A woman who reads while she walks

How can anyone read a book while they walk? I’ve seen this woman in the Mount Avon Cemetery before, book held in one hand, eyes fixed on the page, as she winds her way through. She walks briskly, too, never looking up. I wonder if she ever tripped and landed on her face. I’m sure I would.

An avid reader

I almost hesitated to interrupt her, but she was all smiles when I asked if I could chat with her. She was reading a huge Stephen King book. Her name is Laura.

She said she’s read every King novel, but also enjoys the detective series by Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith. “Mostly those kinds of genres. I read several books at once, actually. I’ve been a big reader since the fourth grade, really. All my kids read, too,” she said, nodding proudly.

I asked why the cemetery. She said, “Well, there’s no traffic to deal with. It’s easy.”

“Yes. No sidewalk cracks, either. I suppose by now the path is pretty much mapped out in your head, so you don’t need to watch where you’re going. You kind of know what’s ahead,” I said. It’s like being on autopilot.

“Oh, absolutely.”

Laura walks in the spring, summer, fall and mild winter days. She’s been doing it for years.

“It’s not hard”

“It’s not that difficult, really,” she said, then shrugged. “I mean, I saw a woman once when I was walking here, and we started talking, and I told her she just ought to try it. It’s not hard. The next time I saw her, she was walking and reading a medical journal or something!”

A medical journal would be intense, not to mention it’s most likely a heavy book, too.

Laura is a graphic designer, but she admires people who have written a book. “That’s something I could never do. It’s an art, really.”

I mentioned I knew Jim Schaefer who writes a column called “A Few Minutes with ….”  for the Free Press, and he might be interested in her curious pastime. I mean, I don’t know anyone else who reads a book while walking through a cemetery. I bet he doesn’t either.

“Oh, no, I’m not sure I’d like that,” she said, blushing a little. In fact, she only agreed to let me write about her if the picture I took didn’t show her face.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of In the Context of Love, about one women’s need to tell her story without shame. Adult contemporary fiction

2016 Sarton Women’s Fiction Finalist
2016 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
2016 Readers Favorite Book Finalist
2016 USA Book News “Best Book” Finalist

Angelica Schirrick had always suspected there was something deeply disturbing about her family, but the truth was more than she bargained for.

“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller, Deep End of the Ocean