Lindsay Edmunds 2004

Pennsylvania is where it all began for me. I was born here, in a hospital that later was turned into a beer factory, and I am living here again, after spending most of my adult life elsewhere. Pennsylvania also was where I was launched on my lifetime enthusiasm for Russ's books, when I checked a copy of Turtle Diary out of a semi-rural library in the middle of the state.

So it felt right to take my 2004 SA4QE quotation to the semi-rural library in Peters Township, Pennsylvania, where I now live. It is from Turtle Diary, of course.

This lovely quotation, about the healing power of a good relationship, has always been one of my favorites:

I didn't know how lonely I'd been until the loneliness stopped. Now when I looked at my flat it seemed to have been cleared of invisible wires criss-crossed in patterns of pain that had been there for years, I saw myself in days past, years past, stepping carefully and trying to keep my balance. There were the kitchen, the bathroom, the sitting-room, the bedroom, the spare room. There were the books, the drawing-table, the typewriter, Madame Beetle, the clutter, all the spaces and places where I stood or sat or lay down, all the things that I touched and used in my daily effort to piece together an eggshell life from broken fragments. George had given me so much that even if there came a time without George I could bear it now and not step carefully nor build my broken eggshell with mad patience. He hadn't done anything special, it was simply his way of being.

from Turtle Diary