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Nov. 28th, 2010 09:43 amWhen I got to my parents' house on Monday, I found the usual assortment of things collected in "my room:" any mail that might've accidentally arrived in my name, coupons they'd clipped for me, clothes they wanted me to sort through, things I'd forgotten to take with me the last time I was there (in May). And a book Mom said she'd found and thought I would like, titled Wordstruck: A Memoir by Robert MacNeil, the guy who did The Story of English. I let it sit for a day or a so, figuring I'd add it to the collection of books I start reading but never finish. Then the other day I started thumbing through it (this was before I bought Catching Fire and let that trilogy suck my brain out). On the inside cover of Wordstruck is a message:
Summer 1998
TO ELLEN-
FOR YOU A DEVOTED WRITER AND "CITIZEN OF THE GREAT ENGLISH LANGUAGE"
Grandpa
It's his handwriting all right, and that quote is certainly something he'd write. It's the first bit that gets me, and one reason I blame for the fact that I seem to cry at the drop of a hat. In the summer of 1998, I was 15; I was trying so hard to fit in that I certainly didn't consider myself "a devoted writer." I don't even know that I was writing anything at the time, and certainly nothing I was telling anyone about. That was during the great lull between my childish attempts at novels in middle school and my more serious attempts in college (and even those weren't very serious). It's like he just somehow knew that "devoted writer" would become as much a part of my identity as "citizen of the great English language."
And I can't even ask him about it.
Summer 1998
TO ELLEN-
FOR YOU A DEVOTED WRITER AND "CITIZEN OF THE GREAT ENGLISH LANGUAGE"
Grandpa
It's his handwriting all right, and that quote is certainly something he'd write. It's the first bit that gets me, and one reason I blame for the fact that I seem to cry at the drop of a hat. In the summer of 1998, I was 15; I was trying so hard to fit in that I certainly didn't consider myself "a devoted writer." I don't even know that I was writing anything at the time, and certainly nothing I was telling anyone about. That was during the great lull between my childish attempts at novels in middle school and my more serious attempts in college (and even those weren't very serious). It's like he just somehow knew that "devoted writer" would become as much a part of my identity as "citizen of the great English language."
And I can't even ask him about it.
