Dearest Gran,
You were born on this day in 1918. You would be 93. Thank you for your legacy of love, laughter and eating the impossible for breakfast. Thank you for continuing to write, against all odds, and for being such a powerful mentor to those who were moved by your work and your process.
We are celebrating your birthday with the launch of your brand new website, where we hope both new and old fans will get to visit and celebrate you too. Countless of people will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time in February: you are remembered, you are loved.
You have been a beacon of hope and an inspiration to many - not just writers, but all kinds of artists, scientists, mathematicians. Many of us spend much of our youth folding ourselves up into pretzels, trying to please others and to conform to our ideas of what our family, friends, society want us to be. We are afraid of not being loved. You have helped us come into our own.
“On Camazotz we are all happy because we are all alike. Differences create problems. You know that, don’t you, dear sister?”
“No,” Meg said.
“Oh, yes, you do. You’ve seen at home how true it is. You know that’s the reason you’re not happy at school. Because you’re different.”
“I’m different, and I’m happy.” Calvin said.
“But you pretend that you aren’t different.”
“I’m different, and I like being different.” Calvin’s voice was unnaturally loud.
“Maybe I don’t like being different,” Meg said, “but I don’t want to be like everybody else either.”
Thank you for inspiring me to be my own writer, and not try to channel somebody I can't be. And to mentor other young writers, to show them that "originality" is finding their own authentic voice. To pay it forward.
“Who have our fighters been?” Calvin asked.
“Oh, you must know them, dear,” Mrs Whatsit said.
Mrs. Who’s spectacles Shone out at them triumphantly, “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”
“Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why of course, Jesus!”
“Of course!” Mrs Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.”
“Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”
“And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “And Bach! And Pasteur, and Madame Curie, and Einstein!”
Now Calvin’s voice rang out with confidence. “And Schweitzer, and Ghandi, and Buddha and Beethoven, and Rembrandt and St.Francis!”
Thank you for teaching us that we can be fighters too by embracing our authenticity, our creativity, our gifts; that we can fight darkness just as well as anybody else; that we can be the heroes and heroines of our own lives.
xoxoxo I miss you, and I love you more-than-tongue-can-tell.
Always.
