Ariane de Gennaro
Over spring break, sick with a sinus infection, I scanned the bookshelf in my bedroom at home, searching for something to read. Something calming, relaxing, to wrap myself in while I lay fatigued on the couch. My eyes landed on “The Penderwicks in Spring,” by Jeanne Birdsall. The Penderwicks returned my gaze.
In five amazing books, “The Penderwicks” series tells the story of a family in Massachusetts. Originally, it began as a modern-day riff on Lousia May Alcott’s “Little Women”; four daughters — Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty — live with their father, Mr. Penderwick, after their mother dies when they are young. In the first book, on a summer vacation in Western Massachusetts, they meet Jeffrey, a boy who lives next door with his mean and strict mother. Jeffrey, like Alcott’s Laurie, becomes close to the Penderwick sisters and accompanies them on various adventures, sneaking into attics and making up games as they pass a playful summer. “The Penderwicks” expands beyond “Little Women,” though, and it finds its true stride in the following books. The sisters go to school, play soccer, swap homework assignments with disastrous results and go trick-or-treating with their across-the-street-neighbors — developing the characters beyond Alcott’s archetypes into fully-fledged people.
In “The Penderwicks in Spring,” Mr. Penderwick has remarried, and their family has expanded with two little siblings. Rereading it as a college student, it brought me the same joy as when I was 11. The characters jump out of the page — Batty’s new obsession with singing, two-year-old Lydia’s refusal to sleep in a “big-girl bed” and Skye’s relentless pursuit of math, doing homework at the dining hall, tugging her hair in all directions. I know these people — I’ve watched them grow up, watched them live a mundane life that Birdsall makes novel and exciting.
Birdsall weaves together scenes of controlled chaos, like a moment preparing for Skye’s birthday party. Older siblings cook quesadillas in the kitchen; younger siblings swipe licks of cake batter and frosting; high-school-aged friends scavenge for pretzels in the pantry. I look around, in the kitchen with them, hearing the overlapping conversations. I can practically smell the cheese melting in the tortillas and see batter spilled on the kitchen floor tiles.
These scenes remind me of the best parts of everyday life, easily-forgotten moments when I just exist, my guard down. I recall childhood family gatherings, with various aunts, uncles and cousins descending on plates of snacks and hor d’oeuvres; evenings with my parents in our kitchen, the radio warbling in the background, as I do homework at the table and one of my parents puts on rice or chops broccoli; afternoons my friends and I spent imagining that the bushes in front of our houses were secret bases in complex spy games. Reading “The Penderwicks,” I am thrown back into these memories, comforted by my literary family.
Upon reflection, many of my favorite childhood books pay homage to mundane life. In Madeleine L’Engle’s, “The Austin Family Chronicles,” the titular Austin family lives in a rambling house — also perhaps in Massachusetts … or perhaps my Massachusetts origins bias me — with cozy bedrooms and a small office for their scientist parents. The siblings argue, learn and grow together, and just as with “The Penderwicks,” the quiet moments of shared dinners and conversations between characters feel realistic, inviting me into their lives. Sydney Taylor’s “All of a Kind Family” features young siblings in early 20th century Jewish New York. My eight-year-old self wanted to live with them, to celebrate Shabbat with their parents, sneak candy in bed and check too many books out from the library. Even when they got scarlet fever, their lives were interesting.
Perhaps in these books I overly romanticize childhood and family life. Not every day is blissful; no family is perfect. These stories depict only a slice of what growing up looks like. And yet I find them compelling and comforting, and not in a trite way. The characters show us how they create a home — and they remind me how lucky I am to have one.
So over spring break I lay on the blue couch in my living room, the same room where I watched hours of “Parks and Rec,” where my friends and I played endless rounds of cards, where I built toy train tracks with my younger cousins. Outside, the weather crept into the 50s, March slowly trudged towards April and the grass, previously withered and yellow, turned green again. I was at home.