Ghosts, Goblins and "Good Works"

My daughter graduated from high school yesterday. As she walked across the stage, I sat cheering in the stands surrounded by “family” members. My husband sat on the bench behind me because we weren’t speaking to each other—again. My honorary “sister” sat next to me, my stepson and biological son sat to my left and right respectively, and my husband’s ex-wife’s parents sat somewhere to my left. Together, we made a proverbial motley crew. While the salutatorian talked about Ronald Reagan, I started to think about families, how they’re created, and how they, in turn, create us.

Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” My own family was made unhappy by the ghost that lived in their home. She was sad and solitary haunt—a leftover piece of someone else’s shattered family. She was me.

Anybody who’s ever been abused knows that abusers prey on hopes and dreams. My stepmother was no different. Hopelessness and depression swam in her wake. Daily, she assured me that no one would ever love me, I would never amount to anything, I had the intelligence of a monkey, etc…

Every time she spoke, I felt as if a piece of me died.

Out of sheer desperation and a pure animal instinct to defend my own life, I took what was left of me and pushed her way down deep, locking her away in that secret place in my soul. There I kept her, barely alive, feed solely on books and daydreams.

Books, in short, saved my life.

Books took me away from the horror that was my reality, but to say that they were an “escape” downplays the effect they had on me and my life. Books were my family—my parents, my brothers and sisters, my creepy uncle and crazy aunt. Books taught me life lessons; they taught me how life could be; they made me who I am today.


From Barthe Declements’ Copper Jones, I learned that telling the truth gives you power and inner strength. Where the Red Fern Grows taught me the value of hard work. And Anne (spelled with an “e”) Shirley taught me the importance of an education.

The older I got, the hungrier I got, and in my pre-teens, I devoured adventure and survival books: The Cay, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Sign of the Beaver, The Hatchet. Each one taught me that I was strong—that if I was smart enough and brave enough, I could survive on my own. Over time, the strength of my family gave me the courage to give up the ghost.


Free at last, I am still sometimes shocked by the sound of my own voice, but I continue to feed off of the works of great authors, and my voice grows stronger with time. But my words are not entirely my own. In the words of Ronald Reagan, I stand on the shoulders of giants. But my “shrines” are not made of bricks and mortar; they are paper and ink. Libraries and bookstores are my temples and books, my shrines.