When I was seven, I lived in New York. My mom’s entire family lived in Oregon, and though we lived so far, they always sent presents at Christmas and birthdays. One of my aunts is a teacher, and she always made sure to send us books.
The books she sent me for my seventh birthday changed the way I saw writing.
The first book, Ida B. And Her Plan To Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, And (Possibly) Save The World, showed how a young girl’s life was changed by her mother’s cancer diagnosis. She went from being the happiest girl in the world to deeply angry—at the world, at her parents, at herself.
A few years ago, I found the book in our library, and reread it. I remember finishing the last page around 1am, tears in my eyes as I could see how much this book shaped the way I saw the world. I have gone through a lot of tragedy and heartbreak in my life, and seeing Ida B’s change of heart at the end of the book helped me to find beauty in the little things. After rereading that book at age sixteen, I started to write nightly.
The second book affected the way I saw poetry. I remember reading from a children’s poetry book and always skipping over poems without storylines, because I found them boring. Keeper Of The Doves changed that. I haven’t read it in years, so I don’t remember much, but the story was based around a young girl who grew up writing poetry. The first poem she ever wrote was a simple line:
A poem is a garden of words.
I read the book over and over. I was so fascinated by this concept of poetry without storyline, ambiguous lines that didn’t have to mean anything, and yet meant everything.
I wrote my first poem shortly after, borrowing her first line:
A poem is a garden of words,
Like the song of birds
Sitting in a golden apple tree—
That’s how I’d like it to be.
I loved that poem. I drew a sloppy picture of birds in a tree, with apples on the ground below. My friend told me it was weird.
It took awhile to get past that.
Today, I don’t write as much as I did when I was sixteen. But I’m getting there. I want to learn, I want to grow, I want to live.
I can do all three when I write.
