The Book I Didn't Write

So, when I last posted, I also updated my "What I'm Currently Reading" section, asking, nay, begging for suggestions of something smart and laugh aloud funny to read. I found Mennonite in a Little Black Dress Rhoda Janzen. And it is indeed, smart and laugh aloud funny, albeit, a touch too crass in places. While I'm enjoying it immensely, it is also another one of those books that fall into the category of "The Book(s) I Didn't Write." Which for me means those books that happened because the author actually sat down and wrote all of those thoughts and ideas and experiences whirling around in said author's head (hey, it rhymes!) and then went through the painful process of rewriting, editing, getting published, etc. Unlike me, who has some of the same thoughts and ideas, but I'm never brave enough (there, I said it) to sit down and write a book that someone might actually want to read. But this happens a couple of times a year to me--I'm reading a book thinking, "wow, yes, exactly, I have thought that, done that, wondered that"--but I always dismiss those thoughts with the idea that they aren't quite book worthy. Now, I am definitely the first to admit that my thinking is not quite so witty, nor my writing quite so pity as is Janzen's in this fun romp through Mennoniteville, but when I got to the part where she is describing  how to make Cotletten (German meatballs with ground beef and saltines) I began to wonder if she hadn't visited my Mother's kitchen? And then, when she launches into two pages about how she cooked Hollapse for some of her students, I said to myself aloud, and I do mean aloud so that my eight-year-old was looking at me funny, "She wrote two pages about Pigs- in- the- Blanket? And I'm laughing about it?"  So, the two things that I am left wondering are: could I ever write about the food staples of my childhood and make that many million people laugh, and, hm, I wonder if I would even know how to make my mom's German staples. . . ? Perhaps one of these days I will either ask her to teach me how to can sauerkraut, or I will finally bring myself to write about the stewed tomatoes over potatoes and the ham pot pie.

Far-Flung Roots

Just home from a family wedding in Indianapolis where beautiful second cousin just married the love of her life. It was a reminder of so many things--how old I am getting (I remember holding beautiful second cousin in my arms as an infant), how nice it is to step out of the daily grind of life and go some other place, and most of all, how lovely it is to reconnect with family. There were many "best parts" of the brief weekend, but the most striking was when all of the Eureka Finches and "adopted Eureka Finches" and mates and children were gathered around two tables on the veranda of our hotel. We had a few adult beverages, ate some marginal pizza, but engaged in a lot of laughs and journeyed down memory lane. It struck me as particularly interesting that although we are spread-out across the country--California, Florida, Indiana, and Illinois--that all roads lead back to one bucolic college-town in the heart of Illinois. It doesn't matter where we've gone, how we've grown, or who we have met--we are our most "at home" selves when back with our roots. I suppose it is no surprise that I have then spent much of my adult life searching for a way to get back to that place. With a little hard-earned wisdom, and a lot of God's grace, I have begun to learn that getting "back to that place" can mean more than, and sometimes something other than being physically in Eureka--but one can still idealize a bit, can't they?

A Reading Life

I just finished Ellis' book, First Family about John and Abigail Adams and was left with that same feeling I often get when finishing a book that I have lived with for awhile . . .it is as though I'm losing a friend. I remember well this same feeling from my childhood when I would reread a slim paperback about Capt. John Smith and Pocohontas, and another slightly longer, but equally historically inaccurate (I'm sure) volume about Abraham Lincoln over and over and over. In retrospect neither of these books was probably particularly well-written, but I couldn't bear to part with their stories and my friends the characters, so I spent countless late nights under the dim overhead light in my bedroom, renegotiating my body positions to accomodate for limbs falling asleep just to make it to the end of the book-one more time. I commented to my husband that I had finished the Adams book, and that indeed the story had ended as it always does--they both died, and John on the same day as Jefferson. My husband laughed with me, and said, "Well, thank God for that. Although, don't you think the author could be a little more creative than that?" Unbeknownst to my husband, he had inadvertantly hit on the yearning that drives me to re-read the lives of my favorite people over and over again. I don't necessarily want their stories to end differently--but I don't want their stories to end-- and it as though if I keep at it, keep reading (even the same books) that somehow I will learn something new or different about my friends. It is a sort of search for the Holy Grail for the reading life. Anyone on this search with me?

Overheard Weekend Edition

10-year-old's first comment when picking him up afterschool on Friday, "Mom, jumping off of the swings is sooo exhilarating!"--Yes, honey, it is. Oh, to go back to those days. And, I wonder if he can spell "exhilarating"?

8-year-old who has been limping around on a sore heel for two weeks, "Mom, how is this going to get better?" Mom, "by resting it." 8-year-old, "Yeah, like that is going to happen."--Self-knowledge is half of the battle . . .

Watching the famous John Wayne movie The Cowboys with the family, and 8-year-old says,"what are they doing with all of those cows?" Mom replies, "well, they are moving them from one town to another to try to sell them." 8-year-old replies, "So that's why they are called, 'cow boys'? That's dumb."--Well, honey, I'm not sure that the American Old West was the linguistic capital of the world.

"Mom are we going to Church tomorrow?" 8-year-old asks. Mom replies, "Well, honey, that depends." "On what, if Daddy sleeps on the couch tonight?" 8-year-old reasons.--Much funnier if one doesn't know that Daddy has been sleeping on the couch because he has been sick with bronchitis.

AHHHH . . .

The past week has been, well, a lot. Baseball began, Little Man made his First Communion, we moved Daughter out of her dorm for the year, and we waited. And waited. Waited for news about what my Mom's prognosis would be . . .and it turns-out that she needs a pill. Yep. A pill. Now, I don't know much about this wonder drug yet, and it may have its own gnarly side-effects, but it means no chemo and no radiation. As one of my dear college friends would say, "Hip Hip!" (I think there was always supposed to be a "Hooray" attached to the end--but somehow we never got beyond the first two words). I know we're not out of the woods quite yet, but after hearing the word, "cancer" this news couldn't be any better. And, like clock-work, 30 minutes after the phone call from my Mom, I began to feel achy and fevery and the tell-tale cold sore reared its ugly self a bit more. My body said, AHHHH . . . and then, enough. I suppose one person can only hold so much at one time. Bedtime will be a blessing tonight, and the dreams will indeed be sweet. Cervantes mused, "God who sends the wound, sends the medicine," and I for one am glad that that medicine can come in the shape of a pill, or a pillow.

Art Imitates Life Again

I just started reading The Wierd Sisters by Eleanor Brown. The wierd sisters, named after the witches in Macbeth, are three sisters in their thirties who find themselves living back at home with their parents. Their father, a college professor, has named them Rosalind, Biana, and Cordelia, and he quotes extensively and exclusively from Shakespeare.Their mother is fighting cancer. One line of the book lifted itself up and offered itself to me last week when I read, "First there was a lump. And then there was a biopsy. And now we are a family who is dealing with the word 'Malignant'."  While my siblings and I aren't named after Shakespearean characters, and we don't live at home, we are in our thirties, my father does often shamelessly quote from Shakespeare, and my Mom is now battling cancer. We are too now one of those families who is "dealing with the word 'Malignant'." But the cancer is contained and Mom is strong."Out, out damned spot!" we say, and in the meantime, we'll, "screw our courage to the sticking place. . ."