Melissa Ostrom in the garden.
I spent the first years of my life in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and most of what I remember about that time involves me playing in the dirt like a hen taking a dust bath—digging in my mom’s vegetable garden, rolling around in the driveway, and stuffing gravel and clumps of soil into my baby brother’s cloth diaper, which was already sadly, er…full. I have photographs to corroborate some of my filth-related memories, though not, thankfully, of that last one, which requires no visual reminders, as the incident is seared into my brain on account of the spanking the deed earned me.
We were dirt poor, so I guess it made sense that dirt was my preferred medium. Plus, we lived in the middle of nowhere. Dirt was plentiful; friends, not so much. Fortunately, there was Lisa: She was around my age and lived close enough to join me in mudpie-making and puddle-jumping. Our other nearest neighbors were a houseful of rough and rowdy boys. They liked to boast, bray, swear, and swagger, and (similar to my brother’s diaper that one afternoon) they were full of shit, lying readily, frequently, and extravagantly.
One of their tall tales became legendary in my family. I don’t know much about the story, only that it had to do with a chicken farm (an enterprise my family, later, in private, agreed probably never existed). What I do know, however, is, not long after sharing their chicken farm story, the boys told another tale, but this one didn’t mesh with the details of the earlier account. When my parents called them out on the discrepancy, one of the brothers hesitated, then said, “Well, that was before the chicken farm.”
As I write this September post, August still surrounds me—a humming time. Cicadas drone during the day; katydids chirr after dark. And in the morning, if I move very quietly outside by the Rose-of-Sharons and hollyhocks, a hummingbird will eventually whip past me to dive in and out of the flowers for their nectar, treading air with rapid wings that make a wonderful whir.
I recently read Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water. In the beginning of her book, L’Engle shares a wonderful quotation by Jean Rhys: “Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”
Late yesterday afternoon, the kids and I walked around our property. The daffodils are blooming. Their yellow heads, like cheerful bonnets, fringe the house, dot the meadow out front, and form bright clumps along the thicket. In the woods, I spied my first trout-lily of the season. The hyacinths are also opening, but that’s pretty much it. It’s too early for the tulips, forsythia, and violets and too late for the pussy willows. Thinking I might cut some willow branches for the house, I trudged over to the ditch where the scrubby trees grow, but their silvery catkins had already puffed into yellow balls. 
I’m keeping the teacher’s name to myself, but I’ll tell you this: I liked him. We all liked him. Cheerful, energetic, creative, funny, kind: there was a lot to like.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his preface to The Marble Faun, directly addresses the audience—calls the reader “indulgent,” “gentle,” “kind.” I rather like wading through Hawthorne’s prose and finding myself so respectfully and hopefully described. Can you hear the plea in his choice of words? It is as if he were begging, “Go easy on me, reader. I’m about to pour my heart out.”
The best writers are enchantresses. Their books bewitch us. But how do they cast their magic? This is the question that lingers after I finish a superb novel, and I’ll research the writer to try to answer it, delving into those sources readily available on the internet—reviews, biographies, interviews. I especially enjoy reading the interviews and getting the inside scoop on the author’s life, like the time of day she writes, the snacks she eats, the books she calls her favorites. I relish these details. The admissions of rituals and preferences compel me, as if such minutiae were the stuff of alchemy.