I was born in Mobile, Alabama, while my dad was stationed at Brookley Field. He had gone off to the Korean War in 1951, just after he and my mother married, and now here I came, in 1953, on the heels of his return. We lived in Mobile for five years, until the Air Force transferred us to Hawaii. I have always claimed Alabama as the land of my birth, and I also claim Mississippi as home, as it was the land we returned to over and again as I grew up, and as my own children grew up, as my people were there. And so was my heart.
My mother was born in Mississippi and grew up in West Point, MS. My dad was born in Jasper County and grew up there. I grew up there, too, with the wacky grandmother who became Miss Eula in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, and the three maiden aunts who become Ruby's chickens, and all the cousins and aunts and uncles and a decaying town that is even more of a ghost today than it was when I was wandering its one main road and its cemetery and crossing the railroad tracks to visit Aunt Mitt and playing piano in the unlocked Methodist church.
Mississippi doesn't claim me, though. According to book committees who decide these things, I didn't live for five continuous years in Mississippi, so I am not in the club, even though I am a Mississippian by blood and by words.
This is a long story and one I hope to write about at some point, so I can figure out how I feel about choosing home. Home is in Atlanta today, of course, but home will always be where I've hung my hat: Hawaii, Maryland, D.C., South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia.... and Mississippi as well. "What you know first stays with you." I am a Southern Girl, through and through. I am a human being with stories to tell. What does that mean?
Here's what it meant this week, as I took part in the first-ever Mississippi Book Festival, visited that family I love so much (Uncle Jim is our patriarch now, about to turn 92), and that place that defined me as a child -- and as a writer. Photos below of what becomes Aurora County in my books LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER; EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS; and THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.
And then there is my first book, FREEDOM SUMMER. I have never before posted pictures of the pool and roller skating rink that closed in 1964. The forest is claiming it now. I have taken photos there for many years, and have documented this abandoned place as it goes back to forest land. I wrote FREEDOM SUMMER -- and REVOLUTION -- to understand what happened. To keep this time and place alive, so we remember our history. So young people will know what it was like then. What it is like now.
Dispatch from Mississippi:
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| Picking up Kerry Madden along the way |
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| downtown Jackson, Mississippi. My folks retired to Jackson after a long military career, and I kept coming to Mississippi with my own kids as they grew up... Mississippi has been a constant in my life, all my life. |
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| With Ellen Ruffin at the Eudora Welty house on Friday night at the author reception |
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| Kimberly Willis Holt, moi, Chris Barton, and Karen Rowell of USM. |
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| Jamie Kornegay and Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi has been such a staunch supporter of my books. Jamie's new novel is SOIL. "It has saturated the South!" Jamie says. |
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| Kelly Kornegay, who (among other things) reads and buys children's at Turnrow. She heard me whining about not being recognized literarily as a Mississippian and said, "Debbie, people who have lived here all their lives are trying to ESCAPE Mississippi!" which made me laugh and gave me perspective. She also said, "Your books are THE quintessential books on what it means to be from Mississippi, to be a Mississippian. You're IN." hahaha. |
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| Fuzzy photo of a bunch of us including Lori Nichols, Ellen Ruffin, Greg Leitich Smith, Susan Eaddy, Kerry Madden |
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| taking in all in. What a lovely evening. |
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| We had to turn people away, in Room 113 of the State Capitol, for the Young People's Literature panel. It was that way on all panels, all day. The turnout was tremendous. HOORAY! |
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| Pontificating. Which I am very good at. |
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| This is what it's about at a Festival. |
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| And this. Clara Martin is the children's book buyer at Lemuria Book in Jackson. Last year on the REVOLUTION tour, she had me sign her copy of LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER that she has had since she was a fourth grader. "My favorite book!" |
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| Chris Barton signing Shark vs Train and John Roy Lynch in the Lemuria tent. |
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| At dinner, Saturday night, with my loves. |
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| My son Jason with his Great-uncle Jim. Both of them jesters. |
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| Two more Jims: mine, and the cousin I have always called Bubba. |
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| If you're a RUBY fan, you recognize this sign! |
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| My grandmother's house, The Pink Palace, in RUBY, Snowberger's Funeral Home in LITTLE BIRD, House Jackson's home in ALL-STARS, and Young Joe's home in FREEDOM SUMMER. This was my world every summer, and the place I longed for when I wasn't there. Still do, I guess. |
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| The back kitchen. Sloped ceiling, lightbulb on a string, Nanny eating buttered toast and milky coffee at the enamel table, closthepins in a bag hanging on the door, a pan of green beans waiting to be snapped. I did dishes in the deep sink with my Aunt Evelyn, who we all called Goodness. Once, when my mother sent me in to dry while Aunt Evelyn washed, Goodness waved me away with, "Go play. I let God dry the dishes." |
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| My friend Howard now lives in Rhiney Boyd's house, across the road from my grandmother's. Rhiney had a son named Luther Rhinehart Boyd, which is where I took Mr. Norwood Boyd's name from in ALL-STARS. |
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| Kerry listens to Merle's stories. Merle now owns my grandmother's house (The Pink Palace, in the background). |
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| I adore Lois. She has just entered the Witness Protection Program. I think she got dressed just for us. "I used to wear all black and brown, but now I wear COLOR all the time." You go, Lois. Go on with your colorful self. |
This is where I'm sitting this morning. Back to the pink chair and back to work. Knowing that it doesn't matter if Literary Mississippi claims me or not. I claim me, and those people who are, and who once were: moments, memory, meaning, as I always say when I teach.
I will never live long enough to write all the stories asking for my attention. They claim me. And for that I am grateful.
#71 Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles (2005)
28 points
“I come from a family with a lot of dead people.”
What a great opening line. Comfort Snowberger has attended 247 funerals, which is a lot for anybody, much less a 10-year-old. Her family runs Snowberger’s Funeral Home, where their motto is “We Live to Serve,” so Comfort and her dog, Dismay, are used to being around grieving folks. That’s not a problem. Her daddy tells her, “”It’s not how you die that makes the important impression, Comfort; it’s how you live.”
I lovedlovedloved this book. Deborah Wiles has such talent. I was in Snapfinger, Mississippi. I could see the inside of Snowberger’s Funeral Home. I was terrified on the rock with Comfort and Dismay. (And annoying Peach.) I wanted to slap Declaration’s snooty face. And I was most definitely inside Comfort’s closet with her as she sat with her mayonnaise jar of freshly-sharpened pencils. I cannot say enough great things about this one. It’s my favorite kids’ novel of all time. - Kristi Hazelrigg
When people love this book they looooooooove this book. Funny to consider that in a way it’s a sequel. Deborah Wiles wrote Love, Ruby Lavender in 2001 perhaps little dreaming that the follow-up Each Little Bird That Sings would find a devoted following. This is an entry into what we New Yorkers call (not without affection) “Southern Girl Novels”. It pretty much hits everything you expect from such a book (meaning, good food, quirky locals, etc.) while remaining touching not treacly. A delicate balance. A delicate book.
The plot summary from my own review reads, “When you grow up in a funeral home like Comfort Snowberger has, you have a healthy understanding of death. And within a single year Comfort’s Great-great-aunt Florentine and Great-uncle Edisto have joined the choir invisible. When Edisto died the funeral would have been beautiful had it not been for Comfort’s scrawny, big-eyed, unable-to-quite-grasp-the-concept-of-dying, seven-year-old cousin Peach. Peach managed to faint into a punch bowl, throw up, scream, and generally (in Comfort’s eyes) make a nuisance of himself. Now Florentine’s funeral is coming up and Peach is in Comfort’s life again. Even worse, her best friend Declaration Johnson has suddenly turned mean. Real mean. If it weren’t for her dog Dismay, Comfort might never know how to get through the next few days. But it takes losing the most important thing in her world to get our heroine to realize what it is to forgive both yourself and others around you.”
Various awards have included:
- Golden Kite Honor Book
- Bank Street Fiction Award
- E.B. White Read-Aloud Award
- Winner, California Young Reader Medal
There’s a tour journal for those of you teaching the book in some way.
Said Booklist, “Wiles succeeds wonderfully in capturing ‘the messy glory’ of grief and life.”
SLJ had some minor qualms, “Sensitive, funny, and occasionally impatient, Comfort is a wholly sympathetic protagonist who learns that emotions may not be as easy to control as she had assumed. While the book is a bit too long and some of the Southern eccentricity wears thin, this is a deeply felt novel.”
Kirkus seriously liked it, “Despite the setting and plot, the story is not morbid but
I blew in -- literally -- from Mississippi yesterday in time to attend the reception for
"25 Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from
The Georgia Center for the Book.
Each Little Bird That Sings is on the debut list -- thrilling! I'm honored to be on this first-time list for young readers in Georgia, and to be in such great company. A few photos:
Me (very blown in! I literally stepped out of my car from Mississippi and into the restaurant) and Terra McVoy, who was manager of Little Shop of Stories in Decatur and is now assistant program director for the
Decatur Book Festival -- it's next weekend, Labor Day weekend, on the Square, in Decatur -- I'll be speaking on Saturday, Sept. 4 at 2:30, but more on that later.
Terra's new book is
After The Kiss, and she is also an honoree on this first debut list, with her lovely novel,
Pure.Half the list:
The other half of the list:
How long have I waited to meet Sharon Deeds, Youth Services Coordinator for the Dekalb County Libraries? Too long:
Likewise Bill Starr, the executive director of the Georgia Center for the Book:
When it comes right down to what counts, what matters, a life is measured in relationships. I know how lucky I am. Here are a few shots from Wednesday, my last full day in Mississippi, back in Jackson, a day that included schools, booksellers, friends, and family, and little literary relationship, too.
Visiting
Jackson Academy. Thanks so much to librarian Suzie Adcock, who had prepared for my morning visit... love that bulletin board! Loved those students, many of whom had music questions for me.
Can you believe this sea of children in the library at
St. Andrew's Episcopal School? What a blast... look how attentive they are! I had so much fun here, with these bouncy third and fourth graders. As I began to sing from "All Things Bright and Beautiful," they sang right along -- knew all the words -- and I was floored. I have a long relationship with that song --
Each Little Bird That Sings comes directly from it -- and was thrilled to see it shared with these students (and parents! Parents came! Hooray!)
Here are Emily Grossenbacher, children's manager at
Lemuria Books in Jackson, and Jeannie Chun, librarian at St. Andrews.
Emily and I are getting to know each other -- she has been in this position at Lemuria for about a year, and I've been coming to Lemuria for years and years. I miss former buyer Yvonne Rogers (who came to my signing -- thanks ever, Yvonne), but I am happily getting to know the very capable Emily and her tastes and ways of working. I loved working with her over the past month or two, to set up this day in Jackson.
Emily set up the morning at Jackson Academy and the afternoon at St. Andrews, AND the 5pm signing and reading at Lemuria. She is tireless, and I appreciate her so much. Thank you, Emily! And thanks, new friend Jeannie, for preparing your school community so thoroughly for my arrival!
I had a couple of hours between the last school stop and my Lemuria signing, so y'all know what I had to do, right? Right. I went, once again, to
Eudora Welty's home, where I wandered the garden and sat in the peacefulness. I never met Miss Eudora, but her work is a big influence on mine, hence the relationship -- the kinship -- I feel with her. Wandering the garden for a while was just what I needed to help me with book two of the sixties trilogy, and to help me catch my breath before my signing.
You know the friends that you sat up all night talking to, gossiping with, and telling all your secrets to when you were a kid? The friends who listened with rapt attention until they fell asleep? The friends that laughed -- and cried -- in all the right places when you told your stories, and whose storytelling was so superb, you felt lucky to be in their presence and amazed to be entrusted with their stories?
I have friends like that. Last night, here in Frederick, Maryland, I sat up with some of those friends until 3am, reconnecting and catching up, and picking up where we'd left off on my last visit. I slept like a baby for a few hours, in the bedroom set aside for me. This morning I savored a long, luxurious shower. I didn't even count the carbs in the fresh garlic rolls and hot coffee.
Last night was almost like a slumber party, like being a kid again, like having so few cares or responsibilities, that the world could slip away for some purloined hours. How rare.
Last night, as the old clock on the wall tick-tocked, three of us held court in a well-loved kitchen with warm light, homemade soup, and shared history. What a gift.
Every book I write is about friendship, its joys and perils. Ruby and Melba Jane (and Dove, of course) in
Love, Ruby Lavender. Comfort and Declaration, in
Each Little Bird that Sings. Cleebo and House in
The Aurora County All-Stars. Joe and John Henry in
Freedom Summer.
And now, Franny and Margie, in
Countdown.
As you read it, keep in mind: There is nothing like a true friend, to remember you to yourself.
So I didn't bring the camera with me Saturday before last, when we attended a house party and were mightily entertained by the Hotlanta Dixieland Trio, all friends who have played with Jim. I didn't bring it the next afternoon, when Jim gigged at the first jazz jam in our neighbor's living room. Players were on keyboard, banjo, guitar, upright bass, clarinet, mandolin, balalaika, and the original instrument: voice.
I dearly wished I'd had my camera, so I could share with you that experience. Folk tunes, jazz standards, Russian gypsy songs, Yiddish favorites, ragtime, and Dixieland - I took my knitting but couldn't tear my eyes off the scene in front of me. It was so good to be with friends, surrounded by music.
I didn't bring the camera to Panama City, Florida this past Friday, either. Five hundred enthusiastic classroom teachers, grades K through 12, attended the Bay Area Reading Association's annual conference, and I got to open the day with a talk about books and reading, family and community. It was an exhilarating experience to stand in front of such a dedicated, amazing bunch (some called themselves "the amen chorus"!) and share stories.
I got to talk about Countdown, too -- and what a great place to tell all about this story, as in 1962, kids in Florida were ducking and covering under their desks as well. There are many air force bases in Florida, not to mention NASA and Cape Canaveral, and the little detail that the tip of Florida is a mere 90 miles off the coast of Cuba. Boy, did I hear stories, all day long.
The best part of the day was working again with Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt's Ronda Baggett, and meeting her daughter, Hannah, who was in the middle of reading Each Little Bird That Sings. She stayed with us for half the day, until her father came to get her at lunch.
"Are you ready?" asked her father, with a wide smile. Hannah said no -- she didn't want to go. Her mother said, "But, honey, you're going to see Avatar! Don't you want to see the movie?" Hannah looked at me and shook her head. I hugged her, thanked her, and promised her she would love the movie more than she loves me. haha! But ain't it wonderful? You know you've arrived, when a ten-year-old would rather hang out with you while you sign books, than go to the movies with Dad and see James Cameron's latest blockbuster. Whoo-hoo! What a sweetie.
Jim picked me up from the airport on Saturday night, and we spent Sunday in front of the fire. S
I used to think I was the only person in the world who had read, loved, and remembered MISTER DOG: THE DOG WHO BELONGED TO HIMSELF, by Margaret Wise Brown. I thought it must be a rare book, and I was content to know that I had discovered a treasure. It wasn't until the Internet began to bring us closer to one another that I found out so many readers adore MISTER DOG as much as I do.
When I was little, I didn't know what I responded to in this book, but it became important to me in a way other Golden Books did not, not even SAILOR DOG, which was also a favorite, and probably for some of the same reasons, but I would not list it in my personal canon. But today, I can look back on who I am as a person and know that I was probably resonating to the themes of independence and autonomy -- the dog who belonged to himself, and the boy who belonged to himself.
I have always needed stretches of time alone, even as much as I treasure community. I'm an introvert (although, not a conservative, as Crispin's Crispian is -- although, if we use MWB's definition, probably I am), and being with people -- as much delight as it brings me -- wears me out in short order, and I always need time to recover. The first time I went to ALA, in 1996, I was so overwhelmed by the lights! noise! people! movement! that I would take the shuttle back to my hotel room and have a little cry, sit in the dark for a while, and then try the exhibit floor again. Too much, too much! I've gotten better at that, today, but I still need recovery time after lots of people or lots happening. That needed recovery time has sometimes, over the years, been seen by others as anti-social, but it's not meant to be that way -- it's meant to fill me up and make me ready for people again.
Solitude feeds me in the way that it nurtures Comfort (in her closet and on Listening Rock) in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. So something in MISTER DOG -- even at an early age, when I already possessed these leanings -- made a deep connection with me. Crispin's Crispian and the Boy Who Belongs To Himself decide to live together in the end. I loved those two completely independent souls deciding that they could live independently with one another. And I loved Garth Williams's art.
I also credit this book with giving me my first written ideas about a safe and loving home:
"Crispin's Crispian lived in a two-story dog house in a garden... with a warm fire that crackled in the winter and went out in the summer. His house was always warm... and upstairs there was a little bedroom with a bed in it... and there was plenty of room in his house for the boy to live there with him."
That sounded perfect to me. Gentle. Kind. Compassionate. I would grow up one day, and that's the kind of home I wanted.
For more about this book, there are many sources to visit, including Leonard Marcus's biography of Margaret Wise Brown, AWAKENED BY THE MOON. Here's a nice essay on the blog "New York Wanderer" that includes photos of the house where MISTER DOG is set, in Brooklyn. And here's one more that says it better than I can, perhaps, about that lovely fictional world that Margaret Wise Brown created in MISTER DOG and how it spoke to readers.
One more Little Golden Book, and I'm done with Golden Books as personal canon. I received this book for my birthday one year: THE GOLDEN BOOK OF 365 STORIES by Kathryn Jackson, illustrated by the fabulous Richard Scarry, and it became a constant companion for me when I was probably 8 years old. This book was a precursor to the Junior Classics and the Book of Knowledge. I loved reading the daily entry for each date, and especially finding the important dates -- my birthday, my brother's birthday, even my parents' anniversary -- I remember marking all the important days with little pencilled stars -- my first intentional, informational marking in a book (I have gone on to copious mark-ups in books, but that's a story for another time).
Before I graduated to longer books, this book made me feel as if I was reading a great big book, and it helped me tremendously with my reading skills, as I read it over and over and, for such a long time, there was always something new in it to read -- and there were "genres" -- a short story, a song, a poem, a fable, etc.
There's a good overview of this book here, at the blog "Collecting Children's Books." I had forgotten the "infinity" cover, but I well remember thinking that my brother's birthday got a great story, and I got this puny little poem -- but it was a GOOD poem, I told myself. Ha.
Finally, don't miss Walter Mayes's comments (and mine in return) on First Influences, Friday's blog post. Thanks, Walter, for the great thoughts, especially about Dr. Seuss (Walter is directing SEUSSICAL: THE MUSICAL in San Francisco!) and thanks for listing your personal canon as well. Walter defines personal canon: "books that are, in one way or other essential to my image of who I am." Yes, that's what I'm after.
I love that one of Walter's picks is the Rand McNally World Atlas. I had forgotten about the atlases! Oh, yes, how wonderful they were. I fell in love with geography in fifth grade, thanks to an atlas (don't remember which one) and a teacher who made geography scintillating -- is it any wonder that Great-great Aunt Florentine in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS calls herself a geographer? (Which is shorthand for gossip, in Snapfinger, Mississippi.)
Did you love Crispin's Crispian, Sailor Dog, or Rand McNally? What early books are essential to your image of who you are today? I remember reading over and over again SAILOR DOG, just for the lyrical, rhythmical language. The very sentence structure awed me (although I wouldn't have been able to articulate that as a child -- I just knew I heard something special). Here's the first sentence: "Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog. Scuppers was his name."
I'm deep, deep, deep into the Sixties this week. Hope you are deep, deep into something just as absorbing -- maybe it's vacation! It's hot here. It's August. The cicadas chorus outside my window at 8am -- time to get to work.
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on 1/9/2008
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How did it get to be January 9 already? I'll swan, give a girl a chance to hunker in at home, and she starts baking her famous homemade granola that she hasn't made in five years (travel, travel), she roasts hazelnuts and puts them up in saved olive jars, she eats well and sleeps well,
and she hires her friend Jim Williams to enclose the carport and turn it into a gathering room, following her desire to implement pattern 182 of A PATTERN LANGUAGE by Christopher Alexander (who knows this book? I'm using it like a Bible as I work on this house...
...I'm investigating Pools of Light (252), Warm Colours (250), Different Chairs (251), as well as Communal Eating (147) and Family of Entrances (102), Entrance Transition (112), Car Connection (113),
and more, but that will do for now. Ha!)
Oh, and she plans to build a bottle tree. (This is a photo of Felder Rushing's blue bottle tree in Jackson, Mississippi. I love Felder and I want a fire bowl like his, but I digress.)
She also opens the mail that has been piling up since the last ice age. And just look what's in the mail! EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS is still cutting a rug on the book world's dance floor. First news is that LITTLE BIRD has won the Alabama Book Award as the Young People's Book of the Year from the Alabama Library Association! Joy and Happy Day! RUBY won this award in 2004, and I know how special it is, both because I've seen how wonderful this conference is (I've met those wonderful Alabama librarians!) and because I was born in Alabama, so coming back is like going home. But the best thing about this award is that LITTLE BIRD finds its way into the hands of more young readers in Alabama. I'm so glad. Thank you so much, ALLA! (And Tim Berry, I'm trying to email you, but your email keeps bouncing...)
As if Alabama -- and the United States -- weren't enough, here comes news, too, from IBBY -- the International Board on Books for Young People -- that LITTLE BIRD "has been nominated by the U.S. Section of IBBY for the IBBY Honour List 2008 for the quality of its writing."
Be still my heart. IBBY! One of IBBY's objectives is to encourage international understanding through children's literature. Sharon Deeds, chair of USBBY's Hans Christian Andersen committee (the U.S. Section of IBBY) wrote me some months ago, but it wasn't public news until now, and I wasn't sure I believed it, but now I have official confirmation. Sharon had written me: "Each section... nominates three honor books: one for writing, one for illustration and one for translation. The Honour List began in 1956. The books are chosen to represent the best in U.S. publishing in the previous two years."
I'm floored, I'm honored, I'm humbled. And may I throw in delighted... I am. Readers! LITTLE BIRD will have international readers... what a thrill. The entire Honour List from around the world will be part of a traveling exhibition in Japan, the U.S., and Bologna. Then, according to my Official Letter, these books "will be kept as permanent deposits at the International Youth Library in Munich and other research collections in Belgium, Russia, Japan, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the USA."
I knew it. I knew it all along, that everything is connected (as Uncle Edisto says in LITTLE BIRD), that we are more alike than we are different, that we exist in community, through our stories, on this planet. This lovely IBBY award is confirmation and validation of that fact -- just imagine these books, written in many different languages, traveling together next year. Just imagine the kinds of stories they tell individually. Imagine the story they will tell together, of their journey.
Oh, thank you, USBBY committee members, for honoring Comfort Snowberger's story, she who has been to 247 funerals and thinks she knows all about death, only to find out that life is about to take some turns she can't anticipate, and that the most important thing to know about death is that it is part... of life.
There is so much life going on at my house right now, on a warm January day. The carport area rings with hammering and the stapling of screens to the framing. Husband Jim's music wafts up from his basement studio, where he is practicing. The cats want in and out every fifteen minutes. The granola is finished and sits in 12 sweet, squatty little Mason jars, ready for ribbons. The hazelnuts in their jars are standing tall next to the granola. The crepe myrtles that needed to come down (talk about death... sob!) so a new driveway can be built, have been cut and deposited on my back porch so I can gather the most earnest, most enthusiastic branches for my bottle tree.
In the book I'm working on now, a character named Partheny, who is old, wise, and superstitious, makes a bottle tree for her front yard, to ward off evil spirits. I want to make the tree that Partheny would make.
So I've got my branches now. I've been collecting my bottles. I need the just-right bucket and some cement, I think. Let me see what I can do, gathering these elements that you wouldn't naturally find together, and making something brand new out of them. Sort of like the IBBY award. Sort of like stories. Sort of like life.
My notebook is getting a workout with LISTS these days. Lists of projects I want to do, lists of supplies needed, lists of administrative tasks that need to be tackled, grocery lists, lists of stories I'm working on or want to work on this year. In January I list. (Well, I list all the time, but in January, especially, I list for myself: what would you like to accomplish this year? How might you make that happen? I start with a fresh notebook for my lists. I know that I'll fill up several notebooks this year, but this is the first for a new year, with lists, including, this year, lists of what I eat each day, how far I walk (I've walked over 25 miles so far this year), lists of my weekly WW's numbers (11.3 pounds so far -- who's still with me? I'm so serious about this...).
Looking at all these lists, I see patterns, too -- it's the same every year; I bring many disparate elements together to create a life. Kind of like my Southern serial-story-turned-into-full-fledged novel, THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS... so many elements and so many characters fairly seething with their wants and needs and aspirations, conspiring separately but finding out that together they make one movement out of whole cloth. You do it, too, don't you? You are interested in so many things, just as I am, you make your lists, either in your head or on paper, and you pull together a life. In doing so, you see how different you are from every other human being on this earth... how different your family is from every other family, how different is your home, your mind! And yet. We are also so alike, wanting to love and be loved, to belong, to achieve something worthwhile, to understand how the world (and each heart) works, to have purpose.
Each of us individually, AND together, makes up the symphony true.
Today is the winter solstice, as many bloggers are noting. When I was ten, I had never heard of the winter solstice... I wonder if it made its way into western thinking along with the new age movement in the '70s. At any rate, as a Methodist kid of southern, military, Methodist parents, living in largely WASPy Prince Georges County, Maryland (I know what you're thinking), just outside the District of Columbia in the mid-Sixties, what I knew of December was Christmas. And singing. I loved singing.
Down the street on Coolridge Road was a young woman who loved singing, too. I don't even remember her name -- I think she was in college, still living at home. I do remember how she organized the kids in the neighborhood each Christmas, how we'd have two practices at her house in front of her piano, and how we'd go out, on a pre-arranged night, and carol all over the neighborhood, freezing, giggling, singing, and how we were treated to something sweet and warm at each house. When we got to your house, you would pick the two songs we'd sing while your parents hovered in the doorway wrapped in jackets, beaming at you. They had been waiting for this moment.
Then we'd be ushered inside for cookies or cocoa (my house) or -- and this one we dreaded each year, because we were well-mannered and had to drink it -- tomato juice punch. Warm. In punch glasses. Gale Morris's mother served this each year, and each year we'd lobby Gale to get her mother to serve something else, but each year there it was again, tomato juice punch. Warm.
We'd belt out "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and trundle to the next house, our collective breath surrounding us in a cloud of fog, and we'd begin again. I looked forward to this night as much as I looked forward to Christmas Eve. Then, one fall, this woman's younger brother died after being hit in the temple with a baseball. She didn't issue the invitation to come to practice, so we didn't go. We didn't carol that year. We never carolled again in that neighborhood. And then I moved to Charleston, South Carolina with my memories of Christmases carolling through the dark and cold and cocoa and warm tomato juice with my neighborhood friends.
I grew up and I grew jaded about Christmas. But sometimes I hear carolers, or I smell the cold December night air, or I am handed a tomato juice punch, warm, and I remember those years when I looked forward to the simple pleasure of singing with my friends, led by a young woman who loved singing with us through the dark.
EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS is the title of one of my novels. We are all little birds, that's what I meant to say in that book. We all have songs to sing. Those songs -- and by songs I mean our stories -- buoy us, nurture us, explain to us, define us in time and place, and carry us through the cold, dark night. Merry Everything, even Christmas, especially song. And, most especially... stories.
Jasper was part of the Capriola family for 16 years. He died on Sunday. Diane Capriola, who owns Little Shop of Stories, our children's independent bookstore in Decatur, Georgia, asked me if Comfort Snowberger might write a Life Notice for Jasper in the way she writes her Life Notices in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS. I was honored to be asked, and so was Comfort. Here is Jasper's Life Notice on Thanksgiving Day, shared with permission from Diane. The family will hold a memorial service today. Comfort would be proud. I send my love. Here's to all good dogs, everywhere.
We Come to Celebrate Jasper Capriola:
A Life Well Lived, A Dog Well Loved
Life Notice by Comfort Snowberger:
Explorer, Recipe Tester, and Funeral Reporter
November 22, 2007
It’s Thanksgiving Day, the day that we give thanks for all our blessings. But, as Uncle Edisto tells us, you can’t have blessings without sorrows, as that is the way of life. This Thanksgiving there is sorrow mixed in with the blessings – just imagine the sadness all over Decatur, Georgia this week as the Capriola family said goodbye to their beloved dog Jasper, a beautiful, white, furry mutt from the Atlanta Humane Society who, as a puppy less than eight weeks old, wagged his tale and blinked his big brown eyes and inspired Diane to say, “That’s the puppy that’s going home with us today!”
So Diane and Rich brought Jasper home with them in 1991. He was so little, he scrunched himself under the driver’s seat all the way home, and who could blame him? He was a tiny puppy who had charmed his new owners but now what? Would they be the right owners for him? He cried all night long at Diane and Rich’s house because he wasn’t sure, because he was scared, and because he was still a baby. Diane kept saying, “It’s OK, Jasper. I’m right here.” And that’s all it took. That and the pasta. Jasper loved pasta. Sauce or no sauce, it didn’t matter. Jasper loved pasta.
I asked Diane about Jasper, as I am an expert on dogs, having had the most wonderful dog of all time, Dismay, Funeral Dog Extraordinaire, for seven of my ten years on the planet. Here’s what Diane told me.
When Jasper first came home, there were no kids at the house – this was before Nick, Will, and Jennifer were born. Nick, Will, and Jennifer did not come from the Atlanta Humane Society, but they were just like real brothers and a sister to Jasper, it’s just that Jasper was the oldest. When he came home from the Humane Society, he was so small he fit inside a men’s size ten shoe. Nick, Will and Jennifer were never that small. Can you imagine a baby fitting into a man’s shoe? Jasper did.
But he grew fast. And when Nick, Will, and Jennifer came along, Jasper was overjoyed. Siblings! Kids who dropped food on the floor! Suddenly there were lots of people to protect and lots of feet to lick. Lots of loving to do. Jasper loved his family so much that he would practically bend in half when they came home at the end of the day. He was so glad to see them that he wiggled himself into noodles of happiness. Have you ever seen a dog do this? It’s the most comical, endearing thing. To think that we, human beings, could make dogs so happy.
Jasper loved to go to the park, to eat raw chicken with his dog friends, to "beat up" innocent unsuspecting puppies, to run on the beach, and to play with his best friend Buddy, a golden-lab mix who left this world a few years back. Jasper was an all-around Good Dog, a noble dog, a wonder dog, a silly dog, like all good dogs are. He even had a special talent: he could catch ice cubes that Rich spit to him. Ha!
A few years back Jasper was diagnosed with a cancer of a nasty sort- the tumor was growing on his rear end and was apparently inoperable. He smelled bad. Very bad. Almost all the time. But the Capriolas didn’t care (love is like that). They wanted Jasper to live forever and they took him to Dr. Mike Smith of Emory Animal Hospital in Decatur, Georgia – the most wonderful vet in the whole wide world. Dr. Mike suggested to Diane and Rich that he try to remove the tumor anyway. Diane and Rich said yes, and that decision gave them almost one more year with Jasper. He battled ferociously to live and for a while he was “The Dog Who Lived.” Last Sunday he died at the old dog age of 16, surrounded by his family.
But he will always live in the hearts of those who loved him. That’s the way it is with dogs and people, you know? I had to learn this the hard way when I lost my dog, Dismay. All I have to do is think of his bravery, his loyalty, his smiling puppy face (even when he got older he had that face), and he lives again, just like Jasper lives on. And now Jasper no longer suffers. Or smells. Poor Jasper. But what a hero he was. Is. And heroic is the Capriola family for taking such good care of such a good dog and for loving him back as much as he loved them.
Isn’t love a wonderful thing? Aren’t dogs the most faithful and loving creatures? Aren’t we lucky to know them? And aren’t we lucky to have families and friends to surround us in sad times and happy times… at all times. Thank goodness for families. For friends. For each other. Let’s all hug one another now and tell Good Dog stories.
My friend Robin MacCready just gave me a heads up about this:
The Ida: The Ida Chittum Award for Best Young Adult/Children's Mystery Novel of 2006
Finalists
S.D. Tooley - SKULL
Gail Giles ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
notjazz - WHAT HAPPENED TO CASS MCBRIDE?
April Henry - SHOCK POINT
Gordon Korman - HUNTING THE HUNTER
Robin Merrow MacCready - BURIED
I can't imagine any better company. The only problem is the award is given in New Jersey, so I might not be able to get out there to see who wins in person.
Read more here.
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Hannah will be thrilled to see she made your Blog!
You are remarkable!!!
Ronda
Ha! It's Hannah who is remarkable, don't you think? And she has a remarkable mother as well. Thanks for everything this past weekend -- what fun, and what good work. Hug Hannah for me.