Charlotte Zolotow, not my Aunt Dot --- has called me for more than thirty years.

It is not a name I associate with a happy period of my life, although there were happy moments from time to time in it, particularly in its earliest years.
 

But then, happiness, especially when young, does not always serve writers well. 

One undoubtedly happy moment, left. I have always had some tendency towards insomnia, and was probably just thrilled to discover some one else was up at that hour. 

It is almost universally true that writers, at least at some point during their growing up years, are lonely, and feel themselves to be outsiders. Being outsiders, they develop those habits of observation, thinking, and questioning which eventually inform their writing. (Like many of us, I tend to goof around and not show the serious and interior/outsider side of myself when a photograph is being taken. But a long-ago friend, Vernon Tucker, caught it in this picture taken circa 1973, when I would have been 19 or 20. I still wore glasses.)

How they fry their ice cream

I remember being quite exuberant, outgoing, friendly, at times very talkative and at ease, when I was a very little girl. When we drove on toll-ways, I always asked the toll-takers, "What's your name?" (Some of them told me). 

I especially loved to make or hear jokes. My mother says she once caught me leaning out the upstairs window, talking to some housepainters at work on our house. "Painters," I was calling to them, "Please give us a nice polka-dot trim!" Once my Grandpa Louis sent me a letter in which he complained that in his new California apartment, all the ladies liked to exchange recipes. "Oh, well," he wrote me, "What do I care how they fry their ice cream?" I thought this was hysterically funny. (As an adult, I also wonder at the amazing ability he must have had to know what a five- or six-year-old grandchild he saw only occasionally would find so funny, and I regret that I did not know him better.

Grandpa, Louis J. Shapiro, my mother's father, is pictured above.

A novelistic kingdom

But at times I was quite content to play alone for hours. I had an elaborate, novelistic kingdom of dolls, centered around an orphanage. Each doll had a distinct personality; loyalties and friendships changed and developed from day to day. I was aghast when I learned that other girls "played dolls" with each other. How could that be? It was so private and internal. How could you ever explain to someone else all you knew about your dolls' lives? What if they wanted to make your dolls behave in ways foreign to their personalities? 

Once I learned to read and write, I had another two activities perfect for solitude. I  spent hours by myself doing these things gladly, too.

Crescent at four or five, above. Now, is that child solitary or outgoing? I still can't tell!

Solitude or Sociability? 

Thus, from the first it seems to me that I interacted  intensely with other people, in a very social, outgoing manner, or quietly (and just as happily, if not more so) went my own way into a dreamy, thoughtful, private, quiet world. There was little middle ground. 

Maurice and I are pictured together, above; he was age 42, I was 4. 

Oddly enough, now that I think about it, these themes and questions also emerged in several of my books: Katie in the Morning, Bat in the Dining Room, and even This is the Bread I Baked for Ned.

To be continued...