Six Degrees of Katherine Center(ed)
When I was in college, I dated a boy from Virginia with a very large family. Everywhere we went in the Commonwealth, I was introduced to cousins, aunts and uncles, of every degree. The way I knew that they were his relatives is that their relationship preceded them: everyone was called Aunt Leticia Baldridge, or Cousin Buthorpington. Most of them had names of such old stock that John Smith himself would have felt like an upstart newcomer, so it was interesting for me when they found out I was from Texas. One Aunt--Hezbollah Jane, or whatever her name might have been--actually looked at me over her pince-nez and said, upon learning my state of origin, "Oh, I'm sorry." Veddy, veddy sorry, I'm sure.
The great majority of the twice, thrice or octoply removed cousins that I encountered were lovely people, but the sheer number of them boggled a person who then had only five first cousins on the planet. I have more now, but that's a different story, longer than I care to go into right now. Point here is, the idea of a greatly extended family who valued its connectedness to the point of nomenclature, was not only phenomenal, but inspirational. I wanted cousins like that--hordes of kind, interesting people to see on holidays and lesser occasions, to drink tea and juleps with, or perhaps correspond with on Crane's paper about literary ideas or Kilimanjaro trips. There would be trust, openness, and great inspiration. Every day would be lived at the pinnacle of Mazlow's pyramid.
My first real inroads into expanding my circle of trust came when I married the youngest child of a family of eight siblings. Can't you see the relative clicks adding up? In laws, outlaws, nieces, nephews, a bounty of riches in the connectedness department. None of us call each other "Cousin," but that's ok. It is the 21st century now. Holiday activity increased tenfold, and creativity abounds in my extended family.
But even with all those wonderful people added to my life, I still felt the need for another kind of connectedness. My current nuclear family started looking for other like-minded families to hang out with on Friday nights, fish with, and such. We have a family of friends here in Houston that we call "the Country Cousins." They are not related to us, but we love them like they were. All of our children are mildly confused by it. "Are we related?" they ask, and all the grown ups resoundingly answer, "Yes!" One day they'll understand: love is thicker than water, thicker than beer.
Recently, I have been reminded of the camaraderie of shared work. Spending time creating books with people forms a wonderful kinship, a bond that is somewhat like a family thing, as we go through good times and tough ones together, always with the green-light optimism that more good times are ahead. And I have found another line of connectedness among these individuals--something that doesn't transcend these primary relationships but augments them like Oxiclean does Tide. It is the Katherine Center Effect, and it flows back and forth between my personal and professional lives like some kind of powerful primordial soup, creating new relationships, strengthening old ones, and enhancing connectedness wherever it flows.
Everyone I encounter these days--everyone to whom I am inexplicable drawn to befriend, or to write a contract for their book, or just to drink coffee with--is linked to Katherine like a Virginia cousin, usually only once or twice removed. Well, you may think, that is logical, because you are a book editor and she is a famous book writer, and you both live in Houston, which is not a book town. And that's where you would be wrong. On several levels, the first being that Houston is as conducive to the propagation of the book arts as anyplace. Salt Lake City? St. Paul? Oxford, Mississipi? Exeter, New Hampshire? What did those towns have in a meaningful hard-cover way besides a few inspired individuals?
So, here's how it struck me that Katherine is at the center of a web of book people in Houston, a gracious Miss Spider, encouraging other writers and editors to come for tea rather than to become lunch. First, I realized:
- Katherine introduced me to Laura Mayes, a kirtsy.com founder and general wizardress, who first became our author and more recently our colleague.
- Katherine grew up on the same street as Angela Caughlin, the author of Journaling Through: Unleashing the Power of Your Authentic Self, which we will publish this fall.
- Katherine invited me to lunch one day where I got to sit with Karen Walrond, who has since become our author as she pens and shoots The Beauty of Different.
- Katherine is connected to the Bright Sky editors: her talented sister is recently responsible for Oobleck, Slime, and Dancing Spaghetti, and her former carpool mate not only edited Angela Caughlin's books, but also The Mother-In Law Manual.
- Katherine told Beth Irvine about Bright Sky, leading to a ripple effect of signs that made it possible for us to sign Beth up for three exciting books.
- Katherine is a graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, making her, in my book, first cousins with a huge number of the amazing authors in town.
Six first degree relationships, and I will not bore you with all they myriad once-removeds. But, even recognizing these connections, I had never thought about the incredible enzymatic role my talented friend was playing in Houston until this Friday.
I went to a workshop at Joy Yoga, on Washington Avenue, down the street from my favorite pizza place. It was lead by Angela Caughlin and Beth Irvine (who also know each other, go figure). It was about combining yoga and guided journaling to go deeper with intention.
I come rushing in, late from busyness and stress, and I hit peace like a wall. After I smacked into it, I slid into a river of mental and physical submission and let these two powerful ladies have their way with my consciousness and my piriformis as I floated through the next couple of hours. Only when I reemerged, focused, calm, and content on the other side, did I notice that Karen Walrond was in the workshop, too. Wow, I thought, Look at all these wonderful women, together. And the realization spread like a double rainbow in the mountains: They are all Bright Sky authors. That's when it struck me like a bolt that before we connected under Bright Sky, we were connected through Katherine.
So, perhaps she is some sort of literary fairy godmother--a sane Auntie Mame, a well-grounded Durrell, a rosy-cheeked Mrs. Wilcox or even a kinder, soberer Dorothy Parker--inviting us to lunch, waving her wand over us, opening our eyes to the marvelous potential in one another. In any case, even though her copyright pages pledge her to another, Katherine is an integral part of the Bright Sky family. Love is thicker than imprints, too.
How many more wonderful connections are out there, waiting to be discovered in this creative frontier of a book town? And how many lead back to Cousin Katherine?
We'll just have to stay centered to find out.
