Lindsay Eland - Middle Grade Author

Buzz was our first dog.

We lived in Punxatawney, Pennsylvania when we got our first family dog–a border collie, springer spaniel mutt that we named Maxwell Buzby (after the Beatle’s song) and shortened to just Buzz. I remember I was in first grade and had just gotten out of school when I first peered over the seat in our station wagon and saw his little puppy face looking up at me.

He was a good dog. He barked insistently at these red snoopy mittens my sister’s and I had, he always held the leash in his mouth when we went on a walk, and he peed on our Christmas tree one year.

Buzz died eighteen years after that afternoon in the station wagon—after I had graduated high school and college, gotten married, moved to Colorado, and had kids of my own. My dad buried him under a rock on his favorite hike up in Bear Meadows State Forest and we all cried at the loss.

Buzz was as much a part of the family as any of us and he’s there, in the background, of almost all of the memories I have of growing up.

We have a dog of our own now named Cowboy. He’s a big, oafy Weimeraner with floppy ears, a stumpy tail, and a deep gruff bark. We adopted him from a rescue when he was two, mud on his coat, and a few of his ribs showing. He’d been caught as a stray when he was young, then adopted into two different homes in two years only to be given up both times.

He came into our family with his own personality, hang-ups, issues, and baggage…but he’s fit in perfect cause we like his personality, can understand his hang-ups, laugh at some of his issues, and relate to the baggage…since we all have our own set of suitcases we cart around through life with us.

Cowboy gets nervous in new places, he hates being left behind, he has an obsessive hatred towards foxes, loves to ride in the car, abhors the rain, barks at the words “here kitty-kitty” and “superdog,” he loves being babied, and hefts his 75 lb self onto the couch and curls up every time we leave without him…we know this cause he leaves a nice indentation in the cushions.

Sometimes I think about what his life must’ve been like before us. Where he got the scar on his left leg, and what it must’ve been like to not understand why you were dropped off at a shelter two times before you found a home.

But good old Cowboy is a part of our family now just as much as the rest of us and I smile to think of all the memories my kids will have of him when they’re older and he passes away.

And hopefully that baggage he’s carrying around–the one that makes him nervous and upset about being left behind–feels a little bit lighter for him every day.

And there’s not really a point to this post…just some thoughts on those creatures that we take into our home and become a part of our family in so many ways.

But for all the animal-loving middle grade readers and adults out there that love dogs as much as I do, here’s some books that I’ve loved reading over the years and more recently.

Sounder by William H. Armstrong

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Dog Lost by Ingrid Lee

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Dicamillo

A Dog’s Life by Ann M. Martin

Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles

And if you are ever thinking about adopting a dog or cat into your family, go to your local animal shelter or rescue, or visit The Humane Society website to learn more on adopting.

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio as were my older sister and younger sister. We lived in a little white house in Marimont only a few blocks away from Betsy and Rubble and Muzzy and PapaGil…four of my most favorite people growing up, and still. I don’t remember living in Marimont. I don’t remember the suffocating Ohio heat, or any of our walks down to the corner drug store, and I don’t remember what our house looked like except for the few pictures that we have–my sister and I on the brown wooden deck, my blue dress, the water from the sprinkler spraying behind me. We moved away from Marimont when I was two–away from Betsy and Rubble and Muzzy and PapaGil, and the brown wooden deck and the sprinkler.

And though I don’t remember living there, my memories of going back and visiting are so thick with sweetness and fondness that I sometimes feel like I’m back. And I don’t want to leave.

Feeling like I’m back at their house, sitting in the sunroom, waking Besty and Rubble up as early as we could, walking down to Graters for ice cream and The Villager for trinkets, making faces at Hank in the window of his office and then going in and watching his magic tricks, listening to Edna hum when she cleaned the house.

When I was young, I hated the thought of leaving it all behind. So, while my dad packed the car and my mom gave hugs all around, I’d secret myself away and take off my shoes one at a time. Then I’d hide them somewhere where I was sure no one would find them—underneath a bed, behind boxes in a closet, under a chair. And though it never delayed our departure long, the search for them did give me a few precious minutes, that were well worth the raised eyebrows of my dad and my mom’s gentle scolding.

And now when I remember the memories of visiting Betsy and Rubble and Muzzy and PapaGil and Marimont, I still don’t want to leave.

I wish that somehow, right now in this moment, that I could hide my shoes away and stay in the memories a few precious minutes longer.

As many of you know, my five-year-old daughter got the top of her index finger cut off in a door hinge this past Sunday. To keep the story short and less gruesome (though Isaac, my second, thought the coolest part of everything was that the police found the tip later on), let’s just say that I discovered three things:

1. I’m not very good in trauma-esque situations

2. I’m so glad I didn’t try and go into nursing like I was contemplated in High School

3. Humans are  filled to the brim with beautiful resilience

The doctors were unable to reattach the tip of my daughters finger for multiple reasons, but her doctor is able to give her a slightly shorter, though normal looking finger.

How?

They sutured her finger into a flap of skin from her thumb and bandaged it up. In this way, her index finger will literally begin the process of re-growing itself.

Upon hearing this, I couldn’t help but be floored with amazement at the awesomeness of ourselves as human beings.

We were created and born with resilience sewn inside us. A resilience that somehow knew that every day of living we may stumble, we will hurt, and we will be broken and shattered, but that inside of us is resilience so breathtaking it startles and floors us with amazement.

We have the ability to grow after tragedy, heal after wounds, restore after brokenness.

Once more I am amazed at life!

I like waking up early.

When the mountain behind my house is just a silouette and it’s still dark in the forest behind our house except for the flutter of movement from a chipmunk or the darting of birds flapping from branch to branch.

I like the quietness and peace of morning. The stillness of the house that is so loud that I can hear ever creak in the floorboards and the rustle of the leather couch when I sit down.

It’s a beautiful calm right before my day begins.

Because ever so slowly my kids start to rub their eyes awake, my husband yawns, the shower starts, and the sun fills all the dark cracks in the forest with light.

I remember the first day of school in fourth grade. My sisters and I walked up the long, steep sidewalk to Fairmont Elementary which was nestled in old trees right on the edge of the small town. The High School football games had been held in the small stadium right beside the school and it was only a five minute walk to my dad’s dentist office. I remember it was a nice, cool walk on most mornings to and from our small duplex on West Hamiliton.

I remember wanting a best friend so badly as I walked up the hill that morning. And I’d find her today, I knew it.

And I did.

Her name was Michael Inspektor and she and her family had just moved to town from Israel only weeks before.

That’s right, I picked the girl who didn’t know a word of English to be my best friend.

I remember watching her on that first day and feeling a little bit sorry and a little bit fascinated at her standing and saying her name in a quiet accented voice, in the classroom where she knew no one and had no idea what they were saying.

I remember raising my hand to volunteer to walk her to the ELS room, though being new myself, I had no idea where it was either. But we made it to the little room where I dropped her off and turned to go back to class. And I remember smiling at her and her tentative smile back.

“I met my best friend today,” my mom remembers me saying after school.

And for the rest of the school year, Michael learned English really well and I found myself copying her broken accent. I even learned a few Hebrew words and phrases from her and her family and started saying, “Shalom” to people. We wrote notes to each other in class, sat side-by-side at lunch, made up songs and sang them into the tape recorder, laughing at our attempts. I remember visiting her family’s apartment in Nittany Gardens, laughing at her younger brother Yeul’s tantrums and running from her older brother Boaz’s tricks. On the weekends, we’d go to the dollar store in the mall with my mom and pick each other out presents and it never mattered to me that it was my own money that we both used. We exchanged best friend necklaces, and held hands everywhere we went. I got a Jewish star, she a Christian cross.

Best friends.

Michael moved away after that fourth grade year, and I remember how devastated I was and how much we wrote to each other but how awkward talking on the phone was. I saw her once after that, but it’s been almost seventeen years now. I heard at one time that she went back to Israel to serve in the army.

But I wonder where she is now. If she’s doing well and remembers that fourth grade year with the fondness that I do.

And I had other dear best friends throughout my lifetime and even still, but thinking about that fourth grade year at Fairmont Elementary is like thinking of that promise of a rainbow after the storm. Or a brilliant flash of light that was there for one brief moment in time and then quietly flickered off.

But not completely…never completely.

Because I still remember the rainbow promise of that year, the brilliant flash has not gone all the way out.

Yan, very graciously, asked it I’d like to do a guest post for her Monday Mysteries, and of course, I said, “YES!”

Check out my guest post here and don’t forget to answer my questions to be elegible to win some cool stuff! Just click here! 

I did an interview with my fellow critique group member! Check out her blog and don’t forget to comment! Just click here!

I did a guest post on author Chelsea Campbell’s blog! She’s the author of Renegade X coming out in the spring with Egmont USA! Check it out!

I have been to India twice.

Seen the beautiful smiles, gazed at the vibrant colors, tasted the spicy food, felt the drenching heat.

A country so breathtaking and a people so hospitable and wonderful, I felt like family.

I have beheld the gut-wrenching poverty, the heaviness of starvation, the hovering of death, the abandonment of babies.

A country so heartbreaking and a people hanging onto strands of hope.

I have felt the wind blowing against my face with my head out of a speeding rickshaw, out a bustling train.

I have held onto the narled beautiful hands of an old woman, held small babies close, close, close.

So close I felt like my heart and my world would expand so much that  it would burst inside me.

How I love that country, with all of it’s contradictions: the beauty with death, the smiles with tears, the color with the poverty.

It takes your breath away and sweeps your heart inside it.

Picture a little boy about eight years old. He has brown hair and deep brown eyes that are always glistening and sparkling with mischief. He has a wide smile…usually.

But not right now.

He stomps into his room, shutting the door hard enough to make his point but not hard enough to get yelled at for disrespect. He falls onto his bed because life isn’t fair, and life is never fair for an eight-year-old boy with three older sisters and an eye for mischief.

This little boy is angry.

So angry he picks up his pencil and draws a small picture of a wolf on his wall right by his bed. It’s a black, angry, snarling wolf that looks like the wolf  he remembers seeing on The Never Ending Story. He draws it perfectly and sighs. It’s just how he feels, down to drooling teeth.

But this eight-year-old boy soon forgets about how angry he was and about his drawing of the wolf on his wall right next to his bed because eight-year-old mischievous boys can’t stay mad forever even if life isn’t fair.

Later that night, he crawls into his bed and the light is turned out by loving hands with a whispered prayer. He smiles, the taste of dessert on his lips because life is sometimes fair for an eight-year-old boy.

But then he sees and remembers the wolf in the dark…right next to his head.

He’s terrified.

Turning his head away from the drawing he closes his eyes, but still sees his drawing in his mind, snarling out at him.

So he turns on the light and scratches at the drawing with an eraser, trying to delete it forever. But the faint outline of the wolf remains.

My husband, now thirty, was that little boy that drew a wolf on his wall with a pencil and was terrified of it long afterward. He still remembers all the details, and he (obviously) can laugh about it now.

And would it have been better if someone had told him his fear wasn’t real? That it was just a drawing and not to be so silly or childish?

No, it wouldn’t.

We as writers cannot explain away the fear that children from four to fifty-five may have.

Because we all have to face the wolf drawing alone. We have to explore the fear, take it on, live through it and then realize on our own, that it’s just a pencil drawing on the wall by your bed.