Ode

My mother says I cried from the moment I was born until I learned to read. At eight, she allowed me to walk out of our neighborhood, down Samoset Street (named after the Native American who trod that path before me), past the convenience store where my father stopped for Table Talk pies after work, right at the stoplights and past our church, past Pilgrim Hall, past the windowless building where my father donned a headset to receive telephone calls, then left on North Street with the harbor below, and past the shoe store - to Plymouth Public Library, my haven. It was a long walk, and sometimes when my feet were sore I had to stop for a rest.

I visit every library I can, always weighing the children’s room against the children’s room of my childhood. First, there was the entrance, separate from the adult entrance. Like a magical portal to a fantasy world, the entrance was not just a door, but a cobblestone alleyway. It shone when it was washed with rain. If you continued past the stairs that led down to the children’s door, you’d arrive at the funeral home, a place I didn’t want to contemplate. Instead I ventured alone into the lively realm of books – poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson, picture books by Robert McCloskey, and as I grew, chapter books like Nancy Drew and Jean George’s My Side of the Mountain. There were so many books I loved in that children’s room that I promised myself I’d remain like Peter Pan and never climb the narrow stairs to the adult collection.

Every Saturday, I’d run my fingers from spine to spine, neatly returning each book to its original position as I’d been taught. There was a three book limit and a long week ahead until my next visit, so I had to choose carefully. One book I returned to again and again was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. There was a mystery here that I couldn’t quite absorb. Meg is the only one, in spite of her admitted flaws, who can save her little brother Charles from IT, the gigantic, disembodied brain.

Perhaps it was because I had several younger brothers and sisters at home that I felt so close to Meg. Perhaps it was because her secret weapon was love, something I took for granted, not intelligence, something that everyone else seemed to value so highly. I knew at some wordless level that love was devotion to hard work while intelligence was a matter of luck and passion, and Meg and her friends brought that to life in L’Engle’s story.

When Madeleine L’Engle died a few years ago, I was sad. I had thought of writing to her over the years, sometimes with suggestions for books I wanted her to write, but I never did. What follows is a prequel I wrote for A Wrinkle in Time shortly after this great author tessered to the other side of reality.