KATHLEEN McCLEARY

Most people want to “make a difference,” to work at something that gives meaning not only to their own lives, but to others. Doctors, nurses, firefighters, teachers, preachers, etc.: They do work that matters. But I’m here to testify that one of the people who made the biggest difference in my life was a personal shopper.

A year ago, my father fell ill suddenly and died an hour before I boarded a plane to see him. The week following his death was awful—my mother was hospitalized (she’s fine now), my brother and I both came down with the stomach flu, it rained ceaselessly. I’ve never felt as battered by life as I did that week. Then on Thursday—with services planned for Sunday—I realized I had a suitcase full of jeans and t-shirts and sweaters. I hadn’t packed for a funeral.

My dad at my brother’s wedding

My husband offered to bring anything I needed from home, but the one black outfit I owned was a ten-year-old cocktail dress that showed too much cleavage. I dragged myself out to a store near my parents’ house, where I looked at black dresses, burst into tears, and drove home empty-handed.

I wanted to look good. My father appreciated good-looking women, and believed in looking good for special occasions. He grew up poor—indeed, the first suit he owned was a hand-me-down from a neighbor he wore to his high school graduation—and he was an informal, down-to-earth guy, but he always put effort into his own appearance, from the leather shoes he shined every week to the small flag pin he wore in the lapel of every blazer he owned.

So I made an appointment with a personal shopper. I don’t remember her name. I remember entering the dressing room feeling raw with grief, thin and shaky from my recent bout of flu. The shopper had arranged five or six outfits for me to try on, right down to the jewelry and shoes. She helped me into and out of clothes, searched the floor for different styles and sizes, and found jackets and sweaters to go with every outfit, in case the church was cold. She brought a box of Kleenex. At last I found a black dress I loved and felt lovely in, and a pair of dark red shoes.

I wore the outfit when I delivered my father’s eulogy, and when I sat in the front row of the church with one arm around my mother, and when I shook hands and hugged the people who came to the reception after the funeral. I looked great. Dad would have been proud.

So personal shopper, wherever you are, you made a difference. Thank you.

I gave birth to my youngest daughter stone cold “sober,” so to speak—without pain medication, not even an aspirin. I don’t recommend this; it was simply something I wanted to do. It was important to me because I was 37 and I’d had several miscarriages and I knew this was the last time I’d give birth. I wanted to know every moment of it.

I was thinking about this because yesterday was said daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and I took her and four of her friends out to dinner to celebrate. She’s a delight and she’s chosen her friends well; they’re all smart, thoughtful, funny, intriguing, hardworking young women. Yet throughout the evening they all were involved with their phones—texting, tweeting, Facebooking, tumblring—in what has become, really, the standard for social interaction these days. They spent as least as much time interacting with their phones as they did with each other. It made me sad.

During the four years it took me to research and write this novel about living on a remote island, it’s become something of a family joke that I may actually move us all to such a place. I’ll find one of my daughters stretched out on the couch watching “The Kardashians” or still awake at one a.m. on a school night texting in bed, and I’ll say, “That’s it! We’re moving to THE ISLAND.”

Living in a remote, less-plugged-in place (I’m not sure there’s anyplace that’s truly unplugged any more) appeals to me for the same reason drug-free childbirth appealed to me. When you give birth without drugs, there’s no way to pay attention to anything but your body and what it’s doing, and I mean full attention. And I’d like to pay full attention to my life—something I often don’t do because I’m blogging ☺ or texting or facebooking or driving or multi-tasking. It’s hard to give birth without drugs; it hurts. But, for me at least, it was also glorious. I wonder if a less-plugged-in life might feel much the same.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing novels is naming my characters.

My books are peopled with characters bearing names I would have given my children, had I borne a dozen instead of just two: Louisa, Sara, Quinn, Sam, Matt, Lila, Joanna, and Georgia, the protagonist of my work-in-progress. (For the curious, my real-life children are Gracie and Emma.)

I also choose names I wish I’d had throughout my life: Susannah, Kate, Ellie. (Kathleen is a fine name, but I guarantee you any “Kathy” you meet was born in the 1950s. I was born barely a month before the ‘50s were over, and I’d rather be a Kate.)

Some names I pick because they have a sentimental meaning for me. For years I’ve called one of my daughters “Betty” as a nickname (much to her chagrin), after an old Dentyne commercial from the 1970s in which a guy chewed some gum and then said “Hellooooooo Betty” to the beautiful girl who walked in the door. Betty (in A SIMPLE THING) may be my favorite character of any I’ve written.

Finally, I search out unusual, quirky names to fit unusual characters, or just because it’s fun. I would never name my kids after mountains, but one of my characters names his twin sons Hood and Baker after two of the peaks in the Cascades. A character in my work-in-progress is a very strait-laced, organized, rational woman whose only eccentricity is the unusual names she gives her children: Wren, Rockett, and Magee. The funny thing is once I’ve named them, the characters begin to take on lives of their own, living in their names, becoming those names.

It’s my Adam moment. And I love it.

[NOTE: I wrote this essay a couple years ago in honor of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I’m re-posting it again here as I launch my new website because loving to read books is what got me here.]

True confessions: I was once a nerd. At least, by eighth-grade standards. In fact, I was a kid who loved to read and spent large chunks of time holed up reading, escaping the angst of adolescent life through the pages of books. (Please note, however, I did NOT wear glasses.)

The summer before eighth grade my family moved from Connecticut to Michigan. Which meant I was the new kid, with braces, who knew no one and had nothing to do until school started. And I mean really nothing to do. But our public library was six blocks away and it was air-conditioned and sometimes had snacks.

I don’t remember exactly what I read that summer. I’m guessing it included some Judy Blume; some Mary Stewart, whose historical fiction and romance novels were favorites then; as well as Booth Tarkington, whose Penrod books my Dad loved. I’m sure I re-read Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. I know I read Immortal Queen by Elizabeth Byrd, and became temporarily obsessed with Mary, Queen of Scots.
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