Meerkat Dog Rat, I Love You
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 11:03PM Jennifer
When I was little and first learned to read and write, I became obsessed with the phrase "Cat Dog Rat, I Love You." I wrote those six words constantly, both at school and in my spare time. I do not remember how or why this string of words came to mean so much to me ... only that it did. I love animals but if that were solely the reason I wrote it, surely dogs would have been named first (I am no cat person) and rats would not have figured at all on a list of only three. If the mantra were about animals I liked, mentioned in the order of their importance to me, my favorite phrase would surely have been more along the lines of Puppy Bunny Chickie, I Love You. I'm sure my choices had something to do with the difficulty I would have encountered spelling the names of animals I truly loved, so I copped out with the first one-syllable critters I could think of. Or maybe I plagiarized the whole thing from a reading primer. Wouldn't surprise me!
If I were making up that list today it would read more like, "Dog Meerkat Fainting Goat Elephant, I Love You." How about that Whiskers Gang ... pretty impressive, although I understand poor Flower -- the one who had to wear the collar -- has since died of a snake bite. Her babies are now orphans. That's what she gets for living in the South African bush country. Did you hear the narrator say that for ten years, Cambridge University has studied these little guys' daily lives and relationships? That will certainly prepare those college students for the job market! The meerkat market, maybe ... and that one researcher getting friendly with a meerkat -- was that a boy or a girl? The human, I mean ... oh well. I've watched it several times but I'm still not sure.
No matter the origin or purpose of my string of words, I loved to write them ... and read them, over and over again, silently and out loud. Reading became important to me when I was very young. My sister and I were encouraged by our parents to read instead of sitting in front of the television. We still sat in front of the television plenty, but we read a lot too. We moved a great deal, so we found ourselves in the backseat of the car for hours and days on end, and when you got tired of tormenting one another and looking out of the window, or when Mama said Be Quiet Both Of You Or I'll Smack You Good, reading became just about the last viable alternative. We had a book called The Red Balloon, by Albert Lamorisse (I had to Google it to get the name of the author), that I can still feel in my hands and smell the pages of. The story was about Pascal, a little boy who lived in Paris, France. Pascal (whose name, in my decidedly un-French mental pronunciation, rhymed inelegantly with "rascal") was visited by a beautiful red balloon which took him on a delightful adventure. I adored that book; it had a pleasantly musty odor that seemed to me to be exactly the way a street in Paris would smell. The story was made into a charming Oscar-winning film of the same title. You should see it.
I still love to read and I steal moments to read whenever I can. I have books stacked up all over my desk and on the floor and on tables beside chairs where I like to sit and read. I can't go to Barnes & Noble without buying a book, and neither can my husband. I don't know what I'd do without my books! Be sad, I guess. My husband won't read novels unless they were written by Pat Conroy, but I'm wild about all kinds of novels. I believe the first bona fide novel I ever read all the way through -- unless you count Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm -- was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and I will never forget the effect it had on me. I was 11 or 12 years old and I think I got the book at the library. I lay in the floor for hours reading it, so it must have been summertime. From page one I was blown away by poor Jane's plight ... how could Aunt Reed be so mean, to begin with, and what was up with those turkeys Eliza, John, and Georgianna? The nerve of some people! I couldn't believe it when they sent Jane to Lowood School where she got chilblains on her hands and didn't get enough to eat and was accused of being a liar, and befriended the doomed Helen. At least there was the lovely Miss Temple so everything wasn't totally awful. She persevered, did Jane, and became a teacher at Lowood, and eventually secured a "situation" as governess to flighty Adele at mysterious Thornfield Hall.
And then romance came into Jane's life, and consequently into mine, and I have never been the same. From the moment Jane met Mr. Rochester in the lane as she was coming home from the village, I knew they were going to fall in love. I had never read a gothic romance -- or any kind of romance -- but I knew they were meant for each other! I was so happy when Mr. Rochester finally proposed, and Jane put on her pretty wedding gown and bonnet (even though the crazy lady had set it on fire), and walked down that same lane to the church to become Mrs. Rochester. **SPOILERS AHEAD** And then -- oh my soul! -- someone objected to the marriage and our heroine found out that her sweetheart loved her enough to become a bigamist ... but Jane would have none of that because even though she was very much in love, she had integrity. So she ran away and met some relatives and got another proposal and turned it down and inherited a bunch of money, and eventually came back to Thornfield and married her Mr. Rochester! I was electrified with the romance of it; the last chapter still sends chills up and down my spine and one of my legs. You should read it.
Many years later I bought for my daughters all six novels written by the Brontë sisters: in addition to Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote Shirley and Villette; Anne contributed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, and Emily gave the world the incomparable Wuthering Heights (her only book). (Talk about a great film too! Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy ... 1939 ... movie heaven.) My daughters have left home but the Brontë sisters' books are still here; I have read them all but someday I plan to read them all again. Even the four lesser-known novels are very interesting. You just can't do much better than a Brontë heroine! These women are always good but never too good. They are real women whose problems are still relevant 160 years after the books were written. Charlotte Anne Emily ... and Jane, I Love You.
Reader Comments (2)
Lovely meerkats, Jen! Whenever we go to the zoo they are our second stop, as the otters take first place with their constant playing and lolling in the sun. The meerkats, although cute, are a little too serious in their daily life, always looking out for trouble and with a slightly puzzled/worried expression on their faces. The otters just want to have fun, and boy do they! They seem not to have a care in the world, or if they do, they choose not to worry about it today - very Scarlett O'Hara of them.
The Bronte sisters were pretty terrific, but it is years since I read them, so I'll take your word for it that their books stand the test of time. Maybe it's time to wander over to the library and check them out. Sure had my fill of 1950's literature at the moment, so perhaps a step back in time will do me good.
You can't go wrong with a Bronte any more than you can with an otter! Both are truly splendid.