I'm Glad I Read So Much Fiction Growing Up

Anne, of the famed Anne of Green Gables, is forlorn when she must leave her beloved “house o’ dreams” at the end of her first two years of marriage to the handsome Gilbert Blythe. After all, it is a house with a brook, a garden she has plans for in the spring that will never come to pass if she moves, and the house is where her babies are born, and… ultimately living in a tiny, beautiful house by the sea isn’t practical for her family.

Right now, I’m living in my house of dreams. It looks just like a dollhouse. It has a porch. It has a huge garden and it overlooks the dearest little park full of trees. But the school district here is something out of a horror movie. And the bedrooms are quite small to accommodate a growing family. And just because we made improvements doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty more to do…

When it was first suggested we should think about moving, I shut the door in my head and screamed, “NO!” as loudly as my brain could scream. No! No! No! This is my dream house. It’s in a fairly urban area where we can walk to get brunch AND to the park AND to the library. And… yet, I know they’re right.

Like Anne, I must come to terms with letting go of the illusion that we were going to live here forever. Let go of the idea that we would make it work no matter how impractical things got. Let go of a perfectly darling dream home for an unromantic, practical future.

And that’s why I’m glad I grew up reading so much fiction. Because there is a chapter for every scenario I have experienced in life waiting in those childhood classics I spent so much time rereading I often ran out of time to do my homework.

So much of children’s fiction involves learning that change is okay. And we learn that letting go of our old dreams when they become impractical or outgrown (so that we can stuff our heads and lives full of new dreams) is just another part of life. And that can be beautiful.