MY LIFE IN BOOKS Floating Island, by Anne Parrish I was lucky enough to be raised in a house full of books—old books, new books, crumbling children's books that had belonged to my parents, stacks of cheap paperbacks from the Scholastic Book Club that cluttered up my room. If we loved books, we revered the library. Every week, in a cherished ritual, I was allowed to check out as many library books as my arms could heft out the library door. I can still remember Mrs. Barclay, the children's librarian at the Malaga Cove Library. She had a certain way of peering over her glasses when I asked her for a suggestion. She always made me feel that in order to recommend a suitable book, she first had to take measure of my character. But nobody in our family loved books as much as my mother did, and the stories about her favorite books hung around our household like cherished friends. She especially loved a book called Floating Island. And when she decided I was old enough, I got to read it too. It told the story of a family of doll house people who got shipwrecked on a tropical island. It was an old book and embossed on it, in faded gold leaf, there were four incriminating words: Property of the Seattle Public Library. I knew the whole story of exactly how that book had come into our possession. I knew about my mother's miserable wartime sojourn in Seattle, when her big brother, my uncle, had tied her to a tree in the woods behind her house while playing "cops and robbers", and taught her how to use a stapler by showing her how to staple her own finger. I knew that during the long rainy days her only solace was in the marvelous adventures of the doll family. Then, when my grandfather, a naval officer, was shipped out to sea, my mother slipped the library's copy of Floating Island into her suitcase, and it rattled along with her in the train back to Brooklyn. Clearly, this was a crime of passion. That is how I learned how important books were, because stealing in general was wrong, and stealing from a library was clearly unspeakable, and yet, I held the concrete artifact between my hands—worn, leather bound, full of tantalizing words like frontispiece, celluloid, and breadfruit. It was incontrovertible evidence. My wonderful mother, my tuna-sandwich-making, carpool-driving, weekly-trips-to-the-library mother was not the sort of person who would steal anything. Yet, at least once in her life she had been so passionate about a book that she had stolen it from the library, an act so clearly out of character that it boggled my imagination. So, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Who wouldn't want that kind of power? A Separate Peace, by John Knowles "We followed our gigantic shadows across the campus, and Phineas began talking in a wild French, to give me a little extra practice." It was an assignment for ninth grade honors English. At the time I was living in a 1950s era ranch house in a dull neighborhood in a decidedly unbookish suburb of Los Angeles, California. So when my ninth grade English teacher assigned A Separate Peace, which was set in a New England boarding school, I developed a major obsession. In my neighborhood, people talked about Frampton Comes Alive, but I was now convinced that there existed a place where serious people strode among ivy covered buildings and spoke about weighty things, where teenagers dropped French into the conversation, where I would become so much more than my ordinary self. I spent two years lobbying my parents, and then, at the age of sixteen, I left home to attend boarding school in Massachusetts, a world away from my native California. I had to learn a lot of lessons very quickly—the most important of which was that ice is slippery. I spent much of the first winter nursing a sore tailbone. That was the part about the East Coast that I hadn't quite understood—the part about the weather. The other part I hadn't understood was that books only tell part of the truth. Sure my boarding school looked the part—ivy covered buildings, treacherous marble steps, but it was still 1979, and we were still teenagers. I spent two years there, and not once did I hear someone spontaneously say something in French. So I learned the next important lesson. Just because you remove yourself to the setting of the book doesn't mean that your life will suddenly take on the glossy feel of literature. Or did I learn? Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The Realms of Gold, by Margaret Drabble When I was studying English in high school and college, I had the distinct impression that the world of literature contained a whole lot of men plus Jane Austen. I had spent my youth reading women writers, EL Konigsburg, and Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, and Zilpha Keatley Snyder. But by the time I got to college, it seemed that all the women had disappeared from the literary landscape and I was left with nothing to read but books by men. I have a confession to make. I was not the best of students. I loved reading, but had a tendency to fall asleep over the books assigned in my literature classes: Beowulf, The Faerie Queen, Dante's Inferno. Somehow, the combination of an overheated library and an annotated Penguin text meant only one thing to me—an overwhelming desire to fall asleep. But I still read a lot on the sly. One Christmas, my friend Betsy gave me a book by a British woman writer, Margaret Drabble. In it, a hard-drinking, hard-loving woman archeologist got dysentery while driving in a jeep across the African desert. What struck me about this character, Frances Wingate, was that for all of her Hemingwayesque antics, she was also seen taking care of her children, throwing saucers at her significant other, and chopping vegetables for soup. A woman heroine. I sat up and took notice. Suddenly, it seemed to me that there was nothing more impossibly romantic and daring and brave and true than getting dysentery in a jeep in the desert. After graduation, I joined the Peace Corps, where I requested a lonely outpost in the Sahara desert. For two years, I taught English in a Moroccan high school. (I had dysentery several times, and have since decided that there are many things that are more impossibly romantic and daring and brave and true than that.) Sheila Kitzinger's Complete Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth When I was pregnant with my first child, I went to an obstetric practice where ob/gyn physicians and certified nurse-midwives practiced together. In this particular medical group, instead of giving us the familiar packet from Similac or Enfamil, full of coupons and pregnancy goodies, they gave us a book—a hardcover classic about pregnancy and childbirth by the esteemed English childbirth educator Sheila Kitzinger. What is it with me and these British women writers? What Margaret Drabble did for the concept of dysentery in an African jeep, Sheila did the same for natural childbirth. The nurse-midwife who delivered my 9 pound 6 oz first baby, who coaxed me through twenty hours of labor, who told me I didn't need an episiotomy or a stitch afterward—well, all of a sudden she was up there on the pedestal that had previously been reserved for my author heroes. But of course for me, it wasn't enough just to have a baby. Did it matter that I had no previous training in science, that I had no experience working in the health care field, that I really hadn't been particularly interested in babies or the birth process up to now? Not to Ms. "Dysentery Sounds Romantic." In spite of the fact that all of my previous work experience had been teaching English, I embarked on a long journey to train to become a certified nurse-midwife. I obtained an RN license and then a Master of Science in Nursing. After graduation, I went to work for the same practice that had opened the magic portal by handing me a hardcover book. I was set for life. Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown Okay. Any normal person would have been set for life: I had an interesting and demanding career as a nurse-midwife and three young children . I was on call night and day for patients in labor while simultaneously trying to get Kraft mac and cheese and hot dogs on the table for the kids. Clearly a balancing act. Actually, the act was pretty unbalanced. I remember once, when I was reading Goodnight Moon to my daughter, she told me to leave my beeper out in the driveway. That way, the car might run over it by accident and I wouldn't have to go to the hospital anymore. I took that as a hint. Goodnight Moon, with its lilting rhythm, its incantatory sense of calm, is not the kind of story that goes well with the insistent electric chime of a beeper. I was open to new ideas. Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons My mother sent me books. She sent me lovely hardbound books, written by women—not at all the kind of books that would have been included in my "a whole bunch of men plus Jane Austen" education. "I just think you should read this," my mom would say. "I just thought this was awfully good," and out would come something by Sue Miller, or Gail Godwin, or Jane Hamilton... "But I don't read anymore," I said. "I don't have time... I'm on call all the time, plus the kids, the shopping..." But my mom didn't listen. She just kept sending the books. "Just put them by your bed..." she said encouragingly. "If you don't read them now, you'll read them later." But the one I really remember is when she sent me Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. My mom said, "you know she's a single mom and she has three kids. I don't know how she writes at all. No wonder her books are so short." Short maybe, but also wonderful and brilliant, with every single word in place, and so the whisper started in my ear again. What could possibly be more romantic and daring, and impossible and brave than being a mom and a writer at the same time? Writing about your Life: A Journey into the Past, by William Zinsser William Zinsser is the author of the classic book, On Writing Well. When I was a freshman in college, he was a featured speaker on "alternative careers day" for people who did not want to pursue careers in traditional fields like medicine, law and business. I wanted to be a writer, and he was talking about how to become a writer. Though he was a lovely man and an amusing speaker, he did not give the right answer to the question "how do you become a writer?" The answer was supposed to be something useful that we could do. As in, if you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. But Mr. Zinsser told us that if you wanted to be a writer, you might have to take the long way around to get to the destination. You needed to go out and live your life and do a lot of different things, and then eventually that path would lead you around to where you were supposed to be going. Needless to say, this was not the advice that an impatient eighteen-year-old wanted to hear, I wanted to be a writer right then, because writers were cool and fascinating, and I was neither. I wanted a hurry-up plan: how to change from unintellectual suburban me, a girl most often described as "wholesome," to become a writer like the ones I saw in the movies—the ones who lived in windswept beach cottages and contemplated imponderables and always got the sexy brooding guy. And then I actually met Mr. Zinsser once. When I was serving in the Peace Corps, he visited Morocco, and by chance came to visit someone whom I was visiting as well. This past spring, I read his book Writing about your Life, the best book I've ever read about how to write a memoir, and I was astonished to find that he had mentioned our meeting in Marrakech in the book. It was in the context of going out and pursuing your dreams. Turns out he was right. Don't be afraid to pursue your dreams. Read lots of books and don't be surprised if they direct you along unexpected pathways. Along the way I learned to speak Arabic, survive both dysentery and natural childbirth, change careers, deliver a baby, handle a toddler tantrum in the supermarket, and even write a novel. So that's my advice too. Live life, stop along the way to pick up junk, and don't be afraid to take the roundabout way to get to your destination.