Gone With the Wind

I was introduced to "romance" novels when I was about seven or eight years old. My mother was cleaning house one night and I remember that I was bothering her with "Mom, Mom, Mommy, Mommy, Momma, Momma" every five seconds. as parents often do she took me to the babysitter (the T.V.). She turned the television on and told me to watch this old movie that was on. She said she said "You'll like it" and then went back to her cleaning. She was wrong about that movie. I didn't like it. I loved it.

The movie was Gone with the Wind starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. From the opening credits I was completely hooked. History has always been a passion of mine and put together with a love story...you have me @ Rhett Butler. I watched that movie and gushed about it for days. My mom would just smile that "I told you so" smile.

The next summer my father took me and my little sister to the DMV at the local Government Center. While waiting as patiently as an eight and five year old can, my sister and I discovered that there was a library in the same building. We asked (read: begged) my dad to take us there. Surprisingly he agreed and off I went to heaven, a world full of books. I remembered that my mom had told me that Gone with the Wind was a book so I very grown up like asked the librarian for the book. I don't remember the look that she gave me but I can imagine but she got it for me. A thousand page book would stun most adults, me you ask? I was thrilled.

I did have one last hurtle to jump. When I asked my dad to check this book out for me he wasn't sure. He told me several times that I wouldn't understand all of it and that it was a thousand pages. I didn't care and evidently he did check it out for me. Again and Again. It took me the whole summer to read the book. I feel as it was fate. That was the only summer that we ever went to the library. I wouldn't go again until I was an adult.

Almost every year since then I read Gone With the Wind. It is my favorite book of all time. And my dad was right I didn't understand that book the first time I read it or even the second. In fact it took years for me to understand its social impact. What I did understand at eight and even more so now was the love story at the heart of it.