This chair came with the lake house we bought in 2000—and when we sold that house in 2004, the chair accompanied us to Maplewood, NJ. It’s not an especially pretty chair, but it’s a comfortable one, and the arm rests are wide enough to hold more than a few glasses. This chair has seen many good movies, like October Sky and Atonement and The Lunchbox. This chair has held many people, old ones, newborns, and every size in between. This chair has watched a lot of CNN and heard its share of viola, trumpet, piano, and french horn practicing, as well as plenty of conversations . . . This chair knows what it takes to keep a family together.

But this year, the time came to part ways, because we needed room for a keyboard, and I wanted to find our chair a happy new home. I posted in a swap room on facebook that this good karma chair could be yours for one dollar. I posted about how well loved this chair was. Somebody messaged me right away saying she wanted it. I gave her my address. She wrote back “got a truck /OTW.” I asked my daughter what that meant. She said “on the way.”

It was Wednesday, July 6, at 9 p.m., the middle of one of the bleakest weeks in American history with the shootings in Dallas, but what happened with my chair was a teeny ray of light that night. We took the chair out of the garage and I sat down, in the dark, on the sidewalk in front of my house, waiting for this person I’d never met. I wondered if I had made a bad choice, giving out my address to somebody on facebook. I thought I might have. She PMed me, six minutes away. I waited.

She didn’t show up, and I wondered if it was a joke. I PMed her: “Where R U?”

She wrote back; she had gotten our house number wrong, so I corrected her. Next I saw two giant round headlights beaming their way up the street. I was nervous. The truck stopped in front of my house. I got out of the chair and went to the driver’s side, hoping my instinct to trust was right. And I looked in the car window at this beautiful lady with the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen.

We loaded the chair in the truck. Turned out she works in a Senior Center in a city closeby, and she wanted the chair for the people who live there. She said, “it’s a beauty.” And she handed me a wadded up one dollar bill. I started laughing, and then we hugged . . .

Just two strangers who got together over a chair.

I have a dear dear friend who used to live in Maplewood, two streets over from me. My son was a plump little baby when we first met, and apparently he inspired her to have a third child too, whom she named Jacques. A few months before he was born my friend asked me to be the godmother. I was honored by the request, and I accepted immediately.

Jacques was born on July 18, which is my birthday too (!).

I don’t have any other godchildren, and I’m not Catholic. This was a brand new thing for me in all sorts of ways, and somehow I got the idea that I was supposed to take Jacques camping, or teach him how to shoot a bow and arrow, or tie knots. I don’t know where this idea came from but there it was, and it left me feeling quite inadequate. I don’t do any of those things, and I’m an indoors person. I admire the color of paint on the walls of a high-ceilinged room as much as someone else admires the Redwood Forest or Grand Canyon.

What did I have to offer this child?

I felt a great responsibility.

On the occasion of his first communion, I flew to Burlington (where he lives now). He and I were going to spend six hours together, just the two of us. I was nervous about what to do with him; I mean I was the godmother and everything. I had to do something he’d remember.

What could I do with him—I was beginning to panic . . .

That’s when I took a deep breath and discarded all of my ideas of what a godmother should be.

That’s when I took a look around . . . at myself.

His mom had picked me, and she hadn’t asked me to become anybody other than who I already was.

We ended up driving to Burlington to visit an artist I know. We ended up playing with a View Master and Magna Doodle and talking for most of the afternoon. We went to the Flying Pig Bookstore and bought some books and stuff. I taught him Yahtzee.

Sometimes it’s hard not to get tripped up by some idea of what you’re supposed to be.

When really all we’re supposed to be is who we are.

Jacques, my gentle boy, thanks for helping me figure that out.

xox

Last fall, a friend was coming to visit us in Maplewood—he’d never been to our house before and he’s always been a little bit hard to please. I eyed up the guest room and decided that the comforter on the bed he’d sleep in didn’t seem quite cozy enough for him, so I ordered a new one, a beautiful deep turquoise quilt; sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to buy something special. The comforter looked so pretty, ready to welcome him.

Until I spilled bleach on it . . . by accident . . .

I was so bummed . . . until I decided to see if I could make it look intentional.

I put the bedspread on the back lawn and threw some more clorox on it—then I threw a little more. The coolest thing happened—it looked like the sea and the sky all at once.

That’s not the only cool thing. I’d planned to get new pillow cases too, so they’d match the new bedspread . . . But the pillows and quilt seemed like they were meant to be together . . .

I asked an artist friend how this could be, how a cotton turquoise quilt could look good with crimson velvet pillows. It didn’t make sense, but the evidence was irrefutable. He said, “Are they the same value?” I understood what he meant, and the answer was yes. These two colors had the same richness, the same saturation, the same depth. That’s all they needed to have in common to be beautiful together.

The other day I went to get this original artwork framed (it’s Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard). The framer pulled out a blue frame and a red frame because Grumpy Bird is blue and his shoes are red. But I chose a green of the same value as the bird.

I think friendships work like this too, but it’s not as easy to see “value” with people as it is with colors, cause it’s inside. It can be shared history or grief or joy; it can be aliveness, openness, or sorrow; it can be integrity or drive; it can be laughter or wit. It can be anything at all . . . it just has to be seen.

And that’s what I want for this holiday—to remember to look for the connections, the inside ones, the ones that are hard to see—big and small—I want to see them better.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

If you have a friend whom you love very much, but that friend doesn’t live near you—I recommend this: take something, anything, from their house to yours when you next visit them, and then use it every day.

I have such a friend. She is 85 years old and lives in Boston. She is an artist. She lives to make things. Her work is full of life.

I live outside New York. I only see her a few times a year, and every time I come home from a visit, I am filled up—with joy, wonder, inspiration.

The first time I took one of her forks I didn’t tell her. Just stuck it in my suitcase.

I wanted to eat from her fork, wanted to stay connected to her and her way of being in the world.

The next time I went to see her, I told her what I’d done. And that I wanted another fork, so I could have an extra.

She said, “Take it!”

And then we went out together, to get a cup of coffee. And she bought us each a golden mug. I use mine every day and I feel like I’m with her and that she is with me. When you find someone like this, grab on and don’t let go. Take their forks if necessary. Buy twin mugs. Do something. Cherish them however you can.

You can be together even though you’re apart.

I believe in the magic of this world.

When I think of summer with my family, I think of the things we do every single year and how I love our traditions, especially our end-of-summer Long Beach Island week.

We’ve been going to LBI for a decade, and every single year, when we head to the family amusement park, I am nervous that the lizard man who gives his reptile presentation on stage every night won’t be there anymore. He is not young, and his voice sounds oily, his affectations so gelled over the years that he could talk about his reptiles in his sleep. But it’s so comforting to walk into the park and see him there again, with his beard and Hawaiian shirt, safari shorts . . . cause he’s made it through another long winter just like we have—cause he’s been doing this forever and he’s still so alive and so in love with his lizards. It’s the first thing I do when I get to the park, check for him.

We were in our LBI rental house when Hurricane Irene came along, watching the storekeepers getting ready, nailing up wooden window covers, spray-painting on the words, “Play Nice, Irene.” We locked up this house and left for home just ahead of the storm. And it was only a year later that we watched on tv as Hurricane Sandy came barreling through our LBI town, to our stores and restaurants and beaches, somehow sparing our house, which is just a few yards from where Sandy did her worst damage. As we rode our bikes down to the tip of the island the next year, there were so many lots with only their stilts left, the houses were gone. There used to be two trailer parks at the very end of the island—one of them disappeared that year. Even now, sand is being pumped onto shore, the beaches being restored.

I’ve watched my family grow up here, making the last wishes of summer year after year, getting a little bigger, a little older, and I’m more grateful each year that we can get to LBI again.

I’m really excited that my first middle-grade novel, Matylda, Bright & Tender, will be published by Candlewick Press in the spring of 2017.

For my middle-grade debut, I decided to use my given name, Holly M. McGhee, rather than my pen name—because the emotions I drew on for this story of two best friends and their leopard gecko came straight from my own life, and this felt like the right time finally to integrate my work life and my writing life.

Everything I’ve learned as an agent has helped me as a writer, and everything I’ve learned as a writer has helped me as an agent, and I’m so grateful for all of it.

xox