True to my word, I have been reading more than I have been writing this year. I read Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres for the thousandth time, but this time I studied it, marking each scene. Then I paid my friendly neighborhood library a visit. It’s noisier there than I would like, but the deeper you get into the fiction section the noise fades to a distant drone. I wandered the aisles, pausing to grin at the placement of author Virgin next to author Virtue. I walked more and more slowly until I stopped altogether and surveyed the spines. Most of them were dusty. Many were faded. I wondered how many of them had been checked out recently, or ever. Most of the authors were foreign to me. I wondered when the Library would come though and weed out the underused books, the old and out-of-date books. What treasures would remain locked inside those books, hidden from the patrons, because some newly published writer (me?) had displaced them with their own shining jewels. It’s sad, really, the life cycle of a book. So few burn steadily into the literary canon; most are supernovas, blazing out all at once.

What will I be? Does it matter? Because I will still mourn the unloved books hiding on the shelves, hoping that they are not the weeds that will be pulled.

In January I made a resolution to begin The Great American Novel. And I have. From the end of August until this very morning, I have tried my hardest to write each day. Some days life interferes, but I haven’t let that prevent me from writing the next day.  Sometimes the Internal Editor interferes, but I’ve managed to gag her and lock her away in my mind.

And in-between writing sessions I’m brainstorming. Ideas keep appearing right before my eyes; I suddenly know not only where I’m going, but how to get there. Last night, for instance, a character spoke to me and her role in the novel has greatly expanded.

Still, I estimate I am only about 10% done with my work. I have a good outline to keep me on track, and I’ve written many, many scenes. But right now the scenes are only patched together. They do not yet make a cohesive whole. Ultimately my work is still a sketch with many scenes resting only on a post unconnected to the rest of the fence.

My plan now is to read. That’s right: not write, or edit, but read. I need a break from my work and I also need to study how my favorite writers sew their scenes into a chapter, their chapters into a novel.

And so Happy New Year’s to all, and to all — read a book before you turn out the light.

Anna is learning to read in Kindergarten. This week, one of the ways in which the students are encouraged to read is through the use of environmental words. The child can “read” a word simply because of his familiarity of it within his environment. For example, most early readers are able to read McDonald’s just because they’ve seen it so often.

So today Anna comes from with a little booklet of environmental words that she’s supposed to read to me. She says her teacher told her to sound out the words if she didn’t know them. Turns out she was only familar with one word: Cheerios. Everything else — Hamburger Helper, Velveeta, Lucky Charms — were things she’d never seen before because I’ve never had them in the house. I’m certain she will be able to read without the ego boost of easy environmental words, but there’s a bigger question here. Are my children being deprived of American food icons? Is it a bad thing that they don’t know about Hamburger Helper? And are there really that many people who use Velveeta that it can be considered an environmental word?

Just a thought.

Jake and Anna are learning to write. Jake’s more advanced after a year in school where he learned punctuation in addition to basic letter formation. Anyway, I bought some elementary writing tablets at Target and they’ve been happily writing words and notes. Jake’s even written a “story” or two.

But as Jake was struggling yesterday to sound out a word and its corresponding letters, I thought about my first attempts at writing. I have no idea when I learned to write my letters (most likely kindergarten, I suppose), but I clearly recall chicken scratching on paper then “reading” what I wrote back to whoever would listen. I remember the overwhelming frustration that I couldn’t really write what I wanted to say, so I had to rely on my memory. And with each reading the story changed until I could no longer remember what I intended to say at all.

It’s easy to forget that frustration, the type that bewilders and crushes. If you don’t remember it, try writing a story. Now write it in Spanish or French or whatever you took for two years back in high school. Does it read the way you wanted, or are you relying on chicken scratches and your aging memory?

School starts on Monday. Summer is almost over.

The kids are very excited to be going back to school, and I’m excited to have them there as well. Yet I still have a small feeling of sadness that I get every year at this time, even though my school days are long gone. Summer is a season of promises, endless possibilities, freedom, youth, love and beauty. The three months zoom by then toss you against the dark backdrop of 9 long months of rigid schedules, responsibility and unreliable weather. That’s when you look back at summer and see the promises unfulfilled, the opportunities missed. The kids are too young to experience end-of-summer blues in this way, and as for myself, nowadays my summer regrets are limited to not playing catch with Jake as often as I wanted. Promises unfulfilled? Well, there is that hanging basket of impatiens that I keep forgetting to water.

What made me reminisce about days gone by, when I would spend September and October holed up in my room writing lists about everything I missed about summer, is a column by Jim Shahin that I read last week in the in-flight magazine. It was all about summer love and first kisses, and I sat in my seat and smiled while I read it. I nodded along as he described his first kiss, although he he did label himself a doofus. I never kissed a doofus. An idiot, sure, but a doofus, no.

Shahin also invoked the first line of an Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet to describe summer love: “I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.” Take a moment to let that absorb. Quite an accurate assessment from Millay, huh?

In the end, in the absence of summer love, in the midst of happily ever after, I still have a soft spot for summer. I still wish for an everlasting summer, and expect it to take down the fences of responsibility. I’m just a kid soaring on a swing until my heart flies too and maybe, just maybe, this will be the year I learn to dive off the boards. I will watch every Cubs game and enjoy each thunderstorm, even the ones that are so severe that I sit in my basement with a flashlight and a blanket. I will eat fried zucchini and cucumbers straight from the garden.

And so, a salute to summer. If you need me I’ll be at the community pool until they drain it for the season and kick me out until next year.