reading is like breathing | Bertram's Blog

Fun? Me?

January 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Daily writing prompt

List five things you do for fun.

Five things I do for fun:

Yep, that’s right — I don’t do anything for fun, don’t even know how to have fun. Even as a kid, I didn’t know how to play let alone have fun. I used to like paper dolls, but after I did the work to cut out the clothes and tried them on the dolls, that was it. I never knew what to do with them afterward. I remember once I spent hours building a small town out of paper, complete with houses and streets, but since I didn’t know what to do with it, I let my younger siblings play with my creation while I sat and watched.

(Apparently, I was born with that trait. My mother often told the tale of baby me and how my eleven-month older brother would play with my toys, and as long as he stayed by my playpen so I could watch, I was content.)

To be honest, I don’t even know what fun is, so I had to look it up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, fun is “light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment”.

Boisterous joviality and merrymaking are not part of my makeup. I am quiet, the one sitting back and letting other people get rowdy or drink too much or “party” (whatever that is). On my twenty-first birthday, I went to a bar in Central City with a friend for my first drink, but she dragged a friend of hers along. I sat and watched the two of them get raucously drunk. Finally, I went up to the bar and started talking to the owner. Even though he didn’t know it was my birthday, he seemed to feel sorry for me, especially as all I did was order a soft drink. At one point he asked me if I wanted to see his new icemaking machine and I said yes. I know what you think: “Hey, want to come up and see my etchings?” But no. He was thrilled with his new machine, and wanted to show it off. So typical of me! (Typical, too, that I had to drive those two drunks home, stopping periodically so they wouldn’t mess up by new car with their retching.)

I read a lot, but for me, reading is not a “light-hearted pleasure or enjoyment.” I’m not sure it’s even enjoyment. It’s more of a thing I do the in the same way I breathe — as a necessity, a mechanical act that keeps me alive, something that supports calm, and keeps me centered. It’s just what I do. Sometimes, if the book is not particularly stimulating, I let my conscious mind follow the story while my subconscious deals with whatever problems I might have, or even deconstructs the story to see what the author did.

I also like to learn, but that fits in with the whole “reading” thing.

As for entertainment: the last time I had a television (until I moved here to my permanent home, I rented a room in a house that came with a television), I decided to watch Hallmark movies. I figured I’d never spring for television programming, so it would be the last time I had a chance to watch those movies. So I did. But for me, it wasn’t entertaining so much as a study in how to put together a Hallmark movie. So much time for an introduction. So much time until the meeting. So much time for the characters to get to know each other. At exactly what time the big breakup/misunderstanding occurs. And finally how long for the happily ever after ending.

Despite being a rather quiet and serious person who spends most of her time alone, I still do like to laugh and chat with friends, but sometimes days pass without my seeing anyone, especially in winter. (Sometimes it takes more mental energy than I have to make the effort. Luckily, my friends make the effort for me.) In the summer, when I am out working in my yard (again, not really fun for me, though I do like seeing the results of my work) I often visit with neighbors across the fence, in the alley, or in the middle of the street depending on where those neighbors live.

A friend posted on her blog that instead of making New Year’s resolutions or intentions, she’d heard of a different way to start the year: pick a word to be a theme for that year. Sounds nice. Maybe I should choose “fun”?

But no, if resolutions tend to set us up for failure, then trying to live up to a word that is not in my nature would set me up for even more failure.

I suppose not being “fun-loving” is something I should worry about, but I’ve lived this long without being able to list five things I do for fun, so I suppose I can live my remaining years the same way. And anyway, I’m contented, which should count for something.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, books, life. Tags: dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1826, don't know how to have fun, having fun, reading is like breathing, twenty-first birthday, what is fun. 8 Comments »

Connecting to the Past

December 28, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I grew up with a hand-me-down life — most of the clothes I wore were hand-me-downs from a much older, much shorter, and much thinner cousin, which, as you can imagine, gave me a bad body image way before such things were fashionable. (It’s funny to think that people don’t do that anymore — hand down clothes — except perhaps for baby clothes. Instead, we donate garments that no longer please us to the various world-wide thrift stores, and end up destroying the cloth and clothing industries in the very areas that need such industry.) I probably sound ungrateful, but truly, back then I was glad for such “new” clothes, even if they had to be altered to fit me.

I also got my cousin’s outgrown books, which did a lot to counter whatever harmful connotations her clothes might have had. Then, as now, I read in the same way I breathe — inhaling without thinking. It’s just what I do, what I have done from the moment I learned how to read. (I know there must have been a time when I didn’t know how to read, but I don’t remember such a time, nor do I remember learning to read. It’s as if I truly have always read.)

Those books from my cousin were the staple of my early life. I went to the library often during the winter and every day during the summer, but during the times I couldn’t get library books, such as when I was sick, I reread my hand-me-down books. I also read my parents’ books they kept on the bookhselves in the room we called the library. This library was a separate room from the living room, and had shelves for books, my mother’s desk, and the chiming clock that formed part of the soundtrack of my early life. (I even read some of my mother’s old nursing textbooks, and will never forget the garish photos of various organs and diseases. I still have nightmares about the smallpox picture.)

I had most of the Judy Bolton series back then. I don’t remember getting rid of them, but I must have cleared them out during a move at some point. Still, I remember those books with the mottled pink cover (the Nancy Drew covers were the same, only they were blue) as if I’d seen them just the other day.

The point of all this nostalgia is that I found a few of the books on the Gutenberg Project website. I certainly hope the site is as they claim, that these books are in the public domain, because I downloaded the few Judy Bolton’s that I could. And now I am reading them.

I’ve always known that books connect us to the others who have read them, a much deeper connection than from writer to reader. I’ve known that certain books connect us to the ages — to the people long dead who also read those very stories.

What I didn’t realize until rereading these Judy Bolton books is how books can connect us to our past selves.

Although I don’t remember the stories so much, I remember the characters, the feel of the stories, and the feel of the books themselves. And I remember reading them.

I’m holding a Nook in my hand instead of the hard back book, but the words are the same. And I feel . . . timeless. The person I am today is reading the same book I last read fifty years ago. It seems miraculous. The older person who lived so much during the intervening years — loving, sharing, grieving — is, through these familiar words, connected to that girl child who could only dream and hope of a life that was to come.

I imagine there will come a time, perhaps fifteen to twenty years from now when I am elderly and frail and rereading these books, that I will look back to me on this day and think the same of this me as I think of that little girl me — that I was young and still full of hopes and dreams.

I imagine I will think back to all that has connected me to myself through the years, and I will be grateful for all breaths I took and all the books I have inhaled.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator