Whisked Away by Books

I wrote recently of my hope to re-visit favorite books, and (though the weather changed, and a friend stopped by, and one new client project started while another ended) I've stayed the course. Rediscovering the crystalline pleasures of When the Emperor was Divine, for example, Julie Otsuka's slender novel about the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s. Five voices tell this tale in five exquisite chapters—the mother who discovers the evacuation orders, the daughter observing her disappearing world, the son who wanders about the internment camp, the son and daughter (a magnificent 'we') upon returning to a battered home in a prejudiced world, and the father who had been taken from them all much earlier. Five chapters. The cresendo of simple sentences. The power of quotidian detail. A book that every person should read—young adults especially. I was not disappointed in my return to this book. I wondered where Julie Otsuka, trained as a painter, might be now, what she is writing.

Yesterday I re-read Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, another narrow, artful volume, this one by Harriet Scott Chessman. The story of the painter, Mary Cassatt, and her sister, Lydia, dying of Bright's disease and serving as Mary's muse and model. A simple story, simply told—where plot is what a dying woman chooses to love, and how she helps her sister let her go. Excerpts from historic correspondence webbed right into the dialogue, the narrative. These final words: I yearn to be simply present in this day, filled for the moment with color and shape, my own hand urging the needle through the silk.

Today I'll take a new book on the train with me—Andrea Barrett's multi-voiced historical novel The Air We Breathe. Later in the week I'll be reading one classic I've never read (forgive me), Brideshead Revisited, and this weekend, while en route to San Antonio for the ALAN panel, I'll be reading John Berger's From A t0 X: A Story in Letters. All three books picked up at the local bookstore on Sunday, as part of my pledge to buy books and more books through this economic downturn.

Rare to find myself with this tunnel of reading time. Grateful for the whisking away, always.

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Happy Halloween

If you remember me blogging about the impeccable John Bell and his "Mikado" earlier in the week, you'll remember that I made mention of his beautiful and talented wife, Andra, who happens to be the star dancer in our ballroom studio, but not only that, she's gracious and smart and thoughtful and works as a reading specialist by day. She's the one who's making sure that children will be able to navigate, to enjoy, to look forward to the books they'll find all through their lives, the stories that wait for them. She's the kind of person for whom all of us writers should be grateful.

Andra also writes terrific emails, and last night she brought me up to speed on the costuming plans where she works. Think of a nurse masquerading as a Miss Diagnose. Think of the male principal, Miss Chief. Think of the literacy coach, Miss Understood. Then put tiaras on their heads and sashes across their shoulders, and this will be school in one part of the world today.

We teach children how to grow up every day. It's a rather grand thing when children teach us to stay young.

Later tonight I'll be tangoing with my husband at the studio, holding my breath through our first spotlight number alone. After two plus years trying to learn ballroom separately, we're forging a path through song together. I don't really care how it goes, what mistakes get made. I care only that we're trying.

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