Because my darling Pippa is perched, if a bit precariously, on the final edge of innocence before she starts middle school next month, I prescreen reading matter that could be just a mite too hormone-driven or psychologically twisted for her. For the her that appears to be, that is: the one in the beret and long scarf, freckles on her cheekbones and feet as flat as Kansas in her red size 9 espadrilles. The young girl who still gets a kick out of Amelia Bedelia and Nancy Drew. Not quite (Thank the powers) ready for prime time. If she could only stay that way for five or six more years!
So, full of grandmotherly solicitude, I picked up a potential book for Pips while shelving at the Book Depository. I liked the neon orange cat on a bed on the cover. The title was cryptic: "A Mango-Shaped Space". It was written by Wendy Mass, who says she would have been an astronaut if she hadn't gotten carsick, but we can discount that as the kind of thing that people say when they are trying to appear quirky and worthy of attention to tweens. Better to just ask them what's up with Lindsay Lohan. But this book was published in 2003 and I think Lilo was under the radar, mostly, that long ago.
Okay. So Mia, the main character, is thirteen and can't get math. In fact, as the book rolls, you find out that she hasn't been able to get math since she was in third grade but nobody tried to solve that little glitch. Now the math is algebra and things are getting dicey. Her trouble is that math is not in color and, for her, everything else is. Letters have colors. words and names have colors. She lives in a very bright, kinesthetic world. Her area of high function is art. And she has this cat, Mango, who is orange, has a lung disease, and was found by Mia at her beloved grandfather's grave side, the day of his funeral. Already this book is almost too complicated for a reader of my advanced years.
The name of Mia's condition is synesthesia. Lots of people have it, though more women than men seem to. Maybe men just suck it up. Wires get crossed in the brain and impulses jump all funny. Distracting, to say the least. Mia is glad to find out that she's not the only freak on the planet who sees the letter A in sunflower yellow.
Her family is a pain in the butt, collectively and individually. They all try really hard to be interesting and aren't. Her best friend has turned into a hormone-addled jerk. The cat gets shut out in the snow (this is wintertime Chicago) and dies. Mia learns how to make colors out of algebra. I didn't care, much. The cat had no personality and Mia was a spoiled brat. I think Pippa would put this one down after ten minutes. See how important it is to prescreen?
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Food Porn
Last night The Man and I had dinner at an astonishingly expensive place, to celebrate his natal day, the anniversary of which was actually last weekend. But last weekend we were in the midst of children and grandchildren, each with his/her own food idiosyncrasies, so strawberry shortcake with gobs of whipped cream at the kitchen table was as good as it got on the actual day. Delicious ahi, too, if I do say so, pridefully.
Well! Last night at Saison it was all wine pairings (all French, mostly white, largely heaven-sent)and broths (or do we say infusions?) and foam and teeny weeny pieces of fish, looking like a lesson in sushi, only prettier than those plastic things you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants. Here's what we started out with: wood-smoked caviar from the Delta, eaten with one of those dear tiny caviar spoons. Later on we had something called "heartbreads", which was eaten with a long toothpick. There were many, many other artfully plated courses.
I liked everything but the rabbit. I didn't actually dislike the rabbit, I just didn't want to eat it, even though it was chopped and minced and stuffed inside an improbably green cabbage leaf like a wee sausage - that is to say, unrecognizable as a bunny. The Man is a stalwart in situations like that. He manfully ingested both of our petite portions.
That's the thing. The portions are a step up from miniscule. I actually remembered to go on Yelp to check out the verbose foodies' reactions to the restaurant and managed to get both scared and confused. Scared, because several people had written tragically about how much they had wanted to like the place, even though the wine pairings weren't included in the prix fixe but cost an additional $88 per person. I also came away from Yelping with the impression that menu items could be ordered individually, which is most definitely not the case. Then there were several complaints about leaving the feast still hungry. That did not happen last night. I only took one bite of my popcorn ice cream and I brought my entire puff pastry wrapped cheese item home, wrapped up in a tinfoil swan.
We had a lot of fun with the food (twist the head off the Monterey prawn then thoroughly clean fingers with lemon-scented towel) and even more with the wine. We both felt like we had eaten far more than we could reasonably digest, but neither of us is a barfer, so we tossed and turned all night, trying to find a pressure-less spot for the grumbling tummies. We even saw someone there that we knew. We could hear each other talk and the music was 70's folk-rocky, pleasantly forgettable tunes, except for the Eagles. Really?
Well! Last night at Saison it was all wine pairings (all French, mostly white, largely heaven-sent)and broths (or do we say infusions?) and foam and teeny weeny pieces of fish, looking like a lesson in sushi, only prettier than those plastic things you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants. Here's what we started out with: wood-smoked caviar from the Delta, eaten with one of those dear tiny caviar spoons. Later on we had something called "heartbreads", which was eaten with a long toothpick. There were many, many other artfully plated courses.
I liked everything but the rabbit. I didn't actually dislike the rabbit, I just didn't want to eat it, even though it was chopped and minced and stuffed inside an improbably green cabbage leaf like a wee sausage - that is to say, unrecognizable as a bunny. The Man is a stalwart in situations like that. He manfully ingested both of our petite portions.
That's the thing. The portions are a step up from miniscule. I actually remembered to go on Yelp to check out the verbose foodies' reactions to the restaurant and managed to get both scared and confused. Scared, because several people had written tragically about how much they had wanted to like the place, even though the wine pairings weren't included in the prix fixe but cost an additional $88 per person. I also came away from Yelping with the impression that menu items could be ordered individually, which is most definitely not the case. Then there were several complaints about leaving the feast still hungry. That did not happen last night. I only took one bite of my popcorn ice cream and I brought my entire puff pastry wrapped cheese item home, wrapped up in a tinfoil swan.
We had a lot of fun with the food (twist the head off the Monterey prawn then thoroughly clean fingers with lemon-scented towel) and even more with the wine. We both felt like we had eaten far more than we could reasonably digest, but neither of us is a barfer, so we tossed and turned all night, trying to find a pressure-less spot for the grumbling tummies. We even saw someone there that we knew. We could hear each other talk and the music was 70's folk-rocky, pleasantly forgettable tunes, except for the Eagles. Really?
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Critical Faculties Engaged
The Man thinks my future as a book reviewer should be as a reviewer of Bad Books. Books that might get reviewed by Romance Writers of America or the Dumpstown Weekly or as a Read that, hated it passing mention in some snooty on-line culture emag. Or that might get seriously dissed in the special NYT reviewing of Kids' books because it deals "inappropriately" with YA issues. Or reviewed nowhere at all because the writer doesn't have any connections or friends of people in the trade or famous parents or infamous parents, for that matter. As in Paul Newman's daughter's doctor's shrink.
Well, I can accept that. Provisionally. I read a lot of books that only teenage girls or women would bother with because we know WHY WE READ. Can you spell "ESCAPE"? I'll sit here in my cold kitchen with the fog-iced wind blowing in the back door, reading about harem women, sheltering from the day's heat in clay rooms with two foot walls, as they eat figs and drink sultry sweet wines and wait for the apocalypse. My darling Pippa Grandgirl will sprawl in her Brooklyn 6' by 8' baking bedroom, reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder's father wading through six foot snowdrifts. Books can take you all sorts of places.
That said, here's my take on Patricia Gaffney's "Mad Dash".
Chick Lit, for sure. Irritating heroine, with redeeming qualities. Irritating hero, cute but basically clueless. These folks are in their 40's and she is bored out of her mind while he is too comfortable in his routine and his hypochondria.
You could write this book, yeah? Of course she takes off for awhile. Of course he doesn't understand and feels aggrieved and adrift. Of course each of them has a brief dalliance with someone who is breathtakingly the Wrong Person. There are dogs in this story but no cats.
The book is kind and sweet. I shed a few tears at the end for the peripheral, relentlessly cheerful, though old and frail, character, who had to have a major health episode in order to bring everyone round right.
Not such a bad book. Interesting musings on the contradictions in the life of Thomas Jefferson. If you're easily bored by people who should know better acting like pre-teens, skip it.
Well, I can accept that. Provisionally. I read a lot of books that only teenage girls or women would bother with because we know WHY WE READ. Can you spell "ESCAPE"? I'll sit here in my cold kitchen with the fog-iced wind blowing in the back door, reading about harem women, sheltering from the day's heat in clay rooms with two foot walls, as they eat figs and drink sultry sweet wines and wait for the apocalypse. My darling Pippa Grandgirl will sprawl in her Brooklyn 6' by 8' baking bedroom, reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder's father wading through six foot snowdrifts. Books can take you all sorts of places.
That said, here's my take on Patricia Gaffney's "Mad Dash".
Chick Lit, for sure. Irritating heroine, with redeeming qualities. Irritating hero, cute but basically clueless. These folks are in their 40's and she is bored out of her mind while he is too comfortable in his routine and his hypochondria.
You could write this book, yeah? Of course she takes off for awhile. Of course he doesn't understand and feels aggrieved and adrift. Of course each of them has a brief dalliance with someone who is breathtakingly the Wrong Person. There are dogs in this story but no cats.
The book is kind and sweet. I shed a few tears at the end for the peripheral, relentlessly cheerful, though old and frail, character, who had to have a major health episode in order to bring everyone round right.
Not such a bad book. Interesting musings on the contradictions in the life of Thomas Jefferson. If you're easily bored by people who should know better acting like pre-teens, skip it.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Read It And Laugh
For a year now, I've been volunteering for Friends of the Library. It's a quirky, labor-not-too-intensive way to spend time around books and the people who love them. We throw almost nothing away (except for Reader's Digest Condensed books, which always make me nostalgic). I read a significant number of RDC chopped and channeled books. Night of the Hunter was one of them. Whoa! I was afraid to look at people's knuckles, for awhile.
FOL is a lot of fun. I work at the warehouse where donations are made, so I participate with the first sorting, before our book mavens, who cull for our retail sources and the on-line sales, have had their picks. We get stuff no one would believe: musty copies of Horatio Alger books (where have they been?), someone's complete collection of Vanity Fair magazine - but also copies of Hello! and Amazing Detective, opera LPs, bibles by the carload, diet books featuring seaweed and tofu, some of the most beautiful cookbooks ever - really, porno shots of food and landscapes with your occasional recipe thrown in.
The people I work with are just as solitary and disenfranchised as me. So we chortle about BBC TV series featuring Older People, and self-help sex books. We eat pretzels and Pepperidge Farm goldfish and all the baked goods anyone wants to bring in, which we discuss with passion and committment. Don't even start with what we find in books: prescriptions, love and hate notes, photos of people with bubble hair and strange props, invitations to events long ago.
I like to work with the kids' books, packing them up for storage (bankers' boxes) with all their weird shapes and sizes, musing about whether my granddaughter would be interested in particular YA books (she is such a sophisticated 10 year old but still reassured by happy endings) (who isn't?) Kids have ways of loving books with crayons and stickers and nicks and tears out of pages in ways that we, the elders, no longer allow ourselves. I don't throw anything away unless it has already fallen apart and shed too much of itself to be useful or enticing.
The warehouse is where all my good (and not so good) reads come from. We get a lot of pre-release books from various reviewers and I just love those puppies, even when they are worse than mediocre. They'll be showing up in this book reviewing blog very soon, probably in multiples.
FOL is a lot of fun. I work at the warehouse where donations are made, so I participate with the first sorting, before our book mavens, who cull for our retail sources and the on-line sales, have had their picks. We get stuff no one would believe: musty copies of Horatio Alger books (where have they been?), someone's complete collection of Vanity Fair magazine - but also copies of Hello! and Amazing Detective, opera LPs, bibles by the carload, diet books featuring seaweed and tofu, some of the most beautiful cookbooks ever - really, porno shots of food and landscapes with your occasional recipe thrown in.
The people I work with are just as solitary and disenfranchised as me. So we chortle about BBC TV series featuring Older People, and self-help sex books. We eat pretzels and Pepperidge Farm goldfish and all the baked goods anyone wants to bring in, which we discuss with passion and committment. Don't even start with what we find in books: prescriptions, love and hate notes, photos of people with bubble hair and strange props, invitations to events long ago.
I like to work with the kids' books, packing them up for storage (bankers' boxes) with all their weird shapes and sizes, musing about whether my granddaughter would be interested in particular YA books (she is such a sophisticated 10 year old but still reassured by happy endings) (who isn't?) Kids have ways of loving books with crayons and stickers and nicks and tears out of pages in ways that we, the elders, no longer allow ourselves. I don't throw anything away unless it has already fallen apart and shed too much of itself to be useful or enticing.
The warehouse is where all my good (and not so good) reads come from. We get a lot of pre-release books from various reviewers and I just love those puppies, even when they are worse than mediocre. They'll be showing up in this book reviewing blog very soon, probably in multiples.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Liking This Book Review Stuff
I finished a couple other books this week. One was called Her Fearful Symmetry. It was highly peculiar: arch and fanciful and a great big stretch of the credulity. Much disbelief to be suspended. For instance:
Do you believe a ghost could pull a kitten's essence out as the kitten jumped through the ghost? It kills the kitten, temporarily, until the ghost puts the essence back. Then the kitten is fine until the ghost tries it again and doesn't make the restoration moves in time. Bye bye kitten. (Little Kitten of Death, in the book) See what I'm saying?
Or how about twins crushing on the same man, him having a quickie with the one he isn't attracted to (but they are identical, no?), pregnancy, birth of twins, and then I'm not going to say, just in case you might want to read it. Me, I'm lying here, buried under a mountain of disbelief and still trying to suspend it. I will say that this author has a really hard time writing men you can believe.
Actually, it was a fun book, except for the characters, who needed some discipline. I learned a lot about Highgate Cemetery, for example. Check it out, next time you're in London.
Okay, I told you stuff that happens in the book and whether it had some content worth reading for. Is that a book review or what?
Do you believe a ghost could pull a kitten's essence out as the kitten jumped through the ghost? It kills the kitten, temporarily, until the ghost puts the essence back. Then the kitten is fine until the ghost tries it again and doesn't make the restoration moves in time. Bye bye kitten. (Little Kitten of Death, in the book) See what I'm saying?
Or how about twins crushing on the same man, him having a quickie with the one he isn't attracted to (but they are identical, no?), pregnancy, birth of twins, and then I'm not going to say, just in case you might want to read it. Me, I'm lying here, buried under a mountain of disbelief and still trying to suspend it. I will say that this author has a really hard time writing men you can believe.
Actually, it was a fun book, except for the characters, who needed some discipline. I learned a lot about Highgate Cemetery, for example. Check it out, next time you're in London.
Okay, I told you stuff that happens in the book and whether it had some content worth reading for. Is that a book review or what?
Monday, July 18, 2011
Ready For Prime Time?
Maybe I'm going to start writing book reviews. That has materialized as an option. Not a paid option, no, but a chance to be in print (if only in cyberspace) and noticed by several readers could be exhilirating. The thing is, I'm not sure how to do it. Can it really be only slightly more complicated than it was in fourth grade? Just put down the title, the author, the publishing house, what the book was about, more or less, and whether you liked it? Does a review always need to shake hands with previous books by the same author, all the classical influences and the economic climate of the time in which the book was set?
I just finished reading "Motherless Brooklyn" which I thought was a very fine book. It made me laugh out loud, feel abashed about laughing, and laugh some more. I mean, please! What's funny about mob wannabes running a car service, with a sideline of cheating Japanese investors in a Zendo? What's funny about Tourette's syndrome? Really? Quite a lot, if it's Jonathan Lethem writing.
What luxury of language! What a joy to write! Words buzzing and humming and dive-bombing around the old laptop, loaded with virtual saliva. Unimaginable physical tics. I loved the straightening of the collars of authority figures.
If you saw Lionel Essrog on the street or sitting on the wobbly vinyl corner stool at the last diner in your neighborhood, tucking into a salami hero and ticcing with his head and neck, you'd maybe get up and move or at least redirect your eyes (unless you were a kid, of course, and then you'd stare, maybe giggle) Because you would choose to forget that a real person lived inside of all that physical paraphenalia not working the way you expect it to. Unless you had more than a nodding acquaintance with Tourette's, you could fail to discover what else goes on for the bearers of that particular burden.
I think J. Lethem jumped right over a big hurdle (or the elephant in the living room, whatever) and gave us the whole emotional grab bag and I say Thanks! You're my hero.
Not a book review though, right?
I just finished reading "Motherless Brooklyn" which I thought was a very fine book. It made me laugh out loud, feel abashed about laughing, and laugh some more. I mean, please! What's funny about mob wannabes running a car service, with a sideline of cheating Japanese investors in a Zendo? What's funny about Tourette's syndrome? Really? Quite a lot, if it's Jonathan Lethem writing.
What luxury of language! What a joy to write! Words buzzing and humming and dive-bombing around the old laptop, loaded with virtual saliva. Unimaginable physical tics. I loved the straightening of the collars of authority figures.
If you saw Lionel Essrog on the street or sitting on the wobbly vinyl corner stool at the last diner in your neighborhood, tucking into a salami hero and ticcing with his head and neck, you'd maybe get up and move or at least redirect your eyes (unless you were a kid, of course, and then you'd stare, maybe giggle) Because you would choose to forget that a real person lived inside of all that physical paraphenalia not working the way you expect it to. Unless you had more than a nodding acquaintance with Tourette's, you could fail to discover what else goes on for the bearers of that particular burden.
I think J. Lethem jumped right over a big hurdle (or the elephant in the living room, whatever) and gave us the whole emotional grab bag and I say Thanks! You're my hero.
Not a book review though, right?
Friday, July 15, 2011
Sleep Is a Trickster
Sleep is my craving. It's been twenty years since I could do it very well, by which I mean fall off the edge of consciousness into a very warm abyss and float endlessly for hours, wake peaceful and relaxed, like a yacht docking in a placid harbor. Maybe it's only hindsight says it was like that. Maybe I was always a restless, dream-ridden, snoring and shouting sleeper.
I am a shouting sleeper now. I shout things like "Get out of here!" "You bitch!" "Don't you even think about it!" Often I wake myself up with the ruckus and my heart beating 150 mph. Or the Man will wake me up, insisting that everything is okay, which is ludicrous because why would I be shouting if everything is okay?
I could approach this scientifically, were I so inclined. I could write down every single thing I ate and drank during the course of a day. If I forgot my statin. Whether I had one or two toffee-ettes. Did that sip of brandy really count? And then I could compare my dream life, under the influences of various comestibles. Well, it would be fun to discover whether dining on mushrooms produced Lewis Carroll sorts of rabbit hole dreams, wouldn't it? Or forgetting the niacin meant dreaming of kung pao shrimp. But I am not that organized, not to say (or even imply) compulsive. (Is the opposite of compulsive expulsive?)
The other night I dreamed about Stepson. He was dressed in a suit (never happen) and frowning, meeting with other suits, also frowning, lots of tension and silent communication taking place, Stepson clearly out of his depth with these Mafioso types. Then, there was his girlfriend, drunk and crying, worried about him and his associating with these types but he wouldn't listen. So she drank and he repudiated her for drinking. Where did that come from? was my waking thought.
A couple days later, we found out that Stepson and Girlfriend, who were planning on a marriage in a month or so, have broken up. She doesn't know why. He does not respond to phone messages or e-mail. You know how some people just seem right together? They did. No cause for joy.
I am a shouting sleeper now. I shout things like "Get out of here!" "You bitch!" "Don't you even think about it!" Often I wake myself up with the ruckus and my heart beating 150 mph. Or the Man will wake me up, insisting that everything is okay, which is ludicrous because why would I be shouting if everything is okay?
I could approach this scientifically, were I so inclined. I could write down every single thing I ate and drank during the course of a day. If I forgot my statin. Whether I had one or two toffee-ettes. Did that sip of brandy really count? And then I could compare my dream life, under the influences of various comestibles. Well, it would be fun to discover whether dining on mushrooms produced Lewis Carroll sorts of rabbit hole dreams, wouldn't it? Or forgetting the niacin meant dreaming of kung pao shrimp. But I am not that organized, not to say (or even imply) compulsive. (Is the opposite of compulsive expulsive?)
The other night I dreamed about Stepson. He was dressed in a suit (never happen) and frowning, meeting with other suits, also frowning, lots of tension and silent communication taking place, Stepson clearly out of his depth with these Mafioso types. Then, there was his girlfriend, drunk and crying, worried about him and his associating with these types but he wouldn't listen. So she drank and he repudiated her for drinking. Where did that come from? was my waking thought.
A couple days later, we found out that Stepson and Girlfriend, who were planning on a marriage in a month or so, have broken up. She doesn't know why. He does not respond to phone messages or e-mail. You know how some people just seem right together? They did. No cause for joy.
Monday, July 11, 2011
More Adventures in Real Estate
Travelled to Appletown today and saw a wondrous house. It has porches and twelve foot coved ceilings and built-in dining room cabinets and dark wood wainscotting and a five burner stove and six (6!) bedrooms and three bath rooms and a creaking wide staircase up to the second floor landing, which is as big as a living room with a wall's width of casement windows. Oh frabjuous day, I sang to myself, rapturous to be in such roofed and towering space, way more than enough to swing a cat in (which I would never do, of course). Almost as good as a French railway station and a lot quieter. It even has an alley! Even the realtor, who hadn't wanted to show it to us because it is right next door to the Appletown Regional High School, was impressed. He said it reminded him of his high school girlfriend's house. He lingered on the side porch. I bet his girlfriend's parents hadn't painted their dining room ceiling tendrils of shiny gold, though.
There is an absolutely enormous magnolia tree in the front yard - a tree you could climb up and hide in. There is an even bigger Doug fir next door, hanging over the fence to shade the side yard. There is sun glancing in windows which seem to have been located precisely so this could happen. There are the ghosts of 15 foot Christmas trees and the faint scent of cinnammon (in my imagination: I can't actually smell a damn thing) The house felt well lived in - tired, now, in need of a heap of cosmetics, but waiting and patient, not in a downhill rush.
Do I think we will buy this house? No, sadly. The Man and I are good for about an hour on a project (weeding, cultivating, pruning, kitchen malingering) before we wander off to whatever book or baseball game is currently fascinating us. (He does read. Me and baseball, not so much)So how in the world are we to take on a project like this house? It's not totally impossible because the house is livable as-is and the cosmetics could be undertaken gradually, after the main living areas were buffed and polished. I won't stop wishing yet. The Man liked the house at least as much as I did, and saw the challenges and the potential. He didn't even find forty-leven things wrong with it during our drive home, so there's hope!
There is an absolutely enormous magnolia tree in the front yard - a tree you could climb up and hide in. There is an even bigger Doug fir next door, hanging over the fence to shade the side yard. There is sun glancing in windows which seem to have been located precisely so this could happen. There are the ghosts of 15 foot Christmas trees and the faint scent of cinnammon (in my imagination: I can't actually smell a damn thing) The house felt well lived in - tired, now, in need of a heap of cosmetics, but waiting and patient, not in a downhill rush.
Do I think we will buy this house? No, sadly. The Man and I are good for about an hour on a project (weeding, cultivating, pruning, kitchen malingering) before we wander off to whatever book or baseball game is currently fascinating us. (He does read. Me and baseball, not so much)So how in the world are we to take on a project like this house? It's not totally impossible because the house is livable as-is and the cosmetics could be undertaken gradually, after the main living areas were buffed and polished. I won't stop wishing yet. The Man liked the house at least as much as I did, and saw the challenges and the potential. He didn't even find forty-leven things wrong with it during our drive home, so there's hope!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
So Blue
I've been thinking about loneliness, recently. Partly because of losing my friend Sooz and realizing that I didn't have anyone to replace her with, even if someone could have replaced her, which they can't. If you see what I mean.
How can a new friend replace someone who has known you for twenty some years, has shared your office space, has put together Office Depot desks with you and not even lost it and started screaming, has buffered you from your snotty daughter-in-law during togetherness episodes at berry-picking farms and gone real estate shopping/dreaming with you in the northern counties? Not to mention all the clothes swapping that went on.
I'm not the world's easiest person to befriend. I just don't put much out there until I know someone pretty well. I'm the one who listens, not the one who vents. Also, with this Old business going on, I don't attract much positive attention, out there in the possible friend pool situation. So, it's pretty random, who I wind up with access to.
My mother spent an awful lot of lonely years. My father spent his evenings at one theatre or another, in his various directorial positions. Sometimes she acted in his plays but mostly she was the one at home, waiting to hear his car pull up and his key in the lock before she fell deeply asleep, so certain was she that some night, in an alcohol-fueled misstep, he'd drive right into the river and forget how to exit the car. They probably spent a total of 3 waking hours a day in each other's company. But it had the earmarks of a normal long-term marriage, I guess.
My mother's father, my grandfather, was so oblivious to his wife and her needs that he let her die of kidney failure, brought on by her dehydration, due to failing to ingest liquids so she wouldn't have to try to drag her arthritic body up a flight of stairs to the only toilet in the house. So my mom either wasn't expecting much from a husband or wasn't particularly surprised not to get much. Other than a lot of responsibility and not much help.
Me, I think I've been lonely all my life. Except when I was raising kids. Having your own posse really staves off the blues.
How can a new friend replace someone who has known you for twenty some years, has shared your office space, has put together Office Depot desks with you and not even lost it and started screaming, has buffered you from your snotty daughter-in-law during togetherness episodes at berry-picking farms and gone real estate shopping/dreaming with you in the northern counties? Not to mention all the clothes swapping that went on.
I'm not the world's easiest person to befriend. I just don't put much out there until I know someone pretty well. I'm the one who listens, not the one who vents. Also, with this Old business going on, I don't attract much positive attention, out there in the possible friend pool situation. So, it's pretty random, who I wind up with access to.
My mother spent an awful lot of lonely years. My father spent his evenings at one theatre or another, in his various directorial positions. Sometimes she acted in his plays but mostly she was the one at home, waiting to hear his car pull up and his key in the lock before she fell deeply asleep, so certain was she that some night, in an alcohol-fueled misstep, he'd drive right into the river and forget how to exit the car. They probably spent a total of 3 waking hours a day in each other's company. But it had the earmarks of a normal long-term marriage, I guess.
My mother's father, my grandfather, was so oblivious to his wife and her needs that he let her die of kidney failure, brought on by her dehydration, due to failing to ingest liquids so she wouldn't have to try to drag her arthritic body up a flight of stairs to the only toilet in the house. So my mom either wasn't expecting much from a husband or wasn't particularly surprised not to get much. Other than a lot of responsibility and not much help.
Me, I think I've been lonely all my life. Except when I was raising kids. Having your own posse really staves off the blues.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)