Visiting an Old Friend - A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle

I read A Ring of Endless Light at least a dozen times as a kid, and you can tell. The pages have turned brown and the corners are worn to a round edge. Corners are ripped off, and the crease on the front cover is so distinct I'm surprised that part of the book is still intact. The spine is cracked clean, and the only thing keeping this paperback together is a good amount of yellowing Scotch tape.

I'm sure I know why I bought this book as a kid - there's a dolphin on the cover, and if you'd asked my Elementary self what the coolest creature was, "dolphin" would have been my answer. But why did I read it again? And again and again and again, until we have this almost broken book that most people would see as trash?

* * *

A Ring of Endless Light called me from its place on the shelf - it was time to open the crumbling age-stained pages again. But why?

Death is a big part of the story: it happens before, after, and throughout the pages. There's death away from the characters, near them, and death that occurs right in their hands. The book doesn't hide any of these things, but it took me years to realize this was a story about death - dealing with it, living in spite of it, living because it's there.

My grandmother died a few weeks ago. Great grandmother, actually - Gram to all of us. A healthy, 90-year-old woman, until she fell a couple months before. She got better, but she wasn't the same. I don't think any of us were surprised that she stayed with us just a little while longer.

In Madeleine L'Engle's book, the dolphins stay close to Vicky after she experiences death. They hold her up, bringing her out of the darkness and up into the light. That was why the book pulled me back, I think, and maybe that's why the pages held me so fast as a child.

* * *

In can't really remember why I this book so many times, clutching it so hard I almost tore it in two pieces. Maybe I had something I had to be carried through, and I felt as safe in the pages as Vicky did being cradled by the dolphins. Or I just read the book because the main character, Vicky Austin, is an affirmation to me - a "poetic soul" who's not sure of her burden in life, I felt connected to and influenced by her. (I do know my desire to be an English major sparked when Jeb Nuttely gives her that advice.)

Or maybe it was something else, or everything, coming up all at once or at each different time I turned the pages.

Or maybe I just liked to read it.

Not that it matters. I thought I wanted to know why I returned to this book so many times, and I went back thinking I would figure it out. But that would just ruin it. A Ring of Endless Light was important to me then, and that makes it important to me now.