Crystal Children

THE CRYSTAL CHILD by Barbara Wersba was one of my favorite childhood books. It is about a lifelike statue of a twelve-year-old girl and the fourteen-year-old boy who becomes infatuated with her. It hints at Pygmalion but there is also a story within the story about the statue girl's mother who died in a house fire. I was devastated by the story of the mother's death when I read it as a kid. It still gets me.

That book was one of many given to me by a good friend of our family, Gail Lockman. Gail died in April, just four months shy of her 77th birthday, which is today (or maybe tomorrow; the exact date is uncertain). I visited her at a hospital in Oakland, California, a month before she died. She was alert and it seemed like she would recover and I'm still upset that she didn't. I struggle sometimes to explain Gail's role in my life. "Good family friend" doesn't really seem to cover it. When I was little all the adults in my life either seemed bemused by or only very faintly interested in things I said. But Gail was always genuinely interested in what I had to say. She treated me like an equal. She was quite tall and had short curly hair and wore round wire-frame glasses that magnified her eyes and reminded me (of course) of Mrs. Who from A Wrinkle in Time. Also she laughed a lot. She got kids; she was a children's librarian for many years. I have a vivid memory of spending the night at her apartment along with my sister and another kid who was part of our circle and Gail had a copy of The Boxcar Children and how I loved that book. At Gail's place, it seemed fitting to read about a group of kids surviving on their own. Her apartment had a long narrow hallway and was decorated in a 70s-era bohemian style with tapestries on the walls and lots of plants in beaded macrame hangers. She probably had a wardrobe that led to Narnia. Gail loved to travel and explore the world. When I was thirteen and my sister was eleven Gail chaperoned us on a trip to France and Italy and we spent a day in Bologna just going from one gelateria to another, eating as much gelato as we wanted. I couldn't ever imagine my parents indulging us in that way.*

Later, when I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn—my first apartment all to myself, with no roommates—Gail came to visit me and she and I went to see an exhibition of drawings by Donald Evans. This was in 1999. I don't know how she learned about it, but she insisted we go. I'd never heard of Evans but the work was enchanting. Evans invented stamps for imaginary countries. Each stamp was delicately rendered in watercolor, and true to size, meaning just big enough to put on an envelope. It was easy to get lost in these little drawings, to visualize the nonexistent countries that they represented. Worlds upon worlds upon worlds, real and imaginary, to which anyone could enter. Gail wasn't rich, but she knew that you don't need wealth to explore; books and art and imagination are enough to get you wherever you need to go. Or rather, usually enough. I think in her final years this world was getting to be too much for her. I hope she has found peace on the other side.

Three Things That Kept Me Going This Week

1. Bunker Life: Not long after I finished Prophet Song I started another novel with a seemingly dystopian premise: The Future by Naomi Alderman. I knew Alderman would be more entertaining than Lynch and I wasn't wrong: there are action sequences galore, and the novel centers around a band of queer radicalized oddballs who are connected to uberwealthy tech CEOs. I really enjoyed The Power by Alderman; her sci-fi reminds me of the sci-fi I enjoyed as a kid, usually set in the real world with a fierce moral driving the plot. Much of The Future takes place in bunkers built by the tech CEOs to live in after the collapse of global civilization. As I read it this article came out, which I thought made Alderman seem hella prescient, and then I remembered that the brilliant artist Jenny Perlin made a film on this subject which came out in 2021, titled simply Bunker. I have yet to watch the film, but the trailer hooked me immediately so I will definitely be streaming it soon.
2. Cristina Ramberg: I seem to have gotten into the bad habit of catching art shows on the last day—I need to get an earlier start. But I knew I had to see Ramberg in the galleries at the AIC and I was right: she was such a gifted, subtle artist and colorist that it's almost impossible to capture her work in photographs. The browns and blues just aren't the same. I find it sad that she died so young—she was only 49, the same age I am now—and I'm sure she would be better known if she'd lived. In any case she left an extraordinary body of work behind, including quilts, which I did not know about until I saw this show.

3. Michaela finished the Harry Potter books! I have so many opinions about the Potter series, not all of them good, but I'll save those for another time. And J.K. Rowling is just bizarre: what on earth possessed her to turn against trans women or women who might be described as masculine? You would think by now she might have learned to shut her mouth, yet she proved once again during the Olympics with her inane tweets that she is a dimwitted TERF; I'm so glad that gold-medalist Imane Khelif is forcing her to take responsibility for her cruelty. Yet Rowling wrote the books that seem to have finally gotten Michaela hooked on reading. So I am grudgingly grateful to her for that.

Today in Mushroom News

I have been growing corn in our backyard and one of the stalks has some funny white bulges on the leaves. I thought it might be gall, so I googled it, and it turns out that this is called "corn smut" and is considered a delicacy in Mexico! Huitlacoche, as it is known, is parasitic and a type of fungus and apparently makes delicious tortillas. Insert witty pun on "corn smut" here.

*My sister remembers the trip to Italy much better than I and sent me this correction: "It was Pisa! It was the walk from the hostel to the leaning tower. Bologna was the hunt for the lasagna she had eaten years before, and we found the place but they didn’t make it in the summer."

Thank you for reading! If you're new here, welcome. Mushroom Head is a comic diary about me, Claire, a middle-aged lady who lives in Oak Park, IL. Previous installments recorded the time I thought I'd ODed on THC and my experience parenting a person with ADHD as a person who has ADHD. If you'd like to get in touch with me, please feel free to respond directly to this email. I'm always happy to hear from you! (Also, you might want to put the Mushroom Head email address into your contacts to avoid having it go to your junk folder.) And if someone forwarded this email to you, I encourage you to subscribe.