Reading to the Mansion residents can be a test of the ego, some drift off and nod, some are off in another space. Some are wide-eyed, focused and eager.

It’s never personal. I want to cry sometimes when one of them comes up to me and grabs my hand or gives me a hug, and says, “oh, thank you for reading to us.”

Another full house, I love SRO readings, I don’t care how old the audience is.

There are peaks and valleys in my readings, often interrupted by snores or odd observations far off the mark. And sweet moments that run deep. These readings are not like the ones I was used to in my book life, most everyone in the audience was awake for an hour or so.

“Are you a doctor?,” Linda asked me on the way out, “because you should be.” No, I said, I am not a doctor, I am just me. And I should not be.

There were three beautiful moments I wanted to share with you. One was when I was reading from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s wonderful novel One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I wasn’t sure about reading this book, my favorite novel, but it is a hit at the Mansion. They love mystical and spiritual images.

I read  how the gypsy Melquiades’ came to the village of Macondo, a twenty-abode- hut town,  every year with a different miraculous new invention.

This year it was the telescope, and the gypsy let them look through it at a parrot at the end of the main road. He promised the villagers that one day, man would be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his old house.

Jose Arcadio Buendia gave Melquiades’ all of his money to buy the telescope (the previous year, he bought the magnet ingots for all of his money to prospect for gold). He had purchased the magnets thinking the new invention would make him wealthy.

Buendia perceived the telescope as a possible weapon of war, at the right angle and in the sun, it could set fire to hay hundreds of feet away. Melquiades” showed him.

Buenida’s long suffering wife Ursula wept at the certainty of another year in poverty.

The Mansion residents were wide-eyed and worried about Buendia. They were worried about him, several just shook their heads. I said he was a man of hope. “Stupidity, more like it,’ mumbled Madeline.

“Oh-oh,” said Madeline, “they should have run this guy when he first showed up.”  She was from the Bronx, she said, and she would have known better.

We’re almost through Chapter one, and I love reading it, and they love the mysticism and magic of Marquez, his narrative is very accessible to them. And to me.

The second sweet moment was when I read them  Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods On A Snowy Evening, a poem I read almost every week. In June, we are sponsoring an outing to the Robert Frost home in North Bennington, Vt. The Army Of Good is buying tickets and lunch.

The residents who are ambulatory and going were stunned to hear my speculation that Frost might have written this poem in that house, I read it to them every week. (He wrote it in New Hampshire in 1922 and won a Pulitzer Prize for it. I will tell the truth at some point.)

They want to hear more poems, and I’m bringing more next week. It is rare that something I can read to them ties so closely to something they can go out and see. Many people in the group had heard of Frost, he is thought of as a local, a Vermonter around her, some had heard the poem.

The third connection was the most surprising and the most magical. I scour Battenkill Books and used bookstores for simple but meaningful stories I can read to the residents each week. I found one such story in a children’s book called My Heart, by Corinna Luyken, who lives and writes in Olympia, Washington. I read it quietly to the residents, holding up each illustration as we went. It touched my heart, it touched theirs.

The story is a poem about the heart narrated by a young unnamed girl. The illustrations are haunting and beautiful:

“My heart is a window, my heart is a slide.

My heart can be closed, or opened up wide,

Some days it’s a puddle, some days it’s a stain.

Some days it is cloudy, and heavy with rain.

Some days it is tiny…

But tiny can grow…

and grow…

and grow. 

There are days it’s a fence between me and the world,

day’s it’s a whisper than can barely be heard.

There are days it is broken,

but broken can mend,

and a heart that is closed can still open again.

My heart is a shadow, a light, and a guide.

Closed or open…

I get to decide.”

There was not a sound to be heard in the room, except for one resident snoring. Those awake and alert – almost all – especially loved the ending.

They  wanted me to read it again, and next week. There was a lot of feeling in the room, much of it unspoken. “What an amazing young girl to have written that,” said Madeline quietly. I explained the story was about a young girl, but the woman who wrote it was older, and had two cats.

We are used to some snoring in the reading hour.

Then I read about Maud,the 88-year-old murderer from Sweden, who removes bad people from the world, and feeds the detectives dinner as they investigate. They never can accept her as a suspect.

One of her victims was lying in a pool of blood beneath her dining room table while she explained to the police that she had been away on vacation, and was surprised to come back and find him there.

Must be awful for you to have seen that, Maud, said the police inspector, sipping some tea. There, there.

I also read them a story about a baby-sitter from out of space, and this sparked a lively discussion about whether aliens from another planet, should they land, be greeted warmly or with guns drawn.

Madeline seemed to win the day suggesting they be greeted warmly, but with guns nearby if needed. I told her they called it Trust But Verify.

We didn’t get to Shel Silverstein’s poems, which they love to hear, but I did read the Wonky Donky, a favorite. Next Thursday I’ll be reading again.

(If you wish to support my work at the Mansion, please consider contributing to this work via Paypal, [email protected] or by check, Jon Katz, Mansion Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Thank you.)