Madeline L'Engle

After years of thinking I should write to Madeline L'Engle, I finally sat down today to find her address, compose and mail the letter.  Her influence on my life has been enormous, and it would be inconceivable not to let her know.  (That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.)

I pulled up her official web site and sat.  Stunned.  "Madeline L'Engle, 1918-2007"   

I first read A Wrinkle in Time in 3rd grade.  That was a hard year for me in school, and Meg felt like a real friend.  I was intrigued by the science side of the book as well, and felt the truth of the universal battle between good and evil in my bones.  I knew it to be true.  So I re-read the book. Again.  And again. And again.  until I had most of it memorized.

I began looking for other science books to either confirm or deny the reality of the scientific concepts L'Engle presented.  Were tesseracts real?  I sat on my bedroom floor and drew pictures of the first, second, third, and fourth dimensions.  I read A Geometry of Four Dimensions in fourth grade, although most of it was well over my head, and gleaned pieces of information that I could ponder while sitting in class with nothing interesting to do.  (Thus my poor grades.  Not that they were stellar to begin with.)  

Some time in highschool I made a rule for myself.  I was not allowed to re-read any book until I could not remember how it began.  I quickly realized this was a near impossibility with  A Wrinkle in Time, so made it my one exception.  I continued to read it at least once a year. 

When I took geometry in highschool I thought I had fallen into heaven.  Here, finally, was a math class I understood!  Not only did I understand it, I cold have taught it.  It was nothing more than common sense spelled out.  Any serious Madeline L'Engle fan, who had spent years trying to understand tesseracts, could do this simple highschool geometry with their eyes closed.  No fourth dimension required, no non-euclidian strangeness to understand.  Just simple proofs of everyday reality.  Heaven existed!  

I don't remember the first time I read A Wind in the Door, which is about Charles Wallace having mitochondrial disease.  But I do remember thinking, "That feels like what is going on in my own cells."  Quickly followed by, "Yeah, right.  Like you can feel your cells.  And as if your favorite author just happened to write a book about a rare disease, and you just happen to have it.  Oh please."   I let it drop.  

But I did have, a few years later, my own little brother who was very much like Charles Wallace.  And I did go on to major in physics because of my love of science sparked by A Wrinkle in Time.  And I did do science experiments in the kitchen, and move to exciting foreign countries, and battle evil in my own small ways.  And when a boy Rachel was dating said, "Do you know what your family reminds me of?  Don't take this the wrong way, but, have you ever read A Wrinkle in Time?  Your family seems a lot like theirs," I didn't stop smiling for days.  

And then, our family's unusual medical stuff became more pronounced, and I began doing some serious internet research to try to find out what was going on.  And I came across something that fit.  Something that I could hardly believe.  Mitochondrial disease.  The thing Charles Wallace had.  The thing I'd thought about back in elementary school.  It fit.  How weird is that?

So I decided that it was time.  I had to let Madeline L'Engle know about her influence in my life.  So I pulled up her web site.  And felt as if the wind had been knocked right out of me.  

She died last year, on my little sister Polly's birthday.  A memorial service was held in NYC, and if I'd known I might have gone.  But then again, with life how it is, I might not have.  

Maybe in the next life I will find her, in the millions and millions of people that will be there, and I'll be old and dead, too, and hopefully also a published author, and we will sit and talk.  I know we will have a lot in common.  Or I think we will.  or I hope we will.  Maybe she can read this blog.

It is appropriate that she died last year.  It was the year of the funeral.  My grandpa, my little nephew, and one of my best friends all died within a few months of each other.  And, apparently, my favorite author too.    

I just wonder, How did I not feel this gap in the world before?  Maybe because there were so many gaps forming, so many little black holes in the universe that Madeline L'Engle's was lost in the blackness.  I should have written that letter long, long ago.

Rebecca 

who really, really recommends A Wrinkle in Time to anyone who has not had the pleasure of reading it yet, along with The Arm of the Starfish and of course, A Wind in the Door.