HOW BABE DIDRIKSON BECAME THE FIRST FEMALE TRACK STAR OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES

So competitive was multi-sport Babe Didrikson that it was hard for her to make friends on the women’s track and field team during the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

Even though Babe was expected to medal in each of her 3 events, her bravado and boasting may have denied her from being voted team captain, which was awarded to high jumper JEAN SHILEY. 

But by the end of the Olympic Games, Babe Didrikson (who everyone thought was 19 since she’d fudged her birth year, but was really 21) would be a household name and the “teen-age” star of the entire event.

Babe’s first event was the day after the Opening Ceremonies, where she’d kicked off her tight new shoes in the Coliseum, to prevent the chance of getting blisters. The following afternoon, Babe competed in the javelin throw. Each athlete was given three attempts.  

On Babe’s first try, she let the javelin fly and her hand slipped off the cord. A sharp pain shot through her right shoulder. The javelin flew close to the surface before finally cutting into the ground. When it was measured, Babe had set an Olympic record and broken her own world record with a throw of 143 feet 4 inches. 

The stadium cheered and Babe was beaming, though she’d torn a cartilage in her shoulder and her next two throws were weak. But Babe never told anyone how much her shoulder hurt. She’d just won her first gold medal.

Two days later, it was time for the 80-meter hurdles. Babe Didrikson broke the Olympic and her own world record just qualifying for the finals. Her main rival for the event would be another teammate, EVELYNE HALL.

 Hall would race in the lane next to Babe for the finals. Full of energy, Babe jumped the gun and false started. But when the race finally went off, Hall surged ahead with Babe closing in fast. At the finish, Hall and Babe hit the tape together and it looked like dead heat.  Regardless, it was a new world record of 11.7 seconds. 

“I won!” Babe was said to have proclaimed. But Evelyne Hall thought she’d won too. The medal was awarded to Babe—her second gold medal, even though it appeared to be a dead heat. The outcome left Evelyne Hall with a disappointment she would never forget.

It was now time for the running high jump. Headlines around the world were all about BABE and her shot at winning a third gold medal. Once again, her main rival would be another American, JEAN SHILEY—who had tied Babe for first place in the National Championships. When the bar was raised to 5 feet 5 inches, only Babe and Shiley remained. Both cleared the new record height. It would take a a jump-off to determine gold. The bar was raised to 5 feet 6 inches. Shiley jumped first and missed. Babe went and cleared the height but struck the standard on the way down and the bar toppled, deeming her attempt a miss, also.

The bar was lowered to 5 feet 5 ¼ inches and this time, Shiley made it. Then Babe rolled in midair and cleared it, too, but the judges ruled it a dive, even though Babe had been jumping the same Western roll style all along. The jump was disqualified and Babe had to settle for silver.

 
But that wasn't really the end of Babe Didrikson’s Olympic journey. She’d been asked to play a round of golf  right after her final competition with legendary sportswriters like Grantland Rice. That fateful day off the track would set the stage for Babe to excel in another sport as no woman had done before. Her new talent in golf would cause Rice to proclaim Babe as: “The most flawless specimen of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical co-ordination the world of sport has ever known.”

WHAT SPARKS A STORY? WHY I WROTE LITTLE JOE

HOW WRITERS GET THEIR IDEAS

“What is it that sparks a story?” A reader asked me that question recently. For some writers it can be how an experience made them feel, an article they can’t get out of their mind, or a culmination of similar experiences that build until they’re strong enough to compound and shape a story.

For me it was the look of a nine-year-old boy I barely knew in the 4-H barn at the county fair.

He’d just finished telling me about his mischievous show calf and how the steer would bolt into the field when the trailer came out, putting the boy’s father in a patch full of pricker bushes. Shortly after telling me that story, the boy was told to lead his calf—the first one he’d ever shown--into the ring to sell at the auction. I followed behind and overheard an older competitor give the boy some advice: “Leave a bucket of water and the halter on the hay bale after its sold and you’re done!”

The inspiration for ELI in my novel, LITTLE JOE

When the boy and his calf entered the show ring, the boy looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Around and around he went with his show animal, until the bidding stopped.

I’ll never forget the look of that young boy once he’d sold his calf. He’d fled into the midway after letting go of the reins, but not before revealing his pain. And I knew I had to write about what he’d been feeling. That I had the end of my story, and now I had to go back to the beginning.

That was four years ago today. It was also a picture book manuscript-turned-into-a-middle-grade novel, later. The Wayne County Fair in Honesdale, Pennsylvania begins this weekend, and it’s where I found my story. The tiny, rural community near Scranton also shaped the first ten years of my married life and enabled me to become a writer, in an office surrounded by cow pastures and wildlife I could see up close for the first time.

I think about the hundreds of kids I watched compete at that Fair back then--sometimes for 10 days at a time--of how much I learned, and how they inspired so many characters in my novel,  Little Joe.

BABE DIDRIKSON'S OLYMPICS & HER TRAIN RIDE TO INFAMY

It’s quite a thrill to be doing research for a book about BABE DIDRIKSON ZAHARIAS when there’s an OLYMPIAD going on. 

A lot has changed for women athletes in 80 years and Babe led the way.

When Babe Didrikson went to the Olympics in 1932, it was just two days after she’d traveled to Evanston, Illinois to become a one-woman wrecking crew at the National Women’s Track and Field Championships. Babe tallied more points on her own than any team who competed,  smashing records in javelin and hurdles, to baseball-throw. Babe also made her afternoon victories in the 100-degree heat look easy, (it was so hot, competitors took turns sitting on an ice block), but Babe was a whirlwind of energy and speed, running from one event to the next and easily winning the championship. Within 48 hours of her victories and as a newly-minted member of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team, Babe and her teammates left Chicago’s Union Station bound for California.

Traveling in their own Pullman car, the train journey was considered a luxury and many had never been in a “sleeper” car before. During the five day trip, Babe was said to have driven the other girls crazy with her talk of winning. While the others politely played cards and acted modest about any potential victories, Babe ran sprints up and down the passenger car and playing the harmonica while the others were trying to sleep. 

When they arrived in Los Angeles a week before the Olympics, the women stayed at a hotel since the Olympic Village only permitted male athletes.

 

Babe competing in the javelin throw in the 1932 Olympics

It was also just the second time in Olympic history that track and field events were open to women competitors, and they could only enter a maximum of three. There were still detractors (many of them sportswriters) who believed that women couldn’t physically handle competitive sports, and that it compromised their ability to have children.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT BABE AND HER OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE IN MY NEXT BLOG POST.

HOW REVISING A NOVEL IS LIKE GOING TO THE DENTIST

I once read that revision can be like having your teeth pulled. I would also add that it can be like pulling teeth. 

Trying to find the optimal way of adding what may be missing information about a character or point of view without muddling up what’s already there that’s working, can leave you staring at the computer screen until you notice how dusty it’s become. You can try for a week or more re-writing the opening of a scene in several different ways, when all it takes is a sentence.(But it’s got to be the right one.)

I’m working on the revision of my new novel Muckers, and what I’ve found most helpful is to actually go back to what I did in kindergarten: cutting and pasting and working with magic markers.(Well, I used crayons back then and finger paint, but its magic markers now.)

What I’ve done is make a bulletin board order of all the scenes in my novel (I love to do this actually), and the color codes all mean something to me.

What it shows is the pacing of the novel and what scenes may be too cluttered before say, a game (my book’s about football), or how long it takes my characters to get where they ought to be. The push pins allow me to move things around, but of course when you do that you’re also in for a lot of trouble since when one thing moves you aren’t really just altering that one scene, you’re changing every reference and nuance that worked when that scene was in its original place. You need to move carefully, like a game of high-stakes chess. It also takes a ridiculous amount of time to move even an inch.

Of course, there’s also the objectivity factor when deciding what really needs to be revised. As the writer, you know everything about the story and everyone in it, yet you must try to forget what you know or at least, put that information in a state of suspension while you attempt to read the story like a fresh reader would. (Note: this is impossible, but you keep trying.)

If all this sounds really complicated, it’s because it is. Writing is a vocation that can be gut-wrenching. But if you start believing that a little too much, it can also derail the revision process, and you might start thinking about wanting to get your teeth pulled, instead. It’s at that point I also like to remember the other line I’ve read about revision from political cartoonist Tim Kreider:

“For a long time I imagined that the time after I’d finally finished this book would be a kind of indolent, well-deserved afterlife. It’s hard to accept that the part you had to make it through to get where you thought you wanted to be was where you wanted to be all along. The part you hated was your favorite part.”

Inside Out And Back Again

One of my New Year's resolutions was to make time every week to read more books, which I tend not to do when I'm fully absorbed in my own writing. Being a finalist for this year's South Carolina Children's Book Awards, (it's still thrilling to say that), and seeing so many titles on the list that intrigue me, I'm determined to read most of them before the winner is announced in March of 2013.

While I usually don’t gravitate toward novels told in verse like Inside Out And Back Again, Thanhha Lai--the first-time author of this National Book Award winner--composes such beautiful, vivid prose, I feel as if I could taste the papaya tree fruit  “middle sweet, between a mango and a pear,” and feel the warm breezes of Saigon just before South Vietnam crumbled.

Told by 10-year-old Ha, who navigates her place in a community left cautious, frightened, and rationed at the cusp of Vietnam War, Ha feels helpless both as a child, and as a girl in a culture favoring boys like her 3 older brothers. Ha’s bursts of random thoughts riddle the calendar of the novel (which begins and ends with Tet, the first day of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year), like sharp staccato notes on a keyboard. Her two anchors are the papaya tree that has grown serendipitously in the yard from discarded seeds, and her beloved mother.

The family manages to escape just before Saigon falls, and journey by boat to become refugees. Finally ending up in America, the tone and pace abruptly changes, and Ha’s disappointment with her new world is palpable. As Ha pronounces: “No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.”  

I preferred hearing about Ha's life on the run (I suppose I was hoping things would then get better for them in America, somehow). Yet the language of the book is so unexpectedly stunning, I spent the day away from my writing and read it in one sitting. 

I won’t soon forget my favorite line in the book where Ha writes about her mother: ”She’s wrong, but I still love being near her even more than I love my papaya tree. I will give her its first fruit.”

Masters Track and Field

My husband Rich doesn't just write about sports, he's still a competitor. I know that's a good chunk of the reason why so many sports readers relate to the characters in his novels. He's been competing in track since middle school,through to state and national meets in university, and he hasn't stopped. (Now he competes in masters track.) So it was no surprise when I'd asked him what he wanted to do on his 55th birthday yesterday, and he'd said "to compete." But what was surprising for Rich, as it always seems to be, is why I'd be interested in coming along.

I've learned over the years from him that running is more than just going fast: it's about the process, the daily commitment and struggle, until finally, you triumph.(Which no longer means winning, I'm told, but accomplishing your personal best by surpassing your previous personal bests, and if that means winning the race, then okay.)

Masters racers compete against themselves, against the misconceptions about what they can accomplish--those thoughts of self doubt that needle the brain--often brought on by society, or even youth. I've seen them watch in horror sometimes, waiting for their high school meets to start up later in the day, mumbling, "How can anyone go that slow?" instead of being filled with admiration or amazement at what an 80-year-old athlete is trying to accomplish. And no, that old man isn't having a heart attack, he's 70 years older than you.

It's true that the clock is against masters track athletes from the start.
Maybe that's why the personal victories are so sweet. And, don't get me wrong, there are masters track and field record holders close to 70 who race faster than peers 20 years younger and keep shattering the world records. They defy what old men are thought to look like by being ripped and fast and younger-looking than many middle-aged men. But the majority of masters track athletes are not former Olympians,nor have they ever competed for their country in national events when they were young.A good chunk of them have torsos that resemble a turtle's more than an athlete's, but just as many train hard--like Rich--who gets up at 6 every morning to run.

There are also nights when Rich will say to me that he's going for a run, and I know it's also to work out a story-line, a character, or a conflict he's seeking an answer for. I suspect that other masters runners do the same, knowing those logged miles can be like an old friend or a new one(some masters athletes have taken up their sport at 60 or so), and something they can depend on, or hope to, for as long as possible.

So, after knowing all this, why wouldn't I want to see Rich race?

I know if you asked masters competitors, they'd say they do this because it's fun. But what I think they really mean is, they do this because it's a part of who they are, and if they didn't, they wouldn't feel quite the same. From all my years as an observer sitting in the bleachers looking out at the cluster of events and the competitors they attract, it's become evident to me that it's more about tapping into that feeling and challenging yourself to dig it up, than kicking butt.

Sometimes they do this in dusty track shoes instead of spikes, wearing their favorite t-shirt, circa 1965. And those heavily-crested track jackets from the 50's are surely a badge of honor and now, courage. Then there's the runners who've finished their heat but linger by the finish line to cheer the others on, signaling a mutual understanding of why they're all still doing this in the first place.

And when Rich raced across the finish line of his 200 meter heat in victory,(he's now the USA Masters Track & Field East Region Champion), it must have resurrected that old feeling from his university days. And yet, when he came up to the stands to give me a hug, he whispered, "This is why I do this. To feel what it's like to run fast. And to feel like I could keep going."

LONDON DAY 7, July 6

We wake up to a hazy Wednesday morning in London, but I'm too excited to care about the weather. We hear laughter and footsteps above our window apartment as commuters head to work. Today is our "explore the area' day, since our 6-day London Pass won't kick in until tomorrow, and it includes unlimited transportation and entry to more venues than we could possibly visit.

We decide to hoof it to the Victoria and Albert Museum (which is about half an hour from our townhome). Along the way, the sun appears. We see that our Westminster neighbourhood is less than a 10 minute walk from the West End theatre district, where WICKED and BILLY ELLIOT are playing.

While we've chosen not to see any shows on this trip, it's still exciting to pass the huge marquees as we make our way to the V & A. (www.vam.ac.uk)

I'm amazed that London's major museums and galleries belong to the people and are therefore, free of charge. And when we get to the museum, the building itself is so beautiful, I want to cry. The museum is really made up of several Victorian structures, all connected and dedicated to art and design.

I was reading a blog about the V & A recently, and it said how the museum is like one gargantuan attic filled with eclectic and massively-scaled artifacts collected by the coolest, quirkiest grandmother you could ever have. Splash in a dose of royalty and I would certainly agree, as it was the brain-child of Prince Albert and soon became a passionate joint-venture he shared with his wife, Queen Victoria.

You can't possibly see the entire museum in one day or even a week, and things do change--new exhibits are interwoven between longstanding ones, in our case, Yohji Yamamoto frocks displayed next to Italian Renaissance sculptures. So we choose the Theatre & Performance Galleries Tour and get a glimpse of the contemporary kookiness found in the displays here, from 19th century carnival performers, to costumes worn by the Beatles.

"Feel free to take photographs," is what our guide tells us, "the museum is meant to be enjoyed." And I somehow feel that the spirits of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria are being channeled through the curators here, delighted in our delight and that they have the chance to surround themselves with such interesting pieces of art and design from all ages and civilizations, in every shape and size imaginable.

"This day is one of the greatest and most glorious of our lives..."Queen Victoria wrote in her journal upon opening the Great Exhibition in 1851."It is a day which makes my heart swell with thankfulness... The Green Park and Hyde Park were one mass of densely crowded human beings, in the highest good humour... the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of every nation were flying... The tremendous cheering, the joy expressed in every face, the vastness of the building, with all its decoration and exhibits, the sound of the organ... all this was indeed moving."

As we round the corner in the Theatre exhibit,(which is just past the stunning Jewellery display room on the third floor,) we're face-to-face with a collage of Gilbert & Sullivan posters. The brightly-colored posters take up the entire wall.

Rich is absolutely thrilled.

He loves the wit and silliness of their plays and we've seen several productions performed in both professional and amateur theatre.

With so many pieces as big as buildings at the V & A, you really don't need reading glasses, which is wonderful, as I'm just getting used to them, and would much rather be transported to the time in which theses life-sized objects once stood, without them.

We head downstairs and go into the Cast Courts, craning our necks to see replicas of David and ancient Roman pillars, some of which are now the only remaining images of the history they only intended to replicate.

We catch the curators deep in thought amongst the casts wrapped up in styrofoam bandages while part of the room gets re-done. They're discussing how to restore the tile flooring in the courts to their original form, the way Prince Albert chose to have it look.

I want to keep staring at the plasters, but we decide to take the glass elevator up to the 6th floor where the ceramics are held, and find vessels from 100 AD, a ceramics workshop in progress, and a blue willow display that makes me want to start collecting again and Rich very hungry.

He's eager to see the dining hall for the food, but I'm just as anxious to see it for it's beauty. Since we love anything from the arts and craft movement, being in the dining Hall designed by William Morris himself is pretty special,

but it's too busy to find a seat, so we pick a table in another room that's just as grand and go hunting for sweets, Here, even the meringnes are larger-than-life and as big as strong fists.

But we go for the cakes-- a chocolate walnut cake for Rich and me with a lemon cake, knowing I've still got a cherry scone from Henderson's Bistro I'd brought back from Edinburgh. We sip green lemon tea in the dining hall wondering if we could ever be so lucky as to get locked into this place and spend the night in the cast courts, where we'd bring pockets full of meringnes to tide us over.

"Can we go see them one more time?" I ask Rich. We decide to view them from the mezzanine, Rich sitting quietly on a bench, me peering over the railing and knocking the steel boot plate every time I move until Rich joins me and clanks at them, too.
"You'd be surprised how the energy changes once the visitors leave," Jon tells us. He's one of the protectors of the plasters. "It's rather eerie."

Before we leave, we discover the gardens in an outside courtyard. There are hundred of bushes sprouting my favorite flower. Why am I not surprised? Hydrangeas are lining the entire brick exterior. Now I really want to be locked in here.

We take the tube on the way back, since I want to see Victoria station and thank her for marrying Albert, who created such a magical place.

On the way home, we spot a corner pub with pink petunias overflowing from the flower boxes and an image of a person perched on a wooden sign on top of the building.

"It says The Albert," Rich tells me.

"Are you kidding?"

"Nope."

We've managed to find the only pub in England named after my new favorite Prince and we go up to the dining room and dig into the carving station.

I load my plate with slices of turkey, pork and Yorkshire pudding--red cabbage, courgette, roast potatoes and horseradish. Then I gaze at

all the pictures of Prince Albert and his Queen lining the walls of the room.

"To Albert," I say to Rich, lifting up my heaping forkful of turkey as Prince Albert looks over me from out the window of his pub.

Out Pops Little Joe- Or So I Think

This week Little Joe launched in bookstores. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep the night before. When I got up earlier than the dawn, somehow I’d expected things would feel different-- that the world might rumble-- at least for a second or two. But our dog, Lucy, was fast asleep hogging all the covers and my husband Rich kept snoring.

Having a book published and seen on the shelf in bookstores is a surreal experience, I’m told. I know when I first got a bound copy of Little Joe it became real for me-- now I couldn’t wait to find out what feelings would overtake me upon seeing it on a store bookshelf. But when I got to our local bookstore in the morning, they hadn’t had time to put the book out yet. My monumental citing would have to wait. At least I could email all my friends to let them know. When I get home, our neighbor girl, Emily-- the only female kid on the block-- comes racing up to see as me fast as she can on a bright pink bike. She remembered! I think, while six-year-old Emily skids next to me.

“I got a new pink bike,” she says. “I’m gonna ride it up and down the street all day.”

Then the boy kids come out and show me their painted faces, already practicing their ghoulish looks for Halloween. Avery, the four-year-old, keeps drooling. He points to his cheek and shows me the inside of his mouth. “Gum!” he says. Then he closes his teeth and smiles.

“He’s learning how to chew gum,” his brother Jake says to me. “That’s why he’s got slobber all over.”

“Little Joe’s out in bookstores!” I tell them, wishing I could point to the book, lying on a shelf. It comes out loud and forceful, but I don’t care. I imagine the novel showcased, surrounded by rave reviews and plucked from the shelves by the hands of eager readers. A bestseller, no less. And it’s not even been out a week.

“Finally,” Dennis moans, rolling his eyes and shaking me out of my dream-state. “It’s taken forever!”

Sometimes it seems that way. But when I go to my first signing this weekend and see that book on the shelf, I know it will have been worth the wait. Maybe you’ll be there; Water Street Books, Exeter, New Hampshire, August 28th at 11 AM. If so, you can join in my delight and maybe buy a copy of the book, too.

the baseball

I had this crazy idea to send a thousand hand-written postcards to bookstores across the country letting them know about my novel, Little Joe. I can only do about thirty at a time, before my fingers seize up and I have to make a cup of tea. Then I head onto the front porch and wait for the cramps to work themselves out.

It’s quiet. All the kids have been called in for supper, so it’s just the birds, me, and Pickles, the street cat. She’s curled up on my neighbour’s sisal door mat scratching her claws.

I can feel the circulation flow back into my index finger and I’m just about to dig into round two of my postcards, when the shrubs rustle. “Hello,” the middle boxwood says. Then a boy bobs up wearing a baseball uniform, his freckles smeared with chocolate. “What are you doing?” Riley asks me, peering over the railing.

“Writing postcards. To let people know about my book.”

“Huh?” he says, climbing up the stairs. Then he takes a postcard and eyeballs the front. “You draw that?” he asks.

“No. An illustrator did.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I wrote it.”

“How many pages is it?”

“Nearly two hundred.”

His face goes pale and I worry that I’ve lost him. “But the type is really big,” I assure him. “And it’s interesting. I promise.”

But he keeps adjusting his baseball cap.

“It’s about a boy your age,” I say, “who shows his calf at the fair and hopes to win the blue ribbon.” I wait for some sort of reaction, not wanting to strike out telling my first real-live kid about the book. Then I get all nervous and mumble, “If you have to go in for supper, I understand.”

“Nah. My mom’s not feeling good. We’re having cereal. And I already had that for breakfast.”

“Hmm.” I didn’t see that one coming.

“Is winning a blue ribbon like winning a baseball game?” Riley asks.

“It sure is!” I smile, feeling the color flow back into my cheeks.

“We won our game today. 20 nothing.”

“Wow! Sounds like a blow out.”

“Not really,” he shrugs. “The pitcher kept walking us. Then the coach said we could have anything to eat after and I got ice cream.”

“Chocolate?”

“A-huh.”

“You know, I’ve never played baseball,” I tell him.

“I can show you how. Me and Matthew.” Riley smiles. Matthew comes out munching on a brownie and runs over.

“Do you play with a real baseball?” I ask them.

“Yep. And it’s hard as a stone,” Riley says.

“You’re kidding. They let you play with something that dangerous?”

“Well sure. It’s wicked sore once it hits you, but you can’t let on,” Matthew says.

“And you can’t ever stop playing-- like if you drop out of pee wee, or you’ll never be allowed to play again," Riley says, “Until you’re in the majors.”

Pickles trots over to listen and I keep my distance. “I’m allergic to cats," I tell them. They stare at me in amazement.

“I never knew anyone who was allergic before you,” Riley admits.

“What if you were allergic to yourself?” Matthew says, chasing Pickles’ salt and peppery tail into the bushes.

“That would be sad,” I say.

“No, that would be stupid,” he tells me.

“I know someone who is,” Riley whispers. “He lives very far away. All by himself.”

“They’re called shut-ins,” Matthew pipes in. “They never come out ’cause they think something bad’ll happen to them. Like when they get the mail, they won’t let it be dropped off too close. Then they come out to get it and run back in.”

They both giggle a little, then start whispering and take off, like kids do. And I remember when I was about six, and my sister and her friend took off aboard their two-wheelers, with me still on my wobbly training wheels pedaling hard as I could, but not getting very far. And part of that left-out feeling seeps back in, which is silly, I know, but I can’t help it. The wind kicks up and Pickles scurries under the pick-up in the driveway across the street. My tea’s gone cold, so I gather up the postcards and head for the screen door.

Then I hear running on the pavement; a few breathless heaves. The boys are back.

“Here,” Riley says, handing me a baseball.

“We signed it," Matthew beams.

“It’s just our names and numbers,” Riley adds, his freckles turning strawberry. “Monadnock Mutual would’ve been too long.”

“It’s game-used,” Matthew points out.

I turn the ball around slowly, reading their names, the magic-marker-fingerprint smudges on their numbers. “Wow, this is great. My first autographed baseball.”

“I’m gonna ask my mom to take me to Borders to check out your book,” Riley says.

“I’ll read it to you when it comes in, okay?”

They both nod.

I decide not to write any more postcards after that. I just toss my game-used baseball around for awhile in the backyard, remembering that my sister came back too. And she brought brussel sprouts. That’s where she’d gone to, with Mary Ellen. To pick brussel sprouts for supper. It was an unusual meal, kind of like cereal. But I remember not really caring or being very hungry. Just happy that my sister hadn’t wanted to run way from me. She just went to get something. I go inside and put the baseball beside our keys in the front hall, hoping that the kids will enjoy my book half as much as what they gave me.

The big dirt pile

The fact that my husband and I are writers preceded us when we moved into our new neighbourhood. (By the way, I can be forgiven for the Canadian spelling because I am Canadian. Besides, this isn’t a book.) I must admit I had no idea the expectations would be so high. Two of them were waiting for us in our driveway, the lone girl-- a five-year old-- astride a pink Barbie bicycle with training wheels, the other-- six-and-three-quarters-- on hot wheels loaded with stickers. “We hear you write for kids,” the owner of the hot wheels shouted, squinting at the sun. “I guess that means you like kids.”

Kids! Of course I like kids! And when was the last time I lived beside a family with kids? This would be terrific. Before, we were surrounded by cows, and before that, I was the only person on my street not collecting social security. And way before that, it was condo living on a floor with couples who chose not to have kids. So, this was really something.
The knocks came rapidly to see what we were really made of.

“Do you write and draw the pictures too? I’m a writer and an artist. See?” He’s got a paper bag over his eight-year-old hand and is moving it with his fingers. “I made it. Would you like to buy it? It’s only 50 cents.”

“What part of it did you make?” my husband asks him. So he flees.

Into our backyard. He squashes his face against the basement window and peers inside.

“There’s ghosts in there!” he hollers to the rest of the kids, who shriek with glee.

“It’s just laundry hanging up to dry,” I yell back. But the kids come running anyway. “Oh,” they moan. “You sure?”

Turns out what they’re really trying to assess is if we’ll let them play in our backyard. And for how often. And if it’s for always or not. It’s the most important part of who we are, according to the neighbourhood kids. A free-wielding, open space, unfenced and forbidden by their parents-- unless we say it’s okay. Our backyard’s been carefully charted out the past few years while the previous owners were at work. Trees were climbed and bark that wasn’t supposed to be peeled, peeled. It’s been a haven for candy dum-dums wrapped up again for future use and stuck sucker-side down in the dirt. I’ve found lucky bottle caps, keys, marshmallows, airplanes, soccer balls and dirty diapers along its perimeter.

“They’re not dirty diapers,” the seven-year-old tells me. “They’re swimmers. There’s no poop in them.”

But there was a problem stinkier than poop. A tree stump rotting in the middle of our yard, waiting to claim a three-year-old’s ankle or, at the very least, his sneaker.

“But, this is our stump,” they told me. “My dad said so.”

The stump grinder people came earlier than I expected-- before school. Early enough for all the boys to watch it get crushed robotically into a pulverized pile of mulch. They said it would only take 20 minutes to get it down to nothing, but I didn’t stay to watch. I knew the boys were eyeing it all from their bedroom windows and I felt evil. While the deed was being done, I cowered over to the coffee shop and sniffled, staying there until I knew they’d be at school. I was doomed. The unwanted neighbour. I had one were I grew up. They never gave out Halloween candy and shut their lights off when they saw us coming.

The next morning, there was something in my mailbox from the kids. They’d written me a story. About how much they’d loved that old stump, and how it became a dirt pile and how much they love playing in that dirt pile. The following weekend, with snow shovels and dust pans, the boys helped me take some of that dirt across to another part of the backyard, to the garden, where the swimmers and the dum-dums once hid.