Alison McGhee

Come with us, if you want. You can carry the bag of groceries, camping food – a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly, potato chips, eggs and butter, graham crackers and marshmallows and bars of Hershey’s chocolate. We’d be happy to have some help with the groceries, because we already have our sleeping bags and our pillows and our notebooks and pens and matches and toothbrushes.

Cross the road where no cars go, and follow us on the tractor path straight through the cornfield. Are you surprised that the corn is above your head? That’s how it is with un-sweet cow corn: it’s tall, much taller than you would think.

Into the woods we go, on the old logging road that’s now more of a trail than anything else. You’ve heard that there are coyotes living in here? You’re right. But they won’t hurt you, and later tonight – later every night – you can sit by the campfire and listen to them howl.

There’s nothing like that sound, of coyotes howling at the moon, or whatever it is that they howl at, unless it’s the call of a loon across a lake.

You can stay if you want, but you will be the silent camper, the one we don’t see, the one we don’t need, because we are sufficient unto ourselves. We are two girls, one very tall and scrawny, with long dark hair, one very short, with crayon-blue eyes and silky blonde hair.

That’s her up there in that photo, the short blue-eyed one. I think about her so often these days, that girl you see there, running beside her horse. She used to do that – hold the reins and run across the grass, the horse trotting beside her. Sometimes she’d put the saddle on and ride through the fields and woods.

She was my best friend, back then. When did I meet her? I don’t even know. Until I did meet her, I would’ve said, had you asked, that I had many friends but that I wasn’t a best friend type.

And then she came along.

She lived in a trailer on Round Barn Road, an unwalkable and unbikable distance away, back when we were little girls. But she was always at my house, or I was always at hers, the trailer with the framed-up-with-2×4’s never-finished addition where her bedroom was.

We were inseparable in the way that you can only be when you’re that age. We had all our classes together. We walked down the halls together. We met at her locker or my locker before school.  We talked on the phone at night. She rode the bus to my house and I rode the bus to her house.

We played a game that we called the Word Game, a game that someone else told me, when I was a grownup, is actually called Jotto. All we needed for the game was paper and pencil. We were exactly evenly matched, and we played that game for years, everywhere we were.

There was the summer she had a stomach ache every night after dinner, which, because we were children, we accepted without thinking.  We used to sit quietly until the stomach ache got better, and then we swung on the swings, or played the Word Game, or lay in the treehouse talking.

But the stomach ache turned into those long days and weeks – was it months? – of chemo and radiation. I would go with her to the hospital, more than an hour away. Long gray halls. Fluorescent overhead lighting. Gray doors. Polished speckled floors. A tall dark door with a chickenwire window and one of those nuclear-radiation-triangle-warning things: don’t go in there. Stay away. Fear. Disfigurement. A power beyond your control.

But she was in there, lying still.

And then back at her trailer, where she lay still on the couch and I sat next to her, talking, telling her about the days. I once had a new pair of hiphuggers, white with fake graffitti all over them – Kilroy was here, Darwin failed – and I waited for her to admire them, but she closed her eyes and tried to hold back the nausea until she had to sit up and use the bucket.

And then it was over, the radiation and chemo were done, and her growing was done, and her ability to bear children was done, but I, being a child, didn’t think about that. Did she? Back we went, to school, to the hallways, to the classes where we were the ones always to raise our hands, to our notebooks and our pencils and our endless, endless Word Game.

Then she  moved to Florida.

I can only write it like that: Then she moved to Florida.

I can’t feel what it felt like,  I can’t remember. I can’t remember what it was like for me to go to seventh grade without her, to walk those long hallways without her, to climb into my treehouse without her. Did I  go camping down through the woods again? I don’t remember.

I don’t remember how it felt when Mr. D the science teacher looked at me that fall and said, “What are you going to do now, without your leaning post?”

I remember those words, though: my leaning post.

There were the years of the endless letters. Letters of many pages, flying back and forth from my mailbox with its red flag to hers on that dusty dirt road, letters written over days, a line here, three pages there, illustrated, written on yellow legal paper or torn-out notebook paper or tiny scraps of paper numbered up to the hundreds, or toilet paper, unspooling and unspooling, so easily torn, each envelope also containing the Word Game, sent back and forth between us, one move per letter.

There was the single trip to Florida to visit her. The smell of orange blossoms brings me back there, to the orange groves that surrounded the trailer where she lived with her mother and her sisters and her brothers. There were seashells, a school where the hallways were outside and uncovered, where shorts were worn year round. There was a can of Florida sunshine, and sponges from a place called Tarpon  Springs.

Where are you now, first best friend, girl who showed me how it could feel to have a kindred spirit, a boon companion, someone to see you through your days, no matter what comes?

Look at you up there in that old photo, running beside your horse. You were the magnificent companion of my childhood.  Beautiful girl, where are you now?

Greetings, feet. Look at you, dangling off the end of the bed like that. Long toes. Sandal tan. Badly-painted toenails.

How many miles have you walked in your life? Many. Many-many.

You were just feet when she was a child, and she didn’t think about you. Pedaling her bike, pushing against the bark of the tree when she climbed into her treehouse, dangling above the floor until her  legs were long enough. Running in the dusk when she and the others played tag or hide and seek or sardines. Catching fireflies.

Then came the years of days and nights when she started out walking and just kept on. Up the steep hills of the city in which she once lived. Down that dirt road in the Green Mountains. Around the alleys and side streets of Taipei, where it was so easy to get lost.

She walked herself out of places, and messes, and states of being. She walked herself from one life into another life, and then another. She walked herself away from things she wanted rid of. She wished she could walk away from her head, sometimes – more than  sometimes – but walking was as close as she could come.

Miles and miles along rivers, and oceans, along continents that once were covered with seas. Once, a woman came up to her as she walked along the low tide line. “You are the most intent walker I have ever seen,” she said.

But the intention was unintentional. She was walking away from what she could, walking her way into the calm that, for her, only comes from walking.

For fifteen years now she has watched a man walk the city she lives in. Once, a decade ago, she passed him as he sat on a bench by the lake with his hands on his knees. Apart from that, he walks, and so far as she knows, he does not ever stop.

In the last three years he has grown gray and gaunt, and his legs have bowed. He was once a handsome man, and now she thinks of him as he is in winter, with the dusty parka and no mittens.

Where does he go at night? She doesn’t know. She hopes that there are some quiet hours for him.

There were years in there when she couldn’t sleep, and when those she loved were not with her, and she clipped the leash to the dog and walked the lakes at 4 a.m. Others were out then too. Could they not sleep either? Were they coming off the late shift? Rising early, or about to go to bed?

And here you are, feet. Look at you. Do you hurt? You hurt. No matter what kind of shoes she puts on you, they are never just the right shoes. No matter how she vows to keep your toes painted, she doesn’t.

Chipped and calloused and aching, still you walk on. She never has to tell you what to do or how to do it. You just know, and what you know is to keep on walking.

That a person could spontaneously combust. That the word “absurd” was spelled and pronounced “absurb.” That the circular file referred to an actual file that went around and around, similar to the revolving spice rack in her sister Oatie’s cupboard. That she could write the beautiful book she dreamed of writing. That she could one day repeat that once-in-a-lifetime night in her childhood, when she closed her eyes at bedtime and opened them again to morning. That Phoebe was pronounced Foe-Eeb. That she would take her children on long road trips and they would all sing rounds in the car. That she would one day encounter Cindy S., magnificent companion of her childhood, in an airport. That she would have a 50-year marriage. That she would one day iron the green and brown shirt that for many years she had been meaning to iron. That she would overcome her fear of headstands.  That she would host a potluck gathering on the second Sunday of every month. That she would live in the country. That she would live among mountains. That she would live on the ocean. That she would never yell at her children. That she would buy an around-the-globe plane ticket good for an entire year. That she would have a signature dish or three. That she would speak fluent Spanish. That she could get over it. That she could get through it. That she could get past it. That heavy cream with her coffee was bad for her. That her sisters would remember the time all that water spilled down from the maple tree onto David C. That the piece of broken-off lead in the palm of her hand would fade away and disappear. That she would someday be good enough. That she would learn to appreciate wine. That she could live across the street from her best friend. That the next time she traveled alone, she would take photos of her shadow wherever she went. That she would always be able to comfort her children. That she would always be able to cheer them up. That the squirrels living in her eaves would move away of their own volition. That she would have a car with heated seats. That she could make others happy. That if only she tried hard enough.

And so we come again to our regularly scheduled Pick a Photo, Any Photo day. Who knows when a Pick a Photo day will occur? Not me. Pick a Photo days just happen, like squirrels invading your eaves will just happen, if you, like me, are not ever vigilant.

The rules of the pick a photo day are very simple: open up the old slides-transferred-to-digital file, choose a numbered slide at random, insert it into the post, and write.

So very simple. And yet some of us, some of us meaning me, can’t seem to follow such simple rules. Some of us, meaning me, descend upon slide #49, open it up, gaze at it and think, Nah, and close it down following only the briefest of soul wrestling matches. Flagrant disobeyal of rules.

Back to the slide file. I shall descend upon the number that reflects the age to which I hope to live without infirmity of any kind and with everyone I love still alive – laugh if you must, but why not dream large? – and here we go.

The problem, if it can be termed a problem, is that this slide is so very, very tiny that I can’t tell who it is. It may well be Oatie on the left, and me on the right. (Oatie? Hello through these many years – is that you?)

At any rate, these children are swinging in their little wooden swings. Sand beneath their feet. Trees surrounding. Cool air blowing past them when they lean back and get going again.

Outside the frame of the slide, their parents and grandparents are setting out a picnic. This is the annual Transfer Day, when the children go to stay with their grandparents for a week while their parents go. . . where? do. . . what? The children have no idea. So far as they know, their parents are placed on Pause during the seven days that their children are not with them, in that creaky old house in the foothills upstate.

Swing, children, whoever you may actually be, because you’re too young to have to do anything other than be children. Potato salad awaits you, along with already-prepared sandwiches from the downstate kitchen of the grandmother. Fruit salad and iced tea with lemon and Sweet ‘n Low. A cake, perhaps. Watermelon.

After the picnic has been eaten, you will get into the backseat of your grandparents’ car. You will travel another hour and a half to their house, while your parents are either on Pause, remaining frozen in time at this state park until seven days have passed, or off on an adventure of which you know nothing.

Nightly visits to Dairy Queen await you at your grandparents’ house, along with scrambled eggs every morning, should you wish them, and you do wish them. Jody the dog. A blue glass bowl full of wrapped butterscotch candies. Lessons in the correct folding of towels. Visits to the summer-house-neighbors, who are never there, but whose pool always is, and which you are allowed to swim in. Visits to your great-aunt’s house, the one attached to the lawnmower repair shop, so that the smells of motor oil and baking cookies intertwine. The closet with its stacks of board games, including Mousetrap, your favorite. Back to your grandmother’s house, and the cool green pleather chair in the basement, where you are allowed to read as long as you want.

Swing high, swing low, swing as long as you like and don’t worry for a moment about swinging too high and falling out, because that wooden bar will keep you safe. Yes, how lucky you are, you children who may or may not be me and Oatie.

A long time ago she lived in a fourth-floor walkup on a steep hill in the middle of a city on the ocean.

The city was bisected from another, smaller city by a river. The river was a few blocks steeply downhill from her steeply staircased apartment building.

She got up before dawn every day, not out of a sense of moral obligation but because she always woke up before dawn.  To pay the rent on the steep apartment, which she shared with her sister and thousands of cockroaches, she typed papers for college students.

The college students took the subway to her steep apartment and dropped off their penned or penciled papers, and she called them when the papers were neatly typed. She was only a year out of college herself.

This was a long time ago, when she was trying so hard to be what she wanted to be.

She had a part-time job a few miles away, in the city across the river. Instead  of taking the subway she liked to walk to the faraway job, and she started walking at dawn, down the steep hill and across the river on an arched bridge.

The bridge was old, with old stone turrets built onto the sides. She liked to stop at the turrets and look down on the river below. The turrets reeked of urine and fish and the salt breeze off the ocean.

After she crossed the bridge she made her way along the other side of the river, two, three, four, five miles to the busy square where her part-time job was.

It was quiet at dawn – it usually is, no matter where you are in the world. Even the birds cease their singing, if only for a little while. She was usually alone at dawn, green paths to her left and a highway to her right. Scullers stroked by her on the river, their long boats silent and swift.

At some point the geese appeared. They lived by the river, and they disliked her. Fowl of all kinds had always disliked her, beginning with the chickens she had raised at age nine.

These geese would hiss at her and even chase her. Lest you accuse her of poultry savagery, rest assured that she was innocent of all crimes when it came to the geese. Yet still, she knew in her heart that had they managed to corner her – against one of the turrets on the bridge, say – they would have gladly killed her.

She was tired by the time she turned from the river and onto the busy streets that surrounded the bustling square. It was a good tired, though, a stretched-out-muscle-beating-blood kind of tired.

She was young, and trying hard, and full of questions, and sometimes she felt lost, and walking was something that wasn’t lost and wasn’t full of questions. Walking was always good. Walking was what she depended on.

When she got hungry in the busy square she walked to a sandwich shop a few blocks away: curried tuna salad, or tomato and cheese on heavy wheat bread. They were the best sandwiches she’d ever eaten.

Some afternoons, before the took the subway back to the steep hill where she lived, she went to the old bookstore a few blocks away.  Straight downstairs she went, to the many tables and wooden shelves of discounted books. Novels and poetry and essays and scholarly treatises on subjects she’d never heard of, in languages unknown to her. She could spend hours there, in that bookstore, the best she’d ever been in.

Once, she had an errand to run on the busy streets of the busy square. She was looking for the address, which she couldn’t find, when the skies opened up. She skittered from doorway to doorway, peering up at the numbers, huddling against the sides of buildings, trying to avoid the deluge.

“Are you lost?”

It was her friend, materializing off the cobblestones, holding an umbrella and laughing, which made her laugh too. She gave up on the errand and took shelter under the umbrella.

Together they walked in that awkward sharing-an-umbrella way to the nearby bakery, the one where the old men played chess by the clock. She, the non-chess player, watched them and marveled at their intensity, and how they seemed to know exactly what to do.

They were  driving south, keeping to the river as it made  its way to the Gulf of Mexico. They had the dog with them. They had fled the bitter temperatures and ever-gray skies and were driving south until they hit 60 degrees, his personal number of temperature happiness. It took them a few days, and when the magic number appeared, he did a little dance  in his seat and she laughed.

Sometimes they opened the window for the dog so that he could stick his head out. There was little he liked more than a road trip. He liked snuffing in the air of a new place, and all the places they drove through were new.

They stayed at dog-friendly motels at  night, and they checked in late, so that they didn’t know what the surroundings were. She was  the early riser and she took the dog for a morning walk and then partook of the free continental breakfasts.

Just as he had waited for 60 degrees, she was waiting for grits, her personal barometer of southernness, to appear on the continental breakfast buffet. When they did, she ate two bowls of them, buttered and salted. But not cheesed.

They had a trucker’s atlas with them. They were hugging the river, that was the plan, so they didn’t consult it much except when night came and they had driven their limit. Where was the next small town, and would it have a pet-friendly motel?

They knew they’d consult it more when they reached the Gulf and began the eastward trek to their destination, but for now, they didn’t have directions. The trucker’s atlas had all kinds of useful information, some they didn’t need but read aloud anyway, such as the weight limits for various roadways in various states.

It was dark when they approached Mobile and they fake-argued about the way Mobile was really pronounced and if the accent lay on the first or second syllable: Mo-beel. Mo-beel. Mo-bye-ull. Mo-bull. They came to no consensus.

The city lay before them, shining. Two onion-domed buildings made her feel she was in a new and strange place.

Traffic slowed to a crawl. Police were everywhere. Barricades blocked streets. People everywhere were walking steadily toward an unknown destination.

Far off they heard music, brass bands and zydeco. The highway ahead of them was now blocked off. Their small car had joined a car river, threading its way who knew where. And then all the cars began pulling off the road, parking wherever there was space. Ahead, the music grew louder.

Ways in and out of the city had closed down. The stream of people grew bigger.

“What’s going on?” she said to him.

She was nervous. There were many, many miles to go before they reached their destination, and it was already late, and she was already very tired.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but we’re about to find out.”

He opened the door and got out. The dog leaped after him. She followed. The  three of them joined the stream of walkers, past the police roaming in pairs, the barricades, past trailers hooked up to thrumming generators, toward the steadily louder music, the lights.

“It’s Mardi Gras,” he said in wonderment. “Look.”

It was Mardi Gras. They were in Mobile, the city that they would later find out was the city of the original U.S. Mardi Gras celebration.

They joined the throngs of people standing on the sidewalks, small children on shoulders, big men brandishing beer, women swaying to the music.

Parades threaded their way through the streets of Mobile, outlandish floats and outlandish costumes and music everywhere. Was everyone they saw smiling? Everyone they saw was smiling.

Beads snaked through the air and they jumped up to catch them. Dolls and moon pies and all manner of candies came sailing through the dark air and they caught those too.

A big man standing next to her caught an enormous rag doll and looked about the crowd: “Where’s a little girl?” She pointed to one with dark hair, sitting on her father’s shoulders. The big man offered her the doll, and she took it without smiling, and then she smiled.

“Happy Mardi Gras, little girl,” the big man said, and took another swig of his beer.

The dog stood patiently between them, watching the floats as they passed by. She draped some shiny purple beads around his neck and he graciously accepted them. She draped some shiny green beads around her companion’s neck.

“This is what happens when you don’t have a big plan,” he said to her. “This is what happens when you wander your way.”

Parades. Big, strange, beautiful floats carrying dancing costumed people. Beads and moon pies and dolls flying through the air. Music rising high in the dark southern sky. Magic.

That right there to the left  is a double boiler, in case you’ve never seen such a thing. It’s made of Pyrex, which the lady at the Annunciation Church Rummage Sale told me was a very good thing.

I saw it sitting on the kitchenware table along with stacks of muffin tins and sets of china and many assorted plastic containers, and I picked it up.

“Is this a double boiler?” I said.

“Why yes,” she said, and then she went on to tell me of its Pyrex-ness, and of the many things it could be used for, such as custards and puddings.

It was $6, pricey for a rummage sale and against my rummage sale instincts, which are to drop in on a rummage sale the afternoon of its second day, which – as anyone in the rummage sale know knows – is when prices are slashed by 50%.

But I’ve wanted a double boiler for years now, so I ponied up the $6 and left with it clutched to my chest, and the next morning I made oatmeal in it.

I did it by feel. Filled the bottom pot with water and the smaller top pot with oatmeal and more water, and set it on the front burner turned to a medium flame, and then I went away and did a bunch of other things, such as weed the flower bed and fold laundry and stare nervously at the legs of the piano, which have come entirely unscrewed from the piano itself, so that at any moment the entire soundboard could come toppling onto the legs of someone sitting there innocently, practicing a pleasant tune.

Came back a long time later and the oatmeal was thick and creamy, as unlike instant microwaved oatmeal as it could be.

A long time ago, I used to take my little kids to the Lincoln Del for breakfast. We went on weekdays to take advantage of the Early Bird Breakfast Special, available from 6-8 a.m.

I can still see the laminated tabletop Early Bird Breakfast Special menu. Everything was absurdly cheap, so cheap that I felt guilty going there so often with my three little kids. But I went anyway.

Blueberry pancakes: $2.25. So thick with blueberries that they were a dark purple.

Cheese omelet: $3.25. This was unlike any cheese omelet I’ve ever had – baked in a small oval tin high-sided pan, more like a cheese-and-egg souffle than an omelet. It was indescribably delicious, so buttery and salty.

Oatmeal: $1.25. Brown sugar and raisins upon request, and we always requested.

We used to order three or four breakfasts and share them amongst us – the kids were very small and I would finish whatever was left from anyone’s plate – but we always ordered two bowls of oatmeal. Like everything they served at breakfast, the oatmeal was better than anyone else’s.

“Why is this oatmeal so good?” I asked the elderly waitress one day. (All the waitresses were elderly.) “What does he do?”

“Oh honey,” she said, “everyone loves the oatmeal here. All he does is cook it long and slow in a double-boiler. That’s the only secret.”

The Lincoln Del closed and was torn down a long time ago, but we – the kids and I – still mourn it. We still remember the oatmeal, and the blueberry pancakes, and the cheese omelets. The red vinyl booths. The chrome sugar shakers and napkin holders.

If there are degrees of separation between restaurants and food and cookware, then there is one degree of separation between the Lincoln Del and my new/old double boiler.

One degree of separation between those mornings long ago, before any of the kids were in school and we could sit together in a booth for a long time, spilling syrup and buttering toast, and mornings now, when a double boiler sits on the stove, slow-cooked oatmeal there for the taking.

One degree of separation between fast, like now, and slow, like it used to be.

Here is a father story.

Once, a father called his daughter on her 33rd birthday.

“Happy 33rd,” he said. “Happy 33rd.”

Pause. Pause. Pause.

His daughter stood by her answering machine, wondering if that was the end of it. Then came a clearing of the throat and a mumbled I love you.

The daughter opened up the answering machine – this was when answering machines were things, not disembodied cyber messages flying through space – and snatched out the tape on which her father’s message was recorded. She put the tape away in a drawer.

Twenty years later she still has it. She showed it to me, an old Radio Shack cassette tape with a pencil mark at the exact place where her father said those words.

Blessings on the fathers, all the fathers.

The fathers who are able to say “I love you” easily and often, and the fathers who aren’t. The father who pushes his child on the swing, higher and higher, and the father who lets his child hitch a ride on his wheelchair.

The father who scratches out a budget in pencil on lined yellow paper, the better to show his child where it all goes when she says in teenage superiority, But where could it all go? How can there be none left at the end of the month?

The father who comes stumbling out of his baby’s bedroom late at night and throws himself into a chair, saying, I spend half my life in a dark room, singing.

The father who untangles his child’s bobber from the weeds where she has cast it yet again, and the father who stands  his child on his feet to dance her around the room.

Blessings on the father who wore blue coveralls on from the barn and washed up in Lava soap. Blessings on the father who grew old and forgot where he left the car.

On the father who let his child twirl on the stool at the diner. Who pulled her up the hill on the toboggan. Who taught her how to make scrambled eggs.

And blessings also on the father who screams at his child. On the father who let his children live through all those Christmases without him. On the father who never wrote or called.

Blessings on the father who cried on  the plane home from visiting his first grandchild, who told his wife I wish I could do it all over. I wish I had been a better father.

Blessings on the father, not hers, who appeared to her in a dream, nodding from the other side: Keep going, you’re doing a good job.

Blessings on the fathers, known and unknown. Blessings on the  fathers, and blessings on their sons, and on their daughters.

You are bad at many things, but the subject of today’s badness is meditation, at which you are particularly bad.

How you long to be a good meditator, like some of your friends, the ones who have been meditating for thirty or more years and can call up that pervasive sense of calm whenever they’re in trouble, or self-doubting, or afraid.

You’re in trouble and self-doubting and afraid much of the time.

You want to live in the present moment. Has that not been your goal your entire life? You remember being a baby, looking through the stair railing, knowing how fast it would all go by, and thinking remember this.

You remember riding your bike as fast as you could down Anken’s hill, looking at the speedometer you got for your birthday, seeing it read 35mph, feeling a giant surge of life, and thinking remember this.

You remember clutching your books to your chest as you walked through the alley on the way to the firehouse, and realizing that you were eleven years old and everything – everything – was possible to you, and thinking remember this.

And so many other moments. That night on the beach with the quilt. That morning with the fishing boat in the fog. The way that old man dropped the knife and looked around the table to see if anyone had noticed. How you came out the door and they were gone, and how you called after them. That late night listening to Nick Lowe sing long-limbed girl. Waking in your car in the Everglades that dawn. How the baby boy bent over and laughed and called the unfurling fern a dinosaur.

And these moments are still with you, those feelings still come to you, even at this age that you are right now, which is not eleven. You do remember. You with your faulty and random memory (“Very nice to meet you! . . . oh, we’ve already met?. . . of course, of course, now I remember. . . not) – these things, those days, those moments, you remember.

Return to the breath. When your thoughts stray, gently return to the breath. Focus on the breath. Breathe in. Breathe out.

But that is your breath, you think. That bike ride, that night on the sand, the look on the old man’s face. Long-limbed girl, where are you now?

You picture a telephone operator from the 1940’s, speaking into her microphone, plugging into this line and then that line and then that other line. That is you, all the ages you ever were, all the times you ever lived through.

Right here, right now, you are thousands of glimmering moments.

Breathe.

Three new books all came out in the last month.

Why all in the last month? Because when it rains books it rains them in threes, I guess.

Always is about a dog and his girl. I love dogs, in case you couldn’t tell from reading this blog, and this is my homage to doghood.

The idea originally came from a three square-inch pencil sketch that Pascal Lemaitre sent me: a tiny dog guarding a large castle.

The tiny pencil-sketch dog reminded me of the valiance of dogs, their fearlessness when it comes to guarding their homes and their humans, and how – unlike their humans – dogs are only and always themselves.

I wrote the words, Pascal the artist did the lovely pictures, and thar she blows: Always.

* * *

Julia Gillian and the Quest for Joy is the second book in a trilogy that Drazen Kozjan, another amazing artist (how do they do it? I break out in a sweat when I try to draw, say, a smiley face), and I are collaborating on.

Julia Gillian is a ten-year-old with a first name for a first name and a first name for a last name, and everyone always calls her by both names, which is something that she enjoys.

And which I enjoy too, because that’s one of the perks of being a writer – if you want to enjoy yourself sometimes, you can.

Julia Gillian has a St. Bernard (see, I told you I love dogs, which is another perk of being a writer – if you love something, you can stick it in a book) named Bigfoot. His name was originally Tiny, but I abandoned that in favor of Bigfoot, partly because a friend told me that Tiny was too cutesy when referring to a St. Bernard, and partly because I’ve always wanted to find Bigfoot tracks in the snow.

Her best friend besides Bigfoot is a boy named Bonwit Keller, and they’re both going into fifth grade, and they’ve been looking forward to learning the trumpet (which they can do once they’re fifth-graders) because their dream is to become world-famous jazz trumpeters and tour the world together, especially Paris.

At any rate, what more can I tell you about this book? Probably a ton, but I stink at synopses, and besides, if I told you more then I’d be giving away some of the mystery, which would detract from your pleasure in reading the book. If you found it pleasurable at all, that is.

So there you have it: Julia Gillian and the Quest for Joy. Drazen’s and my previous book together, Julia Gillian and the Art of Knowing, is just out in paperback, too. Affordable!

* * *

And finally we come to Song of Middle C, in which our unnamed and extra-confident piano-playing heroine suffers a crisis of confidence once she’s finally up on that stage.

Scott Menchin, another artist (so many great artists in the world, and I’m jealous of all of them and what they can do with their pencils and pens and brushes) and I collaborated on this book.

Piano recitals were a formative part of our childhoods, and this is our ode to long-suffering piano teachers everywhere.

I simply cannot tell you anything more about this book and its unnamed heroine because if I did I would totally be giving away the ending, but suffice it to say that the piano piece she plans to play (four P’s in a row, wow – we call that alliteration, don’t we, even though it was unintentional alliteration) is called “Dance of the Wood Elves.”

And she’s wearing her lucky underwear.

And she says HOO BOY a lot, which is something that I really enjoyed saying while I was working on this book, which is yet another perk of being a writer – if you’re taken with a particular phrase at a particular time in your life, you can sprinkle it liberally throughout the book you’re working on.

Of course, one of the un-perks of being a writer is that sometimes you become disenchanted with a particular phrase, but if you’ve sprinkled it liberally throughout a book, and the book gets published, you’re stuck with it for life. Something to think about.

So there you have it – which is a phrase I know I overuse but I can’t seem to help myself – three new books, all at once.

What else am I working on? Good heavens, I don’t even know how to answer that. I keep trying and trying to make two picture books that I’ve been working on for a year good, but so far, no luck.

And I’ve been poking at an adult historical novel set in Martha’s Vineyard and Boston for, oh, like, eight or more years now, but so far, no luck.

And I’ve been working on a comedy for, oh, like, six or so years now, but so far, no luck.

So can it still be said that I’m working on these books, even if there has been no luck thus far? Now isn’t that a big fat question. Let us turn to our dead authors and ask them.

What Would Flannery O’Connor Say in answer to that big fat question? A big fat NO, no doubt, which is an answer I prefer to discard. Besides, she was extremely curmudgeonly. I bid you adieu, Flannery, in favor of James Joyce.

What Would James Joyce Say? His answer, for our purposes here, will come straight out of Ulysses, and here it is:  “and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Thank you, James, for that vote of confidence. I salute you. And in your honor I shall watch John Huston’s The Dead tonight, right after the baseball game.