Heroine: Madeleine L'Engle

My Mom wrote to tell me that the author Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday at 88 years old.

[Day of the Dead, Los Angeles.]

I loved her books so passionately when I was a girl. Somehow they made being a bookish, shy, over-sensitive young woman seem like a good thing—a sure sign that you would grow up to be amazing. She was the first writer who conveyed the idea to me that there were other worlds, ones that I might fit into much better than the one where I was living. And after I had read everything she wrote, even the obscure out of print stuff that I got my local bookstore to order for me, I wrote a letter to her.

I remember sitting at my little wooden desk. I must have been 10 or 11 years old. I had chosen the desk myself at the unfinished furniture store. I loved it because it had secret cabinets for little magic objects and two bookshelves on the bottom where your legs went. I wrote her a letter, and bless her she wrote me back. Almost no one famous does this, but she did. So kindly. I hope I have it tucked somewhere. Maybe I can find it and post it here...

I just started reading chapter books aloud to Jonah this summer. So far we've read Stuart Little and the Cricket in Times Square (why are so many brilliant kids books set in Manhattan?) I can't wait till it's time to read the Wrinkle trilogy to him—a few more years, I think. He is still so sensitive and bewildered by "bad guys" in books and movies. ("Why is he so mean? why are they chasing that guy? Is he a bad guy or a good guy?").

He had a hard time falling asleep last night after watching Robin Hood for our Friday night movie. His play is so wild and intense, we forget that he is still such a baby. He still has this softness at his center that is so good for boys to keep.

Here is some info from the obit: "L'Engle's novel "A Wrinkle in Time," about a teenage girl named Meg Murray and her search for her father on a faraway planet, sold more than 6 million copies and won awards including the American Library Association's Newbery Medal for best American children's book. The book was rejected by more than 25 publishers before it was published in 1962.

Subsequent novels "A Wind in the Door" and a "Swiftly Tilting Planet" formed the Time Trilogy, a series known for a blend of fairy tale, science fiction and family themes.

In addition to children's books, she wrote plays, poetry and a series of autobiographical works including an account of the illness and death of her husband of 40 years, actor Hugh Franklin.

For decades, L'Engle was also the librarian of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan."

Focus on "A Wrinkle in Time" being rejected by more than 25 publishers. Jesus! This is the kind of conditioning my thin-skinned soul needs to be exposed to...I think I would have stopped after, what? 1 rejection? 5 rejections? 7? Somehow I am so easily hurt, so quickly bruised and wounded. It does not serve me well anymore, if it ever did.

And her job as the librarian of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. How I long to have this job when I am old and wise. To live among books in New York, to commune with music and spirits. To read and write poems for the artists and thinkers who visit the Cathedral. I wonder if they would mind an atheist? I am so irritated that there are no cathedrals built for non-religious purposes. I love the quiet, contemplative atmosphere in churches, and the smells and dim echo-ey sounds. I just hate what they are for...