Readathon Monday

It started when the girls were protesting a few years ago about never taking off school on snow days. There isn’t really a point to taking a snow day when you’re at home anyway, but we devised a plan for an annual reading fest.

This morning was our day. The snow was sifting down lightly, blanketing the earth that was bared by yesterday’s warmth and rain. It was so fine that you couldn’t see it unless you looked toward the dark pines, and it accumulated very slowly, just enough to compel the salt trucks and plows to make regular passes on the road.

Rita’s bird feeder was a place of constant motion, little birds all puffed up, flitting from the poplars down to the black oil sunflower seed buffet whenever there was even a small gap in the traffic. There’s a big cardinal population, the startling red flashes all around in the jaggerbushes which is northwestern PA speak for briars. These cardinals are supposed to be territorial, unless there is so much food that they don’t need to fight each other for it. One day we counted twelve at the feeder, so I guess there’s plenty of food around here.

Addy built a fire in the fireplace, stacking up scraps of 2x4s and wetter wood on top. She’s an accomplished little fire-maker, and the crackling was so loud that I hardly noticed when the teapot burbled its boiling sound.

The one rule of our readathon day is that the reading is for pleasure, which means chatty people must be quiet. We settled in with cups of tea and our favorite current books. Olivia has been reading the Ranger’s Apprentice series, and could not find the fourth one at the library. I noticed that she succumbed to reading the fifth one today, though it pains her orderly self to read them out of order. Rita is reading through the Mysterious Benedict Society, in a story grip that I rarely see in her. Her choice of reading tends to be nonfiction, nature guides, and survival manuals, but I guess these stories could count as survival tales. Addy’s following right behind her, reading the first big book in the series, and woe be to us if she catches up. The scrapping over shared books can be bewildering at best. (That’s my bookmark and she moved it!)

Addy settled into her chair with an entire pot of peppermint tea on the stand beside her, pouring cup after cup, sipping with a satisfaction that caused the older girls to roll their eyes at me. But they stayed quiet, except for occasional shoving matches to establish territories on the couch.

The parakeets chirped and the pillar candles on the mantle sputtered, giving off a delicate sugar cookie scent. I bought them on clearance without checking them properly, but the scent is almost vanilla, so we could bear it. Periodically I threw some large logs onto the fire to keep it going, resettled into the recliner with my feet toward the fire. I could read a page in my book, feel the warmth on my feet, and look out the window at intervals. It was the best of all the worlds.

Rita broke the silence with occasional monologues about things like how annoyed she gets when people say, “Shake your head yes.” Addy snitched my seat when I went outside to feed the chickens and she wiggled on the squeaky leather chair. A lot. The only noise Olivia made was page turning and nose blowing, and “Be quiet! I want to read!”

And that is how the day went. It was utterly delicious. My aunt and I have been having some dialog in past comments about enjoying winter properly. I think she would approve of this day. ☺️