Virginia Evans > Quotes > Quote > Jennifer liked it

“The first letter I ever wrote was in 1948 to P. L. Travers regarding her book Mary Poppins. I loved this book and read it numerous times. I loved that Mary Poppins conducted her own life, and the lives of the children Jane and Michael, in such a controlled, even military, manner. This appealed to me terribly, that level of strict control—it seemed very safe. But also, somehow, there was such a great deal of creativity, adventure, color, surprise! And there was something about—Mary Poppins wasn’t their mother, and you knew (even as a child) she couldn’t rightly stay there forever, but as a child I imagined this lovely secret, that Mary Poppins was my real mother and that one day she would float down into my yard on the handle of an umbrella and declare I was her daughter, and she would explain the whole reason for having farmed me out, and then she would settle, and take me back and mind me with that perfect combination of wonder and predictability, though I knew obviously the book was a work of fiction and she would not, and also, didn’t I know, Colt, that as much as I wanted this, I also didn’t want it. I knew the moment she settled in to become”
― Virginia Evans, The Correspondent