Katherine, whose parents were wealthy enough to afford the best doctors of the period, spent years of her childhood strapped to a bed due to a childhood illness that could leave her dwarfed and hunchbacked. Even after such a severe and extended treatment, she never grew larger than a ten-year-old.
When she emerged from her horizontal position, she suddenly had to find her place in the world and seek ways to transform her life. Treated with cruelty by some, pity by others, she had a strong, resilient, and even humorous way of being in the world.
As I slowly read these pages, underlining hundreds of lines and making notes in the margins, I relate to her inner life in spite of the gulf between her outer life and my own.
After a few years at Radcliffe, she chooses to buy herself a house--nothing like the diminutive house she'd planned to buy. Her fantasies and dreams for her house parallel her dreams for who she wants to be.
Houses are often metaphors for the self--owning one, finding one that fits, and transforming a plot of land, trees and walls into home (The writer of the Afterword, Nancy Mairs, wrote Remembering The Bone House, a book that I still remember reading one Sunday afternoon twenty or more years ago.)
All stories matter, but they don't always matter to the people we think they will matter to. Sometimes we question the value of what we have to say and whether or not it is worth the time we devote to it.
I'm so glad that Kitty Hathaway wrote this book. It matters enormously to me--a woman whose life is, on the surface, nothing like hers but who can't read it without a pen in my hand to underline all the places where her words capture exactly what's true for me.
If she were still living--in Paris or Maine or New York--I would write her a letter right now and thank her for this book, just as I once wrote such a letter to Nancy Mairs.
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