Women's Work

Keepers

 Does anyone, or eveyone, else have a shelf of "Keepers"?

These are the books in my house that will never be donated or sold. Or even traded or lent, lest they never come back.  There are short stories (The Beggar Maid, Alice Munro), memoirs (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and the rest of the set by Maya Angleou,) and series (Harry, of course). Mostly fiction, some non (Ophelia Speaks, Sara Shandler), some poetry (The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran). There are lots of women (Toni Morrison, Laurie Colwin, Ann Patchett, Alice Walker), and a few men (Nick Hornsby, David Sedaris). Some of them are classics (my beloved Jane Austen collection) and some are new finds (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Schaffer and Barrows). Some are heartbreaking (Paula, Isabel Allende) while some are inspiring (Hannah's Gift, Maria Housden). Some are pure fun (Bridget Jone's Diary, complete with post-it note additions made when my single friends and I passed it amongst ourselves one year) and others are downright ridiculous (The Fascinating Girl, Helen Andelin).

Many of these books have been read and re-read several times over, while some of them haven't been opened in years. What they all have in common, though, is that just a look at the spine brings to mind a particular character or scene. A quote or a question. A feeling. The satisfying memory of a good read.

Taking care of ...my summer reading list

Recently I was told by a physician that I need to find new ways to relieve stress.  He is one of those doctors that has no idea how intimidating his office really is - people come in and he tells them whether or not their brains are functioning properly. So needless to say, when I went in there I was absolutely terrified.  Most of my answers were half answers, or barely that.  I generally couldn't bring myself to speak, so much so that the second time I forced my fiance to come with me, and wrote a list of all the things I meant to say the first time - but still didn't make it through. 

My brain is fine, but this is one of many doctors visits I've been on recently where doctors tell me while I've always thought that I deal well with stress, in actuality my body absorbs it and recently it has reached its max.  So in multiple ways my body is telling me that I need to shape up, deal with my ever increasing stress levels in better ways or else.  Or else what, I ask...but I don't really want to know the answer. 

When the doctor asked me what I do to handle stress on that nervous and intimidating first visit I told him I read, when in fact I read, do crafts (particularly knitting - but I am starting to enjoy scrap booking and paper work a lot too), go for walks, watch movies, cook and bake.  I enjoy many activities is my point - so what type of stress relieving activity is he referring to?  Do I need an aggressive, sporty activity? Because I don't really like sporty activities, I'm a lady of leisure.

It's been a while since I posted, but I find it very therapeutic.  Perhaps I will add this to the list that I have created to prove to my doctor that I am not some laze-about person, and I that I in fact have hobbies that calm my nerves from time to time.  Some times they excite them a little (my hobbies I mean), and perhaps cause more stress, but I think in a good way. 

The books that I have been reading can certainly be called summer reading, and I also am concerned that maybe they don't lend to 'stress relief'.  But I have found a new friend in crime fiction, particularly detective crime fiction.  I'm new at it - so I've started very high brow and I intend to work my way down.  I've always been a fan of crime drama on television, and in the movies.  Film noir is one of my very favorite genres.  I recall Encyclopedia Brown being the first book that I found enjoyment in while reading, well you know - with more words than pictures that is.  I am currently finishing up Paul Auster's New York Trilogy and I'm loving every moment of it.  It is very solitary and provoking. I find myself yelling at the 'detective' in my head as I read.  Is it relieving my stress or creating more?  I'm not sure, but I pity the man that tries to take away my detective books, because at least I've found a place that I can escape to - including from that wretched doctor's office.

Summer Reading

Although most people assume that summer reading is the light fluffy kind of reading you can easily do at the beach, because I'm a knitter, it is often when I dive into big meaty books that need a lot more attention.

See, I have little air conditioning in my house, and the room that DOES have AC has no television.  I have little desire to knit in a room with no air conditioning, and without the television for background company, knitting just usually isn't enough to hold my attention.  So, I take advantage of the summer months to read those books that I just can't get through when my only reading time is the fifteen minutes before I turn out my light at bedtime.

This summer, my thick book of choice is Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, and I'm quite enjoying it.  It's been a little harder to get through it than I was hoping - mostly because I'm having trouble still keeping all the different rivals straight in my head. 

I've also been taking advantage of the slightly easier pace of summer scheduling with my daughter, and using some of the downtime to read The Hobbit aloud to her in the evenings.  She's loving it, and I'm enjoying re-visiting a favorite story of my own with her.  Last night we left the Bilbo and the dwarves still deep in the forest, and we're hoping that it all ends up with everyone okay.

We head off for vacation at the end of the month, and that's when I'll be looking for the potato chip books.  My taste runs to mysteries and historical fiction.  Anyone have any suggestions?

Beach Reading

I don't really think of my reading as having "seasons" – winter, spring, summer, fall – but that said, summer is the time for "going to the beach," which is code for "reading a book at the beach." I don't look for a particular kind of book to read there, although almost any kind of nonfiction is out. I can only concentrate so much while hot, lying in the blinding bright light, and covered in salt. So the American Planning Association's suggestion that The High Cost of Free Parking made great beach reading went out the window (where, I think, it belonged). NPR has a whole webpage dedicated to summer reading, if you're interested. Here are three of my beach-worthy books:

In Pursuit of the Green Lion by Judith Merkle Riley. In medieval England, a midwife must go abroad to France to search for her husband, being held captive without ransom by a sadistic French noble. She's accompanied by her friend, also a midwife, and her husband, an alchemist. That gives you a very bare bones synopsis – it's much more lovely and magical than my two sentences. It's the second of three in a series – A Vision of Light and The Water-Devil are the other two. (Thanks to Martha Ann for introducing me to them!)

    "It was in the Year of Our Lord 1358, in the summertime, just two days before the Feast of Saint Barnabas, that a Voice spoke out of heaven into the ear of my understanding.

    'Margaret,' said the Voice, 'just what are you doing there?'"

Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg. About three sisters during WWII, two with beaux fighting overseas. I like that this is a story of American women during WWII, and it reminds me of stories my grandmother used to tell, of her and her sister, after my grandfather had left for the Pacific. (Thanks, Emily, for recommending this book to me!)

    "It was Kitty's turn to sleep with her head at the end of the bed. She didn't mind; she preferred it, actually. She liked the mild disorientation that came from that position, and she liked the relative sense of privacy—her sisters' feet in her face, yes, but not their eyes, not their ears, nor the close, damp sounds of their breathing. And at the foot of the bed she was safe from Louise, who often yanked mercilessly at people's hair in her sleep."

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I love the complexity of this novel. It seems inspired by Thomas Hardy* but thoroughly modern – especially the ending.

    "An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay—Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched southwestern leg—and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867."

 

*Not in a Jude the Obscure bad way, Em. J

The Summer of My Discontent

When I received the email outlining this month’s topic, I realized: Whoa!  I haven’t read anything of consequence so far this summer.  I don’t think Yoga Journals, newspapers, or airline magazines count.  Honestly, I can’t remember a period in my life where I’ve gone so long without devouring a book or two or three.

 

Very early in the summer, I did read one book (a friend’s recommendation): Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Ms. Gilbert’s story struck a major chord (in a bittersweet minor key) because I’m dealing with extraordinarily similar issues.  Unfortunately, unlike Ms. Gilbert, I don’t have massive savings stockpiled to support a pleasurable culinary trip to Italy, or a soul-searching stay in an Indian ashram, or a final respite with a healer in Bali.

 

But her reasons…ah yes, her reasons…

 

I, too, am facing divorce.  Like Ms. Gilbert, we’re divorcing for reasons that our closest friends have difficulty fathoming.  We don’t fight, we don’t argue.  We’re basically kind to each other.  Even the mediators questioned why we are parting because, on the surface, we’re exceptionally compatible.  We’ve maintained a harmonious relationship throughout the divorce proceedings – in fact, we’re more companionable now than ever before.  Consequently, our decision seems puzzling.

 

Those looking in from the outside don’t know about the churlish snapping at each other, or the weary plodding through for the sake of the family, or the loneliness of being unable to bridge our vast distances.  And like Ms. Gilbert, I’ve spent too many late nights alone and questioning while my family slept.  I’ve battled self-recrimination and the demons that whispered I needed to stop wishing and whining, and then we could be happy.  It was only when my husband admitted to similar feelings that we finally took our first steps towards achieving peace and happiness for both of us.

 

So instead of reading on the dock, this summer has been devoted to dealing with practicalities: wending our way through mediation and parenting classes, plowing through court documents, disentangling our joint holdings, looking for a place to live.  He spent an irritating six weeks refinancing the house into his name.  And five weeks ago, I tendered an offer on a short-sale condominium that remains locked with the lender’s negotiator, keeping me nervous and slightly on edge.  A traumatic layoff at work – decimating half of our tiny department – sent me into a bit of a tailspin, too.

 

Sprinkled throughout the summer has been occasional weekend travel.  And in early August, I'll be flying to South Korea with 30 other adoptees to visit the places of my beginnings and to put out feelers for my birth family.  So I’ve been trying to plan and pack and steel myself mentally for that. A few days ago, my husband casually tossed out the glaringly obvious question: what will I do or how will I feel should I actually meet my birth family?  Surprisingly – stupidly, really – until he asked, it never occurred to me that I could possibly meet them, given the fact that I was abandoned with absolutely no records.  But he’s right; it could happen.  It has happened to other adoptees I know.  So now…more fodder for my already-overloaded brain.

 

And I admit to ennui and inertia for much of the summer.  Too many changes have crowded into my head space, jockeying for prominence.  There are too many thoughts living there, both positive and negative.  Too many dreams.  Too much hope; too much doubt.  Too much strength; too much neediness.  Plus, when I arrive home weary from 11 hours as an overdressed professional, all I want to do is crawl into my pajamas and escape into my writing and my (admittedly excessive) online socializing.  Cooking, cleaning, thoughtful reading, packing, even chatting on the phone (which requires inflection) – all those seem like too much effort these days.

 

It sounds like I’m making excuses.  And I am.  We’re only halfway through the summer.  There’s still time to unplug and settle down with a good book.  Suggestions, anyone?

Topic for July 2009

Hello!  The topic for July will be summer reading.  Enjoy!