Old Strange Book

In the story of my life there is a field filled with chicory, daisies, and mayflowers. It’s the field behind my childhood house. In summer, I used to spend hours lying in it looking at clouds before my mother brought us to the town pool where I spent some more hours swimming. In the other seasons I went to school. In the school there was a library. In the story of my life there is a book. The book was bound in rough green cloth. Its glossy pages smelled oddly like puke. The book told the story of two children, Johnnie and Jill, I think. They got lost in a deep forest, drawn in thick dark ink. They were brother-and-sister orphans. They met fantastical creatures. One was the goddess of spring, or was that in Botticelli’s picture that I saw in the same library in a book of art history for kids, old European art of course. The other kinds they did not want us to know about. The picture was magic and so was Johnnie and Jill though not a children’s classic. I don’t really remember the title. In the book the goddess of spring rescues the children in trouble and then — I can’t remember a thing. I’m sure there was a villain in the book, probably a woman, who practiced dark arts on a dark hill, so evil she wasn’t human. In the story of my life there is a hill that tamely rises above the field. We sledded there in winter. In spring our bikes wheeled down the hill dangerously. I walked on the hill this summer tamely, carefully, slowly, alongside my mother. It isn’t hard to say what had brought us there. We were old and middle-aged in the knife-like summer air. Slowly and tamely we walked and I remembered the book. It was called —Julie and John? I wanted another look. So what was the title? And was it an allegory? A Catholic one? (It was a Catholic school.) That would ruin the story. A story is only good if it’s made up but convinces you it’s true. Even better if one of the characters is someone who could be you. How else do you know who you are? I once asked an old strange friend: You only know you’re the person who’s with the people you love, in the end.