One Crazy Ride

Hello tiny isolated portion of the world that will see this post. Not going to lie or obfuscate this has been a rough week. Multiple hospital visits and two overnight stays to boot. For those concerned, I am fine and was not the center of these medical field trips. It is time however to bridge this superficial personal drama to the literature at hand. I found one thing that did help me this week were the frequent escapes I took into Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer.

I must confess my love for Young Adult literature only grows with each novel I read. Unfortunately so do I and the looks I am sure I will when I am 35 and reading Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl for the 12th time will not be fun, but in the meantime I will enjoy the shield this institution offers me. One Crazy Summer  was one crazy ride to be sure. I found myself getting inexplicably attached to the trials and tribulations of these three girls. Just a few pages in I was almost wringing the novel out of anger when they met Cecile, their mother, and experienced the opposite of what any little girl should experience during such a homecoming. I found myself looking in this proverbially "mirror" we have spoken so much about more than once and through their journey taking a little journey of my own.

Just as Delphine found herself in an unfamiliar place, taking care of her sisters, running out to get take out in strange town, and trying to understand a situation much larger then herself, I found myself in somewhat of a "Crazy Summer" story. Perhaps this is less the mirror and more my own narcissism, but I too was running to get take out in a part of town I didn't know. I too was trying to take care of my fiance, alone, throughout her medical trials this past week, and I too found myself sleeping on a chair in the corner of her room as doctors tried to explain to me what they were doing. (For the concern of the reader I will tell that everything ended up okay, but it was most certainly a rough ride). Whether or not my image in the mirror and Delphines were similar at all I do not know, but I'd like to think those three little girls helped me get through this past week.

Wow... have to say I didn't really see this post going in that direction. Guess that's what cathartic writing gets me ehh?

Keep calm and read a good book.