Crossing paths,

Her name was Anna and she was eleven. She was on my train to Paris and she had red hair that reached down to her elbows. She also had a black hat on with her navy blue sweat shirt. Her parents both grew up in Ireland, but they had lived in Illinois since she was a baby.

She was sitting across the table from me and staring at her lap. Her mother was stretched across the aisle chatting with the women there. She told him how Anna hadn't been able to sleep the night before because she had been so excited for Paris.

"No mom," Anna told her, "it was because I didn't have a book to read."

So Anna and I got to talking. She told me how her father had died the year before. Her mother had taken her out of school to go on this trip because she wanted to distract her from it. She told me she was writing a book and she was in the sixth chapter. She told me that in a few days they were visiting Scotland so she could visit the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.

Then we talked about books, and her mother came into the conversation. She told me Anna had been a reader for as long as she could remember and she didn't understand it. Why, the woman asked me, would a girl prefer to stay inside with a book then play outside? Why did Anna insist on wearing that hat all the time? She told Anna not to bother me but I assured her it wasn't a problem.

Anna and her mother told me a lot of things, but I couldn't say so many things I wanted to.

This afternoon I stood outside Christ Church in Oxford in order to catch the merest glimpse of the field where the first Harry Potter movie was filmed and I was just as excited about it as I would have been when I was eleven. There are parts of me which are very much still eleven. Except that now I am not the same person when I was eleven because I have company.

So the things I wanted to say to Anna were this - That one day reading is going to be the cool thing for her to do. That she should never stop writing her book. That one day she will meet people just like her and finally get to talk about things with someone. Things that she cares about.

But I knew I couldn't stop her from feeling lonely. Plus, by this time we were in Paris and Anna was following her mother down the aisle and off the train.