Dear Madeleine,

Dear Madeleine,

Can we talk about Meg?

Meg of Wrinkles in Time and Winds in the Door and Swiftly Tilting Planets.

Meg who travels through time and space.

Meg who put you on the map after all those rejection slips.

She is a completely relatable female protagonist. 

Deeply flawed and also incredibly brilliant…  Brilliant by stealth.

A closeted math genius.

Math of all things!

She is consumed with 

Knowing her flaws 

But can’t accept her own brilliance

And there is her Mom.

Not just brilliant but accomplished.

Not just brilliant and accomplished. 

But beautiful.

Meg grows in her shadow.

She grows protecting Charles Wallace who isn’t just brilliant 

But is also a genius.

She sees and delights in his brilliance

And sees how vulnerable he is 

In spite of it.

She grows in the shadow of geniuses

But we know… and part of her secretly knows… that she too, is a genius

Even flawed….

She the flawed, brilliant young lady is our plucky protagonist…. She takes us along for the ride

And we are mesmerized by her power.

Even in the shadows she stands triumphant and compelling.

But vulnerably so….

Then she grows up.

The story isn’t about her anymore. 

The last time the story was about her was when she was pregnant with Polyhymnia 

(great name by the way).

Then she is erased mostly.

Her definitions are boiled down to her attachments to other people.

She is…  Poly’s mother.

Dr. Calvin O’Keefe’s wife.

Who helps Calvin pro-bono with *his* world-changing research.

She is not just IN the shadow of her husband and children

She is completely overshadowed by them.

Nearly blotted out.

A footnote… only seen in connection with the importance of others.

My best friend Becca says–how wonderful.

Both choices were validated in your writing:

The woman who pursued her education and vocation

And the woman who could have, but nurtured her family.

But the thing is.

I want more time with Meg.

We lose not only her on the adventurous pages of the novels,

But also the glimpse into her inner life.

When did the overshadowing take her over?

When the kids were born?

Did she too feel the paradox of being simultaneously newly defined

and also erased

by the word “Mother?”

Did she invite it?

Did she resent it?

Would she say, “She would do it all over again?”

Would she say this–and mean it–but still feel a pang of regret?

Becca used the words, “Wasted potential.”

We both chafe against those words. We fear them. 

Because… did we waste ours?

Why did we lose the continued vibrance of Meg’s internal dialogue?

She was still wholly Meg, right?

Or did you see her as diminished and that is why you defined her 

only in relation to other people?

Oh Meg, I want another novel.

A novel where the woman who is mother, who is wife,

who is Charles’ protector and champion,

who was the assistant to the brilliant Dr. O’Keefe….

I want to see the Meg

who finally Steps out of the shadows and into her own radiance.

I want to see her be a protagonist again.

Brilliant. Genius. And wholly herself.

Even vulnerably so.

Enough all her own

Not just the other side of a relationship to another’s brilliance.

Not diminished. Not erased.

But a woman who casts her own light

and stands in the shadow of no one.