Like Velvet Brown in National Velvet, we dreamed of horses.
We dreamed of horses and we found them and brought them home. Just like Velvet’s, the best one was a piebald – a tall white horse with gray spots, like a child’s pull toy.
I had a big and beautiful house then, deep among the trees, that had once belonged to a veterinary surgeon. A horrible thing had taken place there. Once, while the owner was on vacation, the pipes had broken and the water backed up, drowning the horses in their stalls when there was nowhere else for the sludge to go.
We didn’t think of it as an omen.
Last night, we said goodbye to our girls.
A lovely woman took them, and will love them, and deserves them. We spent six years trying to figure out how to fit enough love and care for them into our lives, as those lives grew to include – between my friend Pam and me – first five, then eight, then nine kids. I was much worse. With travel and the writing that supports my family and me, I was unable to give the horses the time Pam gave them. My kids weren’t, to my regret, interested. At one time, we had four horses: Our two Clydesdales, a quarter horse and a thoroughbred with, someone once said, the personality of a serial killer.
The quarter horse mare died, in a sad freak accident, of a ruptured aorta.
The serial killer went to someone who could change her ways.
No one wanted Maggie and Tally, and in truth, we didn’t want to give them up.
But we had to sell the big beautiful house and now motorcycles sit in the big, beautiful barn. Maggie and Tally were living in makeshift quarters. We just didn’t have the money, or especially the time, to keep their manners up and solid.
On a winter’s day, six years ago, we met Maggie, a big, beautiful black Clydesdale whose given name was Black Magic. We didn’t know then that the phrase “horse trader” applied to her owner, who left out the vet records that showed Maggie’s foundering and subsequent foot and back problems. She said only, “She’s never been alone. I hope she doesn’t die.”
That was when I spotted the rocking horse. A full Clydesdale, Lady Natichia was also a blue roan, and not much use for traditional Clydesdale purposes. And so we asked how much that little weanling would cost. When she came home for the first time, Tally was actually able to kick with all four legs at the same time. My dog, then a puppy, lost four teeth and I learned the true definition of a pain in the rear as a result.
She became the gentlest of ladies, seventeen hands tall and so sweet she ran toward us and laid her great head on our shoulders.
Since Pam’s eldest and my two younger sons were born, the horses became a raw subject, a huge issue between Pam and me. We’re the best of friends, virtually sisters, and we co-owned the horses. There were green days when we were certain that it would all work out. We’d make time where no time existed. Pam worked full time and was busy with two young children. I had old and young children, and barely time for a little sorely-needed exercise. Sleep was hard to find for both of us.
And it was as Velvet Brown’s father, the butcher, said. The beautiful doe-eyed creatures simply ate and produced fragrant piles of what was left over and ate more, and needed medicine and bits of saddlery and were innocent and expensive.
Finally, the offer of a kind person was the offer we had to take.
Last night, I fortunately had a pressing appointment and so I could stop by Pam’s barn only for a moment. There they stood, lovely and tall, Maggie fit at 20 years old and Tally a grown mare, their halters with their brass name tags on their heads. Embarrassed, I kissed each of them on the nose, though, of course, they hardly knew me any longer.
Now they’re gone.
The pasture we often wished was empty is, except for Pam’s goats.
But last night I dreamed of horses, as I knew I would, because people, unlike horses, remain foolish forever.

Am I outnumbered?
You bet I am.
Even as I sit here, trying to write a chapter, sew up a slew of holes in a slew of jeans and put the finishing touches to this blog, my son Will is in the downstairs bath, announcing to his friend Carter, “I can see your butt! And it’s disgusting!”
Not my kind of bathroom chat, if there is such a thing.
My girls and their friends (at least at ages 9 and 12) tend to use the bathroom one at a time and without commentary.
Yet I have a husband, five sons and two male dogs – all of whom evidence what I consider unseemly glee in every kind of bodily appurtenance and function, especially emissions therefrom.
When my husband came home not long ago with a particularly grim-looking “natural chewie” for our Saint Bernard pup, he made a circuit of our house asking everyone, “What do you think this is?”
No one could guess.
So filled with glee was he that my husband even took a picture with his camera and sent it to our son at college.
“It’s a bison penis!” he finally announced triumphantly.
Even the dog seemed unnerved.
And yet, more times than I can count during a week, I say things like, “Chewing a stick does not replace brushing your teeth!” or “No, you can’t threaten to pee on anyone!” In fact, there are few other contexts in which I can imagine saying things like that at all.
But that is the reality of living with sons.
They don’t have to pretend that they like things that would make you or me cringe; they really do like things that would make you or me cringe. They really love anything that sounds like flatulence. They really love anything that refers to their nether regions. They don’t even mind examining and comparing dog poop sizes and contents. It’s what makes their wheels turn.
They love their new things. Then they set out on a concerted and devoted effort to bust them, crack them, disembowel or otherwise make them stop doing what they were built to do. They jump on cardboard blocks. They bite high-bouncing balls. My boys seem genuinely dismayed and even distraught when what they set out to destroy actually ends up… well, destroyed.
There are great things about having sons. Some of the things they do that are nuts are actually also funny. Once, when he was little, my son Dan kept resolutely dipping the petals of a daisy in milk before eating them.
Finally, I asked him, “WHY are you doing that?”
And he answered patiently, “Otherwise, I can’t stand the taste of the petals.”
There’s always the chance, of course, that they could outgrow the need to stomp, point, growl, gurgle and burp.
My husband’s only 42.
If you want to know more (and can handle more toilet jokes) read my piece from a recent Wondertime magazine on http://wondertime.go.com/parent-to-parent/article/where-the-boys-are.html
I write a column in Wondertime called The Long View, (I didn't name it) which delicately hints at the truth that it seems I've been a mother since I was born.

It's still a month before publication but teen readers are beginning to weigh in on ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN and I'm absolutely in heaven about what they have to say!
Here are some early ratings from "previewers" who must all be very intelligent young women...or else I'm just one lucky author. ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN means a great deal to me, in part because I have a beloved friend who has been in a persistent coma for more than a year now, and whose condition is much more severe than Maureen's ever was. Sharing these emotions of devastating love and devastating loss helped me begin the long process of healing (which, in some ways, will never end).
Please glance at my web page (www.jackiemitchard.com) and read the blog from last winter called 'Just The Way You Look Tonight.' You'll understand more about where all that understanding began.

Jackie M.

Reader Reviews from FirstLook
A heartfelt story involving two best friends, All We Know of Heaven tells the tale of when one friend has to learn to live without the other. A tragic accident has changed the course of several lives, and an even more devastating mistake muddies the water. The scarily realistic situations, plot, dialogue, and characters make the novel seem more like nonfiction. Readers follow the surviving friend through her recovery gains and setbacks, her love life, and her lessons on how to live after death.
— Hannah (Saint Johns, FL)

All We Know of Heaven is, simply, a great book. The detailed writing, coupled with the in-depth exploration of the characters’ feelings, caught my eye immediately. Jacquelyn Mitchard obviously has a talent for writing, and for a first-time reader of one of her books, I definitely cannot wait to read more.
— Haley (Pittsboro, IN)

Enchanting, addictive, as soon as you read the first page you become enthralled as it takes you into another world. It’s like you become the characters and feel what they feel, react and show emotions as they do. You can feel the emotion in each line, and it completely drags you into the world of death and sadness, love and loss, and you can’t escape until you reach the end. Even then you won’t want to put it down. I think it was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
— Amanda (Britton, MI)

I love this book! Once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. It is such a touching story. I actually started crying in class as I was reading it.
— Amanda (Kandiyohi, MN)

An intense novel which was unique and profound. Memorable story that was meaningful and unforgettable.
— sharon (albuquerque, NM)

There are books that make people laugh, cry, and think, but there are only some books that can make you week for the happy and the sad or that can touch your life in a way that makes you look at the world differently. This was the book that did that to me. The message was strong and you can bet that I will have my friends, teachers and family read this book because it was that good. I only have one warning for you: have a tissue box ready next to you…make that two!
— Sara (Bloomingdale, IL)

This book is the kind of book you will want to read over and over and over again.
— Jazmin (culpeper, VA)

This is an outstanding book. It had me standing on my toes the whole time! It is a true story that tells you to never give up hope.
— Abby (west lafayette, OH)

I absolutely could not put this book down. It was a very gripping book, sometimes tragic and sometimes joyful. I could feel the parents’ grief as well as Maury’s pain and frustration. It was a very well written book.
— Monica (Amo, IN)

All We Know of Heaven is an amazing book, telling the story of a girl who survived all odds and made something of herself. It helped me realize that we take the simplest tasks for granted, but they can be a big accomplishment. It also showed how one girl lost everything, and yet, gained so much more.
— Cecelia (Ste.Genevieve, MO)

This is a very moving novel. After reading it, I honestly counted my blessings. We take for granted little things that we are able to do daily, such as feeding and clothing ourselves. This novel is very inspirational and brings to light how thankful we should be for the simple things in life.
— Sheila (Ste. Genevieve, MO)

All We Know of Heaven is a book with a sad beginning, but you can’t put it down. I found myself crying with the characters—from sorrow and from joy—through their struggles to overcome the grief of lost friends, confusion about love, and living up to their own expectations of themselves. The inspiring story had me cheering for the characters the entire time. It really makes you look at your own life and to be grateful for what you have, while realizing that if you put your mind to something, you’ll get there eventually.
— Lynda (Antelope, CA)

This is a great book; I read it in three days. It does a stellar job of portraying the lost friend, and the one who survives becoming a real person again. This book is about hope, trust, love, loss, repairing a life, friendship and romance. Jacquelyn is an amazing writer and deals with the intense topic very well. All We Know of Heaven is a great book, which I think everyone should read.
— Manya (Saxtons River, VT)

We heard it first in the taxi, the wonderful London taxi -- they can turn in the radius of their own length -- on the way to our hotel near Hyde Park.
It was to be the worst storm of the winter, and perhaps of a generation. There were warnings that buildings would be damaged, bits of coastline washed away, trees down and power outages. We had come from our own home, where the total snowfall for the year had reached nearly 100 inches. Surely, this was a mistake.
It was no mistake.
I huddled into my lightweight trench coat. Early spring in London is soggy and gray but not usually torrential. In coming days, I would wish I had gear more suitable for the Himalayas. My trip to meet the people of my amazing new publisher, John Murray, including an amazing editor, Kate Parkin, was a bit dampened, shall we say. As we traveled by train all over northern England for literary festivals given by libraries, we saw fashionable girls in double pairs of pants and green Wellington boots, their umbrellas not only blown inside-out but torn out of their hands entirely. With the help of the publicist, we booked trains that were immediately cancelled and, when we could show up for events, learned that we were staying in quaint hotels with sports fans made surly by the fact that the annual race had been cancelled the day before and they had to spend another night before betting on their favorites.
Among the people who did brave the weather to show up, the favorite question was why I didn't set more books in England.
I didn't quite know how to answer. I love England, but although of English roots on my father's side, I don't know enough about England -- although I got a great plot idea while there, even though my husband kept elbowing me to stop asking about it because he thought I was being too blunt and impolite -- to really "set" stories there.
I asked my reader friend, "Do you only read books set in England?"
She answered, "No, I read books by Janet Evanovitch and Patricia Cornwell."
"But they aren't set in England," I replied.
"I didn't say that they should set their books in England. I said you should," she told me.
And the whole experience took on this sort of wonderful-terrible Alice-in-Wonderland quality. Every time we turned on the television, we heard that the foul weather was going to be targeted exactly on the place we were headed the next day.
We had three suitcases the size of Volkswagens, and every bloke we encountered had a comment about them: "Here for the weekend then?"
"Got the kiddies in there?" "Planning on immigration?"
We didn't know we could have left all but one of the smaller bags at the hotel in London to which we would return -- in the U.S. that would have been tantamount to provoking a federal investigation or, alternatively, throwing the contents from an eighth-floor window. But as we struggled up and down the multiple flights of stairs from train platform to other train platform, I was reminded of the phrase about things being in the saddle and riding mankind -- which I believe did originate with an Englishman.
On the other hand, the few people I met were hardy and hearty, kindly and gentle. I loved being called "love" and "ducks" by total strangers, loved the cheerful attitude that a big pot of tea would fix me right up and, don't bother, the innkeeper would bring it to me. I never encountered the repressed, stiff and chilly English of legend, just people with a great deal of bounce and plenty of philosophy -- who were deeply interested in the outcome of our presidential election and hoped Hillary would win. They were gentle with me and my eccentricities, my bad knees and the toe I sprained (on one of the suitcases). They were charmed by my husband, one of the gentlest souls on earth, and one of those people who can't help slipping into the dialect of whatever person he's with -- be that person from Yorkshire or Jamaica. And so everything that seemed tiresome at the time seems funny in retrospect -- something I'd gladly do all over again.
In the end, the weather and the suitcases, and even the fellow who took off his socks and washed his feet in the next seat on the plane ride home, made for a good story.
There'll always be an England, fortunately. The flowers will bloom and the moors flock with sheep in the heather.
And I'll be back.

In my last blog, you can see just the edge of the chair that nearly ended my marriage.
My daughter is sitting in it. I’m leaning on it, because in that photo, I still have the chair, although for a while, it was the chair or me.
I could say it looks much like any other chair, but that would be a lie and make my husband sound nuts instead of only neurotic. We’re all neurotic, but he’s neurotic about furniture and paint. And for the past three months, we’ve engaged in a war over a mini redecoration that has been more sniper attack than all-out cavalry assault. It has not escaped our children’s notice however. Fortunately, it is not the kind of parental warfare that will scar them for life or even until Wednesday. It has proven to them only what they already know – that their parents have feet of clay and heads of bone.
First, a little history.
Personally, I couldn’t much care less what kind of furniture we have so long as it’s serviceable and comfortable.
My husband couldn’t care more.
It’s not that he has too much time on his hands: Staying home with four young kids and two old ones (and coping with periodic bouts of weirdness from the college kid who lives away from home) keeps him more than occupied. He’s great at it.
But also, he majored it art, which gives him the illusion that, if unleashed, he could create an environment that would have photographers from Coastal Living outside the door, clamoring for a peek. It is sort of like my belief that with a few lessons, I could sing like Kristin Chenoweth. But people need dreams the way they need champagne – not every day but once in a while to add a little sparkle to their days. Neither of us wants to disabuse the other of that dream. My husband puts up with my yowling along with the radio and I put up with the fact that he once tried 13 different paint colors on a wall before choosing the first one he fancied.
Generally.
The redecoration was necessary.
Chris had built us a beautiful house but the living room is as big as a full-sized basketball court. People actually use a room in the basement, the size of a bedroom in a New York apartment, to enjoy games and TV. In part, this has been because being in our “great room” wasn’t so great. It felt like being in entry hall of the Field Museum without the dinosaur. What I’d done was to buy little bitty Euro type couches and chairs that, in this room, looked as inviting and stable as doll furniture. When our family gathered at holidays, we got out ten folding chairs to supplement out things. And then people sat on the floor. It echoed because the rugs were too small and its focal point was a flat-panel TV, which is a really terrific TV except for being the only thing on the wall. The paint (which I chose in a fit of decisiveness after the walls had remained white for a full year) was too light for the size of the room, so what we had was a sort of hollow, uninhabited gourd.
We decided together to buy some substantial, although inexpensive, couches and chairs and make that room a place to gather.
And that was the last thing we decided together.
My husband maintains that he does not change his mind very often. He says it’s more a matter of taking so long to make up his mind that people have the mistaken impression that he’s indecisive. He had not fully committed to those couches when we bought them – so it was not indecision that made him call back and change the order from two couches to a couch and two chairs and then, three days later, back to two couches. It was part of a process of making a decision. Although even the storeowner suggested that my husband repine for a while before making another part of his choice. The designer who had shown us 400 fabric samples before my husband picked out one he thought he could probably live with quit the business and decided to go into health care. Chris was almost sure he could live with the couches and with the two end tables he had ordered, although the thought of the end tables was a constant stressor.
But the crisis was yet to come.
The falling out came when I fell in love with the red chair.
It was on sale, and it looked just the like chair in Blue’s Clues or the seating version of the teapot in Beauty and the Beast. In fact, the designer once worked as an artist for Disney. It was really, really red, with a black stripe, and I decided that I loved it. I bought it. I brought it home and my husband smiled and asked, “What is that?”
“It is a chair,” I said. “Isn’t it funny and different?”
“Did you buy it used?”
“No, but on sale!”
“You aren’t going to keep it, are you?”
I sank down into its huge recesses and said, “I am.”
He said, “It doesn’t work. It throws everything off.”
By then, we’d sold all the little bitty matchstick Euro furniture and I was able to answer, honestly, “But there’s nothing else here.”
“It throws off the idea of what should be here,” Chris said.
“I am going upstairs,” I said.
“We need to discuss this,” Chris said. It’s a family rule. You discuss everything before you go to bed or make an appointment.
I explained, “No.”
Chris ranted about the chair in the way a quiet man does. He appealed to my better nature. He pointed out to the kids, in vague terms, how ego could get in the way of human harmony. When I tired of hearing him and went upstairs, I could hear the ominous sound of Chris’ measuring tape – which he uses to express frustration. He was measuring everything --- the distance from the front door to the chair, the distance from the chair to the fireplace, the theoretical distance between the chair and two theoretical couches. Finally, he could take no more of my silence. He appeared in the doorway and said, “Ego! This is all about ego. You’ve ruined a whole room over ego!”
I said, “I just like that chair and I’m drawing the line. I’m keeping it.”
Chris said, “That’s so regressive.”
I said, “You’re probably right. I’m still keeping it.”
Finally, Chris said, “I actually have figured out a place where it would work.”
Heartened, I looked at his kindly face and asked, “Where?”
He said, “The laundry room. You could sit in there and read.”
“And watch the laundry go around like a dog,” I said.
“No, I thought I could make a nice reading space for you in there.”
“I don’t want to read in the laundry room.”
“I can’t live with that chair in the living room,” Chris finally said. Our son appeared in the doorway of our room.
“You’ve really talked enough about the chair,” he said.
We said, simultaneously, “You don’t understand.”
Our son said, “But I do. And Mom, Pop, it’s not a kidney transplant. It’s a chair. And you’ve talked about it way, way too much. You’re starting to worry me.”
But the cold war continued until I had to go out of town. During phone calls home, we softened. After all, we are a loving couple. Chris said, “I’m trying to make the chair work for you. It’s really not fair, and it is a kind of nice, unusual chair.” I murmured my joy at his kindly consideration. He told me about other ideas he had had – about an antique altar from an old church he’d seen that had been bulldozed he thought might be a nice thing to put under the TV. I wondered aloud, but gently, if he had thought about the ramifications of the TV being on an altar. He chuckled. Chris actually chuckled about a matter of decorating and pronounced me cored. We parted with a sweet signoff. Two nights later, I struggled through the door with my suitcases. Everyone was asleep. Happily, I noticed the chair was still near the fireplace, not in the laundry room. I considered how tolerant and kind my husband really was, how very red that chair, how blatant that big black stripe. I really had pushed his buttons.
Then I noticed something else.
The end tables that Chris ordered, sight unseen, trusting in the designer, had arrived. There they sat, casually tucked into corners.
They were shiny black, with a thin red stripe.

They say that the question every author asks is, 'What if?'
But the question this author asks is 'What next?'
I'm interested in the time after the event that precipitate in the book -- in who is changed, affected, whose life exalted or cast down.
I know that All We Know of Heaven, although it is a youth book, meant for young people in high school, will get a great deal of attention, much of it controversial, because it is loosely inspired by two cases of mistaken identity after a motor vehicle crash, one just two years ago, one about ten years ago.
Trauma resuscitation is a subject very close to my family. As I have written here before, one of the closest friends I have, succumbed to a combination of factors last Christmas -- untreated strep, a frail constitution and perhaps a confusion of medications for diabetes. Stacey was only 41 when the respiratory event occurred. She was already hospitalized, in the ICU, and because she was a young mother of a baby daughter not yet two, doctors -- who must be forgiven for this -- "worked" on her longer than they should have, restoring her heartbeat and respiration.
But they could not restore her brain. The brain never heals.
Yes, parts of it can take over for other parts if it is damaged, particularly if the victim is young and the damage minimal. But even minimal damage can have maximum impact, while, because the brain is such a funny, fragile and flukey thing, people who have moderate damage, depending on where it is in the brain, may do much better than those who "should" thrive with less difficulty.
My beautiful friend Stacey did not thrive. She remains in a persistent vegetative state, a coma that has wake and sleep cycles but no awareness. The damage was to her whole brain and those cells would have to be "re-grown," by processes that don't exist yet for human beings. All that survives is the function of her brain stem, which controls involuntary reflex actions -- such as breathing and blinking -- and she remains lovingly cared for in a nursing facility. Her baby girl now is nearly three, my only goddaughter. Her husband copes, as we all must. Her parents alternate between prayer and grief.
After what happened to my friend, I became obsessed with the brain and with trauma resuscitation.
With the help of several friends who are emergency physicians, I was able to witness the trauma of a trauma resuscitation in two hospitals -- a process even more terrifying visually than witnessing the actual accident. There is a huge and all-out effort to save the injured, but it takes place even when, perhaps, it might be better to let go and allow the mortally injured person to die with some grace. It's a controversy among physicians -- who, for legal and compassionate reasons -- almost always try unless it is clear that far too much time has passed. How far should they go? For how long? Should the victim's family be present? Is it cruel to exclude them or to include them? How much should the victim's family know in advance about what lies ahead? Truly doctors do not know what lies ahead. Some patients who come into a trauma bay with brain damage that looks so serious that no one would lay odds that they will ever walk or speak again are in fact reading and resuming work within a year -- confounding any predictions.
More often, the picture is grim.
As one doctor in a brain rehabilitation unit told me, parents who come upon an interrupted SIDS death will almost certainly beg doctors, " Do anything. Save my baby." And when the baby is very small, he or she seems much like any other infant. By the time the developmental milestones that signal a normal brain function are beginning to take place, parents have often lived so long with their child on a brain-rehab floor that, as the doctor said, it's their baby. they love their baby for who their baby has become. Because of time, they have come to accept what would certainly have horrified them before.
But some physicians, including many prominent ones, believe that "bringing back" in such cases is a cruel fate that seems beneficent only at the time of despair. What comes later is far harder and a child whose body is healthy and whose brain is impaired may live a long, long life -- if, indeed, it can be called that.
So it was this, my questions about trauma recovery and brain injury, that led to the story of Bridget and Maureen, two best friends who, just two nights before Christmas -- and I guess it's not a coincidence that this also was the night last year that my friend was stricken, although I realized that only as I wrote this -- were brought into a sophisticated emergency room in an attempt to save two beloved young lives.
Only one life was saved.
But what happens after that fate, which is no secret, is the substance of the story.
It's a story of love -- the love of parents, siblings and friends. But it's also a love story.
It's a story of regret and vengeance, but also of courage and forgiveness.
And it was the most difficult book I've ever had to write, as a mother and as an author.
I deeply identified with Bridget and Maureen and their friends, their small Midwestern town and their parents -- so different from each other and yet so much the same, absolutely devout in their love for their children.
I also remembered myself as a young woman in the unlikely love story that followed the accident, which is a love story unlike any other I've seen written down. All We Know of Heaven made my 12-year-old daughter cry but it also turned the heart of a 19-year-old friend who read it. It raises more questions than it answers.
For this year, because of this book and "The Midnight Twins,' the first in a trilogy of mysteries about twins who are clairvoyant -- born a minute before and a minute after New Year's Eve, one is able only to see the future, one the past -- I'll have spent this year in the world of young adults. For the first time in ages, I won't have an adult novel debut.
That's fine with me.
These novels are important to me. I hope they'll be important to you. While there isn't a word in either of them you couldn't repeat to an 11-year-old -- I wanted these stories to reach as wide an audience as I could, and not have that process compromised by adult language or circumstance, they are not stories for the faint of heart. They're utterly real and the stakes are high.
If you read them, as a young adult or with your son or daughter, you'll be changed -- as I was when I wrote them.

Mia with her big brother Marty

If I were a person with a yen for evil, I would have been in my element last week at a cheerleading competition in Chicago.
Yes, cheerleading.
Yes, a person of my house, my own kin, is a competitive cheerleader.
Was I against this initially? Initially, I was. But our Mia is such a trickster, such a performer and such a darned good athlete – despite, at age nine, being 44 inches tall and weighing 46 pounds – that she was sort of a natural for this growing sport, which involves more than shaking your pom-poms these days.
And young women and men can actually get cheering scholarships if they’re good enough, and from what I already know of kids in college, I’d let her try for a scholarship in hacky sack.
But let’s get back to the competition and the appearance of the competitors. I have to exclude my own daughters’ gym, not out of prejudice, but simply to state the fact: Gymfinity, in rural Wisconsin, did a much better job than, well, all the other gyms there of letting the little girls look like girls instead of like Las Vegas showgirls.
The little girls wore makeup, and while it had to be perky and flashy, it also had to be modest.
That wasn’t true of almost every other team.
Girls who didn’t come up to my navel were wearing navel-baring costumes, some with push-up bras. A few had see-through midriffs with embroidery that looked like body paint. It was a wonderland for what police officers call “short eyes” – which, translated, means adults who have eyes for short people.
The face paint was truly scary. It was as though these girls had Barbie heads screwed onto bodies that, in most cases, were flat and wiry as little boys below the neck.
Some teams actually hire makeup artists, a coach told me, to come in and train the coaches and parents to paint on “smoky eyes” for people ten years too young to legally buy a pack of smokes, and cat’s eyes with seductive Emily-Blunt upsweeps on the end, on people who wouldn’t be able to spell the word “seductive.”
Moreover, the place was a zoo, with probably five hundred cheer girls from age 6 to age 18 and their mothers and sometimes their fathers, their coaches and their assistant coaches.
No one knew who was who.
No one knew who was where – as evidenced from the amount of text-messaging and paging going on, as evidenced by the amount of up-and-down elevator riding and corridor-running.
Some teams were staying at the hotel resort, others at the hotel across the street. Cross traffic and mass confusing were the orders of the day.
Some of the ten or 15 gyms represented took the precaution of counting heads and forming long conga lines of girls and the occasional boy, holding hands as they moved from place to place. But there were still plenty of little girls -- tiny wisps of things that could be carried out a convenient door as easily as someone hefts a computer bag – skipping around with identically-costumed American Girl dolls and teddy bears.
They were all alone, with lipsticked smiles, the lipstick sprinkled with glitter, pretty prey on a plate.
I thought about how easy it would be for some kindly-looking fellow to walk up and say brightly, “Miss Danielle wants you to meet her and the other girls by the big doors.”
The little girls were focusing on their toe kicks and back flips, excited by the booths advertising personalized pennants and modeling careers. They weren’t on guard.
It would have been easy for anyone to overhear the names of the coaches. Confused and befuddled as I was, I could scarcely avoid seeing them on the backs of shirts or overhear them spoken over the course of three or four hours. And for anyone who wanted to come in, the price was on $12 for a wristband.
Most of the routines were anything but wholesome (though, again, I have to single out my daughters’ gym for concentrating more on gymnastics than gyrating). My brother and I sat at the sidelines marveling at the hip-shaking, hip hop-inspired moves on the stage. And the sexier the moves were, the higher (it seemed) were the scores.
Next day, the whole thing was repeated, with hair extensions, eye shadow and mascara for us, with a silver star sticker on one cheek – for the other green parrots, lightning bolts and hair glitter.
One veteran mother with three daughters in the competition explained that nail polish was not allowed.
But everything else was.
“Very Jon Benet,” one mother whispered to me. It was a crude way to put it, and yet I found myself repeating the same thing later on the same day to another mom, as my horror at the amount of exposure and the vulnerability of the girls grew.
Curious, I (ostensibly) complimented one girl on her yellow-and-silver outfit. It consisted of a bra top with see-through sleeves and a hip-hugger bottom. Above the waistband, a bauble swung from a navel pierce.
I asked her age.
Now, think about it.
I could have been Jeffrey Dahmer’s Vanna White, a sinister assistant sent in to lure little people out to a white mini-van -- vehicle of choice for serial killers nationwide. It wouldn’t have taken much luring, and I doubt anyone would have noticed a little girl crying, being led along by anyone matronly.
There was a good deal of crying on the second day, when teams that had great hopes placed sixth, seventh and tenth. One more little girl crying, being led by a tight-lipped older woman staring straight ahead, wouldn’t have looked out of place at all.
In fact, the little girl in yellow and silver shouldn’t even have been talking to me. She should have said, and loudly, “You’re not my mother! Go away!” But I’m a gentle-looking person, and was wearing a pink university hoodie with black pants and black Ugg boots – every inch the non-threatening Mommy.
She trusted me. She glowed.
“I’m twelve,” she said. “Next year, I move up to seniors!”
I moved on.
One of the seniors was outside, having a cigarette before her performance. After she was finished, she stuck the lighter into her satin underpants, along with a sheet of paper on which a boy had, she said, written his cell-phone number.
Now, don’t let this make you think that I consider cheerleading unsavory.
As opposed to “beauty” pageants and some jazz dance shows, there was at least athleticism and sweat equity.
To the credit of my daughters’ gym, the girls’ outfits were flashy yet modest, far different from the rest. They had high necks and long sleeves and short skirts but wore skirts that covered their rear ends.
Coaches and parent helpers were also eagle-eyed around the girls. I was the one wandering around after I lost my wristlet and couldn’t get into the performance area. Whenever I called them, someone answered and assured me that Mia was with the group.
There was this one moment, though, right before the presentation of the trophies.
Mia kept begging me to “go find the other girls.” I finally allowed her to do that. There was seven feet between my daughter and me as she searched on tiptoe for the rest of her squad. A group of girls passed, and Mia was gone.
In that moment, I thought I was being repaid for every sentence of suffering I’d ever inflicted on a parent in fiction.
Mia’s older brother was at the event. Frantically, I called him. He had come walking out of the upstairs lounge, seen Mia alone and taken her hand.
It was that easy.
Of course, it was her brother.
Mia is not very friendly and I’ve taught her to be less than trusting – less trusting of people who are familiar to her even than of people who are strangers: People who are familiar to children are most often predators.
Ironically, the sexy, cutesy facial gestures and disco wiggles are not allowed at the college level, where the stunts are more complicated but the glitz largely absent. I guess it’s my belief, after the experience of the meet, that cheerleader costumes should be changed, made more age-appropriate, more like those worn by athletes than by pole-dancers.
But I also guess, so long as the girls with the bare midriffs (admittedly accomplished) keep bringing home those big trophies, nothing will change at all.

To say that I don’t know how I got a Saint Bernard puppy is as ludicrous as saying that I don’t know how I ended up mother to seven children.
But that’s absolutely true.
I didn’t long for seven children. I didn’t long for a dog the size of a Volkswagen.
When I had four children, I thought I had a “big” family. When I had one dog, it was one enough.
A strange thing happened on the night of my birthday: It was one of those birthdays for which card stores sell tombstones and cards that read “Over The Hill…” so I wasn’t particularly perky.
And then, an email arrived. It was an email from a nice lady I didn’t know, with pictures of her litter of eleven Saint Bernard puppies. I didn’t know then, and still don’t, who told her I was interested in a Saint Bernard puppy. Our life, while chronically active, was as stable as it would ever be.
And yet, by nightfall, my husband had brought home a nine-week-old puppy that weighed 25 pounds, and now, a month later, weighs 40.
The consensus among our children, all of whom love huge things they don’t have to care for – despite fervent promises to the contrary – was that Odin was the cutest living thing they’d ever seen. And he is, with his mournful, understanding, human-like eyes and good-natured shambling gait.
My friend, mystery writer Karin Slaughter, who wrote to wish me a happy birthday, said, “So, the sixteen kids, husband, two horses and a dog wasn’t enough. You wanted to shake things up a little?”
But I didn’t.
I don’t know why Odin is here right now, tormenting Hobbes, our perfectly-mannered, tolerant and sedate six-year-old mutt (who now is only barely speaking to me as a result of this extra-mammal affair). I don’t know what fate sent him to me. Our son Marty had always wanted a Saint Bernard, but now is in college most of the year and asleep or reveling when he is not, so he remains beyond suspicion.
In recent months, I’d begun having some emotional issues about home safety, and more than one expert had suggested that a big bark was superior to a big gun or even an alarm system – since, after all, an alarm system is useful only if someone’s already in.
Although Odin is no guard dog (his version of springing to his feet mimics a heavyset 80-year-old man’s) his sheer bulk and deep “voice” would deter me from any kind of mayhem. Maybe we needed him and so we got him.
Maybe we’ve just created a new set of problems – not to mention stains.
And yet dogs have this undeniable allure that even humans don’t. They judge you not. They forgive you all. They thrill to everything. They give you not just the illusion of being beloved, but the experience of it.
We named Odin after the Norse god of all wisdom – chiefly because our four-year-old son had dubbed him “Otis,” a name that recalled the most dissolute and odious of my brother’s friends, a guy who made the John Belushi character in ‘Animal House’ look prissy as a British Sunday school teacher.
Since he came, my husband has blamed him for our two-year-old son’s tantrums, my bad temper and predicted financial ruin. And yet, when morning comes, no one is giving Odin back to the nice lady.
For me, Odin represents our last slide from some sort of pretense of decorum into complete abandon. There’s no way to organize the Legos by size if you have a Saint Bernard puppy who would eat them by Kibble. All the small motor stuff goes out the window. It’s kind of freeing….

Well, it was some of the most difficult fun I’ve ever had, judging the winners of the Worst Vacation Ever contest – in conjunction with my novel, Still Summer.
And we’re going to quote just a bit of just a few of the doozies that will someday be wonderful fireside tales, but, which in the moment, were probably nightmarish in the extreme.
In fact, there’s one (the one involving the death of the pet alligator) that I suspect was cooked up for the purpose! If the writer can prove otherwise, however, he or she will get a prize!
There’s no grand prize because of the several hundred entries, at least fifty were almost equally horrible, in a dark-comic way.
But I’m going to quote from some of the winning entries, some in their entirety, some excerpts and name names.
It’s the responsibility of the winner to contact ME with an address, in order to claim a pair of Message in a Bottle earrings or a bottle of Still Summer men’s cologne (I’ve been informed that Still Summer cologne is really a lovely, spicy unisex fragrance; so female winners can choose that for themselves, or for their mates, if the earrings don’t appeal).

Here’s a rather generous sampling of the winning entries.
Read them and weep. This is entertainment.

1. As was predicted in a newspaper story about the contest when it began last fall, one of the top entries came from Chari L. Madrigal, a farm girl who went to Louisiana with her husband on a vacation. Some days earlier, she’d given herself a scrape doing some chores; and when she stopped at a store, just 24 hours after she arrived, a clerk asked her how she got her scratch. Oh, Madrigal answered, a bit of barbed wire. Within instants, innocent Chari was surrounded by plainclothes police officers with drawn guns – all of whom had responded to an alert from the store clerk that the escaped convicted murderer Lawrencia Bembenek was cornered in the store!
2. Although she violated the length limit, Christine Lidbury’s Russian adventure must be repeated. In the early 1990s, Lidbury and some friends took a trip to Russia – with hope. One day, early on, they arrived to learn that the package deal, with meals included and lovely two-star accommodations, had some hidden clauses. To quote Christine, at dinner one night, the surly host announced, with an economy of words, “No food.” When her party objected, the staff assembled a meal by collecting leftovers from other diners’ plates!
So accused, he said, “No, we didn’t!”
The Lidbury party objected, “Yes, you did!”
“No, we didn’t!” he replied.
This Russian equivalent of a Monty Python exchange ended with realization of where the previous day’s lunches had originated.
On the Aeroflot flight home, the 747-sized jet had no assigned seating, so the French passengers shoved stadium-style to get the best seats, literally trampling people in their wake, prompting Christine and company to form a human barrier to protect an old woman who had begun to cry. The plane rattle and clanked so loudly, and periodically would drop in altitude so quickly that one woman literally finally fainted with fear. The whole plane cheered spontaneously at touchdown.
And so, we cheer for you, Christine.
3. Christy Hawkes’ family stayed in a Bates-type motel because it was late and there was nowhere else with a vacancy. As her parents rushed to get everything ready to leave in the morning, she and her three sisters played chase outside through some “muddy water.” Dad had a few choice words when the muddy water turned out to be sewage.
4. Joanne Johnson set the indoor record for lost luggage on a 15-day trip to South Africa that included 13 flights. Her luggage was lost four times, including the day she returned home.
5. Kim Miller and her husband, Michael, took a Premier Christian Cruise on Carnival. On the day they were to leave Philadelphia, they learned that a blizzard was due to hit. The snow came first, the passengers second, the fuel third. On the last flight out of Philly, they got an extra bag of pretzels and all the alcohol they wanted to buy. “Ah sunny Orlando!” Kim wrote. “The land of blue tarps and empty cement trailer pads. We waited three hours for our luggage…lost one garment bag with all Michael’s pants, shoes, suit and Kim’s dress. Another bag was ripped…” Rushed to the JC Penney to buy Michael more clothes and luggage….but at the cruise ship, another Michael Miller got THAT luggage. Phone calls, conferences, paperwork., and Kim’s Michael found the other Michael’s luggage and sent it to the rightful owner. Thoughtfully, U.S. Air had flown the Millers’ lost luggage to Newport… after they had left. They still don’t have it, and are convinced that everyone in Newport has worn it by now. Throughout the trip, she kept smiling and thanking God for getting them through it all.
6. Lisa Neilsen Agnew traveled up the mountains of Jacaltenengo, Guatemala, in a chicken-delivery bus waiting for her luggage, lost somewhere between Orland and Guatemala City, to catch up. Four days later, the bags arrived missing ALL her film and other little incidentals looted by the helpful and friendly staff at Aviateca Air.
7. Jeff Adams’ worst memory is of a Christmas vacation to Los Angeles where Dad drove the wrong way down one of the freeways – which, even in 1968, wasn’t good news. But “Dad acted very calm …as though we’d just made a wrong turn on a rural road.”
8. Katie Shaw’s friends were always telling her to get out and get a life – preferably with a boyfriend. So the single mom spent her life savings on a Caribbean cruise for herself and her teenage daughter. They even got a 50% off coupon, having mentioned they’d love to meet “ a few nice guys.” The guys were all nice; but all five hundred or so of them were gay…
9. Tammy Hosch and her husband ended a trip to San Diego with a drive over to Tijuana, Mexico. Two days later, at home, violently ill, sweating and hallucinating, she revealed to doctors and nurses what she’d eaten in Mexico, and was immediately put on IVs, potassium and fluids. Shigella and another parasite would have caused permanent heart damage in another few hours.
10. During the first night of a scheduled week of resort fun, a storm caused water to leak all over the food in the kitchen and into the bed in one of the three bedrooms. The owner later explained to Jim Draper, “You need not worry. The roof only leaks when it rains.”
11. A Chicago to San Diego round trip Amtrak vacation for Jean Mitchell included overflowing toilets, vomiting children (her own, all over her) a delay in the desert in a non air-conditioned train and a “viewing” car so polluted with smoke it was impossible to see out the window.
12. Patricia Munier’s then-husband won a trip to New Orleans. On the bus to the airport, she learned about his affair with a co-worker. She then spent five fun-filled nights in the French Quarter, turning in every night at 8 p.m. in a hotel on Bourbon Street – while her soon-to-be-ex partied!
13. Paula Dent was attending a family reunion when she approached the kitchen table when “what to her wondering eyes should appear but a cooked and chopped cow’s head, decked out in aluminum foil. The scary thing was, she wrote, was, “they were serious, and … the airlines thwarted her initial escape attempt.”
14. When Darla Nielsen checked into Marco Polo International Airport for her return flight to Minneapolis, she was informed that her flight out of Amsterdam later that week had been cancelled – two weeks before. Northwest Airlines transported her to “a hotel in the middle of nowhere” where her only option for dinner was that continental favorite, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
15. Lynn Lemanski was driving home from Maine with a pal, and the only motel in Pennsylvania they could find was called the ‘Three Hours Motel.’ They found out why the next morning, but they couldn’t flee because their car, stuffed with souvenirs from Maine, was stuck at the eight-hour gas station for a $500 transmission repair.
16. Rick Gundermann and his best friend were driving to Taos, New Mexico, for a downhill ski vacation when a blizzard closed all the roads. There was plenty of snow, but in Leoti, Kansas, not known for its hills.
17. Ruth Ellickson wrote that “after the bottom was ripped out of the five-person rubber raft and after riding side-straddle as we bashed against rock outcroppings, my severely battered, bruised and (possibly) broken leg remaining unswollen due to the frigid river water…at the river bank, we abandoned the useless rubber Cheerio and climbed a steep, solid rock embankment into grizzly bear country.”
18. Deb Wisniewski had infected wisdom teeth when her family set out for the camping trip on the North Shore of Lake Superior – before the sewer backed up into the basement at 10 p.m. the night before and her five-year-old woke with her eyes glued together by infection. It poured rain on the whole drive up, and then, after pitching their tent in the pitch dark in the national forest, her husband had to set out with a flashlight and a golf umbrella to find her dog, which had just come home from the Humane Society (editorial comment – and for this?). That flapping in her face that awoke Deb was the back half of the tent that had collapsed on her daughter, in the middle of the mud-sodden lake surrounding the blow-up mattress. No motels nor even private homes were nearby. But Deb’s family relocated the next day and enjoyed a picture-perfect vacation at a picture-perfect campground where they only later learned there had been a bit of a problem… with bears.
19. Carol Dirks got a page at the Denver airport as she was leaving for her ski vacation from relatives telling her that her house had been robbed.
20. Ann Marie Ames was working at a charity golf tournament in North Dakota, even though she’d never golfed, when a turtle peed on her while she was trying to save its life. She later broke her shoe and scraped her knee in what she describes as a “tragic post-tournament conga line incident.”
21. Liz and Frank Stumpf set off from New Orleans in a borrowed motor home with their son and daughter-in-law, a six-month-old baby and a 13-year-old nephew. The motor home died in Alabama where “we limped into Mr. Herman’s truck garage (and spent) three days in 100-plus weather, showered in the public showers of a truck stop” and later found their vehicle was entirely filled with ants.
22. Susan Walkey, her husband and eight-year-old son rented a “motorized lawnchair” for a one-hour cruise of Mission Bay in San Diego. Halfway through the trip, one of the pontoons started taking on water and as the three slid off the “lawnchair” and into the drink, Walkey’s husband called out, “Tread water!”
23. Tracy Toon took the southern route home for Christmas and got caught in an ice storm. Edward Hopper-style, she spent the holiday in a cold café dining on crackers and cheese. She celebrated New Years in a motel that used sardine cans for ash trays and the meal in the Italian restaurant next door cost more than the rent. Says Tracy, “I counted my blessings anyway.”
24. Mary Lou Michaels showed up at the romantic honeymoon cabin rented well in advance to find it had been given to someone else who could stay longer. Although they honeymooned in a Quonset hut with a shared bathroom down the hall on a roll-a-way bed, it could only get better. And she’s been married 28 years!
25. Laura Haefs-Flemming went on her first vacation in 14 years to Barbados, where, on a catamaran/snorkeling outing, although she was the only single person on board, the crew and all the other passengers managed to leave without her, as she bobbed in the ocean – shark bait until they noticed!

And what account of the winners would be complete without Brian Steptoe’s account of his Olympic vacation to Turin? He arrived to find that his hotel reservations had been taken over by a Mr. Steppin, who would not give them up, his tickets had been claimed by a Bill Steffens and his car by Brian Wolfe – both of whom, when confronted, admitted that their had been an error in their favor and refused to change anything.

Thanks also and either cologne, earrings or a ‘Still Summer’ guaranteed-indestructible keychain to runners up Patrick McBride (he of the dead alligator), Tiffany Sanders and her battling sister, Marcy York for fun with a drunken bus driver, Monica Simpson who went to Niagara Falls to celebrate her first baby and nearly lost him, Ramona Samuels whose Mormon family of twelve children forgot one six-year-old who took a bathroom break, Lynn Muesser whose vacation got off to a bit of a deadbeat start at O’Hare and Kathy Kerst who spent her trip solving other people’s problems.

Write to me, jackie@jackiemitchard.com, to claim your prizes and … inflate a kiddie pool in the back yard next time!

Thanks for all your entries, your good humor and for reading my book!

Jackie M.

Some exciting things are happening in my life.

I'll be administrating One Writer's Place in Brewster, MA, a short-term residence for up to three authors in any genre (including science fiction, horror, fantasy and children's).

These will be residencies for real people with real jobs. A two-week commitment won't be required. A two-month commitment won't be required. Stays can be as short as one week, Saturday to Saturday, or as long as four weeks. (The four-week stay can be only in November.)

Residents will be responsible only for their own food, transportation and a $150 cleaning fee -- $300 if there are more than three residents together who want to split it.

One Writer's Place will accept applications starting in January for September, 2008 residencies.

Since this is not a "writer's colony" with large meeting rooms and gathering spaces, but a sort of adapted private home, same-gender residents will usually be matched. Couples can apply only if they work together in business.

Art forms that don't require carpet cleaning, sanding, sound-proofing and welding (such as photography and songwriting) also will be considered.

Residencies will be offered in April, May, the first week in June and in September, October and November. A private party will use the place in August and my own residency will be in July.

Writers need not be previously published and will require three character references along with a four page sample and an outline. The residence will take a $500 damage deposit, and refund it if the house is in the same shape as it was when the resident arrived.

It's a beautiful area, hauntingly east coast and a bit wild still (with a four-star restaurant a block away).

The great mystery writer Thomas H. Cook lives right around the corner in a hollow tree....My friends, the wonderful novelists Sara Pennypacker (the 'Clementine' books and 'My Enemy's Cradle') and Anne LeClaire ('Entering Normal' and 'The Lavender Hour') are nearby as well as Sally Gunning and others. You might even catch a glimpse of Mary Higgins Clark.

It's near both Cape Cod Bay and the Nantucket Sound; and it seems to me that water is Holy Communion for writers and artists.

Eventually (perhaps more "ventually" than eventually -- as my daughter Mia says -- if things go as I hope) I'll begin one-to-three weekends.

These will involve three writers, three works, one teacher, and that will be yours truly.

They'll be intensive seminars, for writers with books or long-form non-fiction, who really need that "push" toward publication, whether it be structural, conceptual or understanding the vagaries of publishing. The form will be classes and intensive teaching in the mornings, writing and revision in the afternoon; lodging, lectures by some special guests, communal meals and a fair price.

To apply for a residency at One Writer's Place, write to me for an application at jackie@jackiemitchard.com.

You'll receive an application form, three forms for endorsement letters, and, if you are given a residency, rules, regs, an indemnity form and where to find a doctor, a taxi, or even a personal chef if you don't want to live on bagel-and-tomato sandwiches.

I hope you'll enjoy sharing in this dream. I know I will!

Yours,

Jackie M.