My Relationship with Reading

From the Archives - Reworking Early Essays

Welcome to Beyond the Bookshelf, a community of readers and writers sharing unique perspectives on life and literature through thought-provoking essays, captivating interviews, and influential books as we explore the challenges of life's transformative journey.

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Dear friends,

This essay originally appeared as four separate articles discussing my early literary influences. At that time, there were less than 50 readers of Beyond the Bookshelf. I hope you enjoy this look at how reading became a transformative part of my life.

Photo by Lee Peters

We moved when I was four, taking a U-Haul from northeastern Missouri across Kansas to Lamar, Colorado. My younger brother Luke and I sat squeezed between Dad driving and Mom holding three-month-old Marcus on her lap.

Southeast Colorado is a high desert, filled with sagebrush and tumbleweeds and not much else. Our two-bedroom, one-bath stucco house had interior walls made from pressed wood. A kitchen, living room, small office, and a closet-sized room for the baby rounded it out. The yard, mostly dirt, had nasty sticker weeds throughout. They were sharp and hurt like hell. A tree in the front yard provided shade near the rock wall fence. Dad taught us to play baseball in the backyard, basketball on a sand court, and how to ride bikes on the gravel street out front.

Mom and Dad were attentive and loving, ensuring we always had food and clothes. They never let on how poor we were. They weren’t perfect, but they gave a damn. They loved us, taught us the value of hard work, taught us how to be independent, and gave us the skills needed to succeed on our own.

My parents were always reading, and our home overflowed with books, stories, and love. I remember sitting on Dad’s lap as he read to me from Charlotte’s Web, his voice resonating in my ears, powerful yet soothing. The story opened a doorway in my mind to imagination and wonder. Life was never the same after that.

Some years later, Dad converted the garage into two extra bedrooms to make space for my sisters. He built enormous bookshelves into the wall of one room. These shelves were filled with books, including an old encyclopedia set door-to-door salesmen used to sell.

In third grade, Mom discovered me reading Roots by Alex Haley under the covers by the glow of my bed lamp. She told me it was late and time for bed, but Mom and Dad never told me something was too hard to read. They understood and respected the power of words. I am forever grateful.

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.

There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.

You feel it, don’t you?

- Rumi

In the summer of 1989, we loaded our lives into a horse trailer and headed east to our familial home in rural northeast Missouri. We lived in an old farmhouse in the country while Dad worked the farm and Mom taught at the local school.

Missouri's verdant meadows and old-growth forests are home to squirrels, rabbits, and deer. The cacophony of birds is ever-present alongside the stillness of butterflies. In the heat of the summer, my brothers and I swam alongside the fish and frogs in our pond.

Our backyard became a baseball diamond and football gridiron. An old concrete foundation was a basketball court, the cracked and uneven surface helping us become skilled dribblers. We idolized athletes and collected their sports cards. It was an idyllic childhood.

I grew close with my grandparents during those years. They each influenced my life in unique and beautiful ways. Besides my parents, Grandma Juanita played the most influential role in shaping me as a reader and writer. A journalist and author, she spoke to me as an adult on topics of interest to us both. I discovered Hemingway,  Melville, and John of the Cross on her shelves. A favorite volume was a photographic essay on the tomb of Tutankhamun. Philosophy, psychology, religion, fiction, history, and more all held places of honor. She loved Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, a story she found reminiscent of her childhood. It was a joyous and formative experience to read alongside her while experiencing her intelligence and wisdom.

During those years, I discovered Tolkien’s Middle Earth and explored space while reading Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Through the wonders of science fiction and fantasy, I found the ability to escape to a far-off place during challenging moments in my life.

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

During the 90s, my family experienced a series of traumatic events that took a heavy emotional toll. Within a year, Dad was in an accident on the farm, resulting in the loss of his leg, and I accidentally shot myself while unloading a deer rifle. Depression and anxiety were ever-present realities as we attempted to work through the repercussions of these events.

It was during these years that I also went through a traumatic time while attending an all-boys boarding school. With everything else going on in our lives, I couldn’t share the details of this experience with my family. It would be 30 years before I opened up to them.

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort…. They learn to hide from their selves.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

I disappeared inside of books. Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, David Eddings, Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov, and many more transported me through time and space to different worlds where I felt safe for a time. This was the only method I knew. During those formative years, I developed a deep and abiding love for the authors and their stories who helped me when I needed it most. They were my life ring when I was drowning in an ocean of pain.

I do not recommend escapism as a healthy means of dealing with trauma. I ran from my pain, thinking a new place or new people would solve everything. I only began healing when I started talking about my trauma with people I trusted.

Many years later, I learned about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of an object's history rather than something to disguise. Like pottery, the places we are broken are not something to be ashamed of or to hide away from the world. In the healing and repair of our lives, we become stronger and more beautiful than we were before.

When Grandpa George passed away in the fall of 1997, I left Missouri to travel and see if I could find myself. A few years later, still lost and needing a steady paycheck, I enlisted in the Navy. This somewhat impulsive decision changed my life.

Those early Navy years saw me stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, and Saratoga Springs, New York. I met Jannett in February 2003, and we married six weeks later. I was stationed in Groton, Connecticut, on the submarine USS CONNECTICUT (SSN 22). David was born the following year. Following this initial sea tour, we moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2006 for a shore tour at Submarine Development Squadron Five. Anamaria was born the following year, and our family unit was complete.

While on shore duty, I earned my Bachelor’s degree, intending to separate from the Navy to pursue a civilian career. However, the financial crisis of 2008 changed our plans. In 2009, we bought our first home, and the following year, I returned to sea duty onboard the USS SEAWOLF (SSN 21).

I was commissioned as a naval officer in May 2012 and reported onboard the USS NIMITZ (CVN 68), an aircraft carrier. We deployed for nine months, which was my most prolonged separation from my family. My Grandpa Les died in 2014, the day after my 36th birthday. He was one of my heroes, and I felt deeply his loss. 

That summer, we moved to San Diego, where my brother Marcus and I were stationed in the same geographic location for the first and only time in our careers. I was the Director of Administration for Naval Special Warfare Group One, supporting global operations, including my only deployment to a combat zone in Iraq.

Upon my return from Iraq, Jannett immediately flew to Peru. Her mother, Juana, had been diagnosed with stage four cancer and was given only months to live. Jannett was able to spend those last few months caring for her mother. Juana was a beautiful soul and my wife’s best friend.

In the summer of 2017, we moved from California to Georgia. I had been selected for an assignment to an admiralty staff, but otherwise, our lives were much the same, with kids in school and Jannett working from home. Time and life continued until everything changed with COVID.

The pandemic created isolation and loneliness across society and within the microcosm of families. Those were challenging years for everyone. As a family, we faced adversity and learned a lot about one another. In the middle of this period, we moved to rural Tennessee for my final assignment in the Navy. Despite the fact that we all received the vaccination series, all of us got sick at some point. Fortunately, we recovered, although Jannett and I both had lasting health impacts.

Those years were a whirlwind of activity and emotion, time rushing past us at the speed of life: careers, cross-country moves, births, deaths, and more. We were living in a time machine, speeding up and slowing down outside our control.

“Be happy for this moment, for this moment is your life.” - Omar Khayyam

As we age and time passes, we question what we do with our time. What are the things we value? How do we want to spend our days? What are our goals?

Throughout my career, I often neglected time with my family. This has become the most important thing for me. My wife, children, parents, and siblings must understand how much they mean to me. The only way to accomplish this is through an investment of time.

I also desire to be well-read and to live a well-lived life. What these terms mean might differ for many people. Living well means, first and foremost, being a good person and treating others the way I wish to be treated—with kindness, grace, patience, and love. It means being a good spouse and parent and contributing to society. I believe in continual self-improvement, life-long learning, and pursuing hobbies and passions that bring joy to my life.

In many ways, this boils down to what I see as my life’s purpose - I will act intentionally to establish authentic connections with others so that through our shared experiences, we transform ourselves and others into our best versions, thereby positively impacting our communities and the world.

There are as many different viewpoints on being well-read as there are on what it means to be well-lived. While reading is often a lifelong pursuit, the things we read and how they influence us frequently change during different seasons of life. Understanding that life influences what we read is as important as recognizing what we read influences how we live.

The number of books I read has waxed and waned at times. Some periods of my life were filled with genre fiction, others with history, and still others with the richness of literary fiction and classics. Reading has provided me with an avenue of self-education, providing me with diverse perspectives I could not obtain on my own.

When time is limited, selectivity is critical. Seeking the right books at the right time became integral to my reading habit. I prioritized books that helped me grow as a husband, father, and global citizen.

The summer before he started college, my son and I discussed how fast time passes, especially since my career has often taken me far from home. We both wished there was more time as we talked about careers, priorities, and life. It was quality time, which happens to be his love language. On this particular day, we didn’t stay on the surface but chose to go deep in our time with one another.

Photo by Aron Visuals

Time is a currency that cannot be replaced once spent. Unlike fictional narratives, we cannot jump into a time machine and relive the past. Though different seasons of our lives seem to pass at various speeds, we must constantly ensure that our time is well-spent.

Relationships and reading are similar in many ways. They require investments of time to produce fruit. But time is not the only factor. If we simply touch the surface in our relationships and reading, then we miss out on the treasures found deeper within. We must have the courage to explore the hidden depths of literature and life, and in doing so, we may find the path to a life well-lived.

Early in life, parents, teachers, or picking up a book and discovering the magic within play a crucial role in creating readers and instilling the foundational love for books. All the stories, adventures, histories, biographies, science, culture, poetry, and plays have stretched my mind and imagination far beyond its innate capabilities. Reading empowers us, instilling confidence and knowledge. Encouraging children to read is one of the greatest gifts of love that a parent can give and that we, as a culture, can provide.

The fine arts, particularly the written word, are a path down which we can discover the soul of humanity. They are a unique means of communicating between creator and consumer. We are allowed a glimpse of another but also of ourselves. Art is a mirror in which we are afforded the opportunity to reflect on the best and worst parts of us. What is found there? What do we do with what we see? Do we continue as we did before? Do we allow ourselves to be changed by the experience?

My challenge to you, dear reader, is to allow yourself to be changed by the things you read. Expand yourself into new and unknown things. Branch out from the safe and familiar. Read books published in other countries, written in another language, by people from a different culture. Read history and the classics. Read to learn a new skill. Read for fun. Read some poetry. Read to grow.

Until next time…