I’m only just pruned down and branched out.
L.M. Montgomery on being yourself. (The Commonplace Book Project)
You can find all the posts in The Commonplace Book Project here:
“I’m not a bit changed — not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real ME — back here — is just the same.” — L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
My grandparents moved from Quebec into a little 1940s house in Garden Grove, California, when my mother was five years old. She lived there most of her life. Her entire life, really, except for the ten years she was married to my dad.
When I was a little girl, during those ten years, one of my favorite things about visiting my grandparents was the bookshelf above the television in the den.
That bookshelf held books that had belonged to my mom and her sister. Nancy Drew. The Bobbsey Twins. Little House on the Prairie. And Anne of Green Gables.
My grandpa read Anne of Green Gables to my sister and I probably half a dozen times. We’d snuggle together in bed in the guest room — it was our room when we visited — and he’d sit on the edge of the mattress and he’d read to us.
Our grandpa died when we were young. He had bone cancer that was caused by his time working as an electrician at the nuclear test site in Nevada. But he left me with these memories of a man willing to read to me for as long as I wanted him to.
I was thinking yesterday about what it would be like to have a body of work that’s actually foundational to readers. Like — I wouldn’t be the same person today if I didn’t have Anne of Green Gables growing up. Maybe the difference would be subtle. Maybe not. But it would definitely be there.
I got a package in the mail today and opened it expecting it to be a copy of The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, a middle grade book I ordered the other day. Instead — I pulled this out of the envelope.
My own book. That I wrote. With a cover that has my name on it. And, even cooler, that has a picture of Roona Mulroney on it. Roona, who was modeled after my daughter Ruby. The artist got it just exactly right.
I don’t know if The Astonishing Maybe will ever be foundational to anyone. Or if my next book will. Or my next. But maybe, someday, my body of work will be. Or maybe there’s a story that I haven’t even caught a glimmer of yet that will spark something in a reader.
Anne of Green Gables taught me that it’s okay to be different. That family is family, however you find it. That even when things are dark and bad, there are Octobers and the world is a beautiful place. She taught me to look for my bosom friends and hold on to them.
Anne of Green Gables was foundational for me, as a reader, but also just as a human being.
That’s some heady stuff. Seriously.
I haven’t read Anne of Green Gables in at least twenty years. Maybe longer. I recently bought this gorgeous edition and it’s on my list to re-read it in 2019.
I am in love with the Netflix series Anne with an E. It’s a little darker than the books. A little more grown up, even though Anne is no older. It’s just — wonderful. It’s absolutely perfectly cast.
There is a whole collection of L.M. Montgomery’s journals available that I definitely want to take a look at. Maybe starting with the Prince Edward Island years. Now that I’m on the East Coast, I am looking forward to taking a trip there.
I wish that I had known Lucy Maud Montgomery. I feel like she was very much like Anne Shirley. The way that Jo March was very much like Louisa May Alcott. I think I would have liked her very much.
This is in her Wikipedia page:
In 1887, at age 13, Montgomery wrote in her diary that she had “early dreams of future fame.” She submitted a poem for publication, writing, “I saw myself the wonder of my schoolmates — a little local celebrity.” Upon rejection, Montgomery wrote, “Tears of disappointment would come in spite of myself, as I crept away to hide the poor crumpled manuscript in the depths of my trunk.” She would later write, “down, deep down under all the discouragement and rebuff, I knew I would ‘arrive’ some day.”
Today’s Poem:
A Winter Dawn Lucy Maud Montgomery
Above the marge of night a star still shines, And on the frosty hills the sombre pines Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow.
Through the pale arch of orient the morn Comes in a milk-white splendor newly-born, A sword of crimson cuts in twain the gray Banners of shadow hosts, and lo, the day!
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Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.
