The Most Important Book From My Childhood.

The subject of the For You - By You scheduled for July sounds just right for summertime: your take on When Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade! An anecdote, a philosophy, a way of transformation that turns adversity into something worth while. Your deadline: June 10.

Do your best to keep your writing selections to about 400 words -- subject to editing for content and length. Each person on the staff will read several entries and forward their favorite(s) to the For You - By You desk.

Mail your writing to us at P.O. Box 1342, Morton Grove, IL 60053; or fax it to (847) 966-6535; or e-mail foryou@lightworks.com. Be sure to add your name and location to your writing! We won't be able to communicate about your entry, and the decisions of the staff are final. If you want us to return your work, please enclose a self addressed, stamped envelope.

The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

When I was a little girl, my mother read to me The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. By the time I was in third grade I could read it myself. I read it over and over again. "Dorothy lived in the middle of the great, gray Kansas prairie," I read in the opening of the book. There I was, in the middle of a perfectly normal Chicago neighborhood, always keeping one eye on the sky, hopeful that my house would be next on the cyclone's list for transport to Oz.

Years later, when I was on the spiritual path, I began to understand that the journey down that yellow brick road represented the quest of the seeker. The symbols in the book dialogue with our inner consciousness.

Dorothy was a loving, resourceful and intelligent young soul. Toto brings to mind the dog snapping at the heels of the Fool in Tarot card 0, symbolizing our natural intuition. Picture the scene as Toto pulls the curtain aside revealing the real man behind the special effects, the Wizard!

The friends Dorothy met along the way embodied normal emotional issues: the low self-esteem of the Scarecrow, the longing for loving relationships of the Tin Woodsman, and the fears of the Cowardly Lion. Dorothy doesn't solve their problems herself, but by diligently pursuing her own goal of returning home (self-realization/enlightenment), the lives of others around her improved.

When Dorothy learned the spell (mantra/affirmation) to control the winged monkeys (sometimes seen as a symbol of the restless chattering of our thoughts), it changed her most feared enemies into her greatest allies. And for Dorothy to use the magical ruby slippers to get home, she had to recognize that the power and ability had been within her all along. Her quest brought her, full circle, back to herself.

This book spoke to me and awoke a longing for the magical and fantastic to be real. When I found yoga, mysticism and metaphysics, I discovered that the miraculous occurs right here on Earth, even in Chicago. The cyclone of transformation picked me up and put me down right in my own backyard.

-- by Marcia Sacks
Hoffman Estates, IL

Grandpa Bunny Bunny, a Disney Golden Book

Of all the books I was exposed to it was often the magic of the illustrations which stayed with me into adulthood and became "important." In others, a book's vocabulary made me stretch to understand the message between the lines and oh, how I strove to know its import. As an impressionable pre-teen, I read my catechism and fell in love with God, probably the first love of my life that would render me breathless. And of course, there was my first literary sexual encounter which, however clinical, was a book at a house where I baby-sat. It covered female physiology, pregnancy, how one became pregnant and then the resulting birth. Photos. Black and white. Powerful stuff. I'd have baby-sat for nothing.

Books were more important than almost anything else in my youth but into my life one appeared which no one seems to have heard of. It was a Disney Golden Book called Grandpa Bunny Bunny. This beloved, elderly bunny went around painting forests, meadows and gardens colors whose names I learned and never forgot. Colors which I found in the big, BIG crayon sets, colors I loved and chose in watercolor trays, colors that only Disney could pull off and make real. When Grandpa Bunny Bunny died, the skies that evening blazed with all his beautiful colors -- and displays like that were forever more referred to as Grandpa Bunny Bunny sunsets, both in the book and by my family.

What astounds me to this day is that every last one of those colors can really be found in forests and meadows, in gardens and sunsets. What I read over and over and believed to be a beautiful stretch of the imagination wasn't artistic license or exaggeration. It was an expression of the real world that's there for our enjoyment and appreciation every spring, summer and fall. To my mind, it is not only Walt Disney's most exuberant treatment of the beauty and color in nature but surely one of the most incredible gifts of my life. A gift that began singing to me years ago in a forest and keeps singing through all the seasons of my years. One that brings tears of appreciation to my eyes.

The gift is a love of color in nature and the book, Grandpa Bunny Bunny, brought it to me. How can I think of this work as anything other than the most important book of my childhood? It wasn't fiction because I see its truth every day of my life. This Disney Golden Book produced a joyous legacy that would glow for me in every hardwood forest in October and in flower gardens or wild flower meadows in spring and summer.

Walt, are you listening? Thank you. You gave me the most important book from my childhood and I'm eternally grateful!

--by Connie Scanlan
Forest Park, IL

The Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle

I was blessed that my parents encouraged my love for reading from the start. Among other subjects, I developed a fascination for the character Sherlock Holmes. While I enjoyed comic book superheroes, Holmes represented a kind of "intellectual hero" for me: someone who developed his innate gifts of observation and discernment to their heights in an effort to help others.

As you may know, Conan Doyle wrote fifty-six Holmes short stories and four novels. The short stories were grouped into volumes of ten or twelve each, titled "The Memoirs", "The Adventures", etc.

After devouring everything available in the library, I scoured bookstores and paperback racks until, by age twelve, I had collected all sixty stories -- which I continue to re-read without tiring of them.

For Christmas of my thirteenth year, my parents presented me with The Complete Sherlock Holmes in hardcover with the original illustrations that accompanied the tales in their first printing in the Strand magazine almost a century ago.

Although I've received many pricier gifts since, nothing nears the value I place on that dog-eared and well worn volume with its notation of love and Christmas wishes from December, 1963. I seldom take it down from the shelf now, but I often glance at it with fond gratitude to parents who knew the perfect gift to delight their child's heart.

-- by Jeff Parry
Kenosha, WI

Butterflies

Whenever I see butterflies in Chicago, my mind races back to the most important book of my childhood: Butterflies. The book doesn't show its butterflies anymore, but I can hear them flying through the pages.

The book is special and because of this it is meant to be shared. It has opened itself up and is waiting for me to read it. Here's my story:

For a few years as a child, I lived and played in Florida. There were butterflies everywhere, waiting for me, an innocent child, to play with them any time of the day.

To play with them was everything to me. They became my forever friends. I watched and held them, and returned their forever love.

The book is simple and small with energy of greatness and change. When I was a child in Florida, it made a deep mark of spiritual importance inside my soul -- and my soul began to grow and change. What was made is still inside my soul and what began still continues.

My heart is a butterfly heart. If someone were to ask me, "Laura, what do you remember most about Florida?" in a second I would answer, "Butterflies!"

-- by Laura Lucas
Chicago

Next Article

Return to This Month's Index