In this together

The thing I miss most is being able to go. Go to the store, to the airport, to a meeting, just away.
That lost time where I hold coffee and boarding pass in one hand while I reach for the wallet in my handbag to pay for the cereal bars I always stock at home and forget to pack. Will I remember the moves to this shuffle when I fly alone next? I miss browsing paperbacks with no intent to buy. The ability to touch new spines, new words, new spaces in the minutes before we lift weightless into blue sky.

This is what I miss, the time I stayed up all night answering emails and doing laundry before getting on a flight to see my parents. That time we took vacations on a whim. This going to the airport, dropping the rental car off, the hiss of the shuttle bus as the doors close and we go. Go toward home, anywhere. Go wash dishes, leave them to drip-dry on the black granite of my mother's counters. Go away from here.

And in lieu of that we are here. Here in this strange place of indeterminate time where people drop like flies. Where I worry that my parents must wash their own dishes and worry if the neighbors go in to help. Fear if you touch the wrong potato at the grocery store. Hope that me staying home, you staying put, this whole planet of us halted in a collective freeze dance to the tune of love will keep them safe, these places and people and hearts so far beyond where any flight will take us now.

This universal exercise in holding still. Learning to make like a tree, rooted where we are planted, we grow things. One friend's sourdough smells like old socks but will make beautiful bread, she says. Another sows cilantro for the first time. We notice sparrow song and where the cobblestones in the backyard dip to make a puddle where my daughter's rainboots fit. She hops and hops and lifts against the air until she is breathless.

We dig deep, into ourselves and earth and pantry and couch and all these places we hope will be safe. Strongholds where we can burrow, grow, emerge stronger collectively. Stay, we say. Stay home. Stay safe. Stay still. Stay strong. Stay well. Perhaps if we dig deep enough these illusions of home and wellness and strength will flourish within our planted, stationary selves. Perhaps this is how notions of home evolve from visions of cheery warmth into the jagged, frayed, sticky truth of family that never leaves no matter how far you go. Perhaps this is how love branches across the distant world, the way leaf tip never touches root and yet is always connected. Perhaps this is how we learn how we are all together, always. Even when I go, I stay. Even when I am here, I am there.

(Five months into the 2020 pandemic)

Pipe dreams

My breath catches on the smoke-filled air of Delhi today, a city I haven't returned to in nearly twenty years. In 2014, I remember what one person's victory felt like: the smell of burning tires. The cold metal bars on the locked gates of our apartment complex. A tall, dark barrier that kept me safe. The bars were easy to grasp, a support I could lean on as I looked out beyond. But they didn't block out the night air, or the sound of broken glass, or the stories of friends who slept with home-made bombs by their pillows.

We all agree this needs to end. But no one will stop until they're proved right. Here, two thoughts from more lucid minds:

1. "When there is a battle between right and right, a value higher than right must prevail. And that value is life itself." (Israeli novelist Amos Oz).

2. "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." (David Mitchell, in Cloud Atlas).

Otto Frank and countless other survivors forgave their captors after the Holocaust. They lived horrors and moved beyond them. Here, we kill and maim in the name of blood spilled so long ago it's the dust beneath our feet. In the fight of right and right there is no end to vengeance. But there is another way, if only we're willing to listen to other possibilities.

So yes, I dream of forgiveness and kindness and stuff my pipe with words of peace. I speak for kindness. I think of impossible things each day: that blood remain encased in skin. that no houses burn.  With each breath I stand for equality. I pray that these  wisps of air traverse the impossible distance between here and there.

Metta meditation

It's funny how people in movies struggle with the words I love you. The hardest three to me are these: You hurt me. They're the ones I don't say when I snap. The ones that get tucked under snarky jokes, pointed opinions, my calling out your behavior. I suspect I'm not alone in this. And perhaps this is why I find it somewhat easy to forgive--or at least recognize--it in others. When you lash out, there's a chance it comes from a place that has nothing to do with whatever exchange we're having in the moment.

Tending to another person's visible wounds is obvious, instinctive. These cuts, though, are mine. They sting and make me coil away from the people that rendered them. I don't call even when I know I should. I don't want to pretend nothing's wrong when your words still hurt. We laughed them off, and to them it's forgotten.

To me, it's a lifetime of hearing that I didn't matter all that much, wasn't noticed. Who wants to be told, after all, that their childhood--that time in life when people are the most lovable--was almost entirely overlooked? (Your daughter really reminds me of your brother. You? Hmm, we don't remember anything about you honestly. She's just like you when she cries, does that help?) Ask my brother, and he'll tell you a different story. I was spoiled, never corrected, never told what to do. (Though maybe the freedom that comes from being overlooked is a kind of spoiling, a chance to grow ignored and unfettered. Parenting thoughts for a different day.)

But I digress. These comments have flown at me through the years. The specifics don't matter. I realize these are universal problems. Or non-problems. Each of us, my family included, have their own stories of hurtful words flung at them. In the big world, these things are trivial. I know I am loved in some way. I know I can go home to them. I can be kind to them. How do I deal with the words though?

You might say I should let them slide. But they slide under my skin and wedge there like thorns. Every move pricks with the reminder that I am insignificant, unnoticed. If I pluck them out, where do I put them? They can't be returned, for they'd only hurt the people who said them instead. They can't be unharnessed to fly into the world out of context, where they'd be turned into caricature or cliche in some comedian's skit about Indian parents.

I could hold them here in my skin, let time stitch scars over them and make the hurt my own. Trouble is, I don't want to be that person who holds these things as part of my story. I may have been unnoticed, but I choose to believe I was loved. I want to be kind to myself. Pick the barbs out, soothe flesh and stanch blood. I want to pick the phone up and call them without hiding hurt. I want to practice metta. But I don't know how.

I turn the word over in my mind. Loving-kindness. Metta, over and over until it morphs into other things. The words for earth in Hindi. Earth where you can bury anything: thorn, seed, carcass. Not everything grows in the earth. Most turns to soil. Hidden, unnoticed, it all turns to mud. Perhaps this is how I learn to be kind to myself. Yes, I am hurt. Your comments hurt me. I will let them sink deep, rest untended. In time they will crumble. Sentences will become words, letters, shapes, squiggles, until they lose all meaning, until they are no more than rich new earth.

Affirmation

6:30 am in mid-September means dawn is grey-black, sluggish like my body. Yesterday a friend 12 years older than I commiserated over email about how our limbs cling to weight as we age.
What is it that makes it hard to let go?

I think about this when I pull clumps of hair out the drain, wrap strands gathered off the floor around my fingers, a few grays mixed in now. I was born with a single gray hair -- a sign of great intelligence, or that my mother loves me deeply. Or just the obvious, that our bodies were never perfect. The rest of this mane was once a source of pride, my connection to Jo March and writerly ambitions and independent womanhood growing up. Now I ignore the grays on the floor and my scalp. They're part of what remains -- and the loss of each strand, black or gray, is muted yet present.

I think about this as I step into my daughter's room. She refuses to sleep there, so we moved her bed into ours. This room with its pink pom-poms on the ceiling, stacks of toys and books on the walls is mine for now. The cotton-ball bunny she made at daycare for Easter is still clipped on a string, googly eyes watching my neck, arms, legs, creak through these morning stretches.

It's easier than usual to focus today, though harder than it used to be. I think about what to pack for her lunch. Bring my attention back to the crick in my neck when I lean. I didn't realize my right calf was tight. The left hip pain I thought was gone is still here, pushing through when I dip into the first bend of the day. I face the east, the sky lightens. The neighbor's tree blocks their view of me. I wonder if they planted it for this privacy. I wonder if the girl who grew up in this room leaned out this window at night and watched the moon.

Bring my attention back. Lift my feet against the wall, invert into a shoulder stand. I've never felt my shoulders shake like this before. I cannot do another inversion. What am I afraid of? There is no one to see me fall, a carpet to soften the landing. But heart and body refuse to release something, and today is not my day to float on my fingers.

What is my intention here? Yoga instructors love affirmations. But my mind is on full moons and little girls and Friday the 13th and remembering how my 70-year-old father lifts his hips effortlessly into a shoulder stand and once-upon-a-time-dances and no, I cannot find a positive thought to focus on.

There is only this. This racing breath in a lightening room and this body that bends. Creaking, fearful, but still moving. And for today, this is affirmation enough. That my limbs and lungs still move air, and over and over with each movement we make breath, and making breath is making life.
And if life itself can be made anew each instant, what is there to hold on to? What is it we fear to let go?

Listen, just listen

When the two-year-old says she's missing her friends from her old school. When she says she doesn't want to go to school. When she says she's upset that mama has to go to work. When she cries even as her new teacher hugs her.

I miss them. I'm upset. I'm sad. I was naughty. 

I can hold her entire body in my arms, but her words stretch the edges of my heart. I fumble and stutter. I know you miss them, but we had to move because you needed to learn new things. It'll get better. You know mama always comes for you, don't you? But you like Miss R. She looks away and goes quiet, and I know it's still on her mind. I wonder what her teens will be like. And recall writing in my diary as a fifteen-year-old words I could never get my mother to understand: Listen, just listen. Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me why. Don't tell me to get over it.  Just listen. Tonight, I'll try just that, with my old voice and hers.

Book, marked.

Embrace.
Tent.
Knife.
Light.
Mile marker.
Foothold.
Straw.
Tattoo.

- A swift sampling.
Stories are more than words.
The things we make with words grow beyond themselves.
They take flight, slice wounds, wrap hearts safe.
If your words formed a sculpture, what shape would they take?
If your story were an animal, would it stomp, hop, or run?
What song would keep pace with its rhythm?

Simple time

Last December the curry leaf plant shoved a new sprig out in our massive hallway, but it shriveled soon after. I've swept a small shrub's worth of leaves off the floor in the months since. Each day it looks a little sicker. Today, though, its browning leaves seemed a touch brighter when I moved the blinds. The little Monstera has a new leaf. Daffodils I forgot in the car two days ago decided to open up anyway.

Surrounded by brick and drywall, encased in plastic, far from tropical warmth and the invisible rhythm of the spinning planet, plants still keep time to the seasons. This is houseplant magic: A promise that like the plants, we who live by alarms and in too-bright nights can still keep wordless, peaceful pace with the world beyond.

Claiming ground

The snow still falls, all day sometimes. But the earth is warm, and green sprouts are pushing out, and the cold melts to slake their thirst. Our first daffodil bloomed the day before the last round of snow. There's something unusually special about the first flower on a patch of the earth that's all your own (okay, mostly the bank's, but still, you know what I mean).

The day after, my daughter smashed a pink ball into one of my favorite plants. It destroyed a large leaf, and it might be one of the few times I've truly scolded her. She's not quite two, and still learning to be gentle. She hugged the plant and tried to stick it back. Some things aren't fixed that way, I told her.

My mother laughed when I told her this. She's the best thing you are growing, she said. But I still care about my plant! And she needs to learn, I reply. Then I hear she's struggling to sit quietly at daycare. She won't listen, they tell me. She ignores us when we tell her that if she can't sit for lunch, we'll move the chair away. She pulls a drawer out on the play kitchen and tries to climb to the top of the toy. She never sits still for class photos, her curls a flying blurry backdrop to the row of smiling faces in the messages I get.

I'm upset by this. If she can't listen, if she can't hold still, how will she learn, I wonder? How can she grow into the person I know she will be? How will her brain absorb words and facts and imagine great things? They tell me about sensory toys and hidden ADHD. She's not yet TWO, my brain yells.

A year ago she couldn't walk yet. She is finding her feet, her limbs, her voice. Let her climb. Let her fall. If it were a tree you'd be thrilled at her "exploring nature". Let her flail and yell and stomp and learn. Let her discover how she can stretch, how strong she is. Let her topple the toys, rake the earth, climb the tables, turn this strange earthly social structure we've planted her into. Let her stand and eat lunch. Let her dig and splash and watch soil turn dark as snow melts to water. Let her learn how to push her own growing tips through the spaces around her. Let her bloom.

Moving on

Because sometimes rolling like a stone is an act of artistry. To lumber past the links that annoy, the photos that trigger, the words that trip your brain into an eruption of punctuation that clamors to be turned into words. Browsing the internet-- watching friends, reading for work, researching your toddler's suspicious rash-- each tap of my fingers requires conscious, constant restraint. How do I choose when to engage?

Yesterday, a woman declaring her thrill at meeting an anti-vaxxer in a moms group that bans vaccine discussions. I stepped in, asked that her post be removed. Today, a woman writing about her experience at a strip club: she was young and didn't know where to look, unsure what to do in the presence of her male co-workers and a mid-forties mother of two. I want to ask- what relevance does the other woman's age or maternal status have to your discomfort? Are older mothers less embarrassed, less likely to be sexually assaulted? I move on. The outlet isn't one I'm interested in, though our writing group where she shared her work is. 

I don't always choose wisely. I engage more than I should, snarl more than is smart, and could afford to be kinder, online and offline. Perhaps it's the sharp sounds of my fingers on the keys, the way they strike in clacks and taps and thwacks. Would a soft-touch keypad make me kinder? In lieu of browsing Amazon or Google Scholar, I look away for a minute.

Outside the world is green and blue and sun and wind. Frost on grass flashes light like gemstones. A brown leaf taps to the rhythm of the wind, soft under the twigs of a shrub poised to bloom, come spring. The breeze is soft. There are no leaves to be ruffled. And for the span of a few minutes, it makes me less confused. There is nothing to clatter about here. No clamor to still, no outrage to quell. It's just a backyard going about the work of growth and death and the spaces between. I linger, my chaos of words and deadlines quelled in watching this patch of the planet at work.

Moving on is an act of conscious grace. Each minute a choice-- of when to move on, when to linger and engage.

Why this blog

This blog will be thirteen years old in 2019. No wonder it's been a little confused, surly and quiet around here lately. At a writing workshop this weekend, I mentioned it to a mentor who pushes me to grow in ways I didn't know I needed. 

She was full of questions I'd never fully considered: Why is it anonymous? Why isn't it invite-only, as opposed to private (something a passing onlooker might stumble on)? What do you write? Do you name people? How many readers do you have? Her asking raised more of my own: Why don't I talk to people about this blog? Why don't I polish these posts some more? Why do I keep it up, when I haven't written in months that creep into years? 

This blog is more process than product. I don't write with a reader in mind here, most times. I tweak a line here or there when I like, and leave it if I'm lazy. You're welcome to linger and read if you like. Move along if it irks you. I don't track who stops by (and at some point, I'll mess around with the template enough to remove the defunct counter on the front page). I love the care and comments of anyone who reads. But I don't want these words found by someone googling "my name + blog" because they want a peek into a private space. 

There's a sense of closure to putting the words "out there"- where isn't as important as being out--out of my head, heart, fingers. Into a format and space that's different from what I use for work. Some posts are good, some aren't. I can never be sure where a pointless ramble will lead. This blog is perhaps my version of the pathless woods. I stay away for months, visit when I feel like it, forget the woods exist until I crave them again. These trees are not timber or furniture or firewood. This is space to wander, and remember how to walk, and wonder at the feel of the world around me. 

Everything here is me trying to make sense of something in the bigger world. Sometimes I find that sense in this forest of words. 

Lucid

Luminous, bright, easy to understand. Incongruous words to describe dreams of tidal waves that crash in my mind night after night. Sometimes I'm the survivor who shouldn't have been, and the ocean wells up once more from sculpted rock to reclaim me. Sometimes we're in a building and I race to safety. Each time, water lingers in my lungs when I wake, cold clings to fingers and toes like second skin.

Luminous. The light that filters through a wall of water is anything but. Why the dreams return is a mystery. Yes, I'm aware it's just a dream, not a nightmare, and I can control what I do. But if having control of one's actions were the only requisite for understanding, how do we explain the millions of stupid things supposedly awake, lucid people do each day?

I wish there were a better word for these dreams. One I could remember and use, preferably before coffee, when my family asks why I woke up the way I did. And I wish there were bright answers to the question that drip-drips in the back of my mind all day: If I let the water take me there, what will I wake to here?

The only way out is through

Sometimes I wake up early* to work. It's when I get my best writing done. Today I sat with my coffee, and fidgeted with worry-beads of problems until I'd sorted them out in my head. Nothing to do with writing, just the stuff of life that's been getting in the way of the work that needs to get done. By 5 am--two hours after my alarm--I'd come up with the perfect solutions to two nagging issues, and about 3 sentences. But now that I've puzzled it all out, my brain is clear to write again. So, a note to myself: sometimes I need to dedicate the best part of my day to worrying, because only then can my brain get back to work. 

*Early is questionable- some consider 2 or 3 am the middle of the night. I'm not one of them. 

On being beautiful

Yesterday a particularly lovely friend and I spent a long while discussing self-care, skin care, and society's standards for women. I spent years coating my face with bleach, peels that burnt my flawed skin off, facials and creams and who knows what else. I'd do anything for good skin. Now my hands are so full they're forced away from the old scars. And I couldn't care less.

I look at my husband, and I look at our child, and I think back now and then to the times I was told I could never have this sort of love because of the marks on my skin and the size of my hips. And I hope some insecure teenager looks at my face and thinks: if she can have it, so can I. When I told her this, she said: "Aww, you're beautiful."

That's always been my reaction to her. Although we commiserate often over our skin woes, I rarely see the spots. I look at her, and I see nothing but beauty, nothing but warmth and intelligence.

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. And perhaps this is the secret to it: Surround yourself with those who see you as such, scars and all. Seek to see the loveliness in others, no matter their size. What better way to remain beautiful, inside and out?

Essays in parenting

My finger hovers over the mute button, poised to push at the hint of a scream from downstairs. It's my favorite music playing, the melody that makes me solve whatever writing mess I'm currently in. I play this when I need to push through, a musical spell that protects my working mind. Today, I hit pause for my daughter's voice. And I wonder:

If there will ever be a time so simple that I can reclaim 9:54 minutes all to myself again.
If there is a self that can be contained so neatly within this rhythm.
If my mind will always remain half broken-open to this new voice.
If clarity of thought and parenting must always be at odds.

I hit pause. After changing a diaper, I click the little arrow that circles back around. And once more I begin to try.

Arts and crafts

Some days, I find flow in writing by listening to particular kinds of music. I don't know enough about the technicalities of it to say why it works, but this much I know: that some stories need a violin concerto to set their tone, others want jazz guitar to find their way, and some need a quick hit of classic rock. I couldn't tell you the first thing about scales or notes, or why today's inspirational soundtrack was yesterday's distracting noise.

The story I'm writing now has been especially rough, tweaking and scratching and re-beginning fifty times without knowing if I'm getting anywhere. If these were days of paper and ink, this is the part where I'd be surrounded by a mountain of crumples. After 3 days of this, I realize now this isn't a story that can be fixed with the right inspiration. It needs rolled up sleeves and a worker who knows how to build from scratch, the way I do with art. Sketch with the pencil, quick outlines. Work in values, light and dark. Mark up shapes, just the rough edges. And slowly, with brush strokes a hairs-width wide, figure out the details. Make each stroke matter. Keep it lively. Step back often to look at the big picture. What is this focus of this story/ painting? This is craft, not art. It doesn't take genius, just hours of neck-cricking work. And that's a note to remember for other times, for they're sure to come.

Keeping it real

An instructor at a writing workshop asked us attendees to send in a photo "of the real you". Don't overthink it, she wrote, "just send a picture that feels authentic". I had to micro-obsess over what she meant, of course, so I looked up the etymology of the word "authentic". Turns out it stems from the ancient Greek -- "acting on one's own authority". And then I knew just which photo to pick.

Sweat the small stuff

Can you please not drive that way?
How many times in a day must I hear these complaints, unnecessary instructions or umpteen now-too-familiar descriptions of how you feel about sweets?

My voice stumbles over unexpected tears when I explain these annoyances and just like that, it is my mother's tone, the one my brother and I commiserate about when we hear it.

Is it really so hard for you to change? Can't you do this one little thing to make me happy? I hate the person I'm becoming with you.

After the words are spent and their anger quieted, their echoes splash back in my mind. Is it really so hard for me to change? I ask you to control the person you are, and yet I behave as though I have no choice in who I am, how I respond.

If you love

If you love something, set it free.

I've been hearing that cliche for more than 30 years. Last night -- for the first time -- I realized it applies just as much to loving oneself as it does to another. Imagine the possibilities, if only we could find enough self-love to set ourselves free -- of expectation, anxiety, insecurity, fear -- of all the things that hold us back. And from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

"When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness."

This joyful noise

On my mind today after an oddly hurtful exchange about how much my words are worth. Let me not forget why I write.   

A wise old gentleman retired and purchased a modest home near a junior high school. He spent the first few weeks of his retirement in peace and contentment.

Then a new school year began.

The very next afternoon three young boys, full of youthful, after-school enthusiasm, came down his street, beating merrily on every trash can they encountered. The crashing percussion continued day after day, until finally the wise old man decided it was time to take some action.

The next afternoon, he walked out to meet the young percussionists as they banged their way down the street.

Stopping them, he said, "You kids are a lot of fun. I like to see you express your exuberance like that. In fact, I used to do the same thing when I was your age. Will you do me a favor? I'll give you each a dollar if you'll promise to come around every day and do your thing."

The kids were elated and continued to do a bang-up job on the trashcans.

After a few days, the old-timer greeted the kids again, but this time he had a sad smile on his face. "This recession's really putting a big dent in my income," he told them. "From now on, I'll only be able to pay you 50 cents to beat on the cans."

The noisemakers were obviously displeased, but they accepted his offer and continued their afternoon ruckus.

A few days later, the wily retiree approached them again as they drummed their way down the street.

"Look," he said, "I haven't received my Social Security check yet, so I'm not going to be able to give you more than 25 cents. Will that be okay?"

"A freakin' quarter?" the drum leader exclaimed. "If you think we're going to waste our time, beating these cans around for a quarter, you're nuts! No way, dude. We quit!" And the old man enjoyed peace and serenity for the rest of his days.

The courage to read

My mother indulged me in the strangest ways. Through most of middle school, there were times when I'd skip a day of school -- claiming to be sick -- and instead go to the school where my mother taught. I'd hang out in the library all day and inhale stories. Some were familiar old ones, others were new. Looking back I wonder what the librarian made of it, how and why I was allowed to do this two or three times each year. No one censored my reading. I could borrow as much delicious fiction as I wanted; at my own school, students were only allowed one story and one textbook each week.

Stacks of books are still my comfort spots. In my twenties, big decisions -- college applications, graduate school woes, friend troubles -- always led me back to bookstores. Alone in the US, I'd drive to Barnes and Noble late in the evenings just to reconnect. Run my fingers over the spines, like touching the fingertips of old friends. Open a book, any book, and the familiarity of print was enough to comfort. I'd find the quietest row, lean back against the books and surround myself with stacks of stories. My makeshift fort of fiction was where I remembered how to be strong and safe and sure.

It's been years since I've been able to take a day off from the world just to read. A day when food appears, clothes are washed, chores can wait, and all that lies before me is the open road to a story world. It's gotten worse lately. Ask me my hobbies and reading tops the list. But ask what I've read lately, what I'm reading now, and the answers slip back to what I read months or a year or two ago.

In part, this is the narrowing that comes with age: there are fewer authors I will tolerate, less genres I'm likely to crack open. But it's made me worry. How could the people I was -- the child who ran to libraries for comfort, a woman who drove through snowstorms just to be with a bunch of books -- turn into someone who can't remember the last good thing she read?

Here's a secret: there's a book I'm halfway through that I love, the sort of love that makes me want to fall through the pages and live in this writer's mind forever. There's another one I just began that's brought wonder back to the world -- I will never look at the fingers on my own hand the same way again. But I haven't finished these. I don't even know where I put the first one. The other sits on my nightstand. Instead I'm racing through trashy romances, the kind with bad writing and pathetic characters that leave me feeling cheap afterward. Almost as if I'd rather indulge in one-night stands (and that's all it takes to get through these) than commit to an actual book.

And here's the real secret: I'm afraid to finish the good books. I'm scared to fall too deeply into story worlds, to lean too far back against their strength, simply because one problem that I struggled with isn't one I could solve or hide from by climbing into my story fort.

Reading -- the kind that leaves mind and heart sated for a while -- is I think an act of courage.
The stories I read gave me permission to be not just myself, but all of my selves. Introverted, confused, tall, plump -- whatever the adjective, there was always a story to tell me it would be okay. Books are doors into other worlds, but they were also a window into my own life. Crack one open, and I could climb back in and walk through my world on another road, one not accessible without the book-window. Allowing myself to simply read, to walk away through wardrobes, fly through a stranger's apricot tree, or hurtle through space with a robot for company, is an act of trust in the writer and myself. That if I take a day to lean into walls that turn into doors and be swept up in a story, tomorrow will be brighter -- there will be a different light, a new way through.

All readers have a book alter ego, I think. Mine was a headstrong girl who wanted to be a writer and blundered her way through life with little care for propriety. Her only real beauty was her hair. When mine started to fall out in clumps this year, I've wondered as I clean my pillowcase each morning: What would Jo do? (Yes, I turned to a fictional character from the last century for hair care advice). It took me months to remember the answer: She'd take a day off, settle into the garret with some apples, and read her worries away.