"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

My new favorite book is about a little boy named Oskar whose father dies in the World Trade attack. For the next year he travels around New York City searching for the lock to a key that belonged to his father. But soon, more than anything, the search turns into a healing journey for his own life. Through each stranger Oskar encounters, he begins to comprehend his father's death and slowly processes his own grief. Though it's a fictional story, seeing through the eyes of a 9-year-old also living with deep grief was moving and inspiring. I found myself crying and laughing at the same time at his quirky yet compassionate descriptions.

Oskar is an inventor. He is very imaginative and always creating new inventions in his head. In one chapter, he invents a machine for ambulances...

"What about a device that knew everyone you knew? So when an ambulance went down the street, a big sign on the roof could flash
DON’T WORRY! DON’T WORRY!
if the sick person’s device didn’t detect the device of someone he knew nearby. And if the device did detect the device of someone he knew, the ambulance could flash the name of the person in the ambulance, and either
IT’S NOTHING MAJOR! IT’S NOTHING MAJOR!
Or, if it was something major,
IT’S MAJOR! IT’S MAJOR!
And maybe you could rate the people you knew by how much you loved them, so if the person in the ambulance detected the device of the person he loved the most, or the person who loved him the most, and the person in the ambulance was really badly hurt, and might even die, the ambulance could flash
GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!
One thing that’s nice to think about is someone who was the first person on lot’s of people’s lists, so that when he was dying, and his ambulance went down the streets to the hospital, the whole time it would flash
GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU! GOODBYE! I LOVE YOU!"

And another invention:

"In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots."

These are my two favorite passages of the book. For one, I can only imagine that Micah's ambulance would have shouted GOODBYE I LOVE YOU! for many, many hours straight...and to many, many people. Maybe it also would have shouted THANKS FOR MAKING MY LIFE SO FUN!...and PLEASE KEEP HAVING FUN FOR ME, IT WOULD MAKE ME HAPPY! Or maybe PEACE OUT HOMIES, IT'S BEEN REAL!

I also love the idea of the Reservoir of Tears.
Lately my Reservoir of Tears is at low-tide, which is good. Being surrounded by friends and family has been great and I'm so thankful for the supportive community around me. As I told a friend lately, I feel like my soul is being filled up with energy like a gas tank.