How A Childhood Book Affected My Life

I had an epiphany yesterday while on Facebook. It wasn't the usual epiphanies, like the fact that I'm wasting a lot of time on Facebook.
I was reading my friend Tracie's post about the top 10 books that changed her life. From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg as number 4 on her list.

She listed
I commented that I loved this awkwardly titled book. If you don't remember it, it's about Claudia, a middle class girl who lives in the suburbs of New York and decides to run away and hide in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. She ends up taking her little brother along.
I can't remember what was going on in the girl's life that made her want to run away, but I remember the awesome adventure that she had as she and her little brother figured out how to hide in the museum each night then decided where they would sleep. They collected coins from the fountain and ate out of vending machines. A new exhibit of a statue (from Mrs. Frankweiler's collection) that is believed to be a Michelangelo intrigues the whole city. Claudia and her brother Jamie are intent on determining whether the statue is really the work of Michelangelo. They end up visiting Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and she lets them research in her files before the kids return home in Mrs. Frankweiler's limo.
As I reminisced about this childhood book that enriched my normal Midwestern  life, I realized I'm still trying to achieve the goal of escaping on an amazing adventure.
Sure, I've had adventures. I went away to college and to grad school, landing in Kentucky, Ohio and Washington, D.C. I moved away for a job in Florida, and turned down jobs in New Orleans and Las Vegas.
I worked as an au pair for three months in France. My husband and I have traveled to Europe several times.
But still, I don't have that clandestine adventure like 12-year-old Claudia. That's probably why I wrote the books that I've written. As a matter of fact, The Summer of France seems similar in so many ways. The family escapes from their Midwestern life to run a bed and breakfast in France. The main character Fia learns that her great uncle has a hidden secret from World War II, and she must help solve the mystery and save her uncle from danger.
Clearly, From the Mixed Up Files had more impact on me than I remembered until Tracie listed it on Facebook and reminded me of the joy the story brought me.
And my other two novels are also about people escaping. In I See London I See France, Caroline sells her minivan and takes her three children to Europe in search of the woman she was during her the European adventures of her college days. And in Trail Mix, two women whose children have gone off to college find themselves without a purpose, so they take off on an adventure to the Appalachian Trail.
Maybe my initial reaction to any problems or changes is to take off an adventure, to change the scenery and hope the problem fades. Perhaps that's why my husband and I plan to retire to France, picturing a new chapter
opening when our parenting days are finished (mostly)
If you haven't read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I highly recommend it. Who knows, it might send you off on your own adventures, or at least you can enjoy Claudia's exploits. And then maybe you'll give my novels a try, knowing that the characters go on trips and mostly end up learning something about themselves.

Running Away

In the three novels I've written, the main characters all run away to try to solve their problems.
This week, I wish I were a character in my novels.
I'm fighting the urge to run away.
I know it's ridiculous...it's just that I'm so tired.
That sounds even more ludicrous if you knew that I woke up at 4 a.m. before finally getting up at 4:30, knowing I couldn't go back to sleep.
But I'm tired of worrying about paying for college.
I'm tired of trying to direct my teenagers down the right path when they keep taking left turns.
I'm tired of arguing with my teenagers about their choices.
I'm even tired of walking in the bathroom and seeing that the tissue box, which is supposed to sit on the back of the toilet tank is gone -- again!! Someone (a teenager?) confiscates the tissue box, smuggling it back to his/her room.
This week, I know that a check for about $1700 is coming our way. And I know that I should pay college bills and buy new tires for both cars. That is the sensible thing to do with the money.
But I can't help dreaming of taking that money and running away -- traveling somewhere, anywhere -- and leaving my worries behind.
Do you think they would follow me and be compounded by my guilt?
I can imagine myself on a beach in Florida.

Or maybe I could look out at the Mediterranean from a beach in Corsica.

Or maybe I could go sit in a cafe in Paris and just watch the people to forget about my worries.

 

What if you were getting some surprise money? Where would you run away too?

Dark Adventures

Something about the dark morning when it rains must beckon me, because I had decided not to run in the rain this morning, yet I got to have an outside adventure anyway.
It all started when I opened the screen door to fetch the morning paper. I grabbed the plastic-encased Columbus Dispatch and turned back inside. Just as the door was closing, the wiry body of our 5-year-old cat Tupi slipped through. Okay, maybe Tupi isn't wiry. He's pretty chunky, but I couldn't figure out how he got through that door. He looked fairly sleek as he was escaping.
Perhaps it was the memory of this Halloween costume last year that inspired him to make a run for it.
I was wearing warm up pants, a fleece and a pair of socks as I started after him. I called him in an exasperated voice: "Tupi!" as I followed him down the stairs covered with leaves and long skinny seed pods from the trees above. I felt them bumpy through my socks which grew soaked on the wet concrete.
Only a few steps behind him, I felt sure I'd catch him. He usually stopped once he reached the sidewalk. And he did slow down. I could almost grab him when a matching tuxedo cat stuck his head from around the stone wall in front of our house.
Tupi stopped then and crouched.
I looked at the other cat. He was black and white and resembled our other cat so much, I wondered if it could be him. I also hoped I never got confused and caught the wrong cat.
I put a hand on Tupi's back and started to pick him up when he lunged and chased the other cat through the grass up a hill to our neighbor's house.
Sigh.
I turned around to fetch shoes. I could feel the rain soaking through my hair and transforming the sleek straightness to gloppy curls. My running shoes stood ready in the hallway. They mocked me: "Thought you didn't need us today."
"What's wrong, Mom?" Tucker called sleepily.
"Tupi escaped and is chasing another cat," I told him.
I walked out the back door, thinking he might have chased the other cat back into the alley. Tucker in shorts and a tshirt, went out the front door. I made my way through the alley and met Tucker on the sidewalk.
No luck.
The rain continued to drip from the sky, just enough to make us miserable.
"Go put some shoes on," I told Tucker.
I called Tupi's name, disturbing the quiet of the neighborhood. The kids were off school today so the whole town was having a lie in.
Sauntering up the street toward me came my husband in a black rain jacket. He had pulled himself from the warmth of our bed to search for the cat.
We called together and a neighborhood stray came running to greet us.
"Not you, Mew," I said.
We climbed the hill by our neighbor's house and called some more. They're on vacation so we didn't wake them.
"He'll come back," Earl said and we turned to go.
Then I heard a "Miaaaoo" from the other neighbor's house.
"Tupi," we called again.
After another "miaaaoo" he crawled from behind a planter.
I went to him and leaned over to grab him, looking to see that he had a white tip at the end of his tail.
"Make sure that's him," Earl warned.
"It is," I said as Grace climbed up the hill beside us in a hoodie sweatshirt and pj pants. I handed the cat over to her. She's our quasi-veterinarian and she would be sure he was the right cat and that he had no wounds from his cat fight. Tucker joined us as we got to the sidewalk, his feet a little warmed in his Converse shoes.
I suggested we all walk down for coffee in the rain (okay, so I'm a morning person), everyone else went back to bed while our little cat followed Tupi around sniffing and waiting to hear about his adventure.

Escape

I've been thinking about the themes in my novels lately. Whenever people asked, I always blithely said, "Escape. My novels are all about escape."
And, on the surface, that seems true. The two novels I've finished (as yet unpublished) and the one I've started on all have people fleeing their homes. In DEPARTURE, a mother takes her three children and runs away to Europe. In TRAIL MIX, two women leave behind their husbands and teenage children to hike the Appalachian Trail.
So, obviously, escaping from their humdrum lives is the point. But if I look at the end, they return to that life they were escaping from. It's not the life they want to avoid; it's themselves they need to change. So the escape is a search for an opportunity to change, to improve. In TRAIL MIX, my characters have to get over superficial worries and find the beauty in living again. In DEPARTURE, Annie must become a stronger person, find out what she enjoys, before she can be the wife and mother she wants to be.
And thinking about that search for beauty and the true person on the inside, made me think about Christmas and how my family and I probably didn't need any of the presents that made us shriek with joy. Maybe we just needed to stand for a minute in the sun beaming through the window and feel it warm on our face, to realize that we don't have to escape to find beauty.
Merry Christmas.