Amy Loves Books

more pictures will be taken this weekend, as the society grows.

I need a place to spend the day,
Where no one says to go or stay,
Where I can take my pen and draw
The girl I mean to be.

A place where I can bid my heart be still
And it will mind me.
A place where I can go when I am lost,
And there I'll find me.

The Girl I Mean to Be - The Secret Garden: Original Broadway Cast
Lyrics and Book - Marsha Norman


I make friends with books. I always have.

Last week, I had to write a response paper on critical theory, and I wrote a critique of the essays in my theory book - but then I went on for about a page about falling in love with characters (specifically, Holden Caufield and Joe Kavalier). I argued that sometimes, theory does not matter. Sometimes, you are in love.

I can’t even begin to think about analyzing Joe and Holden. I love them. Just the way they are. I know they have issues, but I could not bear to examine them from a feminist or psychological perspective. No deconstructing them either; I just want to know them, and sit with them, and love them. My friends.

My professor handed back the paper with the simple comment: “passionate”.

Yes. I am.

Amy Loves Books. Literally.

My writing desk is in my bedroom; it holds Max, my computer. There is a hutch-like thing that goes over the desk and on the wall behind my computer, I have a cut-out dragonfly that my daughter made me for mother’s day. On the top of the hutch, I keep my beautiful wine glass, made out of pottery. I also keep a statue of two girls holding hands that a friend gave me once, when I was praying for her through a struggle with infertility. There is another figure, also a gift from a friend, of an angel without a face (I collect angels - but only angels without faces) that is hugging a book against her heart. And then, there is a sculpture of two cupped, open hands that my brother sent me right after he moved to Austin. It came with a little Ziploc bag filled with colored rocks, that poured into the open hands.

There is very limited shelf-space within the hutch itself. But there is room for a few books. My best friends. My most treasured moments.

This is where I keep my signed copy of Generation X, Life After God, Kundera, Salinger, and my falling apart and personally indexed volume of e.e. cummings: Complete Poems .

I also have three children’s books on my shelf:

Goodnight, Orange Monster, my favorite picture book as a child - that I had to do a rare book search to find and that I paid way too much money for.

Raggedy Ann in Cookie Land, the first chapter book that I ever read.

And, The Secret Garden, the book that I loved - that I still love, more than any other. It became my childhood friend. I pretended that I was Mary Lennox all the time, even adopting a fake accent at the age of seven because of the PBS Masterpiece Theater production. This is the book I named my daughter after.

This book, which I read for the first time when I was seven, still resonates with me. When I was in college, I began to read it as a spiritual metaphor. Once Mary found the key and entered the garden, she found that it seemed dead and neglected. She had to pour her heart and soul into making it grow and bloom again. This is how I felt. I had found the key and the door, but it was going to take patience and trust and faith to turn the neglected and damaged earth into a garden again.

Lately, I have been reading the book again and thinking that perhaps it is a friend and a metaphor - but also something more. I am beginning to think that maybe the book is a map. A map that I found when I was seven, but am only just now learning how to read.

From Chapter Seven:

”Are things stirring down below in the dark in that garden where he lives?" Mary inquired.

"What garden?" grunted Weatherstaff, becoming surly again.

"The one where the old rose-trees are." She could not help asking, because she wanted so much to know. "Are all the flowers dead, or do some of them come again in the summer? Are there ever any roses?"

"Ask him," said Ben Weatherstaff, hunching his shoulders toward the robin. "He's the only one as knows. No one else has seen inside it for ten year'."

Ten years was a long time, Mary thought. She had been born ten years ago.

She walked away, slowly thinking. She had begun to like the garden just as she had begun to like the robin and Dickon and Martha's mother. She was beginning to like Martha, too. That seemed a good many people to like--when you were not used to liking. She thought of the robin as one of the people. She went to her walk outside the long, ivy-covered wall over which she could see the tree-tops; and the second time she walked up and down the most interesting and exciting thing happened to her, and it was all through Ben Weatherstaff's robin.

She heard a chirp and a twitter, and when she looked at the bare flower-bed at her left side there he was hopping about and pretending to peck things out of the earth to persuade her that he had not followed her. But she knew he had followed her and the surprise so filled her with delight that she almost trembled a little.

"You do remember me!" she cried out. "You do! You are prettier than anything else in the world!"

She chirped, and talked, and coaxed and he hopped, and flirted his tail and twittered. It was as if he were talking. His red waistcoat was like satin and he puffed his tiny breast out and was so fine and so grand and so pretty that it was really as if he were showing her how important and like a human person a robin could be. Mistress Mary forgot that she had ever been contrary in her life when he allowed her to draw closer and closer to him, and bend down and talk and try to make something like robin sounds.

Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person--only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe.

The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole.

Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

Mistress Mary stood up and looked at it with an almost frightened face as it hung from her finger.

"Perhaps it has been buried for ten years," she said in a whisper. "Perhaps it is the key to the garden!"

- Frances Hodgson Burnett

at some point in my childhood, they started selling these plastic wands filled with glitter. i became attached to these wands. i found that i could sit and tip the wand from side to side, watching the glitter dance and swirl, for long stretches at a time. it was incredibly calming to me.

this website is kind of like those glitter tubes.

As if I did not have enough to be insecure about, somebody with way too much time on their hands has created virtual stock exchange dealing with blogs.

Whether you like it or not, if you are on one of the major blog hosting sites, your “blog” is a listed, valued, and available for “investment”.
You do nothing to sign up - you just automatically have a stock profile

(Did I mention that I did not register or in any way sign up to have my blog included on their pretend stock exchange?)

I am not sure how I feel about this - but it seems weird - and somehow, wrong.

When I was five years old, my parents moved our family from the top floor of our Campus House /church on College Avenue to a three bedroom house in a neighborhood. I was excited. I had never been around other children before, but I knew from watching The Electric Company and Mr. Rogers that there were friendly children and playgrounds out there, away from the college campus. I was anxious to meet them.

I knew that I was going to finally make a friend. My very own friend. I would say, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” , and they actually would be my neighbor, and I would have a best friend. Someone who would be my always. What I had been waiting for.

And so, we moved - and two houses down from my house, there was a family with a little girl just my age. Her name was Holly, like Hollie Hobbie, but with a “y”. I could not believe my luck. I was ready to wear bonnets and pick flowers with her.

But Holly did not wear bonnets, and she did not pick flowers. Holly did not even have her namesake doll to sleep with at night. She was a Carson McCullers archetype, a short-haired little tomboy that wanted to kick balls around and play with matchbox cars.

What I loved most about Holly was her mother.

My mother was always cooking or cleaning. It was constant. She cooked for everyone. She baked cookies and made bread. Our kitchen was consumed by her food preparation. Homemade pasta was draped over chairs to dry. Jam or jelly was strained through a cutout pantyhose leg that hung, dripping, from the stove light. At least three nights a week, there was some sort of large get-together at our house. She sent homemade cinnamon rolls to the bus driver. She invited people over for dinner almost every night.

I felt like a stranger in my mother’s kitchen. A nuisance. I was in the way of what was important; and what was important was cooking for other people. "Go outside", she would say.

I fell in love with Hollie’s mother. I was in awe of her. I asked to play at Hollie’s house just so I could be around Bonnie. Bonnie, who had long hair that she wore in a bun, and freckles. Bonnie, who had been an art teacher before she had children, who would sit at the small kid-table with us and paint and draw. Bonnie, who taught me how to paper mache with balloons and newspaper strips in the backyard. Lunch at Hollie’s house was always peanut butter and honey on whole wheat bread - store bought, because Bonnie did not cook.

In fact, Bonnie kept a Piano in the kitchen. It was amazing. A real piano, taking up the space where a dining room table should have been. A real piano, with a bench that opened to reveal sheet music, and a metronome in a little wooden box on the top. I would sit in Bonnie's kitchen, and pound on the keys of her piano, and she never stopped me or told me that it was too loud.

Holly wanted to be my friend more that I wanted to be her friend. She confused me. She did not like any of the things that I liked. She never wanted to imagine, or sing. How could she not want to play dress-up? I got bored with kickball. I wanted to dance, and swing on our stomachs, and pretend we were flying. We negotiated, and sometimes Holly would play my games - but I could always tell she was faking it.

Still, it was good to have a friend. I had been waiting for a friend. And being with Holly meant afternoons finger-painting with Bonnie, and peanut butter and honey, and chalk, and the needlepoint cushion on the piano bench, and the calming tick of the metronome.

When I was six years old, Holly approached me with what seemed like perfectly good logic. I kissed my mom and my dad, she said, but I had never kissed her. Shouldn't I kiss her too - since I loved her?

I thought about it. The logic seemed to make sense. And Holly was my first and only friend. I asked Bonnie if it was okay for friends to kiss each other. Bonnie considered my question for a minute, and then she said that she thought it sounded just fine. So, I told Holly that I would kiss her.

We went into her room and I sat on the edge of her bed. This was all new to me, but I figured that my parents usually did their quick forehead kiss when they said goodnight to me, and so, if Holly wanted to kiss me, this would be the place to be.

Holly had a plan. She said that on Happy Days, when people kissed, they turned out the lights and played music. I had never watched Happy Days, but it seemed like a show called Happy Days was bound know about these things. Holly pulled down the shades on her windows and put the Mickey Mouse song on her little record player: I’m a happy mouse, and I ought to be. Won’t you let me in your house and watch me on TV?

Holly seemed nervous, like she was waiting for an important announcement over the intercom at school. I had a dawning awareness that Holly was not intending a simple, parent-like, friendly kiss - that this was supposed to be more somehow. She sat next to me, leaned over, and kissed me quickly on the cheek. The room felt stuffy with the shades drawn and Mickey Mouse singing about us all being happy kids.

I sensed, for the first time, the beginning hint of a kind of disappointment and frustration that would become clearer to me in time. Holly was hurt and upset with me, but I could not understand why, or what I had done. In time, her dissapoinment would would become familiar, like an old friend that I wished would go away. I recognized it later, when I realized that I wanted more than just play with the boys, that I wanted to be more than an eternal Wendy to their Peter Pan. I felt it again when I was the one who waited for notes to be passed back to me, or walked the long way to class with the hope that I might to catch a glimpse of a curly-haired boy in a Sherlock Holmes hat.

I tried to stay friends with Holly, but she was always angry with me. She would not take turns playing games anymore. It was kickball, or nothing. She looked at me with hurt indifference, and spoke the words that I would come to hate more than any others - the only words that I absolutely do not allow my own children to say: I don’t want to be your friend anymore.

I still rode my bike by her house. I still gazed longingly in the big widows at the spider plants that hung in macramé holders. I remembered being in the kitchen, and pounding on the piano, and having Bonnie give a name to my trying: music.

I would ride home and ask my mother for a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

But it never tasted the same.

It has been a strange summer. Everyday, it rains - and not just brief summer showers. It pours. Streets in my neighborhood flood. The thunder is loud enough to make me jump and catch my breath. This is not typical weather for Georgia. In the spring, we plant species that thrive with direct sunlight and low moisture. This year, the intentional plants are dying, their roots turning to sludge in the ever-damp soil. The less tame plants are thriving; the blackberries are going wild with the wet.

I refuse to carry an umbrella, so I am always slightly damp. I keep waiting to dry out. I keep expecting the sun, because it is, after all, summer.

The constant rain has disoriented me. I feel off-balance. I have dreams about boats and drowning. I have dreams about longing to sail, waves and the wind.

Another rainy weekend, and I woke up Friday missing the sun. I was tired of being inside. So, roar(not lion) and I took my kids to the Botanical Gardens - in the rain. Arden and Lily were giddy with the freedom of being able to wallow in the water. They flew down a rain-slick slide in the children’s garden, and splashed into a three inch mud puddle at the bottom. It stopped raining and we ate Ben and Jerry’s Peace Pop ice cream next to a fountain. Arden fell in a pond. Wet as he was, it did not even matter.

As we got ready to leave, they began to set up for that night’s concert in the garden. The gardens were almost empty; not many people think to visit in the rain. My kids ran across the wet grass and Nanci Griffith came onto the stage to warm up for the evening’s performance:

I can't be the wind, cuz the wind blows too free. But if you want a true companion, don't forget about me.

It was a perfect moment. I stood in the wet grass and listened. A couple with a young baby asked if I knew who was singing, because her voice was so beautiful. It was. So beautiful. Perfect. The kind of moment you think could last forever, and you would be happy.

Saturday, I got a letter from a treasured friend in the mail. Words and music.

Today, I drove home from a bridal shower for one of my favorite people, a beautiful young woman who spends summers in Africa and wears daisies in her long red hair. I babysat her when she was a child. Her father was a campus minister, just like my dad.

She has bloomed before my eyes. I gave her a poem and a wrought iron tree that will hang on the wall and hold votives, along with a box of dark red pomegranate candles to fill the glass cups. At her shower, she opened an under the counter wine rack that someone had bought off of her registry. She commented that she had been hoping someone would buy it for her, but that she had been afraid that no one would because, “I know we Christians are not supposed to like wine”. I just love this girl, about to become a bride - who wants to drink wine with her husband; I am so happy for her.

On the way home from the shower, I got caught in another torrential rainstorm. Norman Berry Road was flooded with red clay mud. I pulled over onto a side street and sat in the car while I waited for the rain to subside. I listened to the music my friend sent me, music about trees and God. I thought that I actually like the rain, and I remembered that I have always loved being inside a car when it rains. As a child, I used to sit inside the station wagon on the driveway during thunderstorms, because I had heard that if lightning hit a car, the tires would ground the electricity and you would stay safe as long as you were inside. When it stormed, I always carried a book and a pillow into the parked car, and I sat out the bad weather, reading and drawing pictures with one finger on the fogged-over windows of the sauna-like backseat.

Today, the rain pounded on the hood of the car and the trees were bending in the wind. But I felt at home in the parked car. I knew that I was safe and grounded.

It was a perfect moment. It was one of those perfect moments when you think: “Yes. I could stay like this forever".

For my Sunday post, I am saying Thank You. Thank You for small, perfect moments. Thank You for these precious gifts in the middle of a rainy summer.

i tell her that she has to put on my wings and let me take pretentious pictures.

she has never lit sparklers before. growing up that way; not doing the fourth of july thing. i tell her that the sparklers are the most important thing. sparklers and wings. it is all important. i pull a box of sparklers from my pajama drawer and she laughs. they are illegal in georgia. borders must be crossed to obtain them.

afterwards she says it was like some sort of secret initiation.

maybe i will start a sparkler and wings society. we can meet on wooden swings under friendly trees that wave and clap their hands.

the pictures are beautiful.

I don’t like to get into politics when I write. I think that the current political climate is far too divisive and I cringe at the way denominational (or local church) affiliation has been tied to the way an individual votes. I feel like issues are painted with such broad brush strokes that people have align on either side of a binary argument. It all makes me uncomfortable, and I find it difficult to breathe in the current atmosphere. I want to remain neutral. I want to stay out of it. I want it to just go away.

I think about myself; am I a good person or a bad person? Both. I have good qualities; I have bad qualities. I am not always motivated by the right things, but I try. I suspect that that most things in life are like this - complicated, and difficult.

And so, I read the Slate article that is being linked on untold numbers of blogs. And last night, I went to go see the Fahrenheit 9/11.

My thoughts on the film:

Was it biased? Yes. Moore clearly has an agenda, and I agree with criticism that the film spends too much time building a case against Saudi Arabia at the exclusion of other issues. Moore is opinionated and the film uses music and gimmicky clips to make some of its points in a heavy handed way ( for example, silly 1950’s footage of the countries in the “Coalition of the Willing”, or superimposing Bush over the faces of Bonanza characters).

The case that Moore argues is this: Saudi Arabia is a country that supports terrorism and breeds terrorists, but it has been allowed to go unpunished because of heavy financial investment in both the United States and in companies owned/operated by the Bush family and Bush family friends.

Moore feels that this connection is to blame for everything about the way 9/11 and the war(s) in Afghanistan and Iraq have been (are being) fought. His view is extreme. But I think that the view that all those financial and business connections mean nothing is extreme as well.

Interestingly, the parts of the movie that I found the most moving have not been addressed in the anti-Fahrenheit 9/11 arguments I have heard and read. The movie made me cry, more than once.

I have remained emotionally distant from the war. I just have not wanted to think about it. I did not even look at the prison-abuse photos. I want to believe that in doing so , somehow I am honoring the troops. I think that they are (for the most part) good kids that are in a bad situation. I just tune out and think “Oh, it will all work out; it will all get taken care of”.

What I appreciate (if appreciate is the right word) is that Fahrenheit 9/11 contained clips of soldiers. Lots of clips of soldiers. Lots of interviews with family members.

War is awful. Whether it is necessary or is not does nothing to change the fact that war is awful.

For the first time, I really cried for all that has been lost. I grieved for the families that have lost loved ones. I cried for the soldiers that are scared, and tired, and just want to come home. I cried for the families in Iraq that lost children, and wives, and uncles, and fathers in the war. It felt right to cry for them, to cry with them.

This morning, when the news on my welcome screen reported casualties in Iraq, I stopped for a moment and I let myself absorb what that means. I thought about the family members that got phone calls last night and will wake up to hell this morning. I will not keep brushing those statistics aside. I will let myself absorb the truth that there are faces and names and sacrifice and loved ones and pain behind each number.

These days, it seems that everyone wants to take sides. My linguistic philosophy professor says that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. It seems like the sides of the political debate have stopped being dialects. We no longer have conversations. Now, each side has its own language - a language with an army and a navy. Guns are drawn, and we fire haphazardly at the other side.

The truth, I suspect, lies in the space in-between. But it feels safe to be inside of a well-armed camp to the left or to the right. It feels safe within the walls that have been built to keep some things in, and other things out.

I am tired. I am really, really tired and sad this summer. I want to just find someone to tell me what to think when it comes to politics. I want to just trust whatever is being said. I want to nod my head and say that Fahrenheit 9/11 is a load of crap and Moore is a biased, bad filmmaker. Or, I want to say that Fahrenheit 9/11 is the most brilliant documentary ever and that now I totally understand the conspiracy and have all the answers.

But I don’t think that the truth like that. As much as I want it to be. As tired as I am.

I suspect that I have been lied to. I suspect that I am being lied to.

And I don’t think Michael Moore is the only one doing the lying.

Mostly he read Avengers and the X-Men. He dreamed of being Wolverine, who had a skeleton made of the strongest metal in the universe and who could heal from any wound overnight. At the oddest moments he would think about me, miss my voice, wish that I would come out from the house and pound on the roof of his fort and demand to be let in. Sometimes, he wished Samuel and Lindsay hung out more or that my father would play with him as he once had. Play without that always-worried look underneath the smile, that desperate worry that surrounded everything now like an invisible force field. But my brother would not let himself miss my mother. He tunneled into stories where weak men changed into strong half-animals or used eye beams or magic hammers to power through steel or climb up sky-scrapers. He was the Hulk when he was angry and Spidey the rest of the time. When he felt his heart hurt he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone...

One day, Buckely came home from the second grade with a story he’d written: “Once upon a time there was a kid named Billy. He liked to explore. He saw a hole and went inside but he never came out. The End.”
-Alice Sebold

Last summer, I read The Lovely Bones . I loved it. People asked me why I loved it so much. I always answered that it was because of the part with Buckley.

Today, my son thanked a friend for “understanding his logic”. I find his comment hauntingly beautiful. I think it would be lovely if we could come with instructions - or warning labels. And it would be even lovelier if we could make friends that understood our strange logic.

My warning label would read something like this: not as strong as she tries to appear. likes to hide. has a tendency to run and be paranoid. knows the words “heart to stone” way too well. fears being not-chosen. needs to feel seen. when in doubt, hold her hand. be kind.

Every summer, we drove for two days - from Tallahassee, Florida to Portsmouth, Ohio, my mother’s hometown. We drove over the Kentucky River, past the huge Steel Mill, and through neighborhoods of company-built houses. Finally, we arrived at the house of my mother’s childhood.

Ohio was so different from Florida. The grass was soft, and there were alleys, cellars, and fireflies. My grandparents lived in a little white house with green shutters on Cherry Street. Everyday, my grandmother gave me a quarter and let me walk down the sidewalk to the corner grocery store: Johnson’s Grocery. Mr. Johnson had known my mother when she was a child, and he welcomed me into his dusty, hardwood-floored shop and told me that I looked just like her. I knew that this compliment was a lie; I looked nothing like my mother. I was small and scrawny, with thin, flyaway hair, and eyes too big for my face. My mother had been a round-cheeked, dimple-kneed girl with jet black curls.

Everyday, I would choose either a banana popsicle, a Charleston Chew, a cream soda, or a root beer float popsicle. This is how summer tasted. I would walk home, down the old cracked sidewalks, eating my candy or popsicle. Step on A Crack, Break Your Mother’s Back I would walk carefully, deliberately. I would weave myself in a direct line on the cracks in the sidewalk, walking the spider web patterns, making sure my foot touched every single crack. Please, let her be gone. I felt terrible about what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I did it anyway and I thought: just please, let her be gone.

But she was never gone. She was always there. And her back was fine.

My mother would take me on walks through her old neighborhood. These walks terrified me. She would stop and point out the house where the woman had been standing on the floor heating grate and her robe had caught on fire. The woman ran outside, panicked. She did not stop drop and roll. Oh no. She ran, trying to escape the flames that engulfed her robe, her nightgown, her hair. She ran screaming until she was burned to death. I could picture every detail as my mother described the horror that had happened. Let this be a lesson. When I caught on fire, I must remember to stop, drop, and roll.

She walked me past her elementary school, and opened the gate to let me play on the playground. Back then, there was no concept that playgrounds should have soft surfaces to land on; they were just playground equipment on concrete. My mother called me over to the slide and told me the story of Kenny Cershaw. Kenny Cershaw had been in my mother’s class. He had climbed to the top of the metal ladder on the giant slide, and he had fallen. He cracked his head right open. You could see his brain. “Look”, my mother would say, pointing at the ground near the slide. “you can still see Kenny Cershaw’s blood”. I would look and I swear, I could see the blood. There was no way in hell I was going on that slide. I did not even want to be on the playground anymore.

We went to the baseball fields and the neighborhood park. There was a small concrete pool filled with algae-covered water. My mother told me that it used to be a swimming pool, but it had no filter and one summer a bunch of kids died of Meningitis after swimming in the pool.

I hated these walks. I hated the awful stories. I was scared all the time as a kid; I never slept well. I tied Bibles above my bed. I kept the light on. I was haunted by the ghosts of my mother’s past. The burning lady, the blood on the playground, the children that swam in deadly water. There were always stories about dead children. Children that drowned in ditches, children that choked on hot dogs, children that ate poison. To this day, I can not sleep through the night.

My grandmother had a storm cellar, just like the one in The Wizard of Oz. It was a huge door in the ground that opened to reveal a narrow flight of steps. The cellar was dark, with walls made of scooped-out earth. There were spider webs and mousetraps. But, somehow, it felt safe. I took a blanket, and a lamp down the stairs. There was an old chair in the corner and I set up a little camp for myself. I spent hours in the cellar, reading. I curled myself in the blanket, tucked my legs inside and settled into the chair as if it were a nest.

Underneath the house, I imagined a tornado swirling everything away. It was quiet, and I was alone. I imagined, that if such a storm did destroy everything above me, I would be the only one who survived. This was comforting - the idea that once it was safe, I could emerge from underground and be unharmed.

The beautiful Rachelle, who knows the secrets of bird songs and offering bears, gives her perspective on Lost In Translation.

Just like honey.

Today, someone found my blog after they searched Google for the string of words: “signs that my ex-boyfriend is still in love with me”. Normally, these search strings make me laugh. I get a ton of hits for “the first time I saw a naked man”, or “naked pony riding” (my favorite “naked” search string is still: “naked pregnant belly convent photos").

I get lots of hits from bad children looking to steal English papers. Normally, I get a kick out of the Google search. But tonight, this search string has stuck with me.

I was on the phone with my friend roar(not lion) and I told her about the Google search. She suggested that we actually write a post - just for this girl.

Because, really, we have all been there.

I feel this anonymous Google-searcher's pain. I want to take her out for coffee and tell her (in the brilliant words of roar again - about a totally unrelated boy-situation - but still - a brilliant observation) that whoever this guy is - he is just a boy; he is not God.

And thus, I offer my own list of signs (culled from my own romantic history of boys that dumped me) that your ex-boyfriend is still in love with you - with the following bit of advice: whatever he does - do not take the asshole back. He left you once; he will do it again. Take comfort in the signs that he still loves you and regrets his decision to break your heart - but move on, my friend. Move on.

Amy’s Top Five Signs That Your Ex-Boyfriend Is Still In Love With You

5. He gives you mix tapes with songs that have lyrics that are oh so subtle. For example: “Raise your hands to heaven and pray - that we’ll get back together some day.”

4. He stops by your house and has long talks with your mother when you are at work. He compliments her cooking and tells her that: "grape Kool-aid will always remind him of you."

3. He asks people at church to pray for you because you are backsliding , causing you to get worried calls from your pastor’s wife - all because he saw you with another guy. (And a very cute other guy that wore cream cable knit sweaters and whose father was a curator at the Smithsonian - a definite step up).

2. He sends you the following poem written on the back of a Polaroid of a waterfall:

Where has Maid Quiet gone to,
Nodding her russet hood?
The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
O how could I be so calm
When she rose up to depart?
Now words that called up the lightning
Are hurtling through my heart.
-William Butler Yeats

And the Number One Sign That Your Ex-Boyfriend Is Still In Love With You:

1. He marries a girl named Amy that is an English major.


Okay - so there you have my very helpful (and all 100% true) list. Feel free to add your own signs - and signs about ex-girlfriends are encouraged as well - this is a non-discriminatory blog. I know roar is going to add in her Bjork story (at the very least)..........

There were wild cats that lived under the Campus House. I spent hours trying to charm them, to lure them to me. After the fellowship dinners, I carried little scraps of sloppy joe sandwiches and sat in the bushes, holding out the food like an offering. The cats would cry and hesitantly peer out from under the house. I spoke to them softly:

come on girl,
i won’t hurt you,
here kitty kitty kitty

The cats would take a few steps towards me and then stop. Untrusting.

Eventually, I gave up and threw the food to them.

A few times a year, the cats would have kittens. I loved it when the kittens were born. Once they got old enough to wander, they would let themselves be picked up and stroked. I would carry them around and beg my parents to let me take one home. Just one kitten. Just one sweet, little, kitten to love before it turned wild. My parents always said no.

But I was a determined child. I became obsessed with cats. I figured that, eventually, I would become so obsessed with cats that my parents would just have to give in and let me have a pet. I collected cat figurines, cat stuffed animals. I read books about cats. I sang every song from The Aristocats (I still know all the words). When Christmas came along, I asked for a cat. Nothing else. Just a cat.

This is how I became a cat person. As soon as I moved out, I adopted a cat from the shelter. She was everything a cat should be: smart, independent, just affectionate enough. I aligned myself with the cat people. In other words, I was not a dog person.

After I got married, I decided to give dog-ownership a try and I adopted a puppy. Big mistake. I was used to cats. I named the dog Barrett (after Elizabeth - I am big on the literary pet names) and brought her home and expected her to be like a cat. I treated her like an adult, I gave her space and respect and she absolutely went crazy. I tried to explain to her about being housebroken. She just looked at me as if I were insane. With a cat, all it took was a simple conversation, “Cat, see the litter box? Good.” Not so much with a dog. Barrett was out of control. I called the shelter and they told me that having a dog was like having a two year old, that a dog needed time and attention and training. I took Barrett back. I felt awful. I just could not do it. At that point, I thought perhaps God was telling me that I should never have children. If a dog was so far beyond me, how would I ever handle a baby?

I went back to cats and I named them after characters in To Kill A Mockingbird. When I was pregnant, I dreamed that I gave birth to a kitten. I refused to have anything to do with dogs.

I told myself that dogs were too easy with their affection. I told myself that people who liked dogs must have some kind of self-esteem issue. Pathetic. They settled for such easy love - for a stupid, needy dog that was all tail-waggy and happy to see them.

But then, my kids began to ask for a dog. I reminded them that we had a cat (Scout) and that a dog would make Scout unhappy. I told them we needed a house and a yard to have a dog. I gave them bizarre choices. You can get a dog or have a birthday party. You can get a dog or we can go on vacation. You can get a dog but it will eat Scout. I was a really good parent with that last one. But hey, it worked.

No dog.

Until we moved into a house with a yard, and Scout ran away and got hit by a car. The kids cried for weeks. Every night. It was awful. Okay, I told them. We can get a new cat.

A cat?

But - what about a dog?

I thought about the wild cats, and about all the begging I did as a child. I thought about the contracts I used to draw up promising that I would take care of a cat. I thought of the time that I had all the college students at the Campus House sign a petition stating: “Let Amy Have A Cat”. I remembered the longing that I felt with my hand out, a sloppy joe in my open palm. I saw that longing reflected in the faces of my children.

Please. Please can we have a dog?

And so, I said yes. Yes, with conditions: it had to be a shelter dog - small, and already housebroken. I knew that I could not handle another training failure.

Last week, we went to the no-kill shelter and brought home Sunny Baudelaire, a four year old shitzu/poodle mix. A dog that was, ostensibly, going to be a dog for my children. A dog that I was only going to tolerate.

Instead, I have become this ridiculous dog owner. For whatever reason (although, most likely because I was the one that physically took her out of the shelter cage), Sunny has decided that she is my dog. She follows me everywhere. She hops up in my lap when I study. She gets exited when I take out the leash. She prances around on her hind legs like a circus dog (the poodle in her coming out). She brings toys to me and puts them in my lap, then she puts her little face on top of the toy and looks at me with those clichéd puppy-dog eyes. She growls at my husband when he comes into the bedroom if I am already asleep.

I have become pathetic in my adoration of this little black bundle at my feet. I look down, embarrassed.

I think I might be a dog person after all.

Beautiful things I saw today:

On my way to school this morning, I drove past the housing projects.
It was early, the streets were quiet. Standing on the hill in front of the projects, I saw a man.

He looked strong, and proud. In a worn orange t-shirt and jeans, wearing cowboy boots, he appeared ready to fight. He seemed to be familiar with fighting. I imagined him raising a fist to the stoplight, to the buses and the cars - or swearing in Spanish at the police station and strip club across the street. Disgusted by everything.

He stood facing the road, his legs spread slightly in the stance of a gunfighter.

Arms crossed in front of his chest. His hair was long and wild from sleep, or a lack thereof. He looked straight ahead. Impassive.

Between his legs, a small black and white cat was weaving in and out - oblivious to his stoic stare and angry arms. Oblivious to the fact that this man might actually prefer a dog.

The cat was choosing him anyway.


On my way home, I passed a little restaurant. They had an airbrushed sign near the road.

“The Opening. Lip Fine Food”

(For my friends that I talked to today and did not mention this - I needed to write it first. It did not seem real.)

As a child, I would fantasize about my parents getting a divorce. I had dreams of leaving my mother and brother and just going to live with my dad. Me and my dad. Who needed a mother anyway?

Once a week, my father picked me up from school and took me to the local drugstore to get a milkshake from the old-fashioned soda fountain. He wanted to know what I was reading, what I was listening to. He asked me what I thought. He listened.

My father’s name is Thomas. When my tree befriended me on the kindergarten playground, he whispered his name to me in the wind. Thomasville. It was the name of the town that bordered Tallahassee; it was a different place to be. Anywhere but here. Hope inside of a tree that was my friend, a tree that was named after my dad.

On Saturday nights, my father stayed up late to write his sermons. I would wake up in the middle of the night and see the family room light on. He always welcomed my interruption. These were the moments that I asked the Big questions. How do you know God is real? What if it is not true? How do you keep your faith when there is so much bad in the world?

My father would listen and talk with me. Always, before I went back to bed, he would look me in the eye and say: “Never be afraid to ask questions Amy. God needs more thinking Christians”.

On Sunday mornings, I would sit on the steps and listen to my father preach. Sometimes, he would use examples from our conversations - from books I was reading or from songs that I listened to - as sermon illustrations. He always asked my permission ahead of time. He always gave me credit, even from the pulpit.

When he had to punish me, he would tell me that I was just a little tree and that his job was to keep me growing straight. He built me a playhouse. He nailed wood steps in a beautiful oak to help me learn to climb, and he made a rope swing. He pushed me so high that my bare feet would touch the branches.

My father loved to fish. He would bring home his catch lay the fish out on the grass in the backyard so he could photograph them. I would walk up to each fish and touch their eyeball with one small finger. He allowed this. When I was a little older, he took me fishing with him. I would sit on the floor of the boat and dangle my hand out the side, feeling the water swell and rush past my fingers. Resistance. I learned how to cast, how to take my own fish off of the hook, how to start the motor and steer the boat.

In high school, my father picked me up early and took me to lunch at the most expensive restaurant in town. During the summer that I was sixteen, he took me on a road trip through the rural south to “look for America”. Every good memory of my childhood is a memory of my father. My hero.

Last fall, my dad went into the hospital. He had blood clots that had lodged in his lungs. He has seemed more fragile since then. I worry.

Since then, I am aware of the blessing when I stand next to him in church on Sunday mornings. We sing hymns and I think that I never want to forget how this feels. I never want to forget that I stood beside my father and heard him sing. He never needs the hymnal - he knows everything by heart.

Today we went to my parent’s house for lunch. Father’s Day. My mother said that he was not feeling well because he had not slept the night before. I was anxious. Why didn’t he sleep? How was he not feeling well? My mother said it is just a cold. He took Sudafed and it kept him awake. We eat hamburgers and cottage cheese and french fries, my dad’s special request.

After lunch, my father takes a nap and my mother comes out to sit next to me in the backyard. My kids are swimming and laughing. I have a book I am supposed to be reading.

My mother tells me that my father’s PSA count has come back at an extremely high level. They need to do a biopsy, but it is almost definite that he has cancer. After the clotting , he is on blood thinners and he has to go off of them in order to have the biopsy done. She tries to be positive. Nonchalant. It has probably been caught early. It probably has not metastasized. It will probably be okay.

I am stunned. I ask when they found out.

My mom answers. Last night. They got back in town and there was a message on the answering machine.

I was going to write a post about my father today.

This is not the way it was going to end.

I have wondered
when the mystery will end
and what the answers reveal

But I am learning now
It's less about the answers
and more about how we heal

When all the awful of your past
brings you to this place at last

I am with you

What would happen
in the time it takes your hand
to reach out and beyond

To touch the twilight
Feel the warmth of firelight

Turn a stone in your palm

I can't make this world be kind
But you can put your hand in mine

I am with you

-Christine Kane

blessed are the cracked. for they shall let in the Light.

amen

I have never been a make-up kind of girl. I don’t wear lipstick because it makes me feel like I am saying, “HEY! LOOK AT MY LIPS!”. I feel weird. It’s the same way with nail polish. “HEY! LOOK AT MY TOES!” It is just an uncomfortable thing for me. I prefer not to.

My aversion to make-up bothers my mother. I get make-up kits for Christmas. She offers me lipstick, as if I just accidentally forgot to put it on. She asks if I want to borrow some of her lipstick and I get indignant. I tell her that I put Burts Bees Wax on before I left home and she should be happy. She sighs. What will she do with me?

The only make-up-type thing that I love is perfume. I have a thing about perfume. I love the idea that people might associate a fragrance with the thought of me. I attach to a scent and I wear it loyally. The only problem is, I always latch onto fragrances that get discontinued. When this happens, I am left to search for a new smell that I can identify with. It is not easy.

I do not like floral scents, or musk. Benetton made a fragrance that I wore in high school. Then, after it got discontinued, I started wearing the brand new Calvin Klein fragrance - Eternity - mostly because I loved the name. Eternity. Forever. Always.

I wanted to smell like always. But the smell became too popular. It started to smell like everyone else, not like me.

The next cologne that I loved was a vanilla scent that was made by a small company in France. I bought it in an incredible downtown shop in Athens, called Frontier . They sold story people, and these locally made honey pots, (beeswax globes decorated with pressed flowers and leaves that glowed when you lit a tea light inside of them - immortalized in my favorite R.E.M. song, “Country Feedback” - winter rain, a honey pot) and cool wrapping paper and really good greeting cards.

I loved my vanilla perfume, but the small business that made it got bought out by a larger company and there was no more scent of vanilla. I tried to find a replacement version of vanilla - but nothing smelled pure the way that my cologne smelled. I had to search again.

The last fragrance that I loved was called Angel. Like Eternity, I bought it for the name - and for the bottle, a flat star that fit in the palm of my hand. The scent itself was heavy and sensual, a mix of chocolate, vanilla, patchouli, and sandalwood. I wore this after I got married, but when I had children, it stopped seeming like the way I wanted to smell. It was not the smell I wanted my children to associate with me; it was too complicated.

And so, I have been searching for a new fragrance - for one I can wrap my heart around. Today, I was running mall-related errands and I stopped in Anthropology. They say that you fall in love the moment you stop looking. I was not looking for perfume today. But I found a bottle, and I fell in love. It absolutely made my day. I brought it home to show my husband. His enthusiastic comment was, “Well, I guess that’s a sort-of pleasant smell”. It will grow on him. I know it will. This odd little bottle of perfume that fits me like a key in a lock.

Personally, I love it. I think it smells great. Heavenly. The only thing missing is a faint undertone of cigarette smoke - if it had just a hint of cigarette underneath the fabric softener and Tide, it would be perfect.

And so, if you happen to meet me someday, this is what I will smell like.

I have vivid memories of the first books that I ever read. I taught myself to read sometime between the ages of three and four. I had a Winnie the Pooh book that I loved, and I would read it word-for-word. My mother insisted that I was reading by rote memorization, but I can still remember looking at the book and knowing the words. I started kindergarten when I was four, and I remember sitting at the book table and picking up The House that Jack Built. I had never seen this particular book before, and as I began turning the pages, I realized that my mother was wrong. I did know how to read.

The first chapter books that I ever read were the Raggedy Ann and Andy books by Johnny Gruelle. I can still picture them, lined up on the lowest shelf in the children’s library. I loved these books. I loved the idea that all the toys came alive when I was not looking. I loved the adventures they had. I loved the icicles that tasted like soda and the pancake-making rocks. I loved the wishing penny and the camel with wrinkled knees. I loved the fact that Raggedy Ann had a twin and that she and Andy would always have each other. I loved it that Raggedy Ann loved Marcella - the little girl that owned her. She always came back to Marcella, no matter how exciting it was in Cookie Land. I attributed her loyalty to the fact that she had a magical candy heart sewn inside of her.

Because of my obsession with the books, my aunt sent me Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls for Christmas. I wanted to love them. I wanted them to be real. I just could not seem to trust them. I had a suspicion that she was not the real Raggedy Ann. She had the right hair, and the right eyes; she even had the right little red heart drawn on her cloth body. I smushed her, trying to discern whether or not she had the all-important candy heart sewn inside of her. She just felt smushy. I was angry about this. How dare they lie and say this was Raggedy Ann? Raggedy Ann had a candy heart; my doll was just flat and nothingness.

I had to see if the candy heart was there. I rationalized my destructive impulse; I told myself that a cut-up and sewn back together doll with a real candy heart inside of her would be just fine with me. What I rejected was the idea of an intact impostor doll. I simply refused to give my love to a heartless little stuffed thing that threatened to usurp Hollie Hobbie’s rightful place in my bedtime arms.

I took a pair of scissors and cut into Raggedy Ann. I was right; there was nothing there.

For the past few years, I have been collecting the old Gruelle books off of ebay. Reading them again, I remember why I loved them as much as I did.

The first paragraphs from my favorite of all the books: Raggedy Ann in Cookie Land.

If you ask me, it simply does not get much better than this:

Chapter One - The Ice Grotto

Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy turned over and over as they fell. Part of the time Raggedy Ann was on top and part of the time Raggedy Andy was on top. But all the time they were sailing through the air, each Raggedy held the other’s hand.

It was quite dark, but that did not worry them for both Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy had bright little shoe button eyes. One can see very well with shoe button eyes if one is a rag doll stuffed with nice, clean, soft, white cotton. And, of course, being made of cloth and stuffed with nice, clean, soft, white cotton, the Raggedys were not hurt even a teeny-weeny bit when they finally lit with soft blumps upon the bottom.

The bottom of what?

That was just what Raggedy Ann wished to know. “Where are we, Raggedy Andy?” she laughed.

“I guess we are at the bottom,” Raggedy Andy replied, and he stood up and helped Raggedy Ann to her feet.

Today's back seat conversation:

Lily - Did you know that Santa Evles and Tricking Elves are mortal enemies?
Arden - And there is an evil tribe of elves that pretend to be human and they can make themselves look human - but they can not change their ears.

The summer between sixth and seventh grade, my classmate Heather went to Italy with her parents. Her father was an archeology professor. Heather spent her days at archeological dig sites, hanging out with college students in the sunshine and ancient dust. She drank wine with her meals, sitting around wooden tables and listening to the lively conversations of professors and students. When she came back to school, this is what she talked about: the meals in Italy, bowls of pasta and bread and dark red wine. She came back to school a woman of the world. We were in awe.

And so, it was only fitting that Heather would throw the first “my parents are out of town and I am inviting boys” party that any of us ever attended. A few weeks after school started, we all showed up at her house ready to shrug off the guilt of our deception and experience our first taste of the future. A party with boys. We were ready.

As soon as we arrived, the boys headed into the woods behind Heather’s house. We heard them yelling at each other, having fun. I had the sudden urge to join them - to leave the girls and their glitter nail polish and strawberry lip gloss and training bras behind. I wanted to run into the woods and hang out with the trees and the boys. I imagined them splashing in the creek; I thought that they were probably smoking. There was one boy that I liked more than the others. He was thin and blond and he read books on the sly. I thought it would be cool to meet him in the woods and show him that I could get just as dirty as the boys did - that I knew how to hunt crawfish under the smooth rocks of the creek. Instead, I stayed with the girls.

Heather took us into her kitchen and, with a ceremonial flourish, she opened the pantry door to reveal bottles of wine that her parents had brought back from Italy. She opened one and passed it around. Everyone took a sip. Then, she held the bottle under the faucet and refilled the emptied space with tap water. The bottle appeared undrunk. It was a miracle.

With those first sips of wine warm in or mouths, we began to look for the boys. We walked up and down the streets in a pack, giggling. We had bottles we wanted to spin. We were so sure of ourselves; we were so ready to play those games. The streetlights came on and the air cooled almost imperceptibly. As it grew close to the time that our parents would begin arriving to take us home, the boys emerged from the woods. They were wet and muddy. Triumphant.

They handed us glass bottles of Mountain Dew. Peace offerings because they had missed the party. The bottles were warm.

We realized what they had done. They had urinated in the bottles. We were holding bottles of fresh boy pee.

The boys all laughed hysterically as we dropped their offensive gifts, shattering the glass and splashing the awful contents all over our blue Nikes. I caught the eyes of the boy that I had a crush on. He looked back at me and I quickly looked away. I was afraid that I would reveal too much. I was afraid that he would see, mixed with my horror, a deeper longing to know what it felt like to be so free. I was afraid that he would see my undaunted desire to know him, my restless longing to be where he was.

it is hard to type with just one hand.

i owe a debt of gratitude to my son, who is letting me put vile coke on my blog instead of keeping it for his blog.

when they want to earn money for the offering at church, i ask my kids to make art shows. they paint and draw and glue and tape - and then they set up an art gallery in the living room.

my son created a series called "vile coke"
i think it is brilliant.

vile coke - new with germs

vile coke - pecan milkshake - with real nuts

vile coke with swamp water

extra ingredients: spinach, cat poo, paper, peanuts, mustard, and plastic

lily - can i see your money?
me - it is in the bank
lily - can you get it out of the bank?
me - yes - they just keep it there until i want to take it out.
-pause-
lily - did you know that no robbers can ever get into the bank of Jesus?
me - what does Jesus keep in His bank?
lily - us.

Last week, my friend showed me a list she had made of things to do. On the list - “get a normal Bible”. She pointed to this particular entry: “Can you help me with this one?”

I said of course I could. I own a whole lot of Bibles. I mean, my husband is a preacher. You need a Bible - come to me. Except, I do not really like any of my Bibles. I would not even call them “normal”. I know that by “normal”, my friend just means that she wants an actual Bible - not the book of Mormon or the Jehovah’s witness version. Still, the whole idea of a “normal” Bible made me think about all of the different flavors of Bibles. The topic makes me uneasy. I have issues with Bibles.

My fascination with Bibles began when I was a kid. My grandmother had a Bible that had a little plastic vials of water and sand from the Holy Land glued on to the front cover. This Bible taught me to covet. I wanted that Bible. It was so cool. You could shake it and the water would get all foamy from the air, and the sand would make a soft swishing sound. I was not the only one who developed an obsession with it; when my grandmother died, all of the cousins fought over the Holy Land Bible. I don’t remember who ended up with it, but it was not me.

At the campus house, we had Good News for Modern Man - the hippie Bible. It was the size of a paperback book, with a cover that looked like newspaper. Inside, it had the Bible, written in modern language, with little stick drawings to illustrate key passages. It confused me. Was it the Bible? It was called the “Good News”, and it looked like newspaper. What was the “Good News” and who was “Modern Man”? For years I thought that the “Good News” was a message that I would find in a literal newspaper - the opposite of bad news, related somehow to stick figures.

As a result of these early encounters with contrasting representations of scripture, I developed deeply divided impressions of the Bible. First, there was the heavy, Holy, map filled, gilt-edged book of wonders with its holy water and sand vials. Then, there was the little paperback “Good News” with stick figures being healed and waving palm branches. Which one was the Bible?

Around this time, I also had a little pink Bible with a built in ribbon bookmark. It had my name on the cover. I was an easily freaked-out child, and everything scared me. Remember the movie trailer for The Shining? It showed a hotel hallway and an elevator; the elevator door opened and the hallway filled with blood. I could not sleep for months after I saw this trailer. Seriously. Months. I still don’t like to think about it. Another thing that terrified me was vampires. Luckily, vampires could be repelled by crosses - and so I figured that if I used the ribbon bookmark to tie my little pink Bible to the reading lamp above my bed - it would dangle there and repel any vampires that might sneak in at night. I turned my pink Bible into a magical, hanging, vampire-repelling talisman.

Clearly, I had developed a strange relationship with the word of God.

When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a “real” Bible. It had a leather cover with my name embossed along the bottom. It felt good and Holy to me, until I noticed that it was missing the book of Matthew. We took it back to the bookstore and they replaced it immediately. But I never really warmed up to this particular Bible, not after the missing Matthew incident. I just didn’t trust it anymore. I wanted to find a Bible I could love.

I know all Bibles should be created equal, but they aren’t. There are too many choices. To name a few:

Version - I have never been able to shake my fondness for the way the New King James version sounds because there is a passage in Isaiah where God says he will “dandle us on his knees” and I just love that. But the NKJV is extremely unpopular, and is looked down upon by just about everyone.

Cover - Paperback? Leather? Fake leather? What color of leather or fake leather? Cardboard?
They even make a “metal” bible that says “Got God?" on the cover.

Extra Stuff - Words of Christ in red? Maps? Concordance? Little tab things to help you find the book you are looking for?

More Extra Stuff - All the devotional extras that customize your Bible to suit your lifestyle.

It is the extras that make me really uncomfortable. I am both drawn to and repelled by them. I liked the idea of a “Woman’s" Bible (I actually have three variations of the Woman Bible) - but then, the devotions began to freak me out. There would be little charts of “flowers in the Bible”, or “Bible Herbs”. It seemed weird. Knowing Bible flowers was not helping me relate to anything in the Bible. The Parenting Bible was just as bad. Someone gave me a Couples Devotional Bible, and once again - it bothered me. Relating every book of the Bible to marriage (or parenting, or being a woman) seemed strained and dishonest. The Bible is not about being a woman, or a modern man, or a couple, or a parent, or a teenager, or a fan of the Left Behind series, or a person with forty days of Purpose. Theme Bibles make me uncomfortable.

With one exception.

The only Bible I have ever really been able to love, the only one that I trusted, was the Life Recovery Bible. It was a twelve steps Bible. I loved this Bible because its little notes and explanations and devotions were all about being really screwed up. According to this Bible, everyone was really messed up - starting with Adam and Eve and continuing right on through the people who were in the New Testament churches. This I could relate to. All the margin notes explained that the people in the Bible had the same sorts of issues that I had. They were codependent. They were in denial. They had trouble with anger, guilt, and shame. They were addicts. They needed to forgive. They needed to make amends. They were just like me. I loved this Bible. I saw myself on every page. I called it the “You are Fucked Up Bible”. I wrote lyrics and poems on the inside of the front and back covers, a sure sign of my love and devotion.

But I do not have this Bible anymore, because the last time my friend Charles got out of rehab, he asked me if I could set him up with a Bible. I gave him mine. I bought another one, but then I had to give that one away to someone else - someone who wanted to know what was in the Bible.

And so, thinking about my friend who asked me for a “normal” Bible, I think that it does not get any more normal than this. The You Are Fucked Up Bible. No charts of Bible flowers or checklists for the end times. No conversions for Bible money or explanations of Bible customs. No funky metal cover. Not even a vial of water or sand from the Holy Land.

Nothing but the Good News: Hope. Salvation. Deliverance. Healing. Amends.

Life. Recovery.

The Bible for people like me, who really need that kind of normal.

if you put your hand through a window - the doctor-people have been trained to worry.
i had three different people come in to question me about my injury.
a sample conversation:

dr - how did you cut your hand?
me - it went through a window.
dr. - were you angry?
me - no, it was an accident.
dr. - are you suicidal?
me - no
dr. - are you homicidal?
me - no
dr. - how were you feeling before your hand went through the window?
me - hot
dr (getting excited by this answer) - hot?
me - i was hot. i wanted to open the window.

and so, i am home with a wrapped up hand, tetanus shot, and some antibiotics to keep me staph infection free. i waited too long to get stitches, so i will most likely be left with a scar.

but my scar will be on the palm-side of my fingers, so only people who hold my hand will know that it is there - a poetic little injury.

last night, i went to open the window in my son’s bedroom. being a short person, i open windows by pressing on the glass for leverage. unfortunately, this window sort of exploded and my hand went right through the glass. thirteen hours later, it is still bleeding - so it looks like i will be spending my day off in the emergency room.

tomorrow i have to take an all-day writing exam in order to get official certification to teach.

i am not having fun.

My cousin Anita was beautiful, like Sandy from the movie Grease. I was astonished that I could be related to someone that was so physically perfect. Even her name was fabulous. Anita. ah - NEAT - ah. She was so neat.

I wanted her to climb my tree; I wanted her to catch lizards with me. I wanted her to hold my hand and tell me secrets and let me brush her honey-colored hair. But I was a child, and she was a teenager. She did not climb trees, and she was frightened of lizards.

I was angry.

And so, I went into my grandmother’s bedroom and opened the top drawer of her dresser - her jewelry drawer. I found a little snap-lid box that held a pair of clip-on earrings and I removed the earrings and laid them in the drawer. I went outside and crawled underneath the house to catch one of the lizards that lived in the lattice. I closed him in the jewelry box and wrapped it up in the comic strip page from the Sunday paper. I found Anita watching a soap opera in the living room, and I handed her the gift.

After the adults untangled the freaked out lizard from Anita's perfect Breck-girl hair and calmed her down with promises of swift and immediate retribution, I got in big trouble.

I still think it was worth it.

Last night, I had a dream that it was the end of the world.

In my dream, I was the president’s daughter (not Bush - some other president). The dream opened with three secret service agents hustling me up a narrow flight of stairs. I knew something was happening. They took me into a room that was filled with video display screens. People were rushing around. I was told that there had been a huge number of airplanes hijacked at the border. There were nuclear bombs aboard the airplanes. There was nothing anyone could do. We watched the first bomb explode on the display screen. Silence. Then, one of the secret service agents turned to me and told me I was free to go.

I walked outside, expecting to find everyone panicking in the streets - but it was as if nothing had happened. I realized that they were not going to tell anyone about the bombs. They were going to let everyone go on with their normal life right up until the world ended. People would never even know what happened.

I tried to process this knowledge, to make sense of it somehow. I walked over to a house and sat down on the front lawn. Across the street, there was an old theater. Two yellow school buses pulled up and groups of elementary schoolchildren got off the buses. They were on a field trip; they were going to see play. I looked up and read the name of the production - Peter Pan. The kids were carrying homemade cardboard swords and were giddy with excitement. They were beautiful. Perfect.

I watched them enter the theater. They made me feel at peace. The wind blew my hair across my face, and I sat with my fingers digging into the earth under the grass.

This is how my dream ended: An empty street. A row of parked school buses. A theater of children watching Peter Pan. And me, sitting in the grass - quietly waiting for the end of the world.

The worst moment of my childhood occurred during my least-favorite weekend of the year - Thanksgiving weekend. Every year, my parents packed us into our blue and wood-paneled station wagon and drove south six hours, to Saint Petersburg, for Thanksgiving in central Florida. The trip was always an assault on everything I held dear and hoped for. Based on images in books, commercials, and on Little House on The Prairie, I concluded that Thanksgiving should be a time of wool and flannel, fireplaces and fallen leaves. I wanted to go over the river and through the woods, to a little house made of logs. I longed to eat turkey that was carved at the table and served off of a china platter. I wanted us to gather in a dining room with wallpaper, with all the men wearing Mr. Rogers-like cardigan sweaters, and all the women with long hair in buns or braids.

I was a highly imaginative child, and I was frustrated that the reality of Thanksgiving stood in such violent opposition to the movie-version of Thanksgiving that played across the screen of my heart.

Thanksgiving in St. Petersburg was hot. My grandparents lived in a tiny two-bedroom house that was made of stucco. There were no piles of fallen leaves to jump into in moments of sheer autumnal bliss. The Thanksgiving turkey was served with a stack of white bread, taken straight from its plastic bag, and passed around on a dinner plate with a tub of Parkay. It felt so wrong.

The one thing that I loved about my grandparents’ house was their grapefruit tree. It was huge; it covered the entire back patio. The grapefruit tree was perfect for climbing. I spent hours laying like Mowgli with my bare arms and legs wrapped around the branches. I created different living spaces in the expanse of the tree - a spot for sitting, a place to hide my books, a lookout spot. I felt powerful when I was up in the tree. It was my tree. From the lookout spot, I could see into the alley and the yards of the neighbors. I spied on them and took notes in a little notebook.

For most of my childhood, Thanksgiving dinner involved only our family and my father’s parents. My father’s brother was living in New Zealand. I had never met my uncle Bob, or my cousins. They came back to the states when I was ten and I was in awe of my cousin Anita. She was six or seven years older than I was, and she had long, blonde, Marsha Brady hair and an accent that made her sound like Olivia Newton John. I tried to win her love; I invited her to join me in my tree - but she was a beautiful teenager with lip gloss in her purse, and she rebuffed my attempts to win her heart. I annoyed her with my unbrushed hair and dirty feet and tree bark-scraped knees.

I had a boy cousin too. His name was David and he was closer to my age - only three or four years older than me. I thought he was weird. He liked race cars. Not real race cars, little electric race cars. He was obsessed with them. His bedroom was consumed by race car track. I just did not get it. He wanted to climb my tree. I told him no. I had invited Anita, but it was my tree and I was the one who decided who could climb it. My father stepped in. I was told that, actually, it was not my tree. David would be allowed to climb.

And so, I found myself, sitting across from my strange boy cousin, in the tree formerly known as my tree, on Thanksgiving weekend, in 1980. What would we talk about? I decided that Star Wars would be a good, gender-bridging topic. I told him that I was really excited about going to see The Empire Strikes Back. It had been three long years of waiting. Three years of hopefully playing with the Millennium Falcon and my beloved Star Wars figures - Luke with his little built-in, slidey light saber arm and Leia with her white plastic robe thing. Three years of chewing sharp edged squares of trading card bubble gum as I obsessively collected Star Wars cards. My parents had promised to take me to see the new movie as soon as we returned home.

At this point, my cousin looked me straight in the eye and said the single worst thing that anyone has ever said to me: “I already saw it. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.”

He did not just ruin Thanksgiving - which pretty much sucked to begin with; he ruined 1980.

My mother brought over a box of my old things. Among the photo albums and yellowed greeting cards, I found my senior yearbook. I am not a yearbook kind of girl. I never bought a yearbook until my senior year. I don’t know why I bought one then. I did not enjoy the school part of my senior year. I was actually not in school very much. I skipped at least two or three classes each day.

But, there it was- Picture This, the class of 1988. I opened it and flipped through the pages for the first time in fifteen years.

I dated alot of boys. Dating was one thing I was good at. Looking through my yearbook, I realized that I have forgotten 99% of the details about the boys I dated. With only a few exceptions, I do not even remember their names. I remember even fewer first and last names. What I do remember are snapshot-like images - my personal yearbook.

Instead of faces or important achievement related details, the memories I have stored away are random moments of beauty. A cream colored cable knit sweater. The welded junkyard metal sheeting on the floor a battered jeep. Driving too fast and spinning out on an abandoned red dirt road. A short-story. Moments.

But I do remember music. And I remember the boy with the Sherlock Holmes hat.

I remember every detail about the boy with the Sherlock Holmes hat. He was the smartest boy I had ever met. He was older than I was. He motivated me to try to make it into the National Honor Society. He was the Vice-President of the Beta club. I wanted to have a reason to be where he was.

I remember the way his hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. He asked me out for first time while we were sitting in the bleachers of the Civic Center, right in the middle of the Billy Graham Crusade. We saw Crocodile Dundee. The movie sucked, but I did not care. I remember his rust colored car, an older 1970’s model without bucket seats. I remember talking on the pier at night, surrounded by the woods and the dark water of the lake. Stars. And Bob Dylan.

He loved Bob Dylan. In the eighties, when everyone wanted keyboards, he would play Dylan on the tape player and the songs would reach back to my earliest memories: bonfires, and my bare feet in the sand, and Maggie’s farm, and my blue-eyed son, and ride me high because my bride was gonna come. His music spoke a language that I knew in memories deeper than words. Buckets of rain. Buckets of tears. Buckets of moonbeams in my hands.

He was the first boy that I really loved. The one that I thought about for years afterwards.

Right before he left, he took me out and we drove around. He told me that whatever happened between us in the future - he wanted me to hear a song. He wanted me to listen to the words and to hold them in my heart and know that this song was the truth about how he felt about me. I sat next to him and he drove down the canopy roads between our houses and Bob Dylan sang - Emotionally Yours . I will always be, emotionally yours.

It was enough. In the end, I forgave him for everything.

Even his leaving was beautiful.

Beautiful.


Come baby, find me, come baby, remind me of where I once begun.
Come baby, show me, show me you know me, tell me you're the one.
I could be learning, you could be yearning to see behind closed doors.
But I will always be emotionally yours.
Come baby, rock me, come baby, lock me into the shadows of your heart.
Come baby, teach me, come baby, reach me, let the music start.
I could be dreaming but I keep believing you're the one I'm livin' for.
And I will always be emotionally yours.
It's like my whole life never happened,
When I see you, it's as if I never had a thought.
I know this dream, it might be crazy,
But it's the only one I've got.
Come baby, shake me, come baby, take me, I would be satisfied.
Come baby, hold me, come baby, help me, my arms are open wide.
I could be unraveling wherever I'm traveling, even to foreign shores.
But I will always be emotionally yours.

Adam is taking a road trip. He notices neat signs. I am hooked on the daily pictures.

If I were to analyze my own writing and critique my weaknesses, I would say that I need to work on my tendency to overuse the following words: very, so, really, and alot. But who am I kidding? It is not a tendency; it is a habit. I write like a chain smoker, with really, so, very, and alot in a comforting little box in my pocket (and one of them is not even a “legal” word). I use one, and blindly reach for another. Spend too much time with me, and when you leave you may find yourself trying to get the lingering scent of them off of your clothes. You might even find yourself wanting to use them too.

They can be addictive.

I try to cut down. I write freely and then edit myself, erasing the excessive use of my words of choice. I still leave too many in. I am aware. I know my overuse of these words makes me look bad. I should know better. I do know better, but they just feel so good when I roll them around in my brain. See what I mean? So good - I did that trying not to. Admittedly, I have a problem.

Like all good addicts, I have tried to analyze the root cause of my addiction. Because, we all know it is never just about words. There must be a hole in my life, and I abuse these words in an attempt to fill the abyss.

What I have realized, is that I use these words to try to get at the thing I crave with the deepest part of my soul. I use these words because they are an attempt to express the inexpressible longing of my heart. I have never wanted to admit that what I see is all there is. I have always longed for glimpses of what is under the surface.
The waving hands of trees.
The map that is hidden in the star box.
The key to the secret garden.
The wardrobe with a door.
The looking glass that you can step through.

I want there to be More. In my heart, I believe there is More.

More than can be seen. More than can be explained.

More.

This is why I carry my little words with me, and why I roll them between my fingers while I write. They feel good, like inhaled moments of calm. I use them, because today - it rained. And the wet grass and branches outside my open window are not green in the way that normal leaves are green.

They are very green.
So alive.
More.
Alot More.

Really

Today, in my graduate class on the history of the English language, the professor validated my use of the word “alot”.

God bless him.

Also - today on NPR:

Suzan-Lori Parks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize (drama), admitted that she refuses to use apostrophes.
She called them "stupid little dangly things".

I love her.

I was twelve when Cyndi Lauper released the song Time After Time. I loved it. It was the most beautiful song I had ever heard.

That summer, I wrote a play and titled it Time After Time. I gathered all the neighborhood kids and paid them to be in the play. I produced it in my backyard using the playhouse porch as a stage. I bought smoke bombs from the Magic and Fun Shop for special effects. I set up lawn chairs in the grass and sold popcorn and Kool-aid to the audience.

I don’t remember exactly what the play was about, but it involved a lost key and a dead child that communicated with the present day, and maybe some sort of abuse. I think the dead child had been thrown in a well and there was a key in the well that lead to some kind of treasure. And visions. A present day child had visions of this dead child and the key (hence the smoke bombs). Finding the key and the treasure would right the wrongs of the past. Something like that.

Last week, I heard Time After Time on the radio. I remembered how much I loved it. I remembered that I had written a play because I was so inspired by the song.

Hearing it again, I paid attention to the long forgotten lyrics:

Sometimes you picture me
I'm walking too far ahead
You're calling to me, I can't hear
What you've said
Then you say go slow
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds

If you're lost you can look and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting
Time after time


I was struck by how similar these lyrics are to another song that I love, the song that I quote at the top of my blog. Off the Ground, by Christine Kane.

From age twelve to age thirty-three, I have not really come that far. In some way, I think that Time After Time marked the beginning of my struggle to define love. I knew that the idea of being lost and found was critical to the essence of love - that love was linked to redemption somehow.

I also knew that independence was an important element of love. Freedom. If you fall. If you are lost. Implicit in these lines is the notion that the one who loves you is a safety-net of sorts. They are a place of shelter and support. They make it possible to take risks. Because if you get lost, they will find you. If you fall, they will catch you.

There is nothing to be afraid of. It is going to be okay.

When I was twelve, the song Time After Time lodged in my heart. Later, after Cyndi Lauper was long forgotten and put away with childish things, I fell in love with the song Off The Ground. This time, I understood the meaning of the lyrics:

I have my share of secrets
And dozens of things I hide
And maybe I'll let you in but it might take time
'Cause you say that you want me near you
And you smile when I run right by
When I throw you a sideways glance if you catch my eye
But you've got the patience, I don't
You give the way I can't
So you tell me you love me and I'm likely not to understand

Hey, don't you know I'm laying way too low
I'm on my knees I'll pick myself up if you let me go
Hey, I've been down too long in the lost and found
Now I'm just getting off the ground


These are love songs about God.

I have my share of secrets. I have dozens of things that I think I can hide. I want to let Him in, but it takes time. I will let Him in, but it will take time.

Often, despite my good intentions, I run right by with only a sideways glance in His direction.

But He has the patience, I don’t
He gives the way I can’t.
He tells me He loves me, and I’m only just beginning to understand.

If I get lost, I can look and I will find him.

If I fall, he will catch me.

He will be waiting.

He is waiting.

I am tired of the Lost and Found. I am on my knees.

And this is how I know what Love is.

This morning, my daughter danced in her spring recital. She was a little blackbird, one of four and twenty that were baked in a pie. The teacher gave her a solo part because Lily is a very strong dancer. She wrote the part just for Lily, because she wanted it to fit her personality.

When the music began, all of the little birds flew out of a huge cut-out plywood pie and danced around the stage, leaping and skipping with outstretched arms. At the end of the dance, they lined up and the teacher (in the role of the cook), placed a spoon on the floor. One by one, all of the little birds leapt over the spoon and back into the pie - all of them, except for Lily.

Lily refused to leap and fly. She stomped her foot and shook her little feather-topped head. No amount of pleading could convince her to fly. Finally, the cook whispered in Lily's ear and she smiled, spread her wings as wide as she could, and flew off-stage. I assumed that the teacher meant that this part fit Lily’s personality because my daughter is strong and stubborn, like a little bird that refuses to fly.

I was on the phone with my mother-in-law and I told her about Lily’s solo part as the little bird that did not want to fly. Lily overheard me and corrected my statement. “I didn’t not want to fly”, she explained. “I didn’t want to go back home to the pie”.

Her words made me stop. I thought of her, dancing on the stage. Flying. I realized that she was right, it was only when she was told to stop flying and go home that she refused. I understood what the teacher meant when she said she created the role of the reluctant blackbird for my daughter.

Lily is not reluctant to fly. She is reluctant to stop flying. She just does not want come back down to the ground that we insist is called “home”.

I was in the car with my children and we were discussing Harry Potter. The kids have started listening to the books on CD while we drive. I told them that there was a new Harry Potter movie and we could go see it if they wanted to. Lily asked me if it would be scary. I answered truthfully. It would be scary.

My son said that the other movies had not been scary. I told him that this one would be. He wanted to know why. Why were the creatures in this movie more frightening than the creatures in the other movies?

I told him that this movie has dementors in it. I explained that dementors are scary. They are creatures that have no soul of their own, and they suck all of the happy thoughts out of people - leaving them sad enough to die. Dementors have the power to take away a person's soul.

My kids were quiet for awhile. Then, from the back seat, Lily spoke up.

"Arden, I wish you had not asked that question because now I am thinking about dementors and I feel like I need to cry".

She started sobbing. I almost had to stop the car to hug her and calm her down.

It dawned on me that this was the first time Lily had the realization that a person could lose their soul. I felt terrible for telling her.

"It's the saddest thing I have ever heard", she said as she cried.

"You're right", I told her. "It is."

Richard told me that my blog was ugly. It was true. I had an ugly blog.
But, out of the kindness of his heart, he offered to redesign Amy Loves Books. He asked me to give him a quote, film, color, or photograph to inspire the design of the site. My favorite movie of all time, The Piano, ended up being the inspiration.
So thank you Richard. The site is more lovely than I ever imagined it could be. I am incredibly grateful.

And now, my blog looks just like me.

by Cynthia Rylant

He went there to learn how
to give a good perm
and ended up just crazy
about nails
so He opened up His own shop.
“Nails by Jim” He called it.
He was afraid to call it
Nails by God.
He was sure people would
think He was being
disrespectful and using
His own name in vain
and nobody would tip.
He got into nails, of course,
because He’d always loved
hands-
hands were some of the best things
He’d ever done
and this way He could just
hold one in His
and admire those delicate
bones just above the knuckles,
delicate as birds’ wings,
and after He’d done that
awhile,
He could paint all the nails
any color He wanted,
then say,
“Beautiful”
and mean it.

Rylant, Cynthia. God Went To Beauty School. New York: New York. Harper Collins, 2003.

I spent the first four years of my life living in the upstairs rooms of an old house on College Avenue. We used the rooms downstairs for our church. The dining room and the living room were connected to each other with a sliding door; these were the rooms that we used for our church services and Bible studies. There was a kitchen where my mother cooked meals for all of the college students and drifters. There was also a library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, which my father used as his office. When he had the door shut, I was not allowed to disturb him. My mother told me that he was working. I knew that my father was a preacher, and so, as a child I was convinced that when the door was shut my father and God were in the library together. My earliest conception of God was that he was a guy who hung out with my dad in a library. I think this may be one of the reasons that I love books as passionately as I do. I have always connected them to my father, to mystery, and to God.

But this is not an essay about loving books. This is an essay about loving hands.

In my father’s office, he had two statues. One was of a monkey, holding a human skull in his hand in a pose similar to Rodin’s The Thinker. Along the base of the statue was the word “Darwin”. I do not know what this statue meant. It always scared me a little bit. I am guessing that it must have been anti-Darwin - although my father was never anti-evolution. Maybe it was anti-anti-Darwin. To this day, I have no idea.

The other statue was of two hands, cast in bronze, held together in prayer. They were worn hands, sized as if they had belonged to an adult man. I had tiny hands, and the statue always seemed enormous. The hands looked old, and worn. Scarred. I would run my fingers over them. I would imagine how it would feel to put my small hand inside the two praying ones. I think that, in some way, I almost expected them to come alive; they looked so real. They did not scare me the way the monkey with the skull did. I knew that the hands were beautiful. Magical. I loved the praying hands.

Growing up surrounded by hippies, hand-holding was a part of life. You held hands. This was a given. This is what it meant to come together and smile on your brother. It meant that you got in a circle and held hands. We held hands to pray. We held hands to sing. I sat in laps, and people held my hand. They always commented about how warm my hands were. I had a child’s metabolism, a fast pulse, and warm little hands.

The hippies would have babies, and they would sit me in their laps and put their infant in my child-lap and the baby would wrap its tiny hand around my finger. In that moment, I felt a connection with the baby - that the baby was an actual person. It could already hold hands. It already wanted to hold holds. I was enamored. It was not the baby itself that awed me, it was those tiny fingers that wrapped themselves around mine.

My parents tell a story about the time that they almost lost me. I was three years old. My father took me into Kentucky Fried Chicken, stood at the counter, and placed his order. When he finished ordering, he turned around and I was gone. The man that had been standing behind my father had reached out his hand to me and I trusted that gesture. I placed my hand in