Stuck / Unstuck

I introduced Noah to STUCK by Oliver Jeffers a couple nights ago, and we've read it 8 times since then. For his last book before bed, and after school. In the morning after breakfast. It came out in 2011 when I was a bookseller, and I hosted Oliver for an event at Books Inc. in the Marina, so our copy is signed.

When we read it, I pointed out to Noah that it was signed to Mommy. “But it’s signed to me, too,” he told me. And at first, since I am a virgo and also the worst, I said something true like “well, this was signed a really long time ago, before I even met daddy.” But then, realizing that was not a concept a 3 year old cares about I told him that yes, it was, an answer he accepted. I smiled as he worked hard to pronounce the name Oliver Jeffers.

We've been reading lots of Oliver Jeffers books since Noah was born, and he's easily one of Noah's favorite authors, though he's still unclear on the concept of authorship. But he trusts Jeffers. He recognizes his drawings, and he’s more willing, more game for whatever’s to come. Mostly we read the Boy books, The Way Back Home being a particular favorite since it features an airplane but we’ve read them all countless times, all favorites from my time as a bookseller.

When I say bookseller, I think people typically picture a basic retail job in a single location. Which is how it started. But in 2011 I was getting my ass kicked by a new events/marketing/bookfairs job in the corporate office for Books Inc., a promotion I had basically begged for. August through December, there’d be days when I'd get up at 5:30am to get to a school in Menlo Park or San Rafael or wherever, and then get home after an event at 9 or 10pm. We called October Crytober, because that’s when— invariably— you’d lose it and cry on the steps of a school, or in your car, or outside a store. A grueling schedule, wherein most of my breaks were taken in my commute times. I ate a lot of gas station food. My car was trashed, the AC broken and the CD player finicky, prone to skips. 

There was a night I was alone in the warehouse, pulling titles for a Middle Grade order for a school book fair that was expected to gross something like $40k in sales. So, a sizable order. A mix of hardback and paperbacks, all in quantities of five or more. I was stacking them up on a table so that I could pack them quickly and easily once I’d made all my selections. I was near done. My cell phone had died a few hours earlier. I was working in silence, alone, in a dark warehouse right off the freeway. If I finished it that night, then I wouldn’t have to come in early some other day that week and do it. I just needed, so badly, to finish.

But.

When it happened I screamed, and there was no one there to hear me. The collapse was preceded by a crack. No other warning. Both of the left legs on the table buckled beneath the weight of the stacks, spilling everything. And since I’d been standing on the left side of the table, a fair number of those books had hit me— from my thighs to my feet— on their way down. I was quite literally stuck, mired in merchandise. All my work, all those books. I could see some at the bottom of the avalanche, spines broken under the weight of their peers. Books I loved. Books I hadn’t had the chance to read yet. Books that teachers swore by, and sold well in that particular school, but not at any of the other schools we visited.  

I extricated myself as gracefully as I could (not gracefully) and used the office phone to leave a message for my boss, Shannon, who was working constantly through her maternity leave covering whatever she could remotely. We hadn’t had a chance to connect all day, and I left her a pissy message about the books spilling, that I knew there was a mess, and that I was leaving anyway. I put my phone on a charger at home, and fell into a deep, unpleasant sleep.

When I finally looked at the phone the next morning, bleary eyed and still cranky there was a voice message from Shannon. Oliver Jeffers was going to come through on tour in a couple months, just toward the end of the brutal season. We could host him at the store I’d come up through, the Marina location. Did I want that?

Of course it’s my blurb in the Indie Next list for This Moose Belongs to Me. They were probably sick of me nominating every single book he wrote and were like, fine let her do it so she’ll shut up.

My next phone call with Shannon was mostly me screaming. “I knew your phone must have died,” she said. “Or you’d have called to do this sooner.”

If you knew me in 2011 you know I was fucking insufferable about Jeffers. Just his biggest, least chill fan. Obsessed. My coworkers roasted me, and I deserved it. I owned every single book he’d ever put his name on, including the art book, and the pop up edition of The Incredible Book Eating Boy that was only sold in the UK. The DVD of the UK Lost and Found animated short. No customer left the picture book section without being informed of his brilliance, I made sure of that.

Jeffers was on a national tour to promote his new book, Stuck. Of course I loved Stuck. It had all the things one expects from a Jeffers book— humor, absurdity, that charming font of his, dialogue that’s easy to imagine spoken with a Northern Irish accent, a truly excellent orangutan— and also particularly brilliant page turns that begged to be shared with very early readers. Like Fortunately by Remy Charlip that way, where the breath between every page offers this wild invitation. And I would get to host him for it. I was. Beside myself. 

I even made a landing page on the Books Inc website (that is still there somehow???) where you could buy ALL HIS BOOKS AT ONCE as a baby shower gift. I don’t think anyone ever did, though.

The roasting was taken up many degrees in the weeks leading into the event. “Are you going to propose?” asked one coworker. “Are you going to cry?”

Honestly, the latter was a valid question. I genuinely worried I might. And the anticipation only deepened that fear. That I’d say something stupid, act a fool, put my foot in my mouth, fall down, fart, vomit, who knows. I am nothing if not an endless pool of potential humiliations wearing a human suit, so the possibilities were infinite. 

Perhaps if I had not been so deeply overworked and exhausted, I might have had the energy to do something truly humiliating. But when the day finally came, I’d been working since early that morning at a school somewhere in the North Bay (Tiburon, maybe? I don’t remember anymore), and had been running restocks to another school in San Francisco until close to event time. If you do bookstore events, you know that 7pm on a weekday is not exactly a *prime* time slot. Most of your chosen demographic is on their way to bed by then. But somehow, miraculously (and also due to my CONSTANT handselling, informing and general screeching about Jeffers’ work in general for years to our customers, thankyouverymuch) we had about 80 people there that night. Oliver was lovely. He drew pictures for the crowd. We sold a ton of books. I didn’t do anything to shame my ancestors. He signed my very complete Oliver Jeffers collection. And then he was gone. 

I’ve never talked to or interacted with Oliver Jeffers since then, though I’ve had the opportunity at conferences and the like. My interaction with him that day was sufficient. I’d rather not ruin it. 

And in the decade since then many things have changed. I quit bookselling. I started a career as an author myself. I got married and started a family. And all the while that signed copy of Stuck has been waiting on the shelf to be shared with the children I used to imagine as a distant, hopeful maybe. 

The book jacket on STUCK is still stiff and un-crumpled, and so it felt like it was still brand new when I pulled it off the shelf the other night and asked Noah if he’d like to read it.  And when he loved it right away, I felt this bone deep sureness that I’d been right all along, but that now, just now, something had finally acknowledged that. Stuck was just as perfect as I’d told all those parents it was. Those page turns just as magical. That ending just as fun. I’d been selling this experience for so long. Now it felt like I finally got to taste it. 

And, excuse me, but I had fucking earned it.

Those long, taxing days. My whole life in shambles around a job that would never love me like I loved it. Rigorously educating myself about contemporary children’s lit, learning all the authors, illustrators, imprints and editors to watch. 2011 was a particularly rough year, and that event, that perfect event with my most favorite author was a rare high point. And what a high high. A few weeks after that event, I’d get an agent. And just a week after that she’d sell my first book. These are unrelated in the objective sense, but somehow it all felt of a piece to me. And Noah— an IVF baby, cherished for so long before he could arrive— loving this book now, feels a part of that, too. The way that this life in books and kids and kids’ books was meant for me, even if sometimes it broke my back. The way that I was meant for it, even if I had to take a rougher route to get there. 

And Stuck, after all these years on my shelf, shared with a little boy with a hundred questions. We both were finally doing exactly what we were meant to do, unstuck after all this time.