Madeleine L'Engle

I just finished reading The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L-Engle. It is a poignant true story of the last summer spent with her mother before her death.

She looks back on her childhood and growing up years as an only child of parents who were very cosmopolitan and well-travelled. She laments the fact that she can no longer communicate with her mother as she once did while having morning-long talks over coffee at the kitchen table.

She has to come to terms with the fact that after her mother's death, she's now the 'matriarch' of the family clan; a role she doesn't want but has to accept.

Here's a quote from the book about one thing that formed who she became as an adult. "School was mostly something to be endured; I don't think I learned nearly as much from my formal education as from the books I read instead of doing homework, the daydreams which took me on exciting adventures in which I was intrepid and fearless and graceful, the stories Mother told me, and the stories I wrote. It was in my solitudes that I had a hand in the making of the present Madeleine."

I agree with her, because that is also my experience. I've learned so much more out of school than in. Only in solitude can I work out solutions to problems, think in peace, and be creative.

If you've never read any of her books, I highly recommend them. She's probably best known for A Wrinkle in Time. I prefer her non-fiction. She was also a writer of spiritual books. In the above mentioned book, she was struggling with who God is and traditional religion, but later on she became much stronger in her faith.

*The lady in the photo isn't Madeleine L'Engle, she's an ancestor of mine, Lydia Walker.