Category: Life, Books, Letters

In my third grade year, the Tracy’s, family friends next door, gave me a lovely copy of Little Women. That book changed my life for good (although at times I’ve questioned just how good). Little Women made me want to be a writer. Jo March became my doppelganger, my heroine, my inspiration. If I couldn’t be her, I wanted her for the sister I didn’t have.

I loved the other three as well: womanly Meg, tragic Beth, artistic and vain Amy. But, Jo’s passion and imagination became rooted within me. Jo knew how to live even as she stumbled through trouble (the Civil War no less) and loss. I read all the rest, too: Eight Cousins, Little Men, Rose in Bloom, and the short stories. Louisa May Alcott and her creations made me want to write.

The first result turned out to be a Halloween story about a black cat that jumped into a jack o’ lantern. The cat’s bright eyes kept the jack o’ lantern aglow for the poor little girl who had carved it. I believe a little candle I’d received, a jack o’ lantern with a black kitten curled on top, inspired the story. I wrote it out and showed it to Mom and Dad. Ideal (or I thought at the time) critics who only praised. That decided me. I was, and would always be, like Jo March, a writer.

Did any book read in childhood influence you to choose your way of life?

As a toddler, I listened to Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, nonsense verses, and the stories Dad made up as he lay beside me for a while at bedtime, legs crossed, one arm across his eyes, spinning them out as they occurred to him.

Mom and Dad were avid readers. I still own their first editions of The Robe, Quo Vadis, The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter, and A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich (another book about a girl who grows up to be a writer). They had books in the house for themselves after they tucked us in at night in those softly quiet evenings before television. In their wartime correspondence, they wrote about books and movies, along with shortages, and their yearning for each other. Dad, of course, saw more movies on base or shipboard, than Mom.

Although Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating his Christmas pie and Jack and Jill went up that hill before I knew I had a memory, the first book that I know shaped my love of literature was Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I read it while recovering from some minor second grade illness. Mom and Dad shone with pride, but all I cared about was the magical story: Tom canoodling Joe Harper to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence; the awkward puppy love Tom felt for Becky Thatcher; the weird idea of swinging a dead cat, or visitng a graveyard at night; and, the terror of being stalked in the cave by Injun Joe. Too soon for feminist awareness, I applauded Tom’s protective stalwartness where Becky was concerned.

It kept me turning the pages and picturing the world Twain created. Images abounded in my stuffed up little head. It marked an early experience, and an addictive one, that of being both lost and at home, all at once, in somebody else’s world.

Huckleberry Finn followed in short order, as books by favorite authors often do. The second Twain book, the grand adventure on the Mississippi, took me captive as I absorbed, through a story, a character’s growth. That growth, of course, contributed to my own as a young, but thinking, human being.

And that, along with the entertainment factor, is probably the thing that hooked me once and forever on reading. I slipped into the skin of a mischievous orphan boy who shone naughty, remorseful, brave, and resourceful in 1839-40 Missouri. I knew what it would be like because I’d been there. I understood Jim’s desperation, his sore need to be free. I didn’t quite understand Huck’s dilemma in whether to help Jim, but that would come through the generous words of others.

“What’s in a name?” Juliet, you might well ask.

My life has been unduly influenced by books — words that comprise them, even names of the characters who appear in them — since before my birth. The Second World War staggered to its close as Mom (expecting me) waited it out with her toddler son in her parents’ little company house on the Big West Oil Field in the plains of Montana. Dad served in the Navy, at that time stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. I have their correspondence, saved all these years in a faded red and grey shoebox.

Dad referred to me, the anticipated, as Ophelia. Mom told me later they had also discussed Willowa. Willowa Wills would have been bad enough, but throw in a lifetime of fighting being overweight, and it would have been cruel. After I arrived with an astounding shock of bright red hair, Mom briefly considered Penny.

But, she read a book.

The title and author are lost in time. The important thing is the main character’s name happened to be Karen. Mom liked the sound of it. Of all those names, with apologies to Shakespeare, I’m happy with the one I’ve been handed.

That first foray with words launched a lifetime love affair with books and their influence. Ophelia, Willowa, and Penny. Who knows what would have become of a girl with one of those names? Ophelia might have gone mad as her namesake. Willowa might have developed an eating disorder, and Penny might have been unable to cope when the red turned white. Karen has flirted with various disasters, but is still standing.

Hello gentle reader. My son used to tell me I should write a memoir since I’ve been a woman of my times. And the times were unsettled. However, I want to mix in how my life has been affected and guided by books read by others, as well as me, during my life.