ninme

The Corner - Madeleine L’Engle at Home, John Podhoretz

Madeleine L’Engle was our neighbor growing up. She lived on the 9th floor at 924 West End Avenue in apartment 95; we lived on the 6th floor in apartment 65. There was one elevator for this line of apartments and therefore everybody in them came to know each other quite well, especially since the elevator had a habit of breaking down and trapping a few of us in it for 20 minutes at a time.

As a young boy, I knew her as the kind-faced and friendly woman with the two fluffy big nice dogs (in contrast to the constantly barking and lunging German Shepherds who lived on 12 and scared the bejeezus out of me and everybody else). Then, when I was 9 or 10, I read A Wrinkle in Time and my sister Naomi told me offhandedly that she was its author.

I wrote her the first fan letter of my life and, heart pounding, rode the elevator to 9 and slipped it under her door. Within hours a package was left at our door with an inscribed copy of its recently published sequel, http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Door-Madeleine-LEngle/dp/0312368593/ref=pdbbssr_1/105-9958149-9526868?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189356614&sr=1-1, a box of baked chocolate chip cookies, and a response that was so appreciative I could hardly believe it, it was so gracious and thoughtful.

Sigh…

(Incidentally, the other day I did a google search on her to get to her wiki to factcheck my hazy memories for a lengthy comment over at RC2’s place, and saw in the search results that she had a webpage, and wanted to see if they’d updated it yet, and all it said at the time was that there were new editions of the Time Quintet out but I hadn’t seen what they were and forgot about it entirely till I went to Amazon to get those links just now and, oh, gosh… Covetous covetous covetous…)