28

A new day. A new life continues.

Sunday!  Finally I'm typing again.  It's been a long week.  More than a week since I've typed.

It's all Xena's fault of course.  It's easy to blame her since she's so in control.  It all started before we left Missouri.  Xena had to check out some yard sales while I lazed around the KOA campground and cleaned up.   Xena wanted to stay at a real campground for once so we could go swimming in the morning before heading across the state line.

"Yo!"  Xena called as she drove up.  She had taken to driving in very select locals, making sure no one would stop her if they suspected that she was only 13 or younger.  I was painting on a canvas another portrait of people I'd seen over the past days and trying to get a likeness of anyone, actually.

Xena jumped out when she stopped with Rosie barking a welcome to me as she also jumped down.  She reached back in the cab and brought out a sack looking to be jammed full of books.

"Look at the bonanza I've found."

I looked and saw a pile of old books.  Some with outdated drawings on the covers.  A few with no drawings at all.  Old.

"I met the most god awful woman having an estate/yard sale in her garage downtown.  Talk about trashy!  I thought we'd left that kind of trash back home."  While telling me this she was stacking the books on the table that I'd had my paints on.  She nudged the paints into a corner and spread out the books.

"She," Xena continued, "wanted to get rid of her mother's collection on books now that the old woman died and couldn't try to get her to read good literature, and she'd practically give them away if anyone would just take them out of her sight, and spare her the task of burning them in the trash since surely no one "in town wanted to read the old, boring books her mother collected forever and cluttered up the house and how could she sell the place with all those boring boring boring books that no one wanted and even the schools didn't want them after she retired 15 years ago and people only wanted to read real stories of real people in real magazines and not these made up stories and who'd care anyway, why don't you just take them and let me sell the real stuff.  God! God! God!"  Xena finally took a breath.

"How many did you get?"   I asked now that she took a second breath.

"Oh, there's three more sacks in the back of the van.  I don't know which we should read first."  She looked at the pile.  "Maybe we should lay them all out and put them in order."

"We?"

"Yes, WE!"  She didn't look at me but Rosie barked for emphasis.  "Good Rosie, we know what's good for us, don't we?"  She looked a second at Rosie, who wagged her tail, then went and pulled out another sack.

I went back to trying to make the planted fields more interesting and Xena continued to stack the books.  Every once in a while I glanced over to see how they were doing.  Rosie was obviously as involved as Xena.

Some time later Xena and Rosie stopped, having made a good dozen stacks of books by some category that they had devised.  I didn't ask.  I knew that I'd find out if and when Xena decided to enlighten me, which might be never, knowing her.

"Stop, if you can, for a while anyway," Xena asked sweetly.  I stopped\, knowing that now was an opportune time, even if it wasn't.

"This is what I know," Xena started.  "I know that the mom was a retired librarian at the town's school and she was actually like by the kids and adults.  I don't know why the bitchy daughter didn't like her, but that's not important.  I know that she had all these books that she recommended to her students.  I know this because after I loaded four sacks of books some more people came to estate/yard sale and I listened to them talking about the librarian.  They said everyone liked her and not the daughter, who was no good and broke her mother's heart often.  I know that they wanted the books as they were gathering some of the ones I hadn't had a chance to grab.  I know that they were disappointed when the bitchy daughter told them that a lot of the books were already gone and they should of come yesterday if they wanted the best ones.  I left before the bitchy one could try and get the books back and sell them to the two women."

While talking Xena had kept touching the books and moving books from pile to pile.  I still didn't know how she was stacking them, maybe by color or size.  It didn't manner.

"So, I was thinking," Xena looked very pointedly at me, Rosie barked at me again to let me know she was thinking also.  "So, I was thinking," she said again, "we need to be kids for a while and not let the people back home deprive us of being kids, at least for a while.  We won't let the past tell us what to do, or how to do anything, or when to do it, or if we should do anything.  We should be kids and read some of these books like normal kids do in school.  Like normal kids do with normal lives.  We can be normal, can't we?"  She looked at me with an intense look that I hadn't seen. "Can't we?"

"I can be normal if you can," I answered.  Whatever normal is, I asked myself.  Probably whatever Xena decided it was, so I would be normal if that's what would make her content.

"We can be normal," Xena said a little louder.  "No one can make us not be normal if we want to, right!"  Rosie barked right back at her.

"OK, that's settled, now all we have to do is read these books to start to be like other teenagers in their suburbia's.  You pick a stack and then I'll pick a stack and then we'll trade and then pick another stack.  Here's your stack, I already picked one for you and here's my stack.  Let's eat, get ready to leave here, and then start."

I didn't argue.  Reading could be different. At least this time she hadn't picked some classic or some more poets, at least these books looked like then might be stories.