The Notebook - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,72
Anna has always been my favorite. This isn’t an admission I would make to anyone, but I think Anna knows it. There’s a special bond between us. Lately, I’ve come to believe that even in her silent years, she had been fonder of me than I realized. I can still remember times when I would be working in my den, and she would slip through the door. She would wander around the room, scanning the bookshelves and reaching for various objects, but if I addressed her, she would slip back out as quietly as she’d come in. Over time, I learned not to speak, and she would sometimes sit in the office for an hour, watching me as I scribbled on yellow legal tablets. If I looked up, she would smile complicitly, as if enjoying this game of ours.
Currently, Anna is working for the Raleigh News and Observer, but I think she has dreams of becoming a novelist. In college, she majored in creative writing and the stories she wrote were as dark as her personality. I recall reading one in which a young girl becomes a prostitute to care for her sick father, a man who had once molested her. When I set the pages down, I wondered what I was supposed to make of such a thing.
She is also madly in love. Anna, always careful and deliberate in her choices, was also selective when it came to men, and thankfully Keith has always struck me as someone who treats her well. He’s a resident in orthopedics at Duke Medical School. I learned through Jane that for their first date Keith took Anna kite flying on the beach near Fort Macon. Later that week, when Anna brought him by the house, Keith came dressed in a sport coat, freshly showered and smelling faintly of cologne. As we shook hands, he met my eyes and impressed me by saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lewis.”
Joseph, our second born, is a year younger than Anna, and again, we have little in common. He’s taller and thinner than I am, wears jeans to most social functions, and when he visits at Thanksgiving or Christmas, he eats only vegetables. Like Jane, he was empathetic even as a child and he chewed his fingernails worrying about others. They’ve been nothing but nubs since he was five years old. Needless to say, when I suggested that he consider majoring in business or economics, he ignored my advice and chose sociology. He now works for a battered women’s shelter in New York City, though he tells us nothing more about his job. I know he wonders about the choices I’ve made in my life, just as I wonder about his, but despite our differences, we get along well. It is with Joseph that I have the conversations that I always wished to have with my children when I held them as infants. He is highly intelligent; he received a near perfect score on his SATs and his interests span the spectrum from the history of middle-eastern dhimmitudes to theoretical applications of fractal geometry. It goes without saying that I am often at a disadvantage when it comes to debating him, but it is during such moments that I am especially proud to call him my son.
Leslie, the baby of our family, is currently studying biology and physiology at Wake Forest with the intention of becoming a veterinarian. Instead of coming home during the summers like most students, she takes additional classes with the intention of graduating early, and spends her afternoons working at a place called Animal Farm. Of all our children, she is the most gregarious, and her laughter sounds the same as Jane’s. Like Anna, she loved to visit me in my den, though she was happiest when I gave her my full attention. As a youngster, she liked to sit in my lap and pull on my ears; as she grew older, she liked to wander in and share funny jokes. My shelves are covered with the gifts she made me growing up: plaster casts of her hand prints, drawings in crayon, a necklace made from macaroni. She was the easiest to love, the first in line for hugs or kisses from the grandparents. I was not surprised when she was named the homecoming queen at her high school three years ago.
She is kind as well. Everyone in her class was always invited to her birthday parties for fear of hurting