Nancy and Me

When I was a kid I was afraid of the dark to the point that I would often end up sleeping on the floor of my parents room, or in the hallway where there was light from the bathroom. I had all sorts of little rituals that I used to try and calm down when I got scared at night. Sometimes I would arrange my stuffed animals in a ring around my bed, sometimes I made up a little song, and of course there was the time-honored tradition of making sure that all hands and feet were on the bed and under the covers because the monsters can only get you if your toes are exposed and dangling, of course.

When I was in the third grade my class had a reading log, where we had to read a certain amount of time each week and have our parents sign it. I don’t remember how we decided on it, but my mom and I came up with a plan. We were going to get all of the original Nancy Drew novels with the yellow hardback covers and read them together.

My mom had read some of them when she was a kid and I remember how excited she was at the idea of us having this activity to do together. She would go on about how if we go the nice copies and took care of them then one day I could read them with my children. So, each night before bed we would settle down in my room and take turns reading chapters out loud to each other.

We quickly developed little inside jokes and traditions associated with reading together. By book three we noticed that Nancy Drew, while a delightful sleuth, can not keep a car in one piece for longer than a book or two. It is okay though, because her father is always happy to surprise her with a new car for the birthday she is going to be having any time now. Seriously, over the course of 52 books, seasons come and go, cars are bought and destroyed, but Nancy never actually gets to her birthday.

With my fear of the dark, I realized that if I laid down and closed by eyes, I could often fall asleep while she was reading. We both knew that I just wanted to avoid having to be awake after turning off the lights, but it was just another little joke between us. When I started getting tired and cuddling up my mom would tease me about falling asleep and I would reply that I was ‘just resting my eyes’. We had to read a lot of chapters over but it got me through being afraid.

After Nancy Drew came Redwall, then Animorphs, and Everworld. From the third grade until well into High school my mother and I read together on an almost nightly basis. At some point we started doing other things together while we read, like playing video games or doing puzzles, but it was always the stories that really tied us together.

The first time I moved out of my parents house I realized that I owned one suitcase worth of close, one box of knick knacks, one box of spare kitchen supplies my mother was giving to me, and about thirty boxes of varying sizes stuffed to the gills with books. I spent almost every penny I earned at my first job, which was at a library, on books. They had become my life and I owe it all to a reading log and the fifty two bright yellow books that still sit at the top of my main book case.

The Nancy Drew books are cute and silly and as a series, have some very serious continuity problems, but they are how I got over being afraid of the dark, and, more importantly, the basis for what an amazing relationship I have with my mom.