The first time I met Jeanette Ingold, back in the early 90’s, both of us were celebrating first books. Mine, a picture book called Elephants Aloft, consisted of approximately 40 words.
Jeanette’s, a novel called The Window, had about 40,000 words.
Despite that difference, we’ve shared millions of words in each others’ company, and I count her as one of my most cherished friends and associates. No telling how many words we’ve spoken to each other across the span of our friendship. Let’s just say a lot.
Recently, I had the good fortune of joining Jeanette on our annual retreat together and was able to lure her into the kitchen to talk about her newest young adult book, Paper Daughter.
Pay attention, because Jeanette is a wordsmith, regardless of the count.
I love Paper Daughter, as I do all of Jeanette’s books. They’re smart, savvy, and full of heart. Just like their author. My friend. Jeanette.
Back in the late 1970’s my parents, Pat and George Childress, opened a club here in College Station called Grin’s. At the time it was one of the only music venues in the entire Brazos Valley, and we had some wonderful artists perform there. One of those artists was a very young, shy Lyle Lovett, who was a classmate of mine at Texas A&M.
Ken and I both worked at the club in a variety of positions. Ken mostly ran sound, and I cooked, cleaned, and tended bar.
One night Eric Taylor was performing, and right at the end of the night, as he was finishing up his last set, I started closing down the bar by filling the beer coolers. I confess, I was not paying any attention to Eric even though I love his music. The plain old fact was–I just wanted to go home, so I was hurrying to get things set up for the next day so that I could leave. After all, I had been there for many hours and I still had homework to do. Could you blame me? Anyways, while Eric was singing, Lyle came over and asked me to please stop so that the noise from the bottles wouldn’t be so obtrusive. But instead of pausing to listen to Eric’s beautiful voice, I just brushed Lyle off and kept on keeping on.
I didn’t realize how upset Lyle was until he wrote “Closing Time,” and so there you have it. It’s not one of my proudest moments, even though I’m happy that Lyle got a powerful, provocative song out of it.
I learned something important that night. I learned that hearts need songs and songs need hearts. Ever since then, I stop for music. It’s more important than whether or not the beer is cooled down.
So, on November 11, 2010, when Lyle performed at Texas A&M, and invited Ken and his best friend Kevin Duff onto the stage to sing with him, it was a mighty sweet reunion. I managed to catch it on my iphone video, and while the video is bleached out, I think you can hear the friendship in all three voices, a friendship that has lasted for over thirty years.
Wasn’t that lovely?
And here are some photos from that night:
The person on the left is my mom, Pat Childress. Winnie Garner is on the right. And a member of the Large Band is in the middle.
Here I am with cellist John Hagen, who met Lyle at Grin’s when John was playing with a band called Eaglebone Whistle.
And here I am with Lyle.
Yes, he seems to have forgiven me for all those noisy beer bottles. And like I said, the song has lived on, and so has our friendship. How sweet is that?
Cathy Liles and I met back in the early ’80’s when both of us were new moms, and both of us became La Leche League leaders. Those were the tenderest of years. Breastfeeding my babies was one of the most important things I’ve ever done in this ol’ life, and it was equally important to have friends like Cathy to share those experiences with.
You could say that we grew up together, right alongside our children.
Here’s Cathy with her family. From left to right is youngest son Garrison, daughter Marisa, Cathy, husband Ben, and oldest son Benjamin.
And here she is with her own mom, Peggy.
Cathy has spent her life as an advocate for nursing babies and their mothers. She has served on the board for the International La Leche League; she has worked in international circles at the United Nations in developing policies that affect breastfeeding pairs; and she has been tireless in her support for better infant and maternal health.
No one deserves this lifetime achievement award more than my friend Cathy Liles.
And just as Cathy’s life changed with the birth of her baby, so too did mine. I would never have become a writer for children if I had not become a mother. And those breastfeeding days showed up in this book that is now long out of print…
The illustrations by Dale Gottlieb are just wonderful. And to honor Cathy, here’s the spread du jour:
