Speaking of Avonlea...

My in-laws visited from Kansas last week (hence the long gap between this post and the last).  My mother-in-law, Betsy, volunteers at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store, where she is in charge of books.  That means that she handles all incoming used books, sorts them, and often pulls some out that she will buy as gifts.  (Yesss...)  One of my Easter gifts from her was an old hardcover copy of Anne's House of Dreams, the fifth book in the eight-volume series by L.M. Montgomery.  I was so excited when she handed it to me that I think I have to hang my head and use that tired cliche, "squealed with delight," to describe my response.  Betsy was apologetic about the age of the copy, but I love it more for that.  I don't know what happened to my copies of the Anne books, but thanks to Betsy my collection is slowly regenerating.  This particular volume has a brown cover, brown pages, and a lovely illustration--just one--on the first page, all in color.  It shows Anne in a pink dress, standing on a hill with Green Gables in the background.  She's bidding farewell to her old home before her marriage to Gilbert (which, not coincidentally, is the name of my cat, the one I lived with during my brief time as an independent single woman with her own apartment).

I flipped through the book and saw names of characters I had forgotten.  Some of them jogged my memory; others did not.  It made me realize how lazy I've become in my relationship with these dear old stories.  I've seen the Kevin Sullivan film versions several times (the first two, anyway; the third I couldn't finish even once...blech), and I guess I thought that counted as staying in touch with Avonlea, but there is too much left out: Polly's Place, Gog and Magog, Ruby Gillis' death, Paul Irving, and several others whose names I can't even recall but who I know are important (the twins Marilla and Anne adopt, the first two men who propose to Anne, and so on).

I really feel toward Anne as I do those friends whom I have never stopped loving but with whom I've allowed myself to lose contact over the years.  In my busyness and self-absorption I've convinced myself, perhaps, that they know I love them and that I'm here and I think of them.  But that's just a pleasant little self-deception, after all.  True friends may always be together in spirit, as Anne says to Diana (in the film; I don't know whether that line is in the book or not, further evidence of my sloppy fanhood), but kindred spirits know that while the two-disc movie version may be all right some of the time, once in a while we have to be willing to sit down with all eight volumes and dive back in again.