But Where Was Me?

Grandmothers should be wise.  It’s one of those archetypal attributes of the crone, isn’t it?  So when I fall short in the wisdom department, it bothers me.  

A little over a year ago, my grandson and I were chatting about the first house he lived in – a place he dimly remembered, having moved away when he was a toddler.  His younger sister was confused.  She insisted they had never lived in a house with two huge trees in the garden.  When her brother pointed out that this was before she was born, she became almost hysterical.

“But where was ME?” she demanded, her eyes filling with tears and panic.

That was when I fell short in the wise grandmother stakes.  I knew my answer to the question, but I would have struggled – when put on the spot – to find the words to explain it to a tiny child.  Even if I had managed to leap that hurdle, I was anxious about straying into the sphere of beliefs.  I’ve spent a lifetime as a teacher carefully and meticulously respecting a wealth of different creeds and cultures.  I knew my grandchildren were being brought up with a nominally Christian belief system.  Christianity has plenty to say about an afterlife, but is curiously silent on before life.  It talks vaguely about dust and ashes, which, I felt, wouldn’t help much.  Did I have the right to impose my own beliefs on those they were being brought up with? 

So I failed.  I gave the child lots of comforting cuddles, chatted to her about how excited we’d all been when she was born, and generally distracted her without ever answering her very important question.  And it has bothered me ever since.

When I came to write my children’s novel this year, I decided it would give me the opportunity to revisit the events of that day and to provide Ruby Rose, my fictional toddler heroine, with a fearless crone figure who is more than happy to address her question head on and provide a suitable response.

It was one of those parts of the book that quite happily wrote itself, while I obediently pressed the keys.  Interestingly, Misty often took control of me, as well as the situations in the story, when she appeared in the pages!

Misty waited for the girl to settle down and for the pounding of her heart to slow.  “Now,”  she began, finally.  “That was a very sensible question you asked, my dear.  I’m going to answer it for you, but you will need to listen very hard.  Can you do that?”

Ruby nodded miserably and Stellan sat on the grass at Misty’s feet, because it had never occurred to him that there could be an answer to that question.

“Before you were your mama’s little girl and Stellan’s little sister, Ruby, you were living in the Dreaming Place.”

“What’s the Dreaming Place?” Ruby asked, sitting up.

“It’s a place you know very well.  Why, you go there every night, while your body is in bed, having a rest,” Misty replied.

“You mean when we have dreams?” asked Stellan.

“Exactly.  Haven’t you ever thought how odd it is that your body stays in bed, fast asleep, while you are off doing all sorts of other things?” …

“That is strange,” agreed Stellan, who had never really considered it before.

“So,”  continued Misty, in the same calm, gentle voice, “while we have bodies like these,” she tickled Ruby Rose gently on her arm and the child giggled, “we live in them for most of the time and just put them down to rest at bedtime.  Before we are born, though, and after we have died, we spend all our time in the Dreaming Place.  That’s where you were when Stellan was a little boy and Bella the cat lived with him.”

Both children were silent for a moment, while they considered that.

“Weren’t I lonely without my ma and my pa and my brother?” Ruby wanted to know.

“Not at all,”  Misty replied.  “You were having too much fun!  You see in the Dreaming Place, you can be whatever you want and go anywhere you like.  You might have tried being a fairy or a brave explorer or even a dog or a cat.  What do you think you would have been?”

“A fairy who could fly in the air and do wishes!” Ruby announced.

“Well that would be quite splendid, wouldn’t it?”  Misty smiled.  “But after loads and loads of dreaming, you decided that what would be even more fun would be to become a little girl with a body.  You see, in the Dreaming Place there are things we can’t do.  We can’t feel happiness or pain or full up with delicious food or the softness of an animal’s fur when we stroke it.  You decided to find yourself the most perfect family for your new body to live with.”

“How did she find us?” asked Stellan. 

He couldn’t decide whether this was some kind of made-up tale to calm his sister and cheer her up or whether Misty believed all she was saying.

She smiled at him.  It was a serious smile, not the sort of winking smile grown-ups give when you and they both know they are pretending.

“As I said, in the Dreaming Place, you can go anywhere you want just by thinking about it.  Once Ruby Rose had decided she wanted to slip into a body and find a family in this – Waking Place, she travelled all around the world, deciding which would be the very best family for her to live with.  Eventually, she chose the family she wanted and when your new little sister was born, here she was!”

“I was very clever to choose my nice family, weren’t I, Misty?” Ruby smiled.

My grandson is reading The Glassmaker’s Children at the moment and maybe, when she’s a few years older, his sister will do the same and find a belated answer to her question.  

 

A ‘Dark is Rising’ Night

This train of thought began a few nights ago, as wind and something wet and very cold lashed against my bedroom window.  I’d been working on my latest manuscript, so I suppose I was in that slightly altered state that books always bring about in me.  At any rate, the combination of the storm, the creaks and groans of the cottage and this dark, deep magical time of year as we approach the winter solstice made me think, “Whoa – it’s a Dark is Rising night!”

It was then that I realised how Susan Cooper’s stunning and fearsome children’s novel had seeped into the very bones of me.  It had shaped my perceptions and altered the person I was.  A truly great book should do that.

I don’t remember when I first discovered The Dark is Rising.  Probably in one of my jobs as a school librarian/ head of English in the early seventies.  There was some wonderful children’s literature around at that time – Ursula Le Guin‘s Wizard of Earthsea, Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Penelope Lively‘s meticulously crafted time-slip adventures, Peter Dickinson‘s Changes Trilogy – but it was Susan Cooper’s masterpiece which helped to craft the person I am now.

So all this got me thinking:  What other books have shaped my life?  Notice I’m not talking here about favourite books, books I’ve enjoyed, books I’d recommend (although – to the right person – I’d recommend every one of them).  I’m talking of books that have jolted me into a new understanding and way of seeing.  I’m talking of having my prior perceptions dragged – kicking and screaming at times – into a new paradigm or, in some cases, of having my wildest and most cherished suspicions and hopes about what is really going on here validated and encouraged.  In either case, what follows is a list of books – whittled down reluctantly to ten and in no particular order – which have changed me forever.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper  Written for children but reaches the magic deep inside each of us.  For me, the boundary between the normal and the magical was broken down forever once I’d read it.

CosMos by Ervin Laszlo and Jude Currivan  Magic for grown-ups!  Here I discovered highly respected academics writing about and expanding upon the cosmos as I wanted and needed it to be.  (I’ve been lucky enough to encounter both authors in life, and they are two of the most delightful and inspiring people I’ve ever met.)

The Crack in the Golden Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce  This book kept appearing in other authors’ bibliographies, so I decided I needed to read it for myself.  Thank goodness I did.  Stunning and life-changing revelations on every page.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell  Yes, he’s a brilliant novelist and I loved The Bone Clocks too, but it was this book and it’s way of weaving infinitely subtle links between lifetimes and personalities that shifted my way of seeing other lives and times.

Autism and the Edges of the Known World by Olga Bogdashina  With a title that great, how could I resist?  This (along with my next choice and Suzy Miller’s Awesomism) should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the autistic spectrum and the amazing people who dwell on it.

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida  I’ve already devoted one blog post to this stunning little book but it still deserves a place here.  For me it was filled with moments of joyful recognition as I was shown that hunches had been right all along, or gave me insights I’d never have found alone.

The Hidden Messages in Water by Masaru Emoto  Needs no introduction.  A beautiful, wise, witty man (I was fortunate enough to hear him speak once) whose unique vision and stunning images changed the way the world worked for me.

Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts  Before I settled here in Glastonbury, I came for a long weekend and – as visitors do – went for a psychic reading.  I was told many things that day.  One was that I would become a writer, but that first I needed to find and read the Seth books.  I did.  They are complicated, abstract, awkwardly written and lack the easy readability of Abraham Hicks, but they changed my life and I re-read them constantly.

Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch  This is where I first discovered a God I liked.  Neale’s God was witty, charming, wise and surprising.  I struggle with the financial empire the books have spawned, but the words resonate deeply.

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran  Last on my list but the first of these books I discovered and – if I had to choose – probably the most life-changing.  I love this beautiful, deceptively simple little volume like no other.

 

So there you have it: the books that made me.

Please feel free to share any of your own life-changing reads below.