Random Musings

I had the strangest memory today.

It was a hot day in Southern California. I was at a summer day camp; one of those places where kids who have working parents go and spend a few days a week. I must have been pretty young–I’m guessing eight or nine. I was sitting with a group of kids and the camp counsellor. A guy I’d guess was in his teens or early twenties? He seemed old to me, anyway.

The sun caught the hair on my legs and arms, and he exclaimed, “Wow, you’re really hairy. You’re going to have to do something about that.”

My mom caught me trying to use her razor that night. I don’t think I told her why I was attempting to scrape off the peach fuzz of a nine year old’s legs.

I was too ashamed.

It’s the first time I remember someone so clearly remarking on my physical being (plenty commented on my strangeness/awkwardness, etc). And I’ve been incredibly aware of my body hair ever since. Years later, a guy in middle school commented on how large my butt was, and I’ve been depressed about the state of that part of my body ever since, too.

Wow. How fast do we develop issues around our physical presence in the world because of a few careless words thrown around by people who have no idea the splinter they’ve just lodged in your soul? I developed a sense of shame around my body before I understood that no one had a right to tell me anything at all about it.

Maybe that’s why I can write wounded characters. People who have deeper stuff threaded into the fabric of their souls that has become calcified and defines so much of the way they walk through the world.

And that leads me to: I have a book coming out next month.

Echoes of the Heart comes out on May 1st.

If you wanted to pre-order it that would help me in the giant algorithm that now defines so much of our lives. It, too, has a couple of wounded characters. And a lot of clumsiness and quirkiness. Because I think those things create some of the best people.