Final Post: A Story about Preteen Dystopian Novels, Time, and Phone Calls

  It was a wicked hot September day, about two weeks after my annual trip to see my grandmother in Florida. Typically a Labor Day excursion, my mother, brother, and father (if he was available) would fly down to sunny Jacksonville to celebrate my and my grandparents' birthdays. My birthday fell just before my grandmother's, and my grandfather followed less than a week after (the third, fourth, and ninth, respectively). That year I gifted my grandmother my most recent read and the next book in the series that we were reading together: Catching Fire. And my grandfather anticipating this got us both the following installment Mockingjay. When I read The Hunger Games (a little bit after the hype but before the movie), I told my grandmother about it on the phone. A few weeks later she was asking my mother for the title and author so that she could read it herself. We chatted about the book over the phone, as she read she would complain about the violence, swoon at the love story, and remark about Katniss’ strength as a character. I waited for her to read Catching Fire so that we could read Mockingjay together.

I was sitting on the phone in my kitchen, bouncing between the counter space and the back porch to talk about the final line of Catching Fire. “Katniss, there is no district 12.” Truly a line that had preteen girls in a chokehold, scrambling for the bright blue book that reacted to that sentence. Preteen girls and my grandmother. “OH EM GEE” she would exclaim. And I would giggle excitedly and listen to what she thought would happen in the next novel. Staring out into the warm September sun. 

    It's now about a decade later. My grandmother passed away five years ago now. We had just finished reading A Tale for the Time Being. I am sitting at my desk looking out the window, watching students climb the hill outside Campion towers, and working on my first presentation for this class. My mother calls me. We talk for a little bit, I tell her I’m working on a project for class. She asks me what I’m reading. I tell her about Nao, Ruth, and Jiko. The little moments that we’re meant to savor. The Buddhist philosophy that centers the novel. My mother, with a smile dripping from her voice says. “Maybe I’ll read it. What's the name of the author again? What’s it called?” Suddenly I’m a preteen again, talking to my grandmother on the phone. Telling her about my recent read. The past rushes in and hits me like a sucker punch. My voice broke on the phone. I answer my mom as best as I can, suddenly feeling like a little girl. My mom doesn't catch the sudden bend in time as I answer her. Yet it's all I can think about as I look up from my desk and into the warm September sun.

Time didn’t make me forget those long conversations on the phone, discussing the great literary masterpieces of preteen dystopian novels. But it did suppress those little moments into the roots of my subconsciousness. Those little moments. The ones I hardly recognized as special, now mean the world to me. It’s almost like reading A Tale for the Time Being made me consciously aware of those roots, the branches, the leaves. Every part of my day has a moment that is worth appreciating. Even if it is good or bad, it is so nice to recognize it, give that moment power, and move on. My grandmother’s passing made time stop for me. It still feels a little wrong not to have her presence in my life but, I now have a greater appreciation for the time we did share together. The good, and the bad. I wish I could tell her about A Tale for the Time Being because I know she would have enjoyed it. I don’t think she would have entirely understood the Buddhism aspects, but she would get sucked into Nao’s story just like Ruth. She would have loved the dream, the changing things in the past to change the future, the mystery of it all. Although trying to get her concept of time to change as a whole might be difficult, I think she would agree with me that things are bendy and more flexible than we once believed. She would stick her nose in that book, find a kindred spirit with Ruth, and want to chat about it nonstop.