Southern Girl...Southern World

They forecasted heavy thunderstorms tonight. I have my pen poised and all of my books closeby expectantly. I replaced the ink cartridges in my fountain pen today to write my dad a postcard, and I resolved to write one post card a day to anyone willing to read it.

I've begun reading the books of my youth, trying to determine what role they might have played in forming the present being I call "myself." I want to get back to the root of things and try to find some basis of understanding of why I am who I've become. I don't credit books with my entire character development, but I'm certain that my psyche doesn't live completely independent of them, either.

I've dubbed this the "year of finding lost things." In a former post, I related the story about "accidentally" (I don't wholly believe in "accidents,") running across the painting The Girl I Left Behind Me after years of searching, without knowing the artist or the title. The phenomenon has happened again, only this time the waiting was twenty years in coming.

When I was in the fourth grade, a librarian recommended a book to me about a girl who learned to fly. Those are are all the details I remembered about it, save that it had some profound and unnamed impact on my thought processes. I puzzled many a librarian thereafter while trying to relocate the book. Nobody knew what I was talking about. Then suddenly a few days ago, the story revealed itself again by way of a Barnes and Noble salesgirl.

I was a couple aisles over from the children's section, and I decided to give her knowledge of children's literature a try. I was skeptical, of course. I had been embarrassed so many times before by my own vague request about what I wanted, and I didn't want to be in that position again. After she finished with another customer, she approached me with the obligitory "Can I help you find something?" I think if she had even changed the wording of the question to "May I help you?" I might not have had the courage to ask. But ask I did. Albeit sheepishly and half-heartedly. "I'm looking for a book I read in the fourth grade about a girl who learns to fly," I said. "I don't know the author or the title."

Magic.

In one motion, she walked straight to the shelf and she asked, "Could it be this one?" as she slipped one book away from the others. One glance at the cover of the girl flying with a goose ,and I knew it was the one. With such ease she accomplished what had befuddled so many before her. I was dumbfounded. It was The Fledgling by Jane Langton. There was even the little silver seal of the Newberry Medal gleaming on the front corner. Imagine that.

It was that evening that I decided to do my childhood lit experiment, and I've been reading the Fledgling every night before I fall asleep.

Which brings me to another point. I've been having trouble falling asleep lately and instead of dousing myself with sleeping pills at night, only to rouse myself with umpteen cups of coffee in the morning (vicious cycle), I decided to buy myself a contraption called the Conair Sound Machine. It's supposed to soothe you to sleep with one of the ten sounds it offers:

1. Tropical Forest (Mildly irritating.)

2. Thunderstorm

3. Summer Night (My personal favorite and reason I get any sleep at all.)

4. Ocean Waves

5. White Noise (Because I saw the Micheal Keaton movie, this is the sound I can't abide.)

6. Heartbeat (Eerie. Might be good for a newborn, but not an adult.)

7. Songbirds (This is the one I listen to in the morning to wake up.)

8. Waterfall (This one makes me have to go to the bathroom. Not soothing.)

9. Running stream. (Same as above.)

10. Rainfall (I enjoy this one, too.)

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I didn't read or write last night during the storms. Instead, I watched Carolina (Shirley Maclaine, Julia Stiles). It made me laugh and cry in all the right parts.

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I cut fresh daffodils from my front yard, placed them neatly in a wicker basket, and delivered them to the elderly women in my neighborhood. One of them teared up and told me that her mother-in-law had given her daffodils when her son was born. Another told me I "looked like a picture" with my flowers and basket.

I'm going to be old one day, and I can only hope that some young woman will bring me daffodils in a basket.