Did you know that the REAL [fictional] Mary Poppins was mean? She was strict with the Banks children and didn't smile much. She would take the children on magical adventures and then she'd deny they ever happened! Cruel and hysterical. I read the whole series. And the Great Brain books, all the Anastasia books, Judy Blume, Narnia, Roald Dahl. Series after series, shelf after shelf in the library. I discoverd nonfiction and read about Hitler, Groucho Marx, Elvis, Olympic athletes, Vaudville performers -- anyone, anything. All of it nestled somwhere in my brain, my heart, my lungs. Sometimes when I speak It hear Owen or Janie or Ophelia in my words. I use their voices when I am too scared to hear my own. It was the Scout in me that survived the torment of grade school. And she called in Charlie Bucket to navigate us through poverty and indifference. Sometimes I think of myself as a plaid shirt - - all of those characters woven in -- the wide, bold red stripes meeting crossing with a single thread of green -- all of it essential in the fabric. But sadly, I can't name some of those threads. I can recall the strength of the girl caring for her dying mother and then traveling cross country on her own -- but the title and author elude me. The picture book about the house of mud -- I'll never see it again. I'll never meet up with the family that lived in the abandoned house in the grave yard. But no one can deny it happened -- it is woven in me.