It was yesterday morning, Saturday. I had just turned on my computer, walked out to the kitchen to start the coffee and got my Madonna mic out of my desk drawer to begin my IS 520 distance course. I started deleting a bunch of emails, mostly from listservs, that I just don't have the time to soak up when I noticed a few subject lines - Madeleine L'Engle, L'Engle Remebered, CNN great article about Madeleine L'Engle. I panicked. It got worse when one email revealed she'd passed Thursday. Thursday! And it was Saturday! I lived my life like nothing happened, like one of my favorite authors hadn't left Life for After for two whole days! And then I actually cried.
I was minutes from logging in to my course, minutes from having to be somewhat coherent and I was torn between sorrow at her passing, interested surprise that this was actually affecting me and anger that my world has been so annoyingly busy that I hadn't found out until Saturday. Of course the anger at my busyness turned into anxiety about my busyness and general resentment that this is my lot in life for the next few months, if not year. And then, stupidly, it turned to shame that my thoughts turned selfish and away from Madeleine.
I dressed up as her once. No, wait. I dressed up like Mrs. Whatsit. In my undergrad children's literature course we were supposed to give author study presentations and I chose to dress up in a white turbany thing and whirl around the room feeling simultaneously loony and twinklingly wise talking about "my creator/author."
What's crazy is I think I fell in love with her name more than her books. When I was younger I always identified more with the author and the status of "that came out of my head." And with a name like Bryn, I was a sucker for different names - L'Engle, Roald Dahl, Prelutsky, Shel, Beverly Cleary, Sachar. Yes, I was biased toward Madeleine. But the world and characters she created kept me there.
R.I.P.
Check this blog out, AmoXcalli, for a compilation of L'Engle Links.
