I wish I'd started this years ago, but better late than never. This year I resolve to keep a list of all the books I read, along with a bit of commentary to help me remember them, as I tend to forget one book as soon as I pick up the next.
The following are actually books I read in December, 2010, but I figure they give me a running start.
"A Summer of Hummingbirds" by Christopher Benfey. Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the artist Martin Johnson Heade were all caught up in the 19th c. hummingbird craze. This book details the small literary and artistic world these figures inhabited and explains why hummingbirds were so important to each of them. I'd never heard of Heade before, but the others are, of course, very familiar. This book is a pleasure, not because it provides deep analysis, but because it presents novel information and fresh interpretations of old favorites.
"A Presumption of Death" by Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy Sayers. Jill Walsh took notes left by Dorothy Sayers after Sayers' death and put them in a novel set during World War II. Lord Peter is off on a secret mission, while Harriet Vane, his lady-wife, copes with wartime privations and anxieties with her two young sons at Talboys. This is one of those closed-community mysteries, where suspects are limited to a discrete number of individuals. I never read mysteries for the plot and don't really care "who-done-it". What I relish is the atmosphere and the psychology of the characters. This book describes wartime England, bringing to life a time just before my own birth. It gives me a glimpse into the world as my parents must have known it, when victory against Hitler was anything but certain, and ordinary people often rose to heroic heights.
"The Birthday Present" by Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell). This "birthday present" is not your typical necktie or diamond bracelet. It is, in fact, a kidnapping with erotic overtones. It concerns the contemporary English middle class and pits "normal" family life against something a bit more decadent. Vine/Rendell never shies away from sensational material, but her style is so down-to-earth her books never seem truly salacious. Her characters, at least some of them, tend to go to extremes, showing by contrast the fragility of what most would call normal.
"The Naming of the Dead" by Ian Rankin. I love Rankin's detective John Rebus. He is sixty-something in this book, overweight, out of shape, with a bit of a drinking problem. Imperfect in a word. But he is clever, dogged, and willing to break rules if that will produce results. His integrity is impeccable, and he is loyal to his friends. Maybe it sounds perverse, but I enjoy watching the parallel tracks of the soon-to-be-retired detective: his uncanny ability to see beyond the obvious and his shambolic life. Two brothers have died, one Rebus's, and the novel is about grief, regret, and the bonds of family, as well as murder most foul and corruption at both the local and the global levels. The action takes place against the backdrop of the G8 conference of world leaders in Edinburgh, Scotland. George W. Bush makes a brief appearance when he tumbles off a bicycle and scrapes his knuckles. And Tony Blair flies in and out, trying to be everywhere at once. The Iraq war figures in, and the restoration of order that we expect from mystery novels is no guarantee that the world will have the same kind of resolution.
"The Collected Stories" by Mavis Gallant. Like many Canadian authors, Mavis Gallant has not achieved the recognition she deserves. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say she is a writer's writer. I would put her in the same company as William Trevor, Alice Munro, and Lorrie Moore--masters of the short story all. Gallant is Canadian, but most of her stories take place in Europe or, most often, Paris or provincial France. I would not read a Gallant story for a neat plot or a clever ending. I do read her for her atmosphere and her study of broken or wounded characters. As Lionel Trilling put it, "The world's great literature was not created by a bunch of happy chuckleheads." Mavis Gallant is rather melancholy, which is perhaps why she appeals to me and my somewhat morbid sensibility. Unlike Rankin's novel that brings recent world events into focus as a backdrop to its action, Gallant's stories are internal. Lives unfold beneath the shadows of disappointment and failure. For some reason, this appeals to me, not because I am sad but because I know that many are, and my sympathies are engaged. Some lives are blighted; that's a fact. One of the graces of literature is its finding beauty even in the dark.
"Here's Looking at Euclid" by Alex Bellos. This book was something of a departure for me. I usually stick to fiction, history, or biography; "Euclid" is all about mathematics, a subject I avoid whenever possible. This book won me over right from the start. It's not about solving problems, and it doesn't ask questions whose answers may be obvious to others but are totally opaque to me. It didn't make me feel embarrassed by my lack of math skills, which I have been ever since my parents were first called in for a teacher conference when I was in third grade. Bellos's unique book is a compendium of interesting facts about the origins of numbers, the remarkable things that math can do--whether it be in the form of puzzles or the formulation of technological wonders--and a plethora of mind-blowing information about infinities. Yes, plural. He discusses some of the great mathematicians, past and present, from Pythagoras to Euler, as well as "lightning calculators" (those individuals who can compute with huge numbers in their heads in a matter of seconds). I am no better at solving math problems (beyond simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) than I was before, but I now have a much greater understanding of the appeal of math. Math is not magic, but this book makes it seem magical. It contains a world of wonders.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Snowbound in Carolina
I look out my kitchen window and see white everywhere. Ordinary branches are transformed into giant lace by thick lines of snow. The sky is white, and everything is silent. I wonder why we find snow so magical? I assume that unless you are an Eskimo you too marvel at feathery flakes sifting through the light from street lamps, laying down a white blanket over bare earth and the stalks of dead flowers.
I spent a good deal of my life in northern climes--western Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Ontario. When I was a child, I loved snow because it meant snow forts, sledding, and snowmen. Later, when I was a young mother and it took a solid hour to ready my kids for an outing--snowsuits, hats, mitts, scarves, boots--I started to question the sanity of those who choose to live such strenuous lives. By the time the kids were ready to brave the elements, someone invariably had to go to the bathroom. I didn't find snow so magical then.
I've said many times that I don't care if I never see snow again, but today I think I must take that back. I had forgotten how a snowscape outside can make indoors feel cozy and protected. I know there are children out there who are getting to use their sleds at last. I'm glad I don't have to brave the cold to take my grandsons to the hill across the street from their house, but I can imagine their thrill as they swoosh over the snow with tingling cheeks. Children know what to do with winter. Kids who can scarcely be persuaded to walk to the corner of their street in April will trudge three miles to a friend's house if there's a foot of snow on the ground, as my sons did once.
"Where are the snows of yesteryear?" I find they have been locked in my heart as memories I had almost forgotten. I haven't changed my mind about snow really; it's good to know it will melt and be gone soon. But for today it's fun to cuddle up with a cup of hot tea and a good book and pause to listen to the silence of the snow.
I spent a good deal of my life in northern climes--western Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Ontario. When I was a child, I loved snow because it meant snow forts, sledding, and snowmen. Later, when I was a young mother and it took a solid hour to ready my kids for an outing--snowsuits, hats, mitts, scarves, boots--I started to question the sanity of those who choose to live such strenuous lives. By the time the kids were ready to brave the elements, someone invariably had to go to the bathroom. I didn't find snow so magical then.
I've said many times that I don't care if I never see snow again, but today I think I must take that back. I had forgotten how a snowscape outside can make indoors feel cozy and protected. I know there are children out there who are getting to use their sleds at last. I'm glad I don't have to brave the cold to take my grandsons to the hill across the street from their house, but I can imagine their thrill as they swoosh over the snow with tingling cheeks. Children know what to do with winter. Kids who can scarcely be persuaded to walk to the corner of their street in April will trudge three miles to a friend's house if there's a foot of snow on the ground, as my sons did once.
"Where are the snows of yesteryear?" I find they have been locked in my heart as memories I had almost forgotten. I haven't changed my mind about snow really; it's good to know it will melt and be gone soon. But for today it's fun to cuddle up with a cup of hot tea and a good book and pause to listen to the silence of the snow.
Monday, December 20, 2010
One Perfect Christmas
I've always loved Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales." To me it is the perfect, certainly the most poetic, expression of what Christmas is all about. I am what you might call a secularist, but I still welcome Christmas. I love the fragrant Christmas tree with its ornaments and lights, especially when some of the ornaments have tiny hand prints on them or are made out of popsicle sticks and cotton balls.
I've had many good Christmases, some better than others, rarely a bad one. But one Christmas stands out in my mind; I call it my one perfect Christmas, when I came the closest to recreating the spirit captured in Dylan Thomas's magical tale.
I was living in Canada with my then-husband and two young sons, four and 15 months. It was our first Christmas in the this land of snow and short winter days, where English and European traditions intermingled. I decided to embrace as many of them as I could and have the best, most beautiful Christmas ever. No, I didn't do anything remotely Martha Stewartish, no gilded turkey skeletons as a centerpiece or over-the-top light display. But this was the year I did make everything, beginning with fabric wreaths and homemade Swedish Christmas bread as gifts for family and friends, cookies by the dozen, and of course a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. I dug out an old-fashioned recipe for homemade mince meat that included suet and meat as well as the apples, raisins, and candied fruits we are all familiar with. There was a world of difference between my mincemeat pies and the ones with canned filling. In those days I was adept at making pie crust, and my pies were--well--divine. Hot homemade mince pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream can be enough to make you weep.
The piece de resistance, though, has to be the Christmas tree we tramped over hill and dale to find. The four of us joined another couple and their little girl to go in search of the perfect tree. The tree farm played Christmas carols over a loudspeaker, in case our mood wasn't already sufficiently festive. The snow lay deep on the ground, and my sons' cheeks were like bright red apples in the cold. The little one couldn't navigate the snow drifts, so I carried him, his arms and legs stuck out in his snowsuit like a doll's. I carried him, and we walked what seemed like miles, with him growing heavier and heavier with every step. Still, we pressed onward, sure the perfect tree lay just ahead. At last we found a tree that did indeed meet all our expectations. It was tall and thickly branched, and its shape was classic. My husband cut it down, and we began the walk back to our car. Let me tell you, the return journey was a lot longer than the journey out. The sun sank toward the horizon, shadows lengthened, and my son felt like an anvil in my arms. My husband had the worst of it though. Dragging the tree all that distance gave him a hernia, so although the tree only cost us $2.00, we paid for it in other ways later on.
We met more friends for a supper of homemade soup and bread, relieved to be back in the warmth of our friends' home where we could shed our wet boots and heavy coats. The house was warm, but the air was tangy with the cold we brought in with us. Little kids ran around in their sock feet, while the grown ups thawed out with hot mulled wine. We were so young, just at the beginning of our long adulthood, with so much that was unknown still ahead of us. We inhabited a space of relative innocence, when all a young family needed to be happy was healthy children, good friends, and the confidence that we would always be brave and strong and happy.
The next day we put up the tree. The house we lived in had 12-foot ceilings, but the tree had to be shortened to fit into the living room. It's hard to judge the size of a tree when it's standing outside, just as a new couch is always much bigger in your living room than it was in the store. Ah, but it was a gorgeous tree. When only the Christmas-tree lights were turned on, a fire crackled in the fireplace, and the darkness outside rubbed against the windows like the velvet noses of reindeer, we were complete. Now my sons are grown and I also have a daughter who has two sons of her own. None of them remembers that Christmas, alas, but in my memory it will always be my one perfect Christmas.
I've had many good Christmases, some better than others, rarely a bad one. But one Christmas stands out in my mind; I call it my one perfect Christmas, when I came the closest to recreating the spirit captured in Dylan Thomas's magical tale.
I was living in Canada with my then-husband and two young sons, four and 15 months. It was our first Christmas in the this land of snow and short winter days, where English and European traditions intermingled. I decided to embrace as many of them as I could and have the best, most beautiful Christmas ever. No, I didn't do anything remotely Martha Stewartish, no gilded turkey skeletons as a centerpiece or over-the-top light display. But this was the year I did make everything, beginning with fabric wreaths and homemade Swedish Christmas bread as gifts for family and friends, cookies by the dozen, and of course a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. I dug out an old-fashioned recipe for homemade mince meat that included suet and meat as well as the apples, raisins, and candied fruits we are all familiar with. There was a world of difference between my mincemeat pies and the ones with canned filling. In those days I was adept at making pie crust, and my pies were--well--divine. Hot homemade mince pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream can be enough to make you weep.
The piece de resistance, though, has to be the Christmas tree we tramped over hill and dale to find. The four of us joined another couple and their little girl to go in search of the perfect tree. The tree farm played Christmas carols over a loudspeaker, in case our mood wasn't already sufficiently festive. The snow lay deep on the ground, and my sons' cheeks were like bright red apples in the cold. The little one couldn't navigate the snow drifts, so I carried him, his arms and legs stuck out in his snowsuit like a doll's. I carried him, and we walked what seemed like miles, with him growing heavier and heavier with every step. Still, we pressed onward, sure the perfect tree lay just ahead. At last we found a tree that did indeed meet all our expectations. It was tall and thickly branched, and its shape was classic. My husband cut it down, and we began the walk back to our car. Let me tell you, the return journey was a lot longer than the journey out. The sun sank toward the horizon, shadows lengthened, and my son felt like an anvil in my arms. My husband had the worst of it though. Dragging the tree all that distance gave him a hernia, so although the tree only cost us $2.00, we paid for it in other ways later on.
We met more friends for a supper of homemade soup and bread, relieved to be back in the warmth of our friends' home where we could shed our wet boots and heavy coats. The house was warm, but the air was tangy with the cold we brought in with us. Little kids ran around in their sock feet, while the grown ups thawed out with hot mulled wine. We were so young, just at the beginning of our long adulthood, with so much that was unknown still ahead of us. We inhabited a space of relative innocence, when all a young family needed to be happy was healthy children, good friends, and the confidence that we would always be brave and strong and happy.
The next day we put up the tree. The house we lived in had 12-foot ceilings, but the tree had to be shortened to fit into the living room. It's hard to judge the size of a tree when it's standing outside, just as a new couch is always much bigger in your living room than it was in the store. Ah, but it was a gorgeous tree. When only the Christmas-tree lights were turned on, a fire crackled in the fireplace, and the darkness outside rubbed against the windows like the velvet noses of reindeer, we were complete. Now my sons are grown and I also have a daughter who has two sons of her own. None of them remembers that Christmas, alas, but in my memory it will always be my one perfect Christmas.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Ralph Waldo Emerson Strikes Some Sparks
Having recently read Sarah Bakewell's biography of Montaigne, I was interested to read an essay in Harper's Magazine about Emerson that includes a discussion of Montaigne's influence on him. I think I feel about these great essayists the way I feel about opera: I absolutely love certain arias and passages, but I find listening to an entire opera tedious. What I liked about the Bakewell biography was the quotations she extracted from the density of Montaigne's prose. The Harper's article includes some thought-provoking quotes from Emerson as well, just enough to get me thinking....
"...after thirty a man [or woman] wakes up sad every morning." I'll come back to this.
This resonated with me: "The style of middle age is a style of reappraisal, a style characterized by hesitation, by uncertainty, by the objects of the world rather than the passions that transport us from this world." Remember that passage in Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" where Hemingway dismisses abstractions like "glory" and "honor" and says the only things that matter are the names of the roads. I believe Emerson was saying something similar.
I've been doing some reappraising of my own, especially now that I am over 60 (how is that even possible?), and I find my mind keeps turning to the past, specifically those things and moments that, for me, encapsulate the feeling I had--or remember having--when gleams of intense well-being shone through the tapestry of my life. I don't think of these chinks of time as nostalgia; that's a more diffuse longing for a past of supposedly better times. I'm not sure I find that particularly healthy. I guess I'm a bit like Proust; these illuminated moments are usually triggered by a smell or the feel of the air on my skin or the cry of a mourning dove. One sense feeds into a whole world of associations that don't so much transport me from the world as impress me more deeply into it.
I spoke in praise of objects over abstractions, and here I am going on in a most abstract way. So enough of that. I would like to try to describe one of these memories and what it means to me, though I'm already sure I won't be able to do it adequately. The thing is, I want to make you FEEL the same thing I do, and I am nearly certain that is impossible. Still, I will try.
I am addicted to tea--regular English Breakfast but ordinary Lipton's will do in a pinch. When I raise my mug to take that first sip and breathe in that fragrant steam, I am--for a brief moment--thrust back through time to the small town in Indiana where I grew up. I can see our small backyard with my father's flower beds. Gladiolas were his favorite--bright, gaudy flowers that stood upright and proudly announced themselves. It is summer, though still cool in the mornings. I have been ill for a long time, and I am ten years old.
This morning I am allowed outside because it is finally warm enough that I won't get a chill. The sun warms me; it seems to soak right into my bones, yet that freshness of early morning mingles with the warmth so that I feel cool one minute and almost too warm the next. My mother brings me a cup of tea, or perhaps it's my blue-willow tea set with the tiny cups. At ten I did not know that I was destined to become an ardent Anglophile, but I already had the English taste for tea beautifully served. I am not strong yet, but I no longer feel dizzy when I stand up and I can finally believe that one day soon I will be well.
That harmony of my senses lifts me into a state of mind that seems to hover above the grass, the flowers, the scent of hot tea. In that hovering I feel what I can only call bliss--a suspension of joy that hangs in my mind as the breeze hangs in the branches of the pussy-willow I planted last year. This is the part that is hard to describe. I can tell you about the smell of cut grass or the flagrant blossoms of my dad's flowers or the feel of a teacup cradled in my hands, but the sense I am trying to capture is ineffable. Today when I am sad or unwell, I try to imagine myself back into that scene where I was a child made serious by my illness but still untouched by the storms and tribulations that lay just ahead of me. I was at the apogee of happiness, caught in that moment just as the incline begins to fall. It is a moment tethered to the world around me as it was then, but it exists only in my mind.
Wordsworth spoke of "spots of time" when memory becomes meaning. Perhaps that is what I am trying to evoke. This sounds comforting, yet I agree with Emerson that after thirty everyone wakes up sad in the morning. At least, I agree with him insofar as it applies to me. I don't usually feel sad in the morning, but in unguarded or empty moments--like those upon first waking--I feel a sadness that clings to me like a spider web. I did not feel this melancholy when I was a child, and I believe that summer memory I have just described is important to me because that was the last time life was uncomplicated and the only world I knew was lovely and safe.
"...after thirty a man [or woman] wakes up sad every morning." I'll come back to this.
This resonated with me: "The style of middle age is a style of reappraisal, a style characterized by hesitation, by uncertainty, by the objects of the world rather than the passions that transport us from this world." Remember that passage in Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" where Hemingway dismisses abstractions like "glory" and "honor" and says the only things that matter are the names of the roads. I believe Emerson was saying something similar.
I've been doing some reappraising of my own, especially now that I am over 60 (how is that even possible?), and I find my mind keeps turning to the past, specifically those things and moments that, for me, encapsulate the feeling I had--or remember having--when gleams of intense well-being shone through the tapestry of my life. I don't think of these chinks of time as nostalgia; that's a more diffuse longing for a past of supposedly better times. I'm not sure I find that particularly healthy. I guess I'm a bit like Proust; these illuminated moments are usually triggered by a smell or the feel of the air on my skin or the cry of a mourning dove. One sense feeds into a whole world of associations that don't so much transport me from the world as impress me more deeply into it.
I spoke in praise of objects over abstractions, and here I am going on in a most abstract way. So enough of that. I would like to try to describe one of these memories and what it means to me, though I'm already sure I won't be able to do it adequately. The thing is, I want to make you FEEL the same thing I do, and I am nearly certain that is impossible. Still, I will try.
I am addicted to tea--regular English Breakfast but ordinary Lipton's will do in a pinch. When I raise my mug to take that first sip and breathe in that fragrant steam, I am--for a brief moment--thrust back through time to the small town in Indiana where I grew up. I can see our small backyard with my father's flower beds. Gladiolas were his favorite--bright, gaudy flowers that stood upright and proudly announced themselves. It is summer, though still cool in the mornings. I have been ill for a long time, and I am ten years old.
This morning I am allowed outside because it is finally warm enough that I won't get a chill. The sun warms me; it seems to soak right into my bones, yet that freshness of early morning mingles with the warmth so that I feel cool one minute and almost too warm the next. My mother brings me a cup of tea, or perhaps it's my blue-willow tea set with the tiny cups. At ten I did not know that I was destined to become an ardent Anglophile, but I already had the English taste for tea beautifully served. I am not strong yet, but I no longer feel dizzy when I stand up and I can finally believe that one day soon I will be well.
That harmony of my senses lifts me into a state of mind that seems to hover above the grass, the flowers, the scent of hot tea. In that hovering I feel what I can only call bliss--a suspension of joy that hangs in my mind as the breeze hangs in the branches of the pussy-willow I planted last year. This is the part that is hard to describe. I can tell you about the smell of cut grass or the flagrant blossoms of my dad's flowers or the feel of a teacup cradled in my hands, but the sense I am trying to capture is ineffable. Today when I am sad or unwell, I try to imagine myself back into that scene where I was a child made serious by my illness but still untouched by the storms and tribulations that lay just ahead of me. I was at the apogee of happiness, caught in that moment just as the incline begins to fall. It is a moment tethered to the world around me as it was then, but it exists only in my mind.
Wordsworth spoke of "spots of time" when memory becomes meaning. Perhaps that is what I am trying to evoke. This sounds comforting, yet I agree with Emerson that after thirty everyone wakes up sad in the morning. At least, I agree with him insofar as it applies to me. I don't usually feel sad in the morning, but in unguarded or empty moments--like those upon first waking--I feel a sadness that clings to me like a spider web. I did not feel this melancholy when I was a child, and I believe that summer memory I have just described is important to me because that was the last time life was uncomplicated and the only world I knew was lovely and safe.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Endings
The wonderful thing about literature is the way a writer can describe something unique or very personal and make it seem as if you were reading your own thoughts. Because some are able to plummet the depths and bring them to light with words, the rest of us are comforted. I just read such a piece in the New Yorker that came today. It's by Joyce Carol Oates and it's about the last week of her husband's life, his sudden illness, his hospitalization, their assumption that things would be all right, his unexpected death.
Of all the emotions we human beings feel, one of the strongest has to be grief. Part of our fear of death is our fear of the grief that will follow the death of someone so important to our lives that life itself doesn't seem possible without them. And yet people die, others grieve, and the world goes on.
Oates regrets not telling her husband just how much she loved him (though by her account it seems she did, whether she realizes that or not) and not being there when he died among "strangers." Her account is so poignant it makes your throat tighten and your eyes sting. I hope she has good friends to comfort her.
Every detail of that last week is seared into Oates' heart in a string of moments that in retrospect are freighted with meaning. For me, the moment that clings to my heart occurred a year before my mother died. My mother was a lady, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She was genteel, soft-spoken, and calm. To me she remains the ideal woman against whom I measure myself and come up short. She taught middle-school art, refusing an offer to move to the high school because she loved her squirmy students and was good with them. She was artistic, but she left it to my brother to be the artist. She was an unfailing support to my father, a coach, who adored her but probably never realized how much she sacrificed for his sake. My parents were a couple who were a closed world, much as it seems Joyce Carol Oates and her husband were. They needed no one but each other.
I have a memory from when I must have been about three. My parents were standing in the middle of our living room with their arms around each other. I wanted to be included and put my little arms around both of them--at about knee level--but even then I knew that much as they might love me they needed each other more. When I was a child, my security came from the stability of their marriage. They shared their most important thoughts only with each other. "I love you" wasn't part of the conversations they had with me. I don't remember now the first person I ever said those words to, but I'm sure it wasn't either of my parents.
My mother lived to be 88, but she suffered a series of strokes during her last four years that left her speech impaired and confined her to a wheelchair. She and my dad were in a nursing home that my mother had insisted they move into before one of them became so decrepit the facility would no longer admit them. You had to be able to walk in the front door on day one. So they moved from the home they had built and loved into two rooms with a microwave they never used. Six weeks after moving in my mother suffered her first debilitating stroke. From that point on we couldn't communicate by telephone; I ran everything through my dad, with whom I'd had maybe two serious conversations in my life. I expressed concern; he tried to remain optimistic and never left her side.
This is when adult children step up to the plate and care for their parents, not as if they were dependent children but, yeah, sort of. But I lived many hundreds of miles away, was a single mother with three children, and had an ill-paid part-time teaching job. I was able to get back only about once a year at Christmas. My nieces lived closer, and they were wonderful.
A year before my mother died I did make it home that summer for a week-long visit. She had been in and out of the hospital and was just then in intensive care. My brother was there too, and he, my dad, and I sat beside her bed and carried on a desultory conversation. Beyond her hospital window were fields with cows grazing, and I was reminded of Auden's poem about Icarus falling into the sea while ordinary life proceeded unmindful of the extraordinary event. I was leaving the next day, and I didn't believe my mother to be in immediate danger, but in her condition you never knew. My dad left the room first, while my brother and I said our goodbyes. He took her hand and spoke to her with such gentle kindness that I later told him that if I ever got sick I wanted him to take care of me. I waited for him to leave, then I said goodbye.
"Let me know if there's anything I can do, and if you need me to come back, just say the word." She nodded with comprehension and tried to say something, but she couldn't finish a sentence. I leaned over and kissed her forehead, then I, too, left the room. My brother and dad were waiting for me by the elevators, and as we descended to the first floor I felt as if I were being strangled. If I so much as tried to utter a single word, I was sure I would burst into tears, and that I simply would not do. As we rode the elevator in silence, I knew that I would never see her again, and when she died a year later I had not been able to afford to return in all that time. Did my parents want to see me but not want to impose? Did they prefer to be left alone to face this together? Were they disappointed that I never came? I will never know.
My dad lived four more years, increasingly deaf, increasingly isolated. When he was nearing the end, I went to see him and it was clear he didn't have long. I didn't want to have the same regrets with my dad as I did with my mother, and I told him what a great father he had been and how much I loved him. He said, "That's very meaningful," then paused. "I'll be with your mother soon." Those might not have been his last words, but they're the last ones I remember. I do so hope he was right.
Of all the emotions we human beings feel, one of the strongest has to be grief. Part of our fear of death is our fear of the grief that will follow the death of someone so important to our lives that life itself doesn't seem possible without them. And yet people die, others grieve, and the world goes on.
Oates regrets not telling her husband just how much she loved him (though by her account it seems she did, whether she realizes that or not) and not being there when he died among "strangers." Her account is so poignant it makes your throat tighten and your eyes sting. I hope she has good friends to comfort her.
Every detail of that last week is seared into Oates' heart in a string of moments that in retrospect are freighted with meaning. For me, the moment that clings to my heart occurred a year before my mother died. My mother was a lady, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She was genteel, soft-spoken, and calm. To me she remains the ideal woman against whom I measure myself and come up short. She taught middle-school art, refusing an offer to move to the high school because she loved her squirmy students and was good with them. She was artistic, but she left it to my brother to be the artist. She was an unfailing support to my father, a coach, who adored her but probably never realized how much she sacrificed for his sake. My parents were a couple who were a closed world, much as it seems Joyce Carol Oates and her husband were. They needed no one but each other.
I have a memory from when I must have been about three. My parents were standing in the middle of our living room with their arms around each other. I wanted to be included and put my little arms around both of them--at about knee level--but even then I knew that much as they might love me they needed each other more. When I was a child, my security came from the stability of their marriage. They shared their most important thoughts only with each other. "I love you" wasn't part of the conversations they had with me. I don't remember now the first person I ever said those words to, but I'm sure it wasn't either of my parents.
My mother lived to be 88, but she suffered a series of strokes during her last four years that left her speech impaired and confined her to a wheelchair. She and my dad were in a nursing home that my mother had insisted they move into before one of them became so decrepit the facility would no longer admit them. You had to be able to walk in the front door on day one. So they moved from the home they had built and loved into two rooms with a microwave they never used. Six weeks after moving in my mother suffered her first debilitating stroke. From that point on we couldn't communicate by telephone; I ran everything through my dad, with whom I'd had maybe two serious conversations in my life. I expressed concern; he tried to remain optimistic and never left her side.
This is when adult children step up to the plate and care for their parents, not as if they were dependent children but, yeah, sort of. But I lived many hundreds of miles away, was a single mother with three children, and had an ill-paid part-time teaching job. I was able to get back only about once a year at Christmas. My nieces lived closer, and they were wonderful.
A year before my mother died I did make it home that summer for a week-long visit. She had been in and out of the hospital and was just then in intensive care. My brother was there too, and he, my dad, and I sat beside her bed and carried on a desultory conversation. Beyond her hospital window were fields with cows grazing, and I was reminded of Auden's poem about Icarus falling into the sea while ordinary life proceeded unmindful of the extraordinary event. I was leaving the next day, and I didn't believe my mother to be in immediate danger, but in her condition you never knew. My dad left the room first, while my brother and I said our goodbyes. He took her hand and spoke to her with such gentle kindness that I later told him that if I ever got sick I wanted him to take care of me. I waited for him to leave, then I said goodbye.
"Let me know if there's anything I can do, and if you need me to come back, just say the word." She nodded with comprehension and tried to say something, but she couldn't finish a sentence. I leaned over and kissed her forehead, then I, too, left the room. My brother and dad were waiting for me by the elevators, and as we descended to the first floor I felt as if I were being strangled. If I so much as tried to utter a single word, I was sure I would burst into tears, and that I simply would not do. As we rode the elevator in silence, I knew that I would never see her again, and when she died a year later I had not been able to afford to return in all that time. Did my parents want to see me but not want to impose? Did they prefer to be left alone to face this together? Were they disappointed that I never came? I will never know.
My dad lived four more years, increasingly deaf, increasingly isolated. When he was nearing the end, I went to see him and it was clear he didn't have long. I didn't want to have the same regrets with my dad as I did with my mother, and I told him what a great father he had been and how much I loved him. He said, "That's very meaningful," then paused. "I'll be with your mother soon." Those might not have been his last words, but they're the last ones I remember. I do so hope he was right.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Two Things on my Mind
Singing and scones. First, singing. I just listened to Chanticleer singing "O Come, O Come Immanuel" on the radio. It was ethereal and transcendent. Yet again I wished I had a great singing voice. To be able to open your mouth and produce a sweet, piercing sound that makes people's eyes well up would be to me a truly magical power. Like beauty, a great voice is something you either have or you don't. No amount of hard work will ever produce golden tones.
I remember a girl I knew in college; she lived on my floor in my freshman dorm. I don't even remember her name now. But I remember her voice. A group of us would sit around on the floor late at nights, smoke cigarettes, and sing folk songs, and her voice rose above the others like pure silver. I so much wanted to be able to do what she did so effortlessly, but it was not to be. The only singing I've ever done is to my kids when they were small, and I even put an end to that when my then-two-year old daughter looked up at me pleadingly and said, "Mommy, don't sing." Everyone's a critic.
*******************************************************************************
I have a perfect Christmas memory. (Actually, I have many, but here's one.) I once lived in Canada where there was a village untouched by commercialism and the tourist onslaught that later devoured it. There was a main street that ran along a canal, with a bridge at one end and an old mill with a waterwheel at the other. The buildings were all made of stone, weathered by centuries of northern winters. In them were shops that sold wooden toys imported from Scandanavia or handmade candles and wooly mitts or beer from anywhere in the world. There was a tea shop, run by two Scottish grannies, that was a welcome refuge from the cold, the leaden skies, and an afternoon of shopping. The wood floor creaked comfortingly, a fireplace crackled with warmth and light, and tea was served in giant pots engulfed in tea cozies. The scones came with clotted cream and strawberry jam, homemade of course.
The tea shop was not a twee imitation concocted by marketers but a plain and simple place where everything seemed about a hundred years old, the leaded windows still held the wavy glass of earlier times, and the Scottish accents of the ladies whose domain this was took you quite out of yourself. They understand comfort in the British Isles. Sitting in that tea shop all those years ago, with a good friend and our two babies, drinking endless cups of tea while the babies dozed in their strollers and we ordered another round of scones--it WAS Christmas--I couldn't imagine that anything in my life would ever go wrong.
I remember a girl I knew in college; she lived on my floor in my freshman dorm. I don't even remember her name now. But I remember her voice. A group of us would sit around on the floor late at nights, smoke cigarettes, and sing folk songs, and her voice rose above the others like pure silver. I so much wanted to be able to do what she did so effortlessly, but it was not to be. The only singing I've ever done is to my kids when they were small, and I even put an end to that when my then-two-year old daughter looked up at me pleadingly and said, "Mommy, don't sing." Everyone's a critic.
*******************************************************************************
I have a perfect Christmas memory. (Actually, I have many, but here's one.) I once lived in Canada where there was a village untouched by commercialism and the tourist onslaught that later devoured it. There was a main street that ran along a canal, with a bridge at one end and an old mill with a waterwheel at the other. The buildings were all made of stone, weathered by centuries of northern winters. In them were shops that sold wooden toys imported from Scandanavia or handmade candles and wooly mitts or beer from anywhere in the world. There was a tea shop, run by two Scottish grannies, that was a welcome refuge from the cold, the leaden skies, and an afternoon of shopping. The wood floor creaked comfortingly, a fireplace crackled with warmth and light, and tea was served in giant pots engulfed in tea cozies. The scones came with clotted cream and strawberry jam, homemade of course.
The tea shop was not a twee imitation concocted by marketers but a plain and simple place where everything seemed about a hundred years old, the leaded windows still held the wavy glass of earlier times, and the Scottish accents of the ladies whose domain this was took you quite out of yourself. They understand comfort in the British Isles. Sitting in that tea shop all those years ago, with a good friend and our two babies, drinking endless cups of tea while the babies dozed in their strollers and we ordered another round of scones--it WAS Christmas--I couldn't imagine that anything in my life would ever go wrong.
What the Hell?
What the hell are the Republicans trying to do? And why are the American people letting them get away with it? To take just one issue--the extension of unemployment benefits--the Republicans say we can't afford it. We have to cut spending (more like slash and burn) AND taxes, as if starving government programs would somehow solve our financial problems. What "cutting spending" means is this: families with disabled children (picture a ten-year old who can only eat through a tube, can't speak, can't walk, can't bathe herself) will lose desperately-needed services; more families will be driven to the wall by ballooning medical costs; more people who seek employment will feel like failures because there are no jobs in sight; and the economy will still be in the toilet.
Over and over, I hear economists--famous, reputable ones--say, let government keep people afloat and create jobs in the short term, and plan on reducing the deficit in the long-term. The Republican drumbeat is that raising taxes discourages job-creation, that government is the problem and can't be trusted. What amazes me is how so many Americans fail to recognize that the government is us. Everyone in Congress is there because enough Americans wanted them to be there. Our government is not an occupying army. If Congress refuses to extend unemployment benefits, what that says to me is that America is a selfish country, at least half of whose people (the majority of voters in our last election) lack the compassion to imagine what it feels like to be poor or to be caught up in circumstances beyond one's control.
There are two ways to go. As a people, we can band together to create a compassionate, fair, tolerant society and make decisions based on those values, or we can make money the measure of all things. I love that challenge to create a hypothetical society without knowing where you would fit into it. What if you were plunked down in a society as a gay person or a woman or a disabled person? Would the society you "created" be as good for you as for everyone else? The society we have now is very good for rich people. Money rules. I am flabbergasted that people who stand to lose the most were the very ones who elected a Congress that is intent on protecting the wealthy while slashing away at programs that benefit the majority of us.
Others have articulated my position far better than I--Paul Krugman and Robert Reich to name two--but I want to register my protest against the madness. Americans are angry. I am angry. I am especially angry at the wizards of Wall Street who led us into this ravine, but I am angry too at those who fail to realize that whoever started this mess, we are all going to have to help clean it up. Before we pull the rug out from under ordinary people, let's raise taxes to the levels of the Reagan or Clinton eras. An undertaxed society is a starved society. Too many of our citizens are going hungry, and we damn well better do something about it.
Over and over, I hear economists--famous, reputable ones--say, let government keep people afloat and create jobs in the short term, and plan on reducing the deficit in the long-term. The Republican drumbeat is that raising taxes discourages job-creation, that government is the problem and can't be trusted. What amazes me is how so many Americans fail to recognize that the government is us. Everyone in Congress is there because enough Americans wanted them to be there. Our government is not an occupying army. If Congress refuses to extend unemployment benefits, what that says to me is that America is a selfish country, at least half of whose people (the majority of voters in our last election) lack the compassion to imagine what it feels like to be poor or to be caught up in circumstances beyond one's control.
There are two ways to go. As a people, we can band together to create a compassionate, fair, tolerant society and make decisions based on those values, or we can make money the measure of all things. I love that challenge to create a hypothetical society without knowing where you would fit into it. What if you were plunked down in a society as a gay person or a woman or a disabled person? Would the society you "created" be as good for you as for everyone else? The society we have now is very good for rich people. Money rules. I am flabbergasted that people who stand to lose the most were the very ones who elected a Congress that is intent on protecting the wealthy while slashing away at programs that benefit the majority of us.
Others have articulated my position far better than I--Paul Krugman and Robert Reich to name two--but I want to register my protest against the madness. Americans are angry. I am angry. I am especially angry at the wizards of Wall Street who led us into this ravine, but I am angry too at those who fail to realize that whoever started this mess, we are all going to have to help clean it up. Before we pull the rug out from under ordinary people, let's raise taxes to the levels of the Reagan or Clinton eras. An undertaxed society is a starved society. Too many of our citizens are going hungry, and we damn well better do something about it.
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