Love Lessons

It has been bothering me since Tuesday, when I posted my list of ten books that taught me a little something about love. I can't believe I left out one of the most important books. Well, series of books, really.

It was the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years and I was, per usual, spending the summer living with both sets of grandparents. They lived only a few miles apart, one set in Minnesota and the other in North Dakota. I would bounce back and forth between the two. My best friend in the world (I moved around a bit as a kid) lived next door and I would also spend a great deal of time with her and her seven brothers and sisters. Each summer, this only child felt a part of their enormous family.

My dad's parents decided to take me along for an extended trip to visit my great grandma in Ashland, WI. I remember not being terribly thrilled to be taken away from my friends to a place where there was no one my age to hang out with. There were some second cousins, but they all seemed much older to me and only seeing them once every year or two (for a day or two), we weren't very close at all.

On the drive up to Ashland, I remember stopping at a B. Dalton at a mall in Duluth. We went into the bookstore and my grandpa told me I could get any book I wanted. My dad and I didn't have much money so most of my books came from the library. It wasn't until high school and into college that I really began to have a library to call my own.

I wandered through the aisles and came across the book Anne of Green Gables. I picked it up, read the back and remembered hearing somewhere that it was a good book. I chose it.

I finished it the next day.

My other grandpa had sent me along with some money and so I walked into town to the local bookstore where I then purchased Anne of Avonlea.

The next day, I finished it.

This continued for another two days until finally I was sent to the store with enough money to buy the last two that I needed. (I didn't know there was a book 7 or 8 until I returned to Oregon).

I was in love with those books. I wanted to be just like Anne (in fact, I desperately wanted to change the spelling of my middle name so that I too was an Ann with an "e.") I wanted my own Gilbert. I wanted the friendship and the romance and the happily ever after.

What these books taught me was that love--lasting, enduring, honest, love--is grounded in friendship.

It's a lesson I've carried with me ever since.

The very book(s) that started it all.