Scene in a Library

Last Thursday evening, I had the honor of reading from part of Twirl at the Oak Park Public Library in Oak Park, Illinois, which was the place my mom worked for years. Before I read, I said a bit about her work and its impact on my growing up.

You would think that, given who my mom is, and where she worked, I grew up a reader, and that this was the place I came to find stories. That would be an incorrect assumption. This is the place I came to find my mom –

Because a boy hurt my feelings and I just could not be in school anymore.

Because I failed another test and I just could not be in school anymore.

Because my outfit was all wrong and I just could not be in school anymore.

Because the black, Dodge Shadow convertible was going to waste just sitting there on a 75 degree May day, and Celena and I had 4^th PE, 5^th lunch, and 6^thstudy hall, and Chicago is just 10 minutes away, and I just could not be in school anymore.

I came here to find my mom so much that I got to see her in action, and I soon learned that my mom could find anything anyone was looking for, and even things they didn’t know they were looking for.

She could find anything for anyone: an old Chicago Tribune article on Frank Lloyd Wright for Nancy Horan; information on the Henry Horner Homes for Alex Kotlowitz, even Tupac’s albums for a high school kid who’d found a mentor to help walk her through her one wild and precious life. My mom would never deny anyone a chance to sit with words.

Which is why, instead of scolding me when I’d wait until the last minute to complete a hefty project involving a ridiculous amount of research, she taught me how to use mircofic; she opened up Strunk and White’s Elements of Style; she let me sit in her workspace and write. Sometimes, if I wasn’t acting particularly surly, she and I would take a break and walk to Great Harvest for a slice of bread or a muffin.

It is true, unless it was a piece of paper folded up in a nice, neat triangle, I wasn’t trying to read anything growing up. But I was surrounded by stories – my mom and my dad made sure of that.

One day, when I was sick or, more likely fake sick, my mom brought home the movie To Kill a Mockingbird for me.

“Ugh,” I complained. “Isn’t that in black and white? Why didn’t you get me Karate Kid?”

Knowing my mom, you can understand how much will power it took to not bop me on the head with the VHS tape she’d brought home from the library.

No, it was not reading, but I was taken by the story – by Scout’s sassiness and Calpurnia’s ability to sass her right back; by Mayella’s evil ignorance, and by Jem’s quiet adventuresome personality, by Boo Radley whom, weirdly enough, I had a crush on – all that mystery!

I watched the movie again and again, but never read the book until I became a teacher and it was part of the 8^thgrade English curriculum at Stephen K. Hayt school on the Northside of Chicago.

That was the beginning of what it meant to read for me, and not just be captivated by story. Reading a book meant taking on that story, it meant bearing it, it meant allowing myself to be changed so that when it was over, I saw and understood the world and its people differently, better. The book might’ve ended, but I carried the story with me forever.

What’s more, I could always go back, and going back, I found something different everytime: once, it was Mayella’s care for red geraniums and the terrifying realization that beauty seeps its way into all of us. Another time it was Dill’s need to hunt down a story at any cost with no concern for what taking on the truth of a story would do to him or others (I wonder sometimes if Harper Lee was foreshadowing her friend’s death – that his pursuit of and taking on of stories would eventually kill him). Once I read it and compared Atticus Finch to Bob Ewell – both white men, both living in a Southern town during the Great Depression, both fathers whose wives were no longer in the picture. It was uncomfortable to think of a racist, abusive, alcoholic man in an empathetic way, but I wonder if this is what Harper Lee had to do in order to create Atticus – in order to illustrate what once was, what could be, what is now.

So yes, I was not a reader growing up, and I did come to this place looking for my mom, but as she did with everyone she came into contact with, she gave me much more than what I was looking for.

“Twirl is one of those books I didn’t want to finish because I loved it so much. Feyen puts words to feelings and memories that are difficult to articulate, being so deeply rooted in long-held ideas about identity as it relates to purpose and definitions of success. As a mom, writer, and student in pursuit of a career change, I really related to Twirl’s (brilliant) extended metaphor of clothing-as-story-as-identity. Feyen takes a playful yet profound look at her relationship with clothes and stories, and in doing so invites the reader to consider how they, in turn, can find the courage to step into new chapters of their lives, and new ways of being. As the mother of a young daughter, who is newly enamored with dressing up, Twirl is helping me identify with her and with the child in me, who wants magic and adventure and above all FUN as she works to piece together the world. (As an aside, the way Feyen writes children’s voices is astonishingly real, and made me laugh out loud.) In one of my favorite essays in the collection, “Bloom,” Feyen writes that she wants to give stories to people to help them bloom. Twirl helped me do that at a time when I really, really need it. I expect to reread this book often, and give copies to friends. Don’t buy one copy of this book: buy THREE. You will want to give it to friends.” – Melissa Reeser Poulin, author of Rupture, Light.

Buy Twirl here.