I’m sleepy but my cat did fine at the vet, I reread Ella Enchanted while we waited and gosh it is just the best book. It’s like dinner rolls buttered lightly and fresh from the oven. The story is so familiar to me from having read it hundreds of times but it’s always delicious, comforting, and simple. There’s no challenge or riddles but I think it’s like an old friend.

I’m not so good with people so I don’t have a lot of truly old friends but lately I can feel it again. The way jokes are easy and gestures are familiar but there’s still surprises and new stories, new meanings. It’s on the tip of my tongue the way a loaf melts in your mouth, people laugh without fear and the story repeats again and again without ever growing stale or sad.

This book is a little home, a tiny glowing cottage in the wood on a snowy night that beckons whispering, welcoming, “Step inside, eat at my table, and share my hearth! Though once we were strangers we are now the dearest old friends; come, won’t you stay awhile?”