This is not the way I planned to segue out of the kitty updates – I had a lovely bit of scathingness ready to go, but apparently it’s not going to see the light of day for at least another day now.
No, I’d like to take a moment to say goodbye to one of the finest writers I ever had the joy of reading.
Her name was Madeleine L’Engle, and for the first few years I knew of her I couldn’t pronounce her surname properly. It didn’t matter, the librarians I spoke to knew who she was, and would point me in the right direction. (For the record, it’s pronounced LENG-el).
As a child and young adult, I spent hours in her company and particularly loved her Wrinkle in Time series. The title for this post is the first line in the first book…
It wasn’t until I was older and had not read one of her books in many years that I stumbled across a discussion of the difficult concepts she’d incorporated into the books. Casting my mind back, all I could recall is how I’d simply accepted the truth of them. At the time time the quantum physics made sense, which only goes to show the truth of her belief that children’s lit is too difficult for adults to follow…
My next encounter with L’Engle was in 1995, in the pages of Victoria magazine. That year she played the role of Writer In Residence for the magazine, and shared stories, her home and herself. I reread A Wrinkle In Time.
My final encounter with her writing was a couple of years ago, when a meander down one of the VPL’s many stacks led me to “A Circle of Quiet”. Being at an unquiet point in my own life, I hoped to lose myself in her fiction. Instead, she gave me things to think about, and the thinking through did more than any talking would have done. I read the rest of the series, which she called the Crosswicks Journals.
Tonight I find myself mourning her, and searching through my notebooks for the things I wrote down and carried off with me. Like this:
“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. Because I was once a rebellious student, there is and always will be in me the student crying out for reform.”
Thank you Madeleine. Because you have been, you will always be.
Thank you for reminding me of this great book (A Wrikle in Time) and the wonderful author.
Cin, I have been trying to compose my own post about M. L’Engle for days now. I have my battered childhood copy of A Wrinkle in Time on my nightstand, to read to my sons when we finish what we’re reading. I am amazed that yours is the first blog post regarding her passing that I’ve come across. I loved reading your thoughts about an author who has been a part of my life for almost as long as I’ve been able to read!