The Middle Place, by Kelly Corrigan
About two and a half years ago, I was watching my favorite show, The Today Show, and there was a segment about a woman named Kelly Corrigan. It was October, breast cancer awareness month, and Kelly had just finished up treatment. She had brought her father to Today with her, and she told this great story about how he used to wake up her when she was a little girl. He would go into her room and throw open the window and shout out, “Hello World!” (You really had to hear her tell the story; it wasn’t at all annoying. It was, I thought, the way every kid should be woken up in the morning.) Kelly seemed like the kind of person you want to be friends with. In fact, Katie Couric seemed to feel the same way. She kept Kelly and her dad talking on the couch for fifteen minutes, which is like a month in TV-time.
I remembered Kelly’s name and I googled her a few months later. It turned out she had a blog, so I signed up for her blog updates. I was thrilled when I read that she had a book coming out, called The Middle Place. Better yet, it was a memoir. At some point I emailed her about it. When she got her book galleys, she let me read an advance copy. And she asked me to send her a copy of my book, which made me feel like a real writer.
I met Kelly in person last summer, which was incredibly exciting because by that time I had finished her book, and it was wonderful. It was about the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer; but it was really about being in “the middle place” - the years when childhood and adulthood overlap, and needing to go home even when you need to grow up. The book was funny and sad. Kelly was upbeat, but still utterly relatable. While I was reading it, I called my best friend and read a couple paragraphs to her out loud. So when I was visiting my dad in California, I took Marachel and Lily to Berkeley for the day. They played with Kelly’s kids, and we all had dinner. When Kelly’s book was published in January, I asked if she would be willing to do a book club reading the next time she was in New York, and she said yes. In the meantime, her book got onto the New York Times Best-seller list, she was on The Today Show again, and there were tons of reviews of her book in magazines, on blogs, and in newspapers.
I invited some friends for book club, and they invited their friends, and the crowd got too big for my little apartment. Thankfully, my mom and Faux Pa live in New York City, too, and they said we could have it there. We brought in a couple dozen folding chairs. When Kelly walked in, everyone was so excited to meet her. She seemed really famous all of a sudden. I watched her walk around the room and introduce herself to people, and I felt proud that I sort of knew her, and that she was there talking to my friends. Later, she read a chapter from The Middle Place out loud and answered questions. Then she signed everyone’s books. As I do with all my favorite books, I got two copies for myself.
