Write On Wednesday: Leaf Gathering

In my sophomore biology class we were assigned the task of collecting 40 different varieties of leaves, identifying them as to to type and genus, organizing them, preserving them, and arranging them in a collection suitable for display. It was the perfect way for this slightly science-phobic student to embark on the study of biology, because leaf-collecting was always one of my favorite past-times. It was tradition for me to wander the neighborhood each fall, paper grocery bag in hand, looking for the reds, the sharpest golds, the warmest orange. I would come home with my bounty and lay it out on my bedroom floor in a kaleidocscopr of color. I could spend a long time shifting the leaves around into various patterns, looking at  them from different angles, sometimes trying to draw them in a sketch book and color them in with crayon or colored pencil. I admit that the specifics of our class assignment stole some of the enjoyment from the task. It was difficult to find 40 different varieties of leaves, even in Michigan where there are a lot of trees. I enlisted out of state family members who sent me leaves from palm trees, smoky ash. When I finally met my quota, I had to figure out how to arrange the in some sort of logical order, and then how to display and preserve them so they would remain viable for display during our school's open house two weeks later.

With painstaking effort, I carefully encased each leaf in wax paper, created a typewritten label with all the identifying information, mounted each leaf onto (coordinating) colored paper, and fitted each page into a three-ring binder. I don't recall the grade I received, but I do recall a heady sense of pride at having successfully completed a project like this one - something that was very different from the language arts and musical projects I usually attacked with confidence and creativity

For a few weeks now, I've had a new writing project wandering around inside my brain. As I think about it and ponder the characters and situations involved in it, I feel a bit like that leaf-gathering girl - the one who wandered the neighborhood with a paper sack and picked up whichever brightly colored leaf struck her fancy, giving little thought to type or size or classification. I'm having fun looking at all the pieces of my kaleidoscope, twisting them and turning them into endless striking combinations.

Writers do that, don't we? We wander through life picking up bits and pieces of ideas and imagery. All of  life is like a huge forest in the midst of autumn, filled with a banquet of brightly colored ideas splayed out for the taking like a vibrant carpet beneath our feet. That's certainly the fun part for me, the way I can pass endless hours of time - re-reading my favorite authors, writing down sentences that move me, inspire me.

At some point, though, we have to become the scientist, and put it all together in a way that makes sense.

Scary.

But worth it.

The Sunday Salon: Mother's Day Between the Covers

...of books, I mean. Although it's so cold and windy here, I'm sorely tempted to crawl back under my coziest blanket and stay there for the day. Oh spring, whither for art thou? Although I didn't plan it, I'm in the midst of a book about mothers and daughters. The book is One True Thing, Anna Quindlen's 1994 novel that describes the multi-faceted relationship between 24 year old Ellen Gulden and her mother, Kate. When Kate is diagnosed with advanced cancer, Ellen's father insists that she quit her job and come home to care for her mother, the quintessential homemaker and family touchstone -their "one true thing." But Ellen has always placed herself akin with her father in the family dynamic - the intellectual, high achiever. Initially, she is resentful and afraid  - she has no idea how to play the role of caregiver, the one her mother has always embraced so masterfully. Yet as the days and weeks pass Ellen changes, and reassesses her preconceptions about her mother, her parent's marriage, and the choices she has made for her own life.

Because I'm a huge fan of Quindlen's work - both her fiction, her memoir, and her journalism - I know there are autobiographical elements to this novel. I know that her own mother died from ovarian cancer, know that Quindlen's father called her home from college to care for her mother during her final illness. But  knowing Quindlen has woven bits and pieces of her own experience into the fabric of this story just makes the novel all the more interesting and touching. The mother-daughter relationship in One True Thing is so poignant, and I love watching the subtle ways that Kate uses this final opportunity to teach Ellen some things about valuing herself as a woman.

I started thinking about some of my of favorite contemporary novels that deal with the mother-daughter relationship. Mary Gordon's Men and Angels came to mind immediately.  I first read it back in the early 80's, but I re-read it about every five years because it's so powerful and affecting to me. It explores that age-old question - how does a mother satisfy her own need to be creative and productive, to have her own life,  while still providing the best care for her children?

Another favorite is Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, which looks at the way a mother's cultural history affects her expectations for her daughters. I've always loved this novel  (and the movie adaptation), and when it was first published most of us in the western hemisphere knew very little about Chinese culture. It was intriguing to look at the mother-daughter dynamic through the eyes of eastern history and culture.

How about you? Do you have a favorite novel or memoir about motherhood?

Do share.

If you're interested in reading further -  a bibliography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Contemporary Fiction from the University of Delaware.

Wedded Bliss

You know what I remember most about my wedding day?

Not my surprise at how many people had packed into the white wooden pews of the historic chapel. Not the moment of panic when my about-to-be husband dropped the wedding ring onto the floor in the middle of the ceremony. Not even the annoying wedding  photographer who kept insisting we smear wedding cake over each other's faces.

No, the memory that stands out most clearly from that day, the one I return to when I want/need to recall the butterflies in my stomach that accompany young love, is a moment later that evening as we drove to our  honeymoon in Toronto. We stopped at a small convenience store, a tiny, cramped little place, the ceiling-high shelves jam packed with everything from soup to shaving cream. I don't remember why we stopped, what "convenience" we needed. But I was alone at the front counter after making my purchase, peering around the overflowing shelves to see where Jim might have wandered off to.

"Is there something else you need?" the clerk asked me.

"No," I replied, "I'm just looking for my husband."

And with the utterance of that word - husband - a shiver I can still feel ran through my body. What a momentous word, heavy with portent and responsibility. Saying it for the first time plucked me from girlhood and instantly, ready or not, plopped me down into womanhood. It was a word that meant I was grown up, with a grown up relationship and responsibilities.

Thirty seven years later, having now said the word thousands of times, I'll admit it isn't always accompanied by a flurry of girlish excitement. When you live with someone your entire adult life, you learn more about them then is probably good for any two people to know about each other. But familiarity doesn't have to breed contempt. My husband's oh-so-familiar habits and attitudes are usually more comforting than contemptuous. Sure, like most wives I complain about the snoring, the TV, the long showers and short conversations. And he still wanders off when we're shopping and I have to look around for him after I'm done.

But mostly I'm thankful that we've turned out to be as compatible as we thought we would be when we took joined our lives together 37 years ago today. Like that little convenience store on the 401 in Windsor, we've stocked the shelves of our relationship with everything imaginable until they're filled to overflowing.

I picked a really good husband. I hope I get to call him that for another 37 years at least.

The Sunday Salon: Reflection

A sure sign the blog has been fallow for too long - a rash of spam comments on very old posts. Those things magically appear  like dust bunnies under the bed at the first sign of neglect. Like most people I've been a little pre-occupied this week,  mulling over the events in Boston and Texas and being quietly thankful to have spent an entirely uneventful week in my little corner of the world. But mindful that it could change any second, as it did for the people in Boston, and Watertown, and West.

It's all combined to make me feel a little melancholy.

My spirits were lifted Friday evening as I gathered with a group of bookish ladies for a lively discussion of The Orchardist. If you recall, I waxed rhapsodic about the book a few weeks ago. And while the general consensus among the group was to praise the writing, several people found the story simply too bleak to call enjoyable.

As much as I loved  The Orchardist, I could never call it a "feel good" book. It's rather like the events of the past week - it's a book that forces you to contemplate evil and sadness. It's a book that uncovers isolation and hopelessness and unfulfilled dreams. As we sat around the table and talked about these things, it occurred to me how often I gravitate to books like that, how I almost relish that kind of literary atmosphere. Of course there's sadness and pain and disillusionment and misunderstanding. I take it for granted in my books, like I've come to take it for granted in my world.

Having lived a lot "in my head" I know my own penchant toward the melancholy. My book choices reflect that - the memoirs and novels I read often focus on people who suffer, who seek spiritual and emotional sustenance. I don't like violence or cruelty - won't read a book that has any of that in it - but I do hunker into those books that delve into the depths of the human experience.

Of course this week I haven't had to read about it in fiction...it's been all over the news.

I wonder if other readers find themselves drawn to books that reflect their emotional temperature? Do you?

TLC Book Tour: The New Republic

There's no doubt that Lionel Shriver can write. I enjoyed her clever wit and acerbic humor in The Post Birthday World. I was riveted to the painfully dramatic and timely saga of We Need to Talk About Kevin.

But while I appreciated Shriver's writerly talent in The New Republic -  a part parody, part social satire featuring an attorney who re-creates himself as an investigative journalist - I wasn't completely sold on the premise or plot of this novel.

The novel takes on mythic proportions when Edgar Kellogg, a disgruntled corporate attorney with a larger than life chip on his shoulder, tosses in his lucrative law career and agrees to a suspect foreign assignment in which he will replace the enigmatic but hugely popular journalist Barrington Saddler who has mysteriously disappeared.  Edgar finds himself in a (fictional) Portugese backwater, awash with other journalists trying to make a name for themselves, but mostly living the high life and seeking excitement wherever they can find it. He gets quickly caught up in the spirit of the adventure as he investigates the turn of events surrounding Saddler's disappearance and how it's related to the terrorist activities of the so-called Sons of Barba.

The New Republic was written in 1998 (but published in 2012), and so the satiric, almost playful portrait of a terrorist culture seems almost unseemly in light of 21st century events. Shriver's coverage of current events, i.e., the topic of school shootings in We Need to Talk About Kevin, was highly personal but thoughtfully and carefully scripted.  What interested me most in The New Republic was Edgar Kellogg himself. Ostracized as a child because of his weight, Edgar's one goal has been social popularity.

Edgar had verified in childhood what the New Testament only hints at...Edgar's personal Apocrypha: that people will exonerate sadists, braggarts, liars, and even slack-jawed morons before they'll pardon eyesores. If you're attractive, people need a reason to dislike you; if you're ugly, people need a reason to like you. They don't usually find one. In his tubby school days, Edgar had learned the hard way that every vulgar slob on the block was an aesthete.

So, Edgar has attached himself to popular people throughout his life, becoming the perennial sidekick for the "rich and famous" among the cliques that threaten to ignore him. And he's madder than hell about that. But now, finally slim but still smarting from years of rejection, Edgar has the opportunity to literally replace the "absentee paragon," Barrington Saddler, about whom "no one from New York to Cinziero can stop talking for more than ten minutes using a stopwatch." As he channels Saddler's persona, he is forced to reevaluate his desires for promotion from sidekick to leader.

And how does that work out for him? What's better - to be the admired or the admirer?

Shriver takes the reader on a long and meandering path before Edgar comes to this final conclusion.

Edgar considered his life long position of second-in-command. Sure, constitutionally Edgar was a sidekick. But there was nothing disgraceful about lieutenancy should your captain be splendid. ... As Edgar reviewed the short list of his idols...he concluded that in every case he himself may have got the better end of the deal. It was probably more interesting to adore than be adored, more transporting, more engrossing, and in any event much less creepy. What the hell, given a choice, Edgar might rather revere a hero than be one.

The New Republic is an interesting look at two very large personalities and invites the reader to consider what it is that make people popular.  It's exploration of international terrorism was less successful for this reader, but some with a more political bent might find it of keener interest.

Thanks to TLC Tours for the opportunity to read this book.

The author's Facebook page.