Cornerstones: Where the Wild Things Are

I come from a long line of collectors. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, even my uncles. We collect, gather, hold on to. Buttons, porcelain slippers, books, garden sprinklers, Wee Forest Folk, McDonald's toys, cameras, pint glasses. I don't think it's simply for the accumulation of things in themselves, though perhaps on some level it is. Rather, at least for me, the things I own, the things around me, hold my story. They remind me of family members I love, friends with whom I've celebrated big events, people who have, for whatever reason, drifted. Looking around my apartment, seeing my story unfold in trinkets and furniture, is quite comforting.

When people first come to my apartment, they are often drawn to two things: the photographs and the books. I do not have an exhaustive library. I don't even have a very discerning library. I simply have books. Some of them are rare or special, but not most.

I do not know when or why I was first drawn to Maurice Sendak, in particular to Where the Wild Things Are. I'm not sure if, as a young child, I ever went through a phase of being afraid of the wild things. I have a rather romanticized notion of this book: that it's what caused my love of reading and story. That might be true, but it might not.

My copy has furled edges. The spine is somewhat torn. The pages are not crisp or spotless. This book has lived a long life.

I cannot pass this book in a store without stopping to read it. Once or twice, I've gotten to the end and burst into tears. This is a story of love, a story of imagination and adventure that ends with a coming home to being cared for no matter what.

Several years ago the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are came out. I enjoyed the movie, but it also confused me, as did much of the criticism that came out about the book itself at that time. Many critics see this book as a story about a boy with anger issues who lashes out at his mom and becomes himself a wild thing full of rage. I guess, but maybe he's just a boy who's upset that his mom got mad at him, creates a world where he's in charge, realizes that he kind of likes being taken care of, and returns to find that, indeed, his mother loves him unconditionally.

And that's what I love about this book. It's about home, knowing where love is, recognizing the gift of going away and coming back.

Nowadays I'm a bit more careful with my books. I don't break spines or dog-ear pages. I write in them, but only with pencil. Covers stay tidy and pages aren't smudged with food (though drops of tea might make it onto some pages here and there). And yet, ragged though it may be, this is, without a doubt, one of my most prized books.