I cannot remember the books I’ve eaten more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
―Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are dating. Despite my boyfriend’s head filling my lap, I peruse my textbook and try to memorize important facts for our shared humanities class. Arin has yet to purchase his, though we are already several weeks deep into the semester.
We are newlyweds. He orders his first set of religious commentaries and a large Webster’s dictionary to aid in deciphering the many unknown words he encounters. Do I read at all during this time? I think not; too drunk on love must I have been.
Our first son is born. I pour over parenting books in hopes of becoming the best possible mother. He trusts me enough to not crack a single one.
Babies #2 and 3 follow shortly behind, then #4, who’s different from the start. Unbeknownst to us, he’s autistic. With four children under five years of age, I dive headfirst into historical fiction, eager to enter any world other than mine. My weary husband devours one theological book after another in pursuit of his Master of Divinity. This he does while working nights to support our growing family.
Now, our family is complete with five children, and we’ve converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. He’s read his fair share of academic and theological books to get us in the church door; I’ve found each one, by and large, to be overly wordy and dull. I’m feeling quite disenfranchised with religion and recently gave up on reading.
After months of working three jobs to pay the bills, my dear husband finds work in the oil field. Without a moment to spare, reading falls to the wayside for him while I uncover a mystical branch of Orthodox literature that soothes my seeking soul.
For years, I read about beauty, suffering, and their point of intersection and entwinement. Still, he reads nothing, and his lackluster eyes continue to lose their shine.
Covid-19 hits, and he’s forced to fold the business he only recently started. He sits at home with dark rings dangling from his eyes, and I speak tentatively of how much I miss his brilliant mind. For the first time, he visits a bookstore and purchases a book he wants to read.
Book piles grow as he finishes one book, then another. All World War II. All evil. All suffering. No beauty. The darkness he reads mirrors the locked-up emotions he vaguely perceives yet cannot tangibly find. I fear I’ve awoken a sleeping beast. My heart, bursting with newly-found beauty from my reading, suspiciously eyes his foreboding stack of books.
A rollover car crash. Our oldest son sleeps days away in a coma. Even in the hospital, I start reading about Traumatic Brain Injuries, trauma, and the way “The Body Keeps the Score.” My husband reads nothing, trying instead to find a small space of white emptiness amidst his troubled, aching mind.
Years later, time is healing old wounds. His books arrive one after another in brown cardboard boxes. I open, stack them, and set them aside, still uninterested. Our opposing interests lead to lively conversations. Together, we stretch, and we grow.
As our children begin leaving home, we pack up and pursue our dream of living in the mountains. The natural beauty weaves its way into our hungry souls and refreshes us to the core. In time, books begin arriving: “Beauty” by John O’Donohue, “Yes to Life” by Viktor Frankl,” “Holy the Firm” by Annie Dillard, “Savage Gods” by Paul Kingsnorth, and “When Breath Becomes Air,” by Paul Kalanithi. All the while, my confusion grows. Are these my books…or his?
I begin thumbing through his books as they arrive. I’ve never heard of many of them, and I’m growing humorously jealous of his eclectic collection. Occasionally, he orders two-of-a-kind so we can each have our copy to highlight and write notes in the margins. We’ve even started using the same black gel pens. Little by little, our shelves grow more similar than not. Our conversations turn to finishing each other’s sentences and reading each other’s minds.
We begin speaking more of the days to come. How will we ever withstand death’s severing blow that demands one flesh be forced back into two separate bodies? How can a singular mind be parceled into two? How can one heart survive a slicing—never again to be made whole?
There is no way.
And yet, for today…my flesh, mind, and heart overflow.
When you love, you open your life to an Other. All your barriers are down. Your protective distances collapse. This person is given absolute permission to come into the deepest temple of your spirit. Your presence and life can become this person’s ground. It takes great courage to let someone so close. Since the body is in the soul, when you let someone so near, you let the person become part of you. In the sacred kinship of real love, two souls are twinned. The outer shell and contour of identity become porous. You suffuse each other.
-John O’Donohue, Anam Cara (Soul Friend)
