisfaction of owning more books than I have room for. The way owning a first edition Sabatini novel makes me feel. It's finally owning a copy of a book I've loved for years. It's the guilt at writing in a book, any book and in the feeling of joy that I get from reading what other people have written in books.

It's walking into a used book store and finding that out of print classic most people have never heard of and don't care about.

It's the way I fell when I read any book that's more than a hundred years old. That feeling of being connected to a long gone past. It's feeling that by reading those old books that for the few minutes hours or months it takes me to read that classic, the person who wrote it comes alive and lives within my thoughts.

It's knowing the story behind the To You dedication in the front of Daddy-Long-Legs. It's memorizing most of Poe's Alone.

It's when my grandparents give me free run of their bookstore or my grandfather cleans out his collection of books on Egypt and gives them to me.

It's my grandmother giving me her brother's rosary and prayer book, even though I'm not Catholic.

It's my dad trading a gallon of maple syrup for the huge Emerson Drive concert poster that's big enough to cover the entire wall of my bedroom, just because he knew that the thought of both of them being thrown away made me sick.

It's when my mother, my sister and I spend ten hours in the car driving to a concert, just so I could see the band one more time.

It's listening to my brother and sister sing along with the radio in perfect harmony.

It's watching my older half brother marry the woman he loves. In my best friend asking me to be her Maid of Honor.

It's the way my pet turkey can tell me from my sister. It's the crazy one footed rooster that has a bad attitude and tips like a drunken sailor when he walks.

And it's when the house cat sits in my lap and bites at my hands when I have the audacity to type or turn a page. That's what gives my life meaning.