High in the Clouds by Paul McCartney, Geoff Dunbar, and Phillip Ardagh
2005
Weight: 1.1 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating
This book was alright. I liked the premise enough--much like one of my favorite movies, A Land Before Time, but with a little FernGully and Wind and the Willows mixed in. It seemed as if the authors wanted it to be a much longer or much shorter book, and they straddled that line. I think it would have been much more successful as a longer book, but I know it can be hard to keep children invested if it is too long. I am afraid because it is not long enough it cannot fulfill its potential and because it is too long most children will lose interest anyway. Luckily, with someone like Paul McCartney helping to author it enough adults will likely be interested.
The reason I read this book was Linda Galpin, a woman I was only able to know a few short years before losing her to brain cancer. I was newly married in her last year and had a lot going on in my life, and I did not talk on the phone with her for hours like I had previously. She fostered a dog through PAWS and so I was fortunate to see her on the days she needed meds or food. She would always bring me boxes of gifts, each with a handwritten note about the item she was giving me. It was often something she had made or held onto for a long time. After I married, she would bring my wife gifts too. She said we had given her a gift. We had taught her that, "love is love."
She loved dogs. That is a big understatement. Dogs meant the world to her. She grew up with hounds and had retrievers as an adult. She once had a shepherd too. After meeting me, pit bulls topped her list despite never having one. She loved New England and history. She enjoyed photography and once even made stained glass--she gave me a piece which I still have. We brought her to the farm once to see all the horses and all of our dogs, and she loved it. She thought it was the coolest. Her and Buttercup would drive around town "rocking out." She smoked pot and would get a devilish grin if you caught her afterwards.
She got sick and had to move away to Connecticut. We frequently wrote letters, but there was still little time for phone calls. I just knew that, as much as I loved them, they would go on and on. I wouldn't get all the things done I needed to. I knew she was sick, but she was so vague and so off and on about it. She was thinking about moving to one of the Carolinas when she started to feel better. I had no idea she had a brain tumor or that we would lose her, suddenly, over night. I feel like such a fool now, and it is one of my deepest, most shameful regrets that I did not talk to her more on the phone at the end of her life. That I did not soak up her love, knowledge, and stories. That I, ultimately, took her for granted even with all the clues. I would have seen it if I had listened closer. I should have known. I will miss her always. I have no belief in an afterlife or God, but sometimes I cannot help but pray to her and ask her to, please, forgive me. I think about her all the time.
