Today I am pleased to introduce the new Essays on Childhood site format. It’s more writer-reader friendly than our original site, with lots of white space and the extra links greyed out or hidden. It is a much better format and visual experience, and showcases our writers’ work well.

In addition to the new site design, we will be slowly moving all of the full essay texts over to this site from Esse Diem. In the past, this site has served as a preview and link for the complete essays that were posted here; soon you will be able to read all of the work on one site, in one place, unmixed with the ramblings of a personal blog.

Our first writer to appear via the new approach to Essays on Childhood is the wonderful Susan Byrum Rountree. She is the author of Nags Headers, a regional history set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and In Mother Words, an essay collection. She blogs at writemuch.blogspot.com from her home in Raleigh. This is her second publication by Essays on Childhood. Her first essay, Pick a Little Talk a Little, appeared May 1, 2012.

Her essay, The Roost, turns over and over a great mystery from her childhood — the invasion of her hometown by millions of birds. The flocks of birds penetrated her subconscious mind, and years later began to swirl and form the shape of another plague on the community, one whose impact would far outlast the degradation the birds left behind.

Susan and I worked back and forth on drafts of this essay for several months. She knew what she wanted to write about, but she also knew that the connections she needed to make would be difficult and even painful. I wrote her this line in an e-mail this morning:

“When something powerful is right there, it can be very difficult to keep pushing to let it all the way out. It’s just scary to do, and you did it.”

I hope you will read Susan’s essay, and share with me the respect and appreciation that comes when you can feel how hard someone worked to tell the truth, not just the factual truth, but the known heart of a situation and a story.