I imagine she thought she was introducing us to something new when Ms. McCarty assigned us the book Lord of the Flies. She had underestimated the previous hour we had spent with the senior boys in the gymnasium, playing (barely surviving) a game of dodge ball. Still, it was nice to be seen, to have some affirmation as I sat dazed in the front row, with the word Voigt tattooed across my forehead.
I suppose I’ve always been looking. In the books. Not only to see myself in the situation of the characters, but the authors. Right from the start, I was Beezus. I was Ramona the Pest. I was Beverly Cleary. I was the dancing of words on the page. Because if the simple arrangement of words could change the story, why couldn’t I do that in real life — simply move the words around.
Books made everything possible. All that randomness of words on the page. Of lives being lived. Anything could happen at any time, pain, happiness, confusion, even love.
Oh, I’m still often dazed, but for much better reasons. As I Hemingway the streets of Paris, or when we connect with the words beneath my fingers — when our stories gather us in, on today’s new page.
My mother wasn’t one to swim, but she made sure that I learned. And right along with it she taught me how to take a DIP — how to access the Dream In my Pocket. “You never know when you’re going to need it,” she explained. So before anything ended, we made sure our pockets were filled. Before making a return trip home, a new trip would be planned. After an event, we’d plan our outfits for the next one. And one of the most important, in the last pages of a current book we would add to our “To Be Read” pile.
I finished “Killers of the flower moon” yesterday. Within hours, I went to my TBR. I had purchased these two books about a week ago. I chose Paul Auster’s “The New York Trilogy,” because he had recently passed. I had only planned on getting this one, but on my way to the counter I saw the book, “The Details,” by Kira Josefsson. I had just listened to a podcast about it on my morning walk, so I grabbed that book too. They both waited patiently by my bed.
I was tired last evening. I had taken my actual first dip in our pool. This summer’s dream was officially out of pocket! The water that may have been splashed onto the lawn was replaced with smiles.
Getting ready for bed, I randomly grabbed the top book, “The Details.” I wasn’t even six pages in, when the magic outshined the lamp clipped onto the pages. The character in the book began talking about her love for reading, specifically for her love of the author Paul Auster. My heart giggled. She went on, her favorite book was “The New York Trilogy.” You just can’t make this stuff up!
I’ve always trusted the readers, and the dreamers. My mother gave me that. Perhaps these pockets were filled from heaven. I don’t know, but I slept in the knowledge that I was still surrounded by magic. And I will take a luxurious dip in all of it, every chance I get!!!
“In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma… In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms… The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage… refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.” David Grann
We didn’t study the Osage, or perhaps I would have thought it was May, the “cruelest” of months. No, at Central Junior High, Mr. Rolfsrud had us studying T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, touting “April” as the cruellest month.” Maybe we were too young to understand either one — the cruelty of April or May. We, barely into living our collective Februarys, still believed in all things good. All things possible.
I’m reading Killers of the Flower Moon now. I’m a bit embarrassed to come to it this late, but I am here, now, learning. Maybe that’s all any of us can do. I am but a tiny bloom, for sure. And while some may find that terrifying, I see it as a yearly victory. Resilience. There are parts of me that have been trampled by the largest of Susans, but I’m still here. And each time, there comes a decision, bloom again or stay buried. I choose bloom. May we all choose bloom.
As we keep springing forward, maybe it becomes easier to see. (I hope. I pray.) Empathy reveals our constant struggles and beauty. We’re only asked to keep growing. To not be trampled by the understanding, but set free.
The sun begins to warm our spring day. The cool of early morning offers my heart just a hint of February, and I still believe.
“And each time, there comes a decision, bloom again or stay buried. I choose bloom. May we all choose bloom. “
We got a new refrigerator yesterday. I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that it’s the most beautiful fridge in the world. My very favorite. It is shiny and clean, and it works! Sure, it doesn’t have all the “bells and whistles” – to be honest, I’m not even certain what that would include. But I’m in love with it. The rack that holds the water bottles – how could anything be so magnificent? It’s ours. And it’s my favorite.
I hold that feeling as I climb the stairs to begin my daily routine. The first of which is to practice my French. I have found a new website that offers up random questions that you can discuss. Today’s question was “Who is your favorite author, and why?” In my office, I am surrounded by books. I love to read. I love writers. I love words. To Kill a Mockingbird sits right behind my head. It is glorious. I remember the first time I read it, and the last (which won’t be the last). Ernest Hemingway rests beneath it, reminding me “there would always be the spring.” There is Elizabeth Strout who so elegantly takes me back to Maine. Joan Didion who inspires me daily. George Saunders. Joyce Carol Oates. Virginia Woolf who challenged me. And John Kennedy Toole who made me laugh out loud by myself. I won’t go through every book and author — there are just too many. And I love them all. But the question lingers, and I think about each word of it. It isn’t who wrote your favorite book. The question is, who is your favorite author. To which I answer, it’s me. Hold on, hold on, hold on… not so fast to judge me… let me explain.
I am not the best writer. I look up to all the authors that I have mentioned and more! So many more. I envy the perfect words they choose – in the perfect order. They are magnificent. And I haven’t sold the most books. I won’t be on everyone’s best seller list. Most people won’t even know my name. No, I am not the best writer. But I will tell you this. Writing has always been my comfort, my joy. I have told you from the age of five, I began writing and drawing. No matter what I was feeling, I would go into my room and put it down on paper. Words have always saved me — from the darkest of times, and they have rejoiced with me in the brightest. They have held me. They have lifted me. And so I write. Every day. And I love it. So, yes, I am my favorite author. I would hope the same for all, with everything!!
I have to believe I am living with the best husband. That I have the best mother. That I am living my best life. (And I have the best refrigerator). Otherwise, what am I in this for??
I want you to be in love with your life. As I have said before, Do something you love. Be someone you love.
Good morning, my friends. Welcome to the day — it just might be my (your) favorite!
We lost a good writer this week — Joan Didion. But I take comfort in the fact that we didn’t lose the words. They will be here, as long as we need them. She wrote with such a clarity, even in times of complete distress. She wrote of the hippies, and drug culture in California. She wrote of losing her husband. Her daughter. She says, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.”
One of my favorite titles was her book, “Slouching towards Bethlehem.” She took this title from the poet Yeats — “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Didion stands in the same position as Yeats’s narrator, describing a social disaster of her time, feeling the center starting to give out.
The “rough beasts” seem to surround us still, and always. But sometimes it feels they are doing a lot more than slouching. So I look to my center. To hold me. And I find it in the words. The words in poems. In books. In songs. The words that gather in my heart and spill to the page each day. I find it in the ones I love. Standing tall. Standing beside. Ever upward. Whenever I need them.
This is my core. My center. I believe it will hold. I tell myself today’s story. And I live.
One day in the late 1930’s a boy came up to his librarian and she suggested the he read about King Arthur. The boy replied, “Aw, I don’t want to read about kings. I want to read about human beings.” The librarian, Miss Beverly Bunn, knew what the boy meant. As a child she had felt the same way – she was sick of reading “wealthy English children who had nannies and pony carts or poor children whose problems were solved by a long-lost relative turning up in the last chapter. Beverly wanted to read stories about the sort of children she knew.”
This was the beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary. I did not google this information. I researched her in our University Library. I will sound old, perhaps, but consider me lucky. I was born before google. I was born when you had to go across campus, in the winter, (oh dear, this is almost sounding like one of those I walked a mile to school every day stories, but stay with me), look for your book titles in the card catalog, in other books. Find the aisle. Run your fingers across the shelves. Grab your book with delight, grateful that it wasn’t already checked out. Do this over and over. Then go to a silent table and read. Yes, read. You had to read complete books, not just a blurb spit out by a computer. Sometimes you would read an entire book, and realize it just led you to another book. But what a glorious gift. The smell of the leather, and slight must of the pages. The silence all around. You could feel the power of the words.
And so I researched Beverly Cleary. The assignment was to write about an author who had a great influence on you as a child. And she did. Every Wednesday, at Washington Elementary, the year after I had finished the Cowboy Sam series, and before I started the Little House on the Prairie books, I read Beverly Cleary. They lived on Klickitat Street, Henry Huggins, Beezus,Ramona (the pest), Henry’s dog Ribsy, the neighbor Scooter. You could say they lived in a world where nothing was special, but in that, I thought everything was special. The Huggins home was as real as the Norton home to me. As real as my VanDyke Road. It was a neighborhood I visited every week.
Perhaps the best gift that an author can give you is a glimpse of yourself. When you see a reflection of yourself, you see possibility. You see hope. And you begin to see yourself, just a little bit more.
On my returned assignment, the professor wrote, “Perhaps you should think of doing some professional writing yourself!” An exclamation point. For me! I had been punctuated.
No one should be denied a chance to live on Klickitat Street, or VanDyke Road. So I write.
