For several years, deep in early motherhood, I found I could not read. It was a problem that snuck up on me. My baby-rearing years were dreamlike. Naps were still a thing and both my children were inquisitive and able to entertain themselves when needed. Coming off several years of graduate school reading, I read for pleasure like an addict. But as the kids got older, my attention turned more and more to them; until having two grade school children did me in. I was working 2-3 part-time jobs, volunteering, running kids to soccer, t-ball, play practice, helping with homework, keeping up with housework. By the time the day was over, I barely had energy to lift a glass of wine to my tired lips.

When I did have time to read, it was informative books on autism, heavily peppered with euphemisms and hope: How to find local resources (that don’t exist in your rural area), how to take advantage of your child’s “unique gifts” and teach them coping mechanisms for their “shortcomings” and “quirks.” Although I haunted the library on a weekly basis, I rarely made it through a book unless it consisted of colorful pictures and kid’s stories.

But one fateful day, I took a wrong turn in the self-help section and ended up next to a national poetry month display. Hmmmm, I thought, I could read a few poems while I waited for the kids to finish T-ball practice. This could work.

And so it was that I left the library that day with my usual collection of kids’ movies and books and a collection of haiku by Jack Kerouac. The next week found me waiting in the hall during my kids’ play practice or sports practice as usual, but instead of staring at my phone and pretending to look busy and important, I was savoring three line commentaries about autumn leaves curling in the winds of death and such.

Quickly I recalled something forgotten. Good poetry is the lembas bread of literature. It doesn’t take long to read, but it takes a long time to digest. Properly prepared and served well, it sticks to your ribs – sometimes for hours, sometimes days, sometimes years. Best of all, poems have the ability to say things without really saying them, making it effective in times of censorship, and when dealing with ideas and feelings too powerful to put into words. It’s freaking magic! A good poem leads you in slyly with interesting words and images, and suddenly it’s over and you find yourself staring into the face of terrible beauty.

But back to the Kerouac book–a thick and squatty dog-eared volume. It had short pages that embraced the tiny verses lovingly with a respectable amount of white space. Two haiku staggered diagonally across each wide page. Best of all, at least two previous readers had penciled in stars or asterisks or a series of 1-3 check marks by their favorites, making it not just a book, but also a conversation. A real adult conversation about NOT kids. A conversation to which — library gods forgive me — I added my own tiny pencil marks to continue. A door had opened to a neglected room. I could read again.

I worked my way up to longer verse, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Wendell Berry, Rainer Maria Rilke, and anything else the library had in its collection that would fit in my mom-purse. From there, I clawed my way back to essays and short stories and eventually back to full-length books.

Right before taking a full-time job, I had to have foot surgery. Afraid that balancing a full-time job with family would put me in the no-reading zone again, I hit the Wooster library book sale before the surgery and read like a fiend during my convalescence.

But there was nothing to worry about. I was now an avid addict and had learned to change the shape of my reading materials to fit the spaces of my life. How good it was to be a reader once more!

And I had poetry to thank for it.

Little did I know that in the coming year, through a series of odd and fantastic circumstances, I would end up surrounded by creative writers for the next four years of my working life. I found new poets–existing poets I’d never heard of, emerging poets the world was waking up to, and I even witnessed a few beginning poets become emerging and established poets.

It’s been a strange year of mixed blessings and insight. I am so glad to have had poetry at my side this year and into the future. Thank you, poets!