Miracle on 10th Street

I have a big writer's-crush on Madeline L'Engle. It started when I first read A Wrinkle in Time in gradeschool and identified with the main character, Meg. The more of Madeline's work I read, the more I want to read.

I picked up Miracle on 10th Street a few years ago. It's not very thick -- about the width of a good-sized magazine. Unlike most of her work, this is also not one complete story. Instead, this is a sneak-peak into the author's journals and random writings on Christmas from the 1970s to the late 1990s.

The entry for which the collection is named "Miracle on 10th Street" tells the story of the Christmas season when Madeline and her husband were afraid that their daughter would be diagnosed with leukemia. The family was living in a small apartment in New York City on 10th street at the time (downstairs from Leonard Bernstein). While they were waiting for the test results to come in, the family tried to keep their spirits up.

"I rocked my child and told her stories and prayed incoherent prayers. We turned on the lights of the Christmas tree, lit a fire in our fireplace, turned out all the other lights, and I managed to sing lullabies without letting my voice break, or tears flow. When my husband got home from the theatre [he was an actor] we put her to bed, and we held each other. We knew that the promise has never been safety, or that bad things would not happen if we were good and virtuous. The promise is only that God is in it with us, no matter what it is."

It was still the Christmas season when Madeline received word that her daughter did not have leukemia and the little girl began to recover. She talks about other holidays, though, when the answers to prayers she prayed was "no."

I love this collection -- in fact, I read it every year and find different stories, essays, and poems that appeal to me more that year. Whatever inspires you this holiday season, I hope you have time to enjoy it.