Two little stories

about Bea and Harriet

This was another busy week, with a visit to campus (all the way from India!) by the magnificent writer and teacher, Smriti Ravindra. Smriti is a graduate of our MFA, but completed the program a few years before I was hired, so I didn’t have the opportunity to know her until this year, when her brilliant debut novel, The Woman Who Climbed Trees, was published by Harper Collins. I fell in love with this stunning, quite singular book (there are now signed copies at Quail Ridge Books—trust me, it would make a great gift!), and we invited her to join us for a week of readings, talks, and workshops.

The biggest day of the week was Wednesday, and Bea joined me at NC State for a full day: we had a campus tour with a high school class, a reading and sharing of their poetry with Smriti, and a writing session in the tropical plants greenhouse (maybe our favorite place on campus).

All leading up to the main event: a reading in Caldwell Lounge by Smriti. Bea has heard me talk about Smriti and her novel for months (it takes quite a while to get visa paperwork in order), and like many people across our campus visited by Smriti (Honors and Arts Village students, MFA students, and more) she was excited for the reading (and, to be honest, for the delicious chocolate cake that was to follow).

Only one problem: the microphone was locked away in a drawer. In all the hubub, none of us organizing the reading had collected the key! By the time we realized that we didn’t have it, it was after 5PM (the reading was at 7:30), and everyone who could help was gone for the day. We called campus facilities, the on-campus locksmith, but no one could help! Our friend Chris Tonelli, who works in the Libraries and co-owns So and So Books, brought a microphone, but it wouldn’t connect to our speakers. Soon it was time: 7:30.

The good news: the reading was packed, all the way to the end of the lounge, a beautiful room that looks out on the Court of Carolina. The bad news: the reading was packed. There was no way that all the people in that huge room would be able to hear Smriti read from the novel. But the drawer was locked tight.

“Mommy, do you have a bobby pin?” Bea asked. I did, and handed it to her. She worked the lock for a while before concluding that the pin was too short. “Does anyone have a pocket knife?”

Chris had a multitool, and he handed it to Bea while we looked around the room, fuller by the minute. Watching students and faculty take seats, by now, on the floor, I felt awful that this event, so anticipated, would be compromised by a simple mistake!

“I got it!” Bea yelled, popping open the drawer. We pulled out the mic, and soon we were listening to Smriti as she read from the captivating prologue, followed by two gorgeous Bollywood-infused sections. Smriti even sang a little, and answered questions from an audience that, by the end of the reading, was quite in the palm of her hand.

Bea said she didn’t want to retell this story for the FTT because, by now, she’d “told it enough times” (how un-Boggs-like, or maybe un-Haynes-like of her). But she credits years of reading Nancy Drew mysteries for knowing how to pick a lock—or maybe just knowing that she could. It seems appropriate that it was reading that helped her save a reading.

Meanwhile, back at home, Richard was auditioning for Jeopardy! over Zoom. The audition was supposed to happen during the day, while the girls were at school, but it had been moved to the evening, and since we were at the reading Harriet was at home with her dad. He turned on a movie in the living room and told her, “Please don’t interrupt me unless it’s an emergency.”

At the end of the hourlong audition (which went well! fingers crossed!), Harriet came up to him and put a tiny white object in his hand. It was a tooth! Her first tooth, lost during the hour, which she rinsed off and saved and apparently did not consider an emergency.

Richard and I were both, of course, really proud of our girls. Not just because they both helped us in unexpected ways, but because they did so independently.

We are of course proud of them every day—when they bring home school folders full of writing and math and artwork, when they get good reports from school or feed the cats without being asked. But when I think about what makes me most proud of my daughters, it’s these two categories: First, when I observe them or hear of them being kind to others, especially others who really need their kindness. Second, it’s when they do something so independent and self-possessed I had no idea they could even manage it. Picking a lock, handling a first lost tooth.

I don’t think proud quite expresses how I feel. I’m amazed by them, and grateful to be their mom. I know that the high school students we toured campus with, all immigrants and refugees learning English, have moms and grandmas (some all the way back in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador) who feel exactly the same way about their children, studying and dreaming and working in the United States.

It’s really the best feeling, if a little bittersweet—to know that someone you held when they were almost helpless, now isn’t so helpless at all.

Bea, who locked the microphone back into its drawer once the reading was over.

How about you, Frog Troublers? What has amazed you lately about your kids and grandkids?