The Secret Garden

When I was in the 6th grade, I won the school library's "Reader of the Year" award. I think that was possibly because I checked out about 3 or 4 books every day from the library and would usually have at least one of them finished by the time school got out. This kind of makes me wonder now just how bad that school must have been that I had so much free time to just sit at my desk and read, but whatever.

My prize was a hardback copy of The Secret Garden, the edition with the lovely Tasha Tudor illustrations. I already had a copy, but the fact is that I won this one, see. And that meant something.

Then in 1993 they did the Warner Brothers film version of the movie and I absolutely fell in love with it. They made England look like this gorgeous magical place, and there were all those sequences where they used time-elapsed photography or whatever to show all the flowers blooming and the really cute little baby lamb being all cute and stuff. As I watched it I thought, "Wow, what it would be like to live in the English countryside and watch it turn all to spring like that. I've really got to get myself over there." This was me at, like, thirteen, mind you.

Only now I am here, and I keep having all these Mary Lennox moments, like when I first noticed the bulbs starting to come up. They're getting ready to flower now, and it's so exciting to check on their progress and to see that spring is on the way. I almost dropped my bags and started weeding the front garden because I could see little green things trying to come up under last year's dead stuff. (It really is too bad about my black thumb. I'm sure that if I could garden, I should be a true proficient.)

Today I was walking home from class and I heard this really pretty bird twittery thing, and I didn't recognize it. (I mean, not that I know all the bird sounds or anything, but lately I've just noticed that there are a lot more bird sounds than there have been. Possibly they're all thawing out now from that flipping Deep Freeze we just had.) So I looked around to see where it came from, and saw my very first English robin, sitting high in the bushes with its pretty red throat, looking just like the one in the film who shows Mary how to get into the secret garden. Also it was singing this really lovely song, which American robins don't actually do, so much. They just tend to hop around like the enormous birds that they are, with their whole "if I don't move then you can't see me" routine.

I did manage to refrain from rushing over to the hedge and beating it with my fists while crying, "Show me the key! Please, show me the key to the garden!"

But I so wanted to.

I will go out with my camera and get pictures of the flowers so we can all have Mary Lennox moments, kay? And if there are people out there who don't know who Mary Lennox is or what The Secret Garden is, please slap yourself and then go to a library and get the book. Or the movie, if you're pressed for time and promise to read the book within the next 6 months.

Posted in: England