The White Way of Delight

I’ve been in an “Anne mood” recently. I’ve found myself thinking (and sometimes speaking) in flowery language, and letting my imagination run wild (in a good way). I decided a while back that I’d make it a summer goal to read through the entire “Anne of Green Gables” series, after lo these many years of never getting past volume two whenever embarking on the challenge. I’m not sure how I never made it further than that, unless I use young age as an excuse, or maybe my addiction to “Grandma’s Attic” that swallowed up my reading time.

Anyhow (I suppose ‘anyhow’ isn’t very poetic), I started on book 1 for the umpteenth time, but this time I’ve flown through the next few and just finished book 5! Well, sort of, not exactly. Somehow I managed to accidentally skip book 4, “Anne of Windy Poplars”, because the book I own coupled #3 and #5 together into one book. How dumb is that? So clueless me just jumped from “the end” to “three years later” without realizing I’d missed a thing. I suppose I ought to go back and read it, but who wants to go back to teaching the Pringle girls when you’re married to Gilbert and have a rosy-cheeked baby? Oh bother!

Oh, which brings me to an important point: I can’t believe how offthe movies are! I’m not sure why I’m surprised, since every film maker that’s ever lived thinks he’s a better story writer than the authors themselves. But having grown up wearing out our VHS recording of it from AETN’s Masterworks Theater, I almost wished I could unread the books out of love for the movies! But of course that’s silly, and besides they’re much better (as books always are), so that only left me to be bitterly disappointed with Sullivan Films (I suppose I should say ‘in the depths of despair’). But that disappointment lasted approximately, oh, two minutes, and then I was back to enjoying myself and anticipating the next time I could watch the movie(s) with some girlfriends. You just can’t turn your back on life-long friends like Megan Follows and Schuyler Grant, especially when you’ve sung “Oh Promise Me” with both older sisters on each of their wedding days right before they walked down the aisle!

Interestingly enough, an Avonlea-related conversation with a friend of mine coincided with my book reading challenge. (On a side note, don’t you wish there truly was an honest to goodness, real life Avonlea? Alas, it doesn’t exist, except in your imagination. Or at least in Maud Montgomery’s.) She (in case you forgot who ‘she’ is, it’s my friend) and her husband have decided that in five years they’re going to Prince Edward Island (and a few other places along the way!) and are planning and saving for it now. Of course, now I’m saving for it; whether or not I actually go, it doesn’t matter. =) Is it too much to ask to go to PEI twice in one’s lifetime? I hope not. A beautiful place like that just has to be revisited. Hey, maybe I will some day outdo my grandparents’ record of six trips! Wouldn’t that be loverly? (Oops, wrong film.)

Usually about this time I wrap up my post with a little life lesson to remember, or one last witty thought to close with (or so I like to think). So here I am, to tell the moral of today’s story: “If he faints, promise me you’ll catch him!”