Got a lot on my mind today...

The family is asleep. It's Sunday afternoon. The house is quiet. I can write. Sigh.

I often write in my head while I'm doing mindless tasks around the house (washing dishes, sweeping, doing laundry) or while I'm push-mowing the lawn. I not only think about what I'm going to write, but also how to write it. I think about phrasing. I think about rhythm. I think about humor. I think about tact. I'm a little short on the latter. I think that's one of the reasons I married James. He has a much softer way of presenting ideas--one that's more diplomatic, more palatable. His parents grew up in Tennessee. Mine grew up in New Jersey. Maybe that has something to do with it. Northerners aren't exactly known for their syrupy sweetness (the availability of sweet tea in the South must be symbolic).

When we first moved from New Jersey to Kentucky, I was nearly seven years old. I remember asking my dad, "Why does everybody wave at us? They don't know us." He said everybody down here waved. When I reached junior high, my perception of Northerners was that they outwardly hated everyone except family and friends. Southerners seemed to like everyone except foreigners (at least they pretended to, anyway). Being from New Jersey, I was a foreigner. I talked funny. I corrected the teacher's pronunciation of certain words. I read books.

When I read Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson in the 6th grade, I fell in love. I instantly connected with the character Leslie Burke. Leslie's best friend Jesse Aarons Oliver, Jr., reminded me of my quirky childhood friend who dubbed me Her Royal Excitedness. Neither character felt as though they fit in their small town. She moved from the city to a home across the road (not the street) from Jess. She had a vivid imagination and no TV. He had a gift for art and a dad who didn't understand him. To him, Leslie was just like one of the boys (since she was, after all, the fastest kid in the 5th grade). To her, Jesse was a blank canvas on which to paint her Terabithian ideas.

While in college, "my Jesse" sent me a copy of Bridge to Terabithia in the mail. He strategically placed his handwritten letter between two pages toward the middle of the book. Before I read his letter, I knew to look at the pages to discover the reason for the letter placement. My deliberate Jesse didn't do much of anything without thinking it through first. (In fact, he stopped saying, "Hi," at the beginning of telephone conversations and "Bye" at the end because he felt as though it was irrelevant, understood, and a waste of breath. My parents called him weird. So, naturally, I liked him.) Anyway, Jess of Terabithia was trying desperately in his etchings to capture "the poetry of the trees." In the letter, "my Jesse" asked if I knew why he placed the letter in the book. Well, of course I did. It was all about the poetry of the trees, silly.