Running from a Purple Crayon Home

As a child, I took books seriously. Transported into their world, I followed their paths, smelling the smells, seeing the sights, experiencing the fears, hopes, loves, dreams and terrors of the characters without the barriers of pages, words, covers or time. I wandered the roads of England with Isaac the Jew in his cart, Rebecca looking over my shoulder as she tended to Ivanhoe who lay wounded in the back. I strolled from Longbourn to Meryton behind the Bennett sisters, holding my skirts up and stepping daintily if there was too much mud. Like Ender, I felt compassion and determination in the spherical confines of Battle School, breathing the air and drinking the water that had been recycled through the bodies of the other students countless times.

Perhaps because of the total immersion I experience in books, I never liked reading anything frightening or sad. I’ve never read Stephen King, and the Hunger Games, which I read recently, gave me nightmares for two weeks. Even a picture book like Harold and the Purple Crayon scared me. I was terrified by the fact that Harold never really -- or so it seemed to me -- found his way back home.

Harold has always been a sore spot for me. I know the book is considered timeless, and not being able to appreciate it bothered me. But on Saturday, during Bryan Collier’s speech at the conference, I had a moment of enlightenment, and now I know why I feared the book so much. “When Harold hang the moon in the sky, that was magic,” Collier said. “I’ve been chasing Harold ever since.” And suddenly I understood: that’s the meaning of true adventure -- following the lines of the purple crayon through the book.

I had been terrified to follow Harold, because I feared losing sight of home. In my eyes, Harold ventures forth into an unknown world which he creates by himself, moving farther and farther away from his home, and when finally he wants to go back, he doesn’t know how to return. But Harold does not need to go back. He is making magic! He is on the adventure of life. His bed is where it always is, under a window framing the moon, and Harold can sleep there in peace because he trusts in the process. He trusts the adventure. He trusts in the impermanence of life. And mostly, he trusts that his home is in him.

For years, Harold has been calling to me to follow my purple crayon, but instead of following him, I’ve been sitting around moaning my inability to fly. Harold says, you want to fly? Here, take your crayon and draw yourself wings. You want to go home? Here, take your crayon and draw yourself the moon. You want to climb a mountain? Here is your crayon. Climb a mountain. Write a novel. Fly on the wings of dragons. Go on your adventure without any fear because you don’t need to look back. You have everything you need right there in your hand.

Which adventure would you like to follow with your purple crayon?
Do you have a picture book which scared you as a child but you can now see in a new light?

My Hectic Life in Books

Lately I’ve been reading five or six books at a time. Two books on the iphone, alternating whenever I have a break between appointments. One book on the ipad while eating my breakfast. One paperback ready in my secret escape haven, the bathroom, and another next to my bed. And two books, non-fiction, I haven’t been able to finish yet.

Two romance novels: a historical romance in which aristocratic Anthony is trying to seduce school-teacher Madeline, and a time-travel romance in which Sara is thrown back two hundred years in time to a gypsy camp to find her one true love. The paperback next to my bed is a middle grade novel recommended by my son. Young Jack and his butler travel to California to find gold in order to help the boy’s aunt keep her home. On the ipad: an adventure novella about two assassins trying to end slavery while falling in love. My serious reading: a book about meditation and another about will power. Just what I need. And last, a book detailing the historical travels of a collection of miniatures from Japan. I haven’t fallen head over heels with that one.

So many characters and their various escapades swirl in my head. Was it Toma the gypsy who hid the pig in a tent, or Master Jack who stuffed it out a porthole? Is Madeline the one whose father is ill or Sara? And which heroine is the really gorgeous sixteen years old who keeps her face covered at all times?


I guess I have high expectations of my memory, to keep all these people and events, their families, looks, and characters straight in my mind. Perhaps if that was all I tried to remember, I’d be fine. But I expect yet more. I’ve been planning three novels at the same time while attempting to revise another. I keep all my appointments in memory -- I write them down too, but I rarely recheck my calendar to make sure that my memory was right. And let’s not mention the piles upon piles of forgotten papers on my desk, the stuffed animals and other toys the kids have left there, and our camera, with photos from our last two trips still inside (yet another characteristic hoarding of details instead of uploading them into a better safekeeping device).


Oh dear. My life is chaotic beyond belief or relief! Why can’t I just read one book at a time? Keep one novel to write at a time in my head. Clear the desk, check the calendar, free my memory of all the phone numbers that have been gone almost thirty years ago (09-448-624 was our family’s phone number when I grew up). Perhaps it is time for me to clear my head and my desk of this unhelpful stuff. But at least in books, I find that sheer number adds to my excitement of life.

What books are you reading now?

Teaching, Learning, and the Kama Sutra

Every summer vacation, I looked forward to the time when a school envelope delivered the list of books required for the fast-approaching school year. We would head to Fabian’s bookstore where I’d hand my list to the saleswoman and, after a suspenseful search, receive my pile of books for the year. I loved the smell of the new books and the blankness of the notebooks, the endless possibilities resting within them, the promise of new knowledge and learning to be found inside.

In seventh grade, my biology teacher became irritated by my endless questions. “Why don’t you write your questions at the end of the notebook,” she suggested, “and if at the end of the year I haven’t answered them, you can ask me then.” I wrote the questions in the notebook, but I already received one reply: she had neither the answers nor the patience for me.

Ever on the lookout for learning, I adored my college mentor, a passionate teacher who made the world of eighteenth-century British literature come alive. But after a while she lost interest in my work and her only comment on my thesis was that my English improved.

While studying for the MBA, I fell in love with Economics and considered getting a PhD. My Economics professor disagreed. “You’re coming from English Lit,” he waved me aside, “so you are too narrow minded to understand.” I proved him wrong by receiving 98% on his final exam, but my taste for Economics was gone.

Sometimes I learn the most from unexpected teachers. Today this teacher proved to be a romance novel. In Mia Marlowe’s Touch of a Thief, Lieutenant Quinn has mastered the teaching of the Kama Sutra, spiritual side and all. Viola, his leading lady, is a willing student. The novel is well-plotted and the characters are endearing. The suspense works though I trusted all along that everybody was going to be okay in the end. But it was the relationship between Viola and Quinn that made me think. How attractive to have at least one Kama Sutra enlightened partner in a relationship!

I wondered: how can it be that in a society which values education and college degrees as much as ours does, experience rather than learning is the most common way to gain knowledge of the mysterious, intimate ways between men and women? We send our children (and ourselves) out into this confusing world so unprepared. Like the old saying, we seem to imply: “Lie back and think of England.”

Strangely, it is romances which venture close to teaching, instructing, and giving a personal example of how love should be. I might put Touch of a Thief on the required teenaged girl’s reading list. Great ethics about not giving your virginity too quickly or trusting too soon, and a great example of how magnificent love can be when both sides move forward at the same time, with the same willingness, wishes and hopes.

Let's Have Some Fun, Kids!

I like to watch my friends and their parenting techniques, and I noticed there are different parenting schools with regard to one of my favorite subjects: are the kids or the adults in charge of fun?

Some of my friends are the kind of parents who believe that children should fit themselves to the schedule of the adults. They expect from the children a certain level of behavior. While the expectation sometimes results in crying and complaints, the outcome is usually that these friends sleep better at night, are able to finish a conversation without being interrupted, and are not slaves to their children.

There is another type of parents I recognize. This type is so excited to have kids, that they make the children, their schedule, needs and wishes a priority. They walk with babies all night singing to them, they nurse on demand, they let the kids sleep with them in bed, and they go to the playground even if they absolutely abhor it.

Guess to which group I belong?

Going to the playground might appear an innocent, charming activity which parents and children can engage in together, but I dread it. I have a hard time running around trying to get my children not to kill themselves or be killed by other kids on the play structure. I don’t know how to protect my clueless and far-too-innocent two (who must have inherited their helplessness from me) from playground thugs who take away toys from them or push them around in the sand box. Taking my kids to the playground is in my book an ordeal.

My favorite activity with the kids and what I have always loved loved loved doing with them is read together. No surprise there, I guess. I spent my childhood reading books to myself, and now I want to spend my kids’ childhood reading books to them.

Of course, there are many types of parents in between the two I mentioned, in all directions of the spectrum. And I hope that I don’t always belong to the door-mat kind. I rather hope that by thinking about all this, as I certainly did and do, there may have been slight changes in my behavior, possibly undetected by the naked eye, but which have made a difference in the quality of my life.

There is much to learn, and the kids are not waiting for me to learn it. They are growing up, developing, learning themselves. My daughter is now a pro in playground etiquette and is an expert on the monkey bars. My son controls the football field, even if he would prefer that less than forty kids would want to join his game. And me? Well, I’m still here, reading books, writing books, thinking about books, and eating while pondering books. That’s who I am. And I guess that’s all right.

Blogging and Frog and Toad

I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a long time, but the idea scared me. I normally don’t see myself as a very consistent person, and the thought of committing to write something on a daily basis seemed pretty much impossible.

In fact, in the grand scheme of things, and out of my great love to Arnold Lobel’s books, I have always considered myself more of a Toad personality than a Frog. Will power has never been one of my strong points (I’ll always prefer to go home and bake a cake), I’m very picky about the size and shape of my buttons, and though I might put a lot of effort into a garden (including singing and talking to the plants), it would be a one-time concerted effort rather than an on-going project for life.

I can see Frog blogging on a daily basis, writing about his philosophical and wise exploration of life. But would Toad have a blog? And what would he blog about? Cake recipes? Disasters with ice cream? Embarrassing encounters of the bathing suit kind?

Well, either way I have taken the plunge. This Toad is going to have a blog, a blog about the books I read and about my writing. I’m still trying to determine whether it’s a good platform to complain about the dogs or the amount of homework I need to do with the kids. And maybe, once in a while, if I bake something exceptionally good, I’ll put the recipe up here for you, or maybe just a photograph. I don’t know.