Ellen Herrick

Author of The Sparrow Sisters

I Have No Elf on a Shelf

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XmasXtreeX2015

 

My children are grown now so we missed the Elf on a Shelf extravaganza. And, no I am not sorry. Not that we didn’t have our own, certainly less KGB, elf tradition. It began with my father. But really, it began with his five sisters and three brothers on a tobacco farm in 1930s North Carolina. There wasn’t a lot of money in this big family but there was a lot of love. The older children looked out for the younger right down to making sure the magic and mystery of Christmas, elves and all, was never forgotten. They are all gone now; my father was the last. But, they left me with a lasting love of the season and an unshakeable belief in the power of family love.

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The End is Nigh

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kid gloves

It is a fact that I tend toward melancholy.  This is not to be confused with having a sentimental streak.  THAT I do not.  At our recent yard sale—which nearly killed me and several of the shoppers—I all but threw merchandize (including vintage linen and quilts, 60-year old, pristine kid gloves, silver plate whiskey sour muddlers and a set of library steps) at the milling crowd.  “Take it,” I screamed, “Just get it out of here!”  When a particularly creepy man asked us if there was more to see inside the house I almost told him “Yes, just go in there and strip the joint!”

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Look Homeward

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I have had a house guest for the past ten days.  This is not the best situation for me.  I am a solitary type and when there are others around, even my husband or child, for more than a bit I become slightly frantic.  Claustrophobia grips me and my temper is short, my speech terse and unloving.  In this small house anyone but a hobbit would find themselves shrinking into a corner at the press of bodies in the kitchen, the trail of shoes at the foot of the stairs, the untidy aspect of every single room.

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I Do Believe in Faeries, I Do, I Do.

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I have been reading a lot of books about faeries and shape shifters lately. I read a lot of books, period.  But, you knew that about me.  Since my daughter Emma became a more eager reader in the last couple of years I have taken up Young Adult fiction.  No, that’s not true.  I have rediscovered that kind of fiction and I am terribly grateful to Emma for that.  Right now, there is a lot of crud filed away under Young Adult, a lot of scary, ugly, angry stuff in those books.  But, there is magic, too.  There’s the real kind, faeries and wizards and talking animals, and there is the more subtle kind, those words written by a grownup, a mother or a father perhaps, that so perfectly capture a voice (theirs, maybe, their own voice remembered) that both Emma and I say “Yes, that is exactly how it feels!”  Exactly how it still feels.

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>Home

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I have been on the Cape for a week.  It is the only constant in our lives.

After 16 years in London we are moving back to America.  Or not.  Both my sons will be in college by September, my daughter will be in eighth grade.  But where?  If my husband finds a job in London, to replace the old job in London, we will stay.  Or not.  If he finds a job in Boston, we will move.  Or not.  I am a gifted juggler: kids, house, school, writing, chainsaws, bowling balls, random fruit.  But this?  Stay, go, England, America, Library Science degree, novel.  I am usually the commando commit girl.  See it, size it up, do.  This change changed me.  I don’t know what scares me more; making a decision or floating in this limbo until I forfeit the right to make the decision at all.

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