“Live your Life. Live your Life. Live your Life.”
– Maurice Sendak

Sometimes my brain surprises me with its capacity to grieve for those I’ve never met. I cried when Lucille Ball died. I joined the rest of the grungy youth mourning Kurt Cobain. The death of Steve Jobs somehow hit me like a ton of bricks. And now, with the news of the death of Maurice Sendak, this inexplicable sadness fills me as this person, this creator of magic and wonder is no longer here.

Children’s literature has always held a place in my heart and I was raised in a home where reading was valued, and reading was special and reading was part of our daily lives. As a child and now, as an adult, I could easily slip away and get lost in the world between the covers of a book. I could let the words paint pictures in my mind and somehow I was transported – to the land of the Wild Things or to Ramona’s Klickitat Street.

Those who know me know well the place in my heart held by “Goodnight Moon” – my favorite children’s book, it was also my mother’s favorite to read to me. And now, even though my children are too old for its simple prose, I still cherish that great green room and its telephone and the cow jumping over the moon.

Max held a place in my heart, close to that of the quiet old woman whispering hush.

I remember having this story read to me, I remember reading it to myself, and I read it to both of my girls, though neither seemed to love it quite like I did.

Sad and complicated Max escaping to a world where he could be king.

And he felt sad and complicated to me – not so much naughty. Just a frustrated boy. Frustrated kid. Creating a world when he couldn’t control his own.

And I loved it.

I love it still.

And from a house of reading to my own house of reading, my daughters both have my strong love for books and our shelves overflow with books – all of these pages full of new adventures and characters and illustrations. But it seems so many of these stories don’t hold the same magic as the ones from when I was young – and maybe that’s just my age talking or maybe it’s true. There are so many people out there creating, and the creating? That’s good. But it’s hard to sort through all the garbage to find the true gems. The classics. The ones that become a part of your heart and your history and weave their way into your very being so that when you are older, you remember with a wave of nostalgia how much those words meant to you and you nearly ache to share those words with the next generation.

I have no idea what books those will be. What books my daughters will share.

But, to me, I still hold Max close in my heart.

And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.

RIP Maurice Sendak. Thank you for your words, your creativity, your passion. Thank you for leaving your mark on my childhood and on my heart with your stories. I’ll keep on sharing them, I will, so that one day maybe my grandchildren will love Max and the Wild Things as I did.

Dig if you will a picture…

We’re at a dinner party. It’s cocktail hour, everyone is dressed to the nines, people are getting drinks, mingling. The room is packed and every where you look it’s a seemingly endless sea of faces. The room hums with the chatter of several simultaneous conversations. There are familiar faces, but a lot of faces I don’t know as well. You? You dive right in. You look for friends, you look for new faces. You jump into a conversation, hand extended to greet someone with a firm handshake and a “Hi, my name is…”

Me? At this point? I’m OVERWHELMED.

And I love people and I love being social but time and time again, I find that events like this leave me wanting to find the nearest wall to hold up, to let people come say hello to ME, and sometimes I leave wondering if maybe I couldn’t have tried to be more social.

I’m an introvert.

Not like that was any surprise to me. I mean, I’ve known that, but recently I picked up Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, a book by Susan Cain that not only explores what introversion is but explains lots of other stuff – that made me feel like Ohhhh, THAT explains why I react like X when Y happens.

Being an introvert doesn’t mean that I’m an antisocial hermit – quite the contrary – I really enjoy when I’m able to go out with friends and connect and talk and socialize. Yeah, I will enjoy myself more if I’m sitting down with one or two peeps and digging in depth and connecting and talking about life than having surface conversations with dozens of people at an event. Does that mean I avoid events? No. But I’m not a social butterfly. I’m probably kind of sort of a little overwhelmed. I probably will leave feeling like I should have talked to more people.

But that’s okay.

Being an introvert also (obviously) explains why working at home was such a fantastic fit for me. I remember when I started working from home six plus years ago, my boss being concerned – some people need to be in an office, they need to have people near by to bounce ideas off of, they need that water cooler talk. Well, to some degree, I do as well… but… I work pretty well without it. In fact, getting to work in my own little world is how I thrive – and I’ve had to adjust to being back in an office again.

“Quiet” addresses finding restorative niches – basically ways to catch your breath during your day. For people who need to shut the world out sometimes, offices can be overwhelming. I love the people in my department, but I find that making sure I get outside for a walk  by myself during my lunch hour kind of restores a bit of centeredness (shut up, it is SO a word) I need to get through my day.

Being an introvert or an extrovert – neither is a disease or something that needs to be fixed – they’re just traits, part of who you are. And if you, like me, pick up that book it’s not because you don’t know whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert and you want to find out — it’s probably because you already know. And I really figured “what can this book tell me about myself that I don’t already know?” but I was kind of pleasantly surprised with it.