The Sunday Salon: A Tale of Two Zeldas

 

I haven't seen the remake of The Great Gatsby, and I'm not sure I want to.

The trailer scares me a little.

I cut my cinematic Gatsby teeth on the 1974 version, with Robert Redford/Mia Farrow, all shimmery pastels and brooding looks accompanied by Nelson Riddle's score. I loved everything about that movie - I was 18 after all, and it was so romantic.  Baz Lurman's remake, with all it cinematic special effects and hopped up score frightens me.

Until I make a choice, I'm indulging my long standing interest in everything pertaining to the Fitzgeralds, and reading two recently published books about Zelda Fitzgerald, the fascinating woman who lived with F. Scott during his tumultuous and reckless writing career.

Z, A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, by Therese Fowler, is straightforward bio-fic (biographical fiction), imagining Zelda and Scott's courtship and early years of marriage. I raced through it, getting a great photographic portrait of this couple's marriage.

Ericka Robuck's Call Me Zelda comes at the subject from a slightly different angle. Robuck introduces a fictional psychiatric nurse who is Zelda's caretaker at the mental hospital in Baltimore. I love this approach, because the novel gives the reader a two-for-one story as we meet this very interesting character who has a story of her own to tell, one that seems to intersect in interesting ways with Zelda's.

I'm glad I decided to read them in the order I did  (Z first, followed by Call me Zelda), because I have the background on Zelda's entire life from Fowler's book to illuminate all the corners of Robuck's novel, which focuses on a briefer span of time.

Both books are great ways to satisfy an interest in this fascinating woman.

What are you reading this Sunday?

Change of Scene

Something I learned when we moved last fall - a change of scenery can be inspiring and invigorating. When Deb Smouse, friend and Life Coach extraordinaire, starting contributing to Medium (a new concept in writing networks that's still in the beta stage) I was intrigued.

When I received an invitation to post there myself, I decided to give it a try. My first piece is here - I'd love to have you visit, and if you like it, click the green "recommend" button to let me know you've been by.

A new writing space.

A fresh spring morning.

What's not to like?

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.