To My Kindle

I resisted at first. We all do. The experience of a book, with pages I can flip, is sacred. Books are the only church I worship in. To read without a book would be like praying in my car. Maybe I’d get to say I need to say, but it’s a hollow, distracted experience.

Cost of books did not drive my decision because I believe in libraries. Though I adore books, owning is a commitment of money and space I don’t take lightly. On the nights when mortality presses a warm palm on my heart, I wonder if I am leaving those I love with a book-mess to clean up. Is it worth it?

I had no intentions ever but then one day in Staples, while Whit spoke in the foreign language that is computer-ese to the sales kid, I opened you up and was stunned. Your type looked like paper, and the screen had no glare. And down at the bottom, I found a toggle button that allowed me to change the font size.

That was all I needed to know. Years of glasses, then no glasses, then glasses again, accompanied by reading for fun and for a living have ruined my eyes. The surgery I had when I was 12 was a near-perfect fix. So close to perfect, the ophthalmologist tells me, that though my eyes aren’t straight now, the misalignment is so minor, he cannot fix it. And there’s no prescription he can write.

Every day, I race the clock to get my reading done. In the morning, my eyes are rested and aligned and I can read without much effort. But as the hours tick by, I spend more and more time trying to focus, moving my whole head to different angles, waiting for the page to come into focus. By the end of the day, I am a useless reader. The words swim together like anchovies.

But not anymore. I can make the words as large as I need them to be. I can relax with a book. A book becomes a refuge again, not a battle.

Do I miss the feel of the the pages? The smell of the ink? Yes. And I miss the beach in Spain where I first had real olives. I miss sleeping until 10. I miss talking to my grandmother. But I missed reading more than I missed the books. Growing old is a gift and missing is the box it comes in.