Lecture: Refreshments Will Be Served: Our Lives of Reading & Writing

Abstract

I took the name of my first cat—Puff—from May Hill Arbuthnot’s Dick and Jane books, which had entered our home before I went to school. Our Puff came to live with us in Ferguson, Missouri, when I was three, following my mother and me home from the market. Puff was placid and mellow and maintained cozy habits, curling up at the foot of my bed, following me patiently, frolicking with leaves. When I was six, in first grade, and my class read Dick and Jane every day, Puff froze to death in a blizzard. It took a while to find him. I cried and cried, till my mother suggested I could try to thaw him on a cookie sheet in the oven. I remember hovering in the kitchen, hoping to open that oven door to see him raise his head again and mew. Of course, this did not happen. We buried him under the cherry trees. Our Puff was gone. But Puff was still in the BOOK.