Excerpt:

I dug my paddle deeper. Just as I had expected, the prow of the canoe lifted up out of the water. We were rising above the lake. Its waters were now far below us. The tall pine trees on the shore looked as small as twigs. We were heading toward the sunrise, toward the top of the great mountain, paddling our canoe through the sky!

I wasn’t alone in that canoe. Someone I couldn’t see was there behind me, paddling and singing. It was the singing that was lifting us up into the clouds. I knew that voice, or at least I thought I did.

A hand grasped my shoulder and shook me gently. The canoe and the lake, the singing and the mountain, were gone. I opened my eyes just the tiniest crack. I was in my own little room, on the army cot that had been my bed since I was old enough to be taken out of the crib. I knew it had to be way before dawn; not even the smallest gleam of light was coming in through my window. I could barely make out the shadowy shape bent over me, but I could see enough to know, to my relief, for certain sure who it was.

I was surprised, though, that my mother had been able to come into my room without waking me up. I was a light sleeper. I’d been taught that it was good to not sleep too heavily. Otherwise you might get “crept up on.” My mother had told me that for as long as I could remember. It wasn’t the kind of reassuring thing that most kids would expect a mother to say. Most mothers tell their children that everything is going to be all right, no matter what. But most mothers weren’t like mine.

I’d always known Mom was different from the other mothers. For one thing, she didn’t come to school like a lot of mothers did, helping out the teacher or bringing cupcakes for birthday parties. All I ever brought in for class parties were paper napkins. Because my father worked at the paper mill, we never had any shortage of them.

I would have liked Mom to come to school, but there were times when she couldn’t because her face was bruised or she had a black eye. When I was little I though it was because she was clumsy and ran into things — that’s what she told me. But even those few times when my mother did come to school, the other mothers laughed more than Mom. They talked louder. They baked and helped with book drives and did arts and crafts. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. The other kids in my class did, too.