Reading Life: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Long before Ann Patchett’s imaginative novels (Patron Saint of Liars, Bel Canto, State of Wonder) were bestsellers, she was making a living as a writer - but as a writer of nonfiction for magazines.  Patchett cut her writing teeth as a journalist/essayist in the 1970’s, beginning with a book review for Seventeen magazine (for which she was paid $250). She spent eight years writing almost exclusively for Seventeen, until she herself was thirty years old when she moved on to “grown up” publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and Gourmet. While she was writing freelance articles, Patchett was honing her craft as a fiction writer, with short stories and eventually novels. She credits her training in journalism - the intense editing, the research, the deadlines - with teaching her the kind of skills and endurance necessary to persevere as a novelist. “All those years of writing articles…made me a workhouse, and that in turn was a skill I brought back to my novels."

And while Patchett started writing nonfiction as a way to literally support her fiction writing (“The tricky thing about being a writer or any kind of artist is that in addition to marking art you also have to make a living”) she was surprised to find her work as a journalist supporting her fiction in other ways as well. When she was working on Bel Canto, her novel about an opera singer, the editors at Gourmet magazine sent her to Italy on assignment to write an article about famous opera houses. Later, they fronted a trip into the Peruvian jungle while she was working on State of Wonder, her book about scientists in the Amazon. In fact, there have been so many benefits to this “day job” of nonfiction writing that even when her novels were successful enough to provide a living wage, Patchett has continued to write nonfiction, just more selectively than when it was the mainstay of her livelihood.

This is the Story of  Happy Marriage collects a variety of Patchett’s essays and articles into one volume. It’s an interesting look at her life through essays that are well written and evocative of the writers time, place, and personality. We learn about her childhood, her love for her grandmother, her first marriage and divorce. We meet her dog Rosy as a puppy and then, 16 years later, as Patchett says goodbye to this beloved pet. We cheer her on when she writes about the success of her new bookstore in Nashville.

And we hear The Story of a Happy Marriage, with her husband Karl. “I  can tell you how I came to have a happy marriage,” Patchett writes in the title essay, “but I’m not so sure my results can be reproduced. I continue to think back to (my friend) Edra, standing in that swimming pool on a bright day in summer. ‘Does he make you a better person?’ was what she asked me, and I want to tell her, Yes, with the full force of his life, with the example of his kindness and vigilance, his good sense and equanimity, me makes me a better person. And that is what I aspire to be, better, and no, it really isn’t more complicated than that.”

This collection is an irresistible blend of memoir and journalism - the kind of writing I really love, probably because it’s the kind of writing toward which I have aspirations of my own. Whether you’re a fan of Patchett’s novels or not, these pieces form a portrait of a real life, lived with thoughtfulness, compassion, and love.

Direct Your Gaze

Early this morning, coffee in hand, I stood in front of the sliding doors that lead onto our deck and listened to the birds thronging happily around the feeder. One of the things I love most about our new house are all the different birds – who knew that moving eight miles down the road would put me in completely new ornithological territory. I’m learning to identify them now – the bright golden finch, cuddly tufted titmouse, chickadees and wrens – all scrabbling for territory on the perches.  But when the red-bellied woodpecker makes his appearance, they hover reverently on the surrounding bushes, allowing him to sup in regal splendor.

Today, something caught my eye and directed my gaze upward into the soaring branches of an oak tree. Maybe it was the shimmer of that tree’s last golden leaves, or the piercing blue of winter sky. What might have been a passing glance turned into a stare of wide-eyed wonder. For every bird gathered around my feeder, there were at least a dozen flying in and out among the branches of that tree. I had to crane my neck to see them, those flecks of gold and brown as they swooped and dived in and among the uppermost branches. It struck me at once that they lived SO high in the sky, like high rise apartment dwellers, and must be constantly looking down on my, pitying me for my groundedness.

And I knew then that I’ve been walking through life with my head down, my eyes in the wrong place. There are entire other worlds to see if we just look up once in a while.

Direct your gaze and see the world differently.

I know I will be doing that more often after today.

Where Were You When

Yesterday was a day for remembering - where were you when? When Kennedy was shot.

Of course I know where I was - I was seven years old, so I was in elementary school, struggling to put my chair upside down on top of the desk as we always did at the end of the day. It was hard for me - I was short and chubby and not particularly good with physical things. So I was probably hot and sweaty, because it was a warmish humid day, even though it was late November in the midwest. I imagine the classroom smelled fusty with end-of-the day body odor from 30 second graders.

Our teacher was  called out of the classroom. She was my favorite teacher of all time, Miss Trudy Strale, one of those dedicated spinsterish teachers who was warm and appreciative and understanding.

Yes, I was her pet. I readily admit it.

So when she came back into the room with tears streaming down her pretty face, I was alarmed. What had happened to hurt my favorite teacher so? And then she said: "Boys and girls, a terrible thing has happened to our country. President Kennedy has been killed."

The scope of a 7 year old's understanding was revealed by my reaction. I turned around and said to the boy behind me (Mark Gardner, aka "Mouse") - "I don't care. I will just go to Kentucky and live with my cousins."

Believe it or not, I was considered one of the "smart kids" in those days.

Obviously I had no idea of the ramifications of that moment, didn't even understand what had happened. Over the course of the next few days, with schools and businesses closed out of respect, with our parents crying and glued to the television for all the latest news and then the long state funeral, I finally came to grasp the import of the situation.

Yesterday, my mother talked about where she was on that day, and I realized I'd never asked her about what she was doing when she heard the fateful news. "I was shopping," she said, "at the Federal's store on Plymouth Road." I could picture that store immediately, because it was a place we often shopped. I could even smell the particular combination of dusty carpet and new clothing that permeated the old building.

"I went looking for Dad right away. 'They've killed the President,' I told him. 'I've got to get home to my baby, because who knows what will happen next.'" Of course, I was the "baby" in question, and it made perfect sense that her first impulse would be to find me and protect me at a time when the world around her seemed so uncertain and vulnerable.

That was a sensation I knew very well. Because the morning of September 11, 2001, another day when the world as we knew it was shaken to the core,  I was on an airplane that got grounded half-way between Michigan and Florida and I too had an overwhelming need to be with my family. I was stuck midway between my mother and my son, unable to get to either one of them. We waited, not knowing what would happen next.

"This country was never the same after that day," my mother said yesterday, referring to the day Kennedy was killed. "I don't think we knew how evil people could be until that happened, and people have been getting meaner and meaner ever since."

Every nation has pivotal moments that change them. Every generation lives those moments in a different way. They all involve a loss of innocence that alters the way you live your life - for good or ill - from that day forward. Assassinations, acts of terrorism, those are the events that can make us draw inward, make us want to protect ourselves and our families. They make us edgy and distrustful. We run. We hide.

Even as a seven year old child, my first thought was to flee, to leave the country (even if it was only for the perceived safety of my aunt and uncle's farmhouse in the blue grassy hills of Kentucky). But in the 38 years between 1963 and 2001, I learned that any attempt to escape is futile. All you can do is gather your courage, circle the wagons, and hope for the best.

Evil didn't start on that November day in Dallas. There has always been evil in the world, and there always will be. It visits each nation, each generation, even each family and person in some degree.

One thing that is certain - you never forget what you were doing the moment you meet it.

Preparation

I thought I was prepared. After all, for the past two years, my father had been living with Stage IV colon cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, and kidney failure. That’s a lot for an 87 year old. But when my stepmother called me on the phone the other night, I could tell immediately that I was about to hear the worst news possible, and I realized I wasn’t prepared after all.

In the past two years, I’ve made four trips to Florida on what I assumed were “last time” visits. But my Dad’s will to live kept trumping the frailty of his body.  Even though I knew he was living on borrowed time, I was expecting him to keep pulling miracles out of his hat, keep surprising us with unexpected rallies and recoveries.  When he was hospitalized briefly two months ago, I contemplated making another trip down, but decided against it. I had a lot going on, the tickets were expensive…yadda yadda.  I would wait, I thought, wait until November. And indeed I did make a trip in November,  but it was to help my stepmother make arrangements for his cremation. I said my goodbyes, but only to his body lying still and cold in a makeshift casket.

It was slightly strange being in Florida alone with my stepmother. She has been my Dad’s chief caregiver throughout his long illness, even as she works a full time job in retail, and for that I was so grateful. But I felt as if I were the representative from the first part of my Dad’s life, the almost 50 years he spent married to my mother, his high school sweetheart, while Sharon stood for his Second Act – the new life he embarked upon in his mid-sixties, moving to Florida, marrying a woman two decades younger, cultivating new hobbies (golf, poker) and new friends. We had completely different memories of this man we were putting to rest, and we were trying to reconcile that with the reality of our loss.

Meanwhile, back at home, my mother deals with her own private grief, one not even acknowledged by society. The break up of their marriage was not by her choice, and though she had come to some sort of terms with it in the ensuing 25 years, there was still a large part of her heart that belonged to that young man she fell in love with in the early 1940′s, the one to whom she devoted four decades of her life.

As for me, I find myself speeding through the stages of grief.  Those few days in Florida had a tinge of unreality, as if I were going through the motions without any sense of rhyme or reason. Then I started to feel angry – first with everybody around me who were oblivious to my sadness and continued about their trivial pursuits as if everything in the world was normal, and then with my Dad, who had once again taken me by surprise like he did 25 years ago when he packed up and left our family to start his new life.

Now, two weeks later, there is a veil of sadness inside me, one that washes over me at odd times. Like when I see his handwriting on a box of tools still sitting in my mother’s garage. When I look at the wedding picture of he and my mother that I keep on the mantle. When I drive by a Walmart Store, where my Dad worked during his retirement. When I see his phone number in the Favorites list on my phone.

I am no stranger to death. In the past few years I have lost my in-laws, a beloved uncle and aunt, and three elderly neighbors of whom I was inordinately fond. I thought I knew what grief was all about, was almost smug about my ability to handle it.

But the loss of a parent is something different, and I think it’s especially so for an only child.

I wasn’t prepared for it at all.

Presently

Be present. Be here.

I've been thinking about this idea a lot over the past few months. My life is fairly uncomplicated right now, at least as lives go, and so I have the luxury to ponder things. As often happens, when an idea takes root in your mind, you find the universe sets it before you in many different ways.  This notion of paying attention - it pops up on my social media pages in cute sayings on Facebook or quoted passages on Twitter. Bloggers write about it. My favorite authors explore it in books that I carry around like talismans. Even the young up-and-comers, the 30-somethings who have been hell bent in their pursuit of future achievements, are beginning to rein themselves in and start focusing with renewed appreciation on what is happening right now.

In the present.

Now I'm a little bit obsessed with this idea of being present. I begin to look at everything I do during the day a little differently, so that each activity is unique and not just as something to be finished before I move on to the next item on my list. The very first thing I do in the morning  - filling the coffee pot with water, measuring the beans, grinding them to a fine texture, setting our cups on top of the coffeemaker to warm them, pouring the coffee into the cups, setting them on a cloth covered tray, and carrying them upstairs to our bedroom - takes on an element of sacredness.

Does it sound ridiculous to think of making coffee as a sacred ritual?  Part of me scoffs. Coffee is coffee, the practical, earth-centered me chides this new introspective character. But yet, I've been making coffee first thing in the morning for the past 37 years. Cumulatively, all the time I've spent making pots of coffee in the morning - not to mention all the hours spent drinking it! - represents a significant portion of my life. And the same could be said for the hours spent driving from place to place, walking the dogs, preparing meals, shopping, gardening...yet I have spent most of my life rushing through these things thinking only of getting to the next step in the process.

Thinking only of getting finished with them so I can move on to something else, something ostensibly bigger, better, more important, more interesting.

"A favorite yoga teacher often has us being in child's pose," writes Dani Shapiro (Still Writing). "As we lie there with our foreheads pressed into the mat, she'll tell us to drop down. Drop in."   Shapiro refers to the writer's need to be aware of everything, to immerse oneself in every detail of the moment, to emerge from the "cotton wool" that clouds our perspective. "Feel your feet on the ground. Your butt in the chair. Your elbows on the desk. Feel the breath moving in and out of your belly. The weight of your head on your neck. Your jaw: is it clenched?"

Try it. It's scary, isn't it? This hyper-awareness, this dropping down into the moment feels like a free-fall even as it slows me down. I wonder if this is what sky-diving is like - a sudden drop into the ether, and then a gentle pulling back as the parachute opens and you gracefully, easily float through an open expanse of blue sky.

It's a new sensation, one I can only handle in small doses right now. I experiment, play with it, like a child with a new toy.

And I try not to wonder where it will lead. I try only to fully notice this moment, in this day, in this year.

To be present. Be here.