On Smart, Brave and Pregnant Meg Murry

Madeleine L'Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time, has died. She was a favorite of Rosalind Little's.

I found Meg Murry, the heroine of A Wrinkle in Time, terribly easy to relate to. She was brainy and awkward and possessing of an undirected and unwieldy sexuality. I mean, I knew girls like that. I'm just saying.


Wrinkle is without a doubt one of the most memorable books of my childhood. And of course the sequels were lovely, too. I especially liked A Swiftly Tilting Planet, where Meg is an older pregnant woman still preoccupied with saving the world.

I thought about that book a lot when I was pregnant. I liked to think of myself as an inflated creampuff superhero, too.

A Wrinkle in Time was written and published during the Cold War. When I reread it as an adult, I was struck by L'Engle's description of Camazotz, the planet that is under the thumb of the totalitarian-dictator, giant-brain IT. Everyone on Camazotz lives in some kind of surburbian dystopia, where every child bounces their ball at the same time, every father comes home from work at the same time, etc., etc. It is a place characterized by horrible, stilted conformity -- and those who refuse to comply are brought to face the terrifying IT.

Was Camazotz written to bring to mind American perceptions of life in the Soviet Union? Or was it a sly critique of late-1950s American culture?

L'Engle was sufficiently complex that either interpretation, or both, is possible. She also wrote beautiful meditations on Christianity, which I always admired and ached to agree with.

God bless her. As they say: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

On Eight Presidential Elections

Rosalind Little has lived through eight presidential elections. She was alive for the 1976 presidential election, but just barely. She does not remember it, being preoccupied with drooling and bawling. She vaguely remember Carter being president. His name made her think of grocery carts. But she does not remember the 1980 election either.

In 1984, my elementary school had its own election. I remember wearing my Mondale button to school, and being surprised that other kids made fun of me. I was amazed that anyone I knew would support Reagan, who was obviously a putz. Plus, there was a girl running for vice president on the other side! As it turned out, I was the ONLY student in my third grade class to vote for Mondale. Sadly, the school's election probably mirrored the country's.

This was my introduction to the brutal world of presidential politics. Lesson one: it turns out your candidate doesn't always win. Lesson two: your friends don't always make good political decisions. Lesson three: a girl running is not necessarily an advantage.

In 1988, I was in seventh grade, and I represented Dukakis as a mock candidate in a debate during an all-school assembly in our junior high auditorium. There were particular topics we were supposed to research in advance, and I remember asking my mom what she thought about abortion. That was really the first time I was ever aware of the abortion debate. I also remember researching the environment and the defense budget, and it was my first serious introduction to those issues as well.

For me, anyway, the 1988 election worked out more happily than the 1984 election. My candidate still lost the national election, sure, but Dukakis won by a landslide at my junior high. I like to think my debating skills had something to do with that. Sure, I had only known about the abortion controversy for a few weeks. But it turns out there's really not far to go on that topic once you've made your mind up, now is there?


In 1992, I was in eleventh grade, and living in a much, much more conservative town. Because Georgia was a swing state back in those days, and because in those days he was only a governor of Arkansas, Clinton actually came to my home town to speak. I skipped school that afternoon to see him.

It was a beautiful, crisp, clear fall day. I went with some friends from the Drama Club, who dresssed in goth and flannel clothing to signal their political apathy. I wore a flaming red blazer, my braces, and a Hillary-esque hairdo. I carried a Clinton/Gore sign. We walked through the throng of angry conservative protesters out front, and entered into the amphitheater, and I was entirely taken with Clinton. It was a wonderful speech. Even the Drama Club kids seemed properly awed. I shook his hand afterwards. He smiled at me, and I was elated.

Still, I was shocked when he won. Just floored. I'd never supported a winning candidate, you see, in memory. Moreover, Augusta was such a conservative place that I didn't actually know anyone else who had supported Clinton. Lesson Number Four: you can't judge the outcome of a national election by the political sentiments of your immediate neighbors and friends.

In 1996, I was a sophomore in college in Atlanta. College students by reputation are deeply politically active, but in 1996 I was not. I was busy with school and musical theater. I remember watching the election results on TV in my dorm, relieved but not surprised to see Clinton win again. That year, I remember being exposed to no controversy or debate over the election. I was surrounded by fellow progressives. I knew very few people who voted for Dole.

By 2000, I was in a place that seemed to have no conservative voters at all: Berkeley, California. I followed the election very closely, as I was in journalism school at the time. I was not an impassioned Gore supporter, and some of my Berkeley friends and neighbors were telling me I should vote my conscience for Nader. I didn't do that, as I was just paranoid enough about the possibility of Bush winning. It turns out I was right to be anxious.

And yet really it seemed unfathomable that Bush actually won. (Arguably, of course, he did not.) It seemed unthinkable that we had this man as a president. He was just so obviously inappropriate. I'm afraid I had to relearn the lesson of 1992 from the opposite vantage point: you can't judge the outcome of a national election by the political sentiments of your immediate neighbors and friends.

By 2004, I was back in Atlanta, married, barely pregnant with my Lucy. Indeed, we didn't know yet that I was pregnant. We went to watch the returns at some friends' house -- still optimistically, as this election was hardly a done deal -- and we brought little cut-out donkey cookies with us as a refreshment. When it became clear that Bush was going to win again, I drank several miserable glasses of wine. It didn't do Lucy any harm in the long run, but I worried about it later. Lesson Five: Do not drink if your candidate loses if it is possible you are pregnant.

It's striking how much one's life changes in four year increments.

On Webster Groves, Missouri

Rosalind Little moved away from Webster Groves, Missouri when she was thirteen years old, never really to return. This is an disruption in her life's narrative that continues to disorient her. She's still getting used to the move.

What do you think? Is it accurate to say that Webster Groves her is home town? Or is she from the town in Georgia where she attended high school and her parents live now? What does it mean not to be able to walk and touch and see the physical locations you associate with your oldest memories? To have no casual, everyday relationships, outside family, that predate the 1990s?

You see how I overthink these things. I'm a historian, you see.

Now the decent thing for the people and places of Webster Groves, Missouri to have done was to absolutely freeze in time. Like a perpetual shrine to my childhood memories. So that if I did go back, everyone and everything would be the same. But this didn't happen.

Not only does Webster Groves, Missouri continue to exist, it has a disquieting visibility for what is really just a very average suburb of St. Louis. It shows up all the time. I can think of many examples, but I'll share one here.

Apparently the novelist Jonathan Franzen is from Webster Groves, and writes about it in his famous novel The Corrections. I know this not because I am especially up to date on best-selling novels of the past ten years. I have not read The Corrections. I know this because I read it in an essay, "How I Got Jonathan Franzen To Stop Stealing Things From My Brain," by Sara Crosby, in my husband's Believer magazine.

In this essay, Crosby tells us that she, a struggling nonfiction writer, is also from Webster Groves. At a low point in her own career, she becomes frustrated that successful Franzen writes about the Webster Groves she knows, drawing upon places and cultural idiosyncrasies she also remembers, effectively "stealing" her own best and most personal material. His description of pulling pranks at the flagpole at Webster Groves High School in the 1970s gives her a shock of recognition:

I not only knew the flagpole and the entrance’s concrete columns and faded nuclear-fallout-shelter sign, but I also
knew plenty of prankster kids like Franzen in my 1994 graduating class—tall, lanky boys with easy, toothy laughs who
usually took Advanced Physics with Mr. Wojak.

Eventually she comes to her senses, has some professional success of her own, and no longer finds Franzen as threatening.

Which is fine, and great for her.

Except for what she's describing feeling when she reads Jonathan Franzen? I feel it reading Sara Crosby. Except for she and Franzen, their memories share only space in common. Sara Crosby and me, our memories share time.

Not only do I know her Webster Groves, I know HER. Had I never moved, I would have been in that 1994 graduating class with her. I went to first grade with her at Steger Elementary School. I can picture her face in my mind's eye. She was the first kid I knew whose parents got divorced, and I remember feeling sorry for her. Later, in junior high, I remember being scared of her. She was sullen and smartass.

She talks about one of her oldest friends, Peter, and I know exactly who she is talking about. I remember what he looked like in first grade, and that he dressed up like a St. Louis Cardinal for Halloween, but came late to the school that day because he was sick. And I know that he really must be one of her oldest friends because they knew each other back then. And I know that because I WAS THERE.

This might not be as mind-bending to others as it is to me. But that's why I have my little blog without readers.

I have no memory of Sara Crosby ever being a writer. It's not especially surprising that she is one, since it often happens to sullen smartasses. And people do tend to take up different life courses after age thirteen, or maybe she was already an accomplished writer when I moved and I just don't remember that about her.

It is unspeakably strange to discover a childhood memory, someone you never thought about after 1990, suddenly an intelligent and introspective adult writing about a past you have, at least to some degree, in common.

(Sara Crosby even taught me something about my past that I did not know. Apparently telling a joke in order to get candy while trick-or-treating was something unique to Webster Groves. I remember doing this, and have never been aware since that it wasn't the same everywhere. I suppose I never discovered this because after I left Webster Groves, I was thirteen, and I never really trick or treated again. For me, Webster Groves = everything before 1990 = childhood.)