For a new project due out next fall, I just reviewed some 25,000 digital photographs taken over the last fifteen years.
I skipped the gym.
Tomorrow, in the company of John and Andra Bell (and my husband), I will watch slender young things dance their hearts out in Bethlehem, as part of the "So You Think You Can Dance" tour.
I will wish, watching them, that I'd gone to the gym.
Everything about this weekend was perfect.
On Friday evening I joined my father at Villanova University, where
my mother was being honored by artist Niko Chocheli. This was shortly after learning that my fabulous nephew has chosen to attend a very fine college not far from my own home. The kind of news any aunt would want to hear.
On Saturday, after writing a
Going Over poem for a certain band of students who will be reading this Berlin novel over the summer, I had the immense privilege of visiting
Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls on behalf of the first-ever, immaculately well-run Teen Writers Festival. All thanks to Sister Kimberly Miller and K.M. Walton, who organized the day, to the girls who came, to the families who encouraged them, and to my fellow rocking writers. The community strengthens. The friendships grow.
I read, and was deeply moved by, the portraits my own students at Penn created about people who matter to them. Something essential happens when we stop to remember. When we ask. When we listen. When we evoke.
History of impressions. My story about pre-season/post-storm
Beach Haven appeared in the Sunday
Philadelphia Inquirer, sharing a front cover page with Philadelphia's own archbishop, one of those small coincidences that makes a writer smile.
A poem I wrote appeared on Serena Agusto-Cox's blog
here, in honor of National Poetry Month.Words I'd once written about the young adult label were quoted alongside the thoughts of Lauren Oliver and Cornelia Funke in a very interesting
New Straits Times story by Samantha Joseph,
here. This was the second weekend in which something I'd said in one place was discovered (by Serena Agusto Cox) elsewhere. A week ago, the
LA Times quoted me
here, in this piece about Gina Frangello.
I received a gorgeous, handwritten (!) letter from Amy Gigi Alexander, a letter written while Amy sat in a cafe in the Petit Square of Tangiers. Amy, I could not be more honored by your words there. Treasured words, which will sit among treasured things.
And finally, but never ever ever finally, Bill and I spent yesterday afternoon with our beloved friends, John and Andra. John Bell was both conducting and directing Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man" at the Labuda Center for the Performing Arts at DeSales University, where John chairs the Performing and Fine Arts Department. It was a rich and wonderful performance. It was a perfect time with two very dear friends.
Today I sit preparing for the
launch of Going Over at the Radnor Memorial Library, this coming Wednesday evening, 7:30. I hope you will join us.
Tomorrow I say goodbye to my students. That, my friends, is one of the hardest things I do.
Molly misses her grandma. It makes her feel awfully sad. She misses her hugs, her smells, her baking scones and biscuits in the kitchen.
Molly’s mum is also sad. How Molly wishes Grandma would come back again.
One day, Molly finds Grandma’s big straw hat. She puts it on and wanders into the garden where she finds a beautiful wattle tree with dark green leaves like a dress her gran used to wear, and gentle curves like the curls of her hair. Molly feels at peace here.
The next week, she returns to the tree, which is now covered in blousey, golden wattle flower. Molly puts her arms around the trunk and hugs it tight. It becomes her special place for Grandma and she liked keeping it secret.
Until one day when she sees Mum crying over Grandma. So she decides to share her special place.
This is a heartfelt, sweet book about loss but also about remembering, and finding solace in both the objects that once belonged to someone we love – and the comfort to be found in nature.
This book was particularly poignant for me, as I have my own very special tree that brings back the fondest memories, and connects me to those long gone. This book shows children there is a way to honour our dearly departed, and therefore keep them close.
Beautifully warm, pastelly illustrations by Ben Wood perfectly convey the tender emotion of this book – illustrations that are firmly carving this artist a place in the beloved Australian children’s book niche.
The Wattle Tree is published by Lothian. Published tomorrow.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/1/2014
By: [email protected],
on 8/12/2012
