In my childhood home, books were as plentiful as band-aids. My three brothers and I would play outside from sunrise to sunset, coming inside with skinned knees and scrapes from imaginary battles we fought or races we sometimes won. My mom would meet us at the door with a pack of band-aids and a book, and after tending to our wounds, the five of us would pile on the overstuffed loveseat in the living room and she would read aloud for hours.
Although my brothers and I were never good at sitting still, we would sit silent with anticipation as my mom read to us on that couch. I remember roaring with laughter as Grover warned us in The Monster at the End of the Book, and listening with awe to Christian’s journey in A Pilgrim’s Progress. My older brother still says Mr. Popper’s Penguins is his favorite novel. We listened to that book during a week full of snow and no school. We came inside from sledding and snowball fights with frozen fingers and red noses to hide under blankets as my mom read, refilling our hot chocolates between chapters. I will always cherish those moments.
My love for stories started here. On that couch, I learned the excitement of a story that devours you, the agony of a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, and the horror of a character who does not make it to the end. I went to bed with my body covered in band-aids and my mind full of someone else’s words and I loved it. As I grew up, I started to need less band-aids and more stories. I began to write my own, toying with the characters I knew and loved, like crossover episodes where Christian’s journey was not towards religious enlightenment but towards the monster at the end of his book. The stories were messy, but they were mine.
I love stories because I love community. My favorite memories with my brothers are the ones where we sat on the couch and listened, or met on the bottom bunk in my room to guess what might happen in the next chapter. I wrote stories of all of my favorite characters because I wanted them to know the community that I felt in their books. The shared experience of finding words that you love is vitalizing. I continue to write for the sake of community.
Meg Pinkston is a maker of crafts, stories, and foods from East Tennessee, her creations all heavily influenced by her Appalachian roots. She is a sophomore at the University of Tennessee pursuing a degree in English with a minor in Political Science. In her free time, Meg can be found scuba diving and writing essays exploring the complexities of the American South.
