Proto-blog blog

I'm a little slow to discover some of these things, but I was glad to find out this exists:

http://www.pepysdiary.com/

Daily readings from Samuel.

Life of the party

My daughter’s First Communion is quickly approaching – it’s this Saturday, and it looks like a party is not happening. The Church has a nice reception after the Mass, but the three other families I invited over for lunch are unavailable. Most of my girl’s classmates have family of their own in town – and it’s hard to invite one or two and not all.




So it may be just us going out to a special lunch.



On the one hand I’m relieved not to have to prepare lunch for 30. But on the other hand, the celebration deserves the glory of a spread of foodstuffs and pretty napkins and a bouquet for the table. But even a bouquet feels out of reach since we have no blooming flowers in the yard (except a couple pincushion scabiosa), unless it’s a purchased one, which doesn’t feel as fret with love.



Once I read an article (Where? by whom? in one of the politico-religious magazines like Crisis or First Things, but I can’t remember exactly who or where – for some reason I think it was Rachel Teti. In our old house I know it was a in a stack under my bedside table, but after we moved, things like that are still missing.) about preparing for celebrations. It was published probably around Christmastime or maybe Easter, when everyone is rushing about trying to get ready for an Event. And the column was responding to the criticism of this behavior, by saying that a little bit of work, a little sacrifice, a little fasting, is necessary for a celebration.


Sometimes it seems like people don’t want to have parties anymore because it is too hard to prepare them. Or they have big elaborate parties, like a wedding, and don’t enjoy them. The challenge is letting go of the planning when the celebration is taking place. (By the way, I did enjoy my wedding – my grandfather said it looked like I had more fun than anyone else there. The groom had a good time, too, I think. An advantage to marrying young: no pressure for a fancy wedding.)


There was a paragraph in my Bible study book by Priscilla Shirer that reflected on how we often pray to ask God what we should DO, or we fret about how we should discern and live out our calling. But sometimes we need to respond to our calling as an invitation.  We don't need to take over the planning and preparation; we just need to show up to the celebration and participate. Be happy that we’re here. Trust that God has a vision for it all.
That struck a chord.


So I’m going to show up to the First Communion celebration and enjoy it and not worry about popping a ham or a casserole into the oven before we scoot out the door. Will try not to take too many photos, but instead stay recollected on the unfolding of the Mass. Of course, I’m probably now putting the emotional energy I might have spent on a party into deciding on a dress – one I made, with bunchy shoulders and bad buttonholes, one she wore in a wedding that’s ivory, or one off the sale rack at TJ Maxx that’s glittery. My daughter changes her mind daily and so do I. Ah decisions… easier for boys.

A matter of diction

While helping my sixth grader research Guyana for a major research project on a South American country, not of his choosing, we came across this delicious verse.  Uses a little different language than Shakespeare, but says pretty much the same thing.  Love in lyrics that even a sixth grade boy can understand and appreciate:

How Do I Love Thee - West Indian Style



You are the essence in my mauby
De fish in my fishcakes
I love you love you dearly
You are the lard oil in my bakes
You are the coconut in my sweetbread
De pigtail in my rice
Just like piece of curry goat head
I will love you till I dead.


You are the sardine in my gravy
The dumplings in my soup
I love you more than mi belly
Yes I love you bad fah true.


Like banana leaf around my conkie
I'll be always close to you
Sweet like sugar in your bush tea
I'll do anything for you.




You are the sauce around my Cou Cou
Hot like sweetbread when it done
I will stick to you like dandruff
Like the corns upon your toes
Like the fat around your belly
I'll be everywhere you goes


Cause you are my black pudding
And I know I am your souse
When you call I will come running
Like when a boar cat see a mouse.


Oh my pepper on my pork chop
Sweet like sorrel when it mix
When my hands caress your body
You feel just like a couple-six.


You are sweeter than a snowcone
I will give you all I own
You are sweeter than a hambone
Soft and sweet like piece'o'pone.
No one can take me from you
Not in this life or death
My Panya girl I love you
It's just your mudda me cant tek.


(Just so you know, I have no complaints with my mudda-in-law. I'm blessed in that department.) I know a place to get fishcakes and hambone with mi esposo when he gets home...

Sometimes it's best to let the master speak for you

In honor of the Bard's blessed birth, a sonnet - or two or seven - for my absent love:

XCVIII
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.


This one also applies:

XLVII

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other:
When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,
And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thy self away, art present still with me;
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them, and they with thee;
Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
Awakes my heart, to heart's and eyes' delight.
 
 
So many good choices:
 
XXVII

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
 
Too many to choose from:
 
XXIX

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
 
 
A promise of a passionate reunion:
 
 
LI


Thus can my love excuse the slow offence
Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:
From where thou art why should I haste me thence?
Till I return, of posting is no need.
O! what excuse will my poor beast then find,
When swift extremity can seem but slow?
Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind,
In winged speed no motion shall I know,
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace.
Therefore desire, (of perfect'st love being made)
Shall neigh, no dull flesh, in his fiery race;
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade-
Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,
Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.

Good thing these are short:


II


When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.


and finally, expectedly:

CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

What are seven months in the course of timeless love?

What should I call this?

Spent a little time with the Wall Street Journal this weekend and came across this review of The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar. Now this is not a book I’d buy – I don’t leave much room on my shelves for nonfiction, especially anything with studies that might be outdated in a few years. And this book review tells me all I need to know about a problem I have.

Indecision.

For instance, I have been debating about what to post next. Should I write shorter posts? Should I finish one I started a long time ago or move on to something else? Should I just read the Wall Street Journal instead?


Now if I thought the book had a fail proof method for making the best decision every time, I might have to buy it.

Indecisiveness is probably my most annoying habit, except maybe when I whine about not being about to make decisions. My inability to make a decision and stick to it causes more emotional turmoil than any bigger quandary I might be deciding about, mainly because I muse and fret and worry about little decisions more than big ones.



And maybe this book addresses that. But what caught my eye is an argument the author, a Sikh woman, makes for arranged marriages from her personal experiences and from studies that show that at the 10 year point, couples in love marriages are less happy than those in arranged marriages. I wonder though, if the study also looked at couples in marriages where divorce isn’t an option. If an action is unthinkable, if there is no option, no choice available, you make the best of what you have.



And that’s what the rest of the study seems to argue: When people are overwhelmed by choices they buy less. (Although not necessarily: Last week a new commissary opened. The old one had been destroyed in Katrina, and for the past five years a temporary one has been open in an old warehouse. It was small, the aisles were narrow, and it had a limited and poorly organized selection. Everyone loved to complain about it: retirees clogged the aisles, moms with babies could be heard across the store, what you wanted wasn’t always available. But you could shop for a week in about 30 minutes because the choices were so limited.



Well, now the new commissary opened, and it is big and beautiful and clean for now. The aisle are wide, the buggies are bigger. But Friday after exercising I went in to grab milk and some fruit and vegetables for the weekend, but came out with a full cart and spent well over an hour shopping. All my sweat was dry by the time I left. The line was awful (of course it was lunchtime on payday – nonmilitary readers may not realize what a mistake it is to shop at that time; the only worse time is 5 pm on payday, followed by the next day. Proof that lots and lots of people in the military are living paycheck to paycheck.)



Grocery shopping was just one of the examples given. The other one that caught my eye was about the study that originated the idea for the book. Ms Iyengar initially studied how children play with lots of toys vs. how they play with few toys. Iyengar probably didn’t need a study to tell her that children with just a few toys played more creatively than those who had a lot toys to choose from.



And this reminded me of Melanie’s toy manifesto – probably a good idea to have it written out, so you don’t have to make decisions all the time about toy choices. I agree with a lot of what Melanie says in theory, but practicing it is harder. Take, for instance, wooden toys. I love the idea of wooden toys and cloth dolls – I’ve yearned for a Waldorf doll. But every wooden toy, except blocks and swords (including wooden trains), have always been bypassed for the more colorful plastic varieties. Happily, the boys have always loved legos and playmobils, which I love for them to play with, but they also love action figures of every stripe. And as for dolls, well, we haven’t been overrun by Barbie, but plastic babies and American Girl dolls and their knock-offs take up a lot of floor space. (My happiest garage sale find: a wooden kitchen set for $20. So that takes up the rest of the floor.)



It was easier for me to get rid of toys when we had fewer, and I had no sentimental attachment to superheroes, like my husband does (we keep Hulk and GI Joes around just for him :). Now I’m overwhelmed by the thought of sorting through Legos and Playmos. I figure one day we’ll just dump them all. Sometimes my kids don’t even want to go in their rooms themselves because they are overwhelmed by the clutter.



This article has me newly rededicated to filling some bags for my friend who is having a garage sale fundraiser in a couple of weeks. 3 garbage bags of outgrown, unloved winter clothes and a few stuffed animals and puzzles (which seem to reproduce during the night) are already waiting disposal. But I’m a little afraid myself to tackle the clutter in the boys’ room.



Meanwhile I’m trying to get back into a routine – a lifestyle that minimizes decisions. Which may be while since we’re heading into the last six weeks of school with all the end of the year projects and events, including a First Communion in a couple of weeks. I already miss Lent. Perhaps I should make an Easter resolution of trying to keep focused on celebrating rebirth and resurrection rather than on scurrying around trying to decide what’s for lunch.

Signposts in a strange land

I love this sign. I get a thrill of adrenalin every time I see it - as if maybe, if I'm feeling wreckless, I just might reject its authority and pick up a hitchhiker in a striped jumpsuit. 

If he were to spend much time in our car with all the kids, he might want to be dropped off back where he came from.

On Breath, Eyes, Memory

After the lachrymose ending of The Farming of Bones, I hesitated to open another book by Edwidge Danticat, especially after my sister warne d me that this one also ended with tears. But I had Breath, Eyes, Memory from the library, and it’s short. I started paging through, I couldn’t stop. The characters are again thin and shadowy instead of fully formed, and the plot, well, the plot is more anecdotal memories than action – Danticat’s writing is more lyrical than narrative, but perhaps she is trying to draw attention not to the people but to their relationships – in this case 4 generations of Haitian women.



Sophie, the third generation, is the central character. She is the child of an act of rape, raised by her aunt after her mother went to America to avoid going mad, Sophie goes to America at the beginning of the book while the aunt returns to her home town to be with her mother, Grandmother Ife. The aunt mourns the loss of Sophie and the occasional brushes with the married man she is in love with but does her duty and encourages Sophie to do the same, even though both of them have suffered from abandonment by Martine, Sophie’s mother/Tante Atie’s sister, and the actions of their mothers: “I must tell you that I do love your mother. Everything I love about you, I loved in her first. That is why I could never fight her about keeping you here . . . It would be a shame if the two of you got into battles because you share a lot more than you know.” says Tante Atie to Sophie.


The rest of the book is mostly vignettes of mother/daughter/sister relationships showing how these tightly knit women hurt and cling to each other. Sophie’s mother struggles to make a living, while Sophie falls in love. Danticat gives the impression that Haitian mothers are very concerned with their daughters’ virginity. Various violations – testing, the rape, betrayal – cause the women of the story to be haunted by ghosts and self-loathing, but they keep clinging to each other. On Sophie’s first night with her mother, Martine has a nightmare because Sophie has the face of her father, the unnamed rapist.


When Sophie finally does leave her mother for her husband, it is only through an act of violence after her mother continually antagonizes her, while saying things like “the love between a mother and daughter is deeper than the sea. You would leave me for an old man who you didn’t know the year before. You and I we could be like Marassas (doubles). You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand? … There are secrets you cannot keep.” But Sophie can’t have a healthy relationship with her husband until her relationship with her mother and her mother’s past is healed. She even goes to therapy, which was surprising when she at one point seems to live on the edge of poverty, while her mother never gets help exorcising her demons, but finally runs back to her aunt and grandmother in Haiti.

In Haiti, we find out how difficult mothers can make life for their daughters, but also how strong the ties between them are. The grandmother looks at Sophie’s baby Brigitte and comments on connection between generations: “’Do you see my granddaughter?’ she asked tracing her thumb across Brigitte’s chin. ‘The tree has not split one mite. Isn’t it a miracle that we can visit with all her kin, simply by looking into this face.’”

This reminded me of how my family acts when a new baby is born: everyone sits around looking at this scrunched, red face making pronouncements about whom the newborn looks like before his face even has time to recover from a trip down the birth canal that makes him look like everyone other newborn, not great-uncle Joe or whomever. Brigitte is an older baby, though, a quiet, good baby, and she acts as a bridge between the previous three generations, pulling them closer so they can heal.




Later Sophie’s grandmother says “Your mother is your first friend.” – to which there is an unspoken “although” – although she left you with her sister, although she tried to kill you in utero, although she would make you feel guilty and dirty for leaving her to marry. Martine shows up in Haiti, too, and Sophie begins to understand how her mother’s behavior towards her was formed by her past, by her culture, by her own sufferings. There is no sobbing lovefest reunion, but Sophie and Martine go back to New York together with baby Brigitte reconciled to their fuller understanding of each other.


Sophie is also able to reconcile and continue in her relationship with her husband, largely because she realizes how her mother was formed by her mother and her mother before that. She holds no anger toward her Grandma Ife, but appreciates her many stories, one of which is about the people who carry the sky on their heads “They are the people of Creation. Strong, tall, and mighty people who can bear anything. Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head.”


(That sounds like my Bible study leader, who was sexually abused by her stepfather, has been in more than one near fatal accident, nearly died of blood clots, has a mother who had a brain tumor, a brother who is a drug/alcohol abuser, and now just found out her husband has a brain tumor. Yet she remains generous and cheerful with others. She certainly carries a bit of sky.)


But Martine is unable to get over her past, even though she too, has a man who wants to marry her. She can’t accept the love of him or of his child and finally gives into the demons that have haunted her since her rape. So Sophie has to go back to Haiti, this time for a funeral, so her mother’s spirit can finally rest, so she can finally be a grown woman herself.

The book seemed to leave a lot of holes, and sometimes it seemed that these women shouldn’t have been so damaged by their mothers’ attempts to keep them pure. But then passages like this made me want to keep reading:

“Listening to the song [at the wake] I realized that it was neither my mother nor my Tante Atie who had given all the mother-and-daughter motifs to all the stories they told and all the songs they sang. It was something that was essentially Haitian. Somehow, early on, our song makers and tale weavers had decided that we were all daughters of this land.” and “I come from a place where breath eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. My mother was as brave as stars at dawn. She too was from this place. My mother was like that woman who could never bleed and then could never stop bleeding, the one who gave in to her pain, to live as a butterfly, Yes, my mother was like me.”



And then the grandmother asks, to Sophie, to Martine, “Ou libere? Are you free my daughter?”


Perhaps it is not just in Haiti where mothers and daughters comfort and torment each other. I remember wanting nothing more than to get away from my mother when I was a teenager. She never did anything to deserve my scorn – just danced when it embarrassed me, punished me when I was smart alecky, made me brush my hair and dress neatly when I thought I was being stylishly unkempt. I wanted independence, not from an abusive, clinging relationship, but freedom nonetheless.



And what daughter doesn’t want to be free of her mother’s judging eye? I can already see that I hold my daughters to a different standard than my sons: their misbehavior angers me more, like I expect they should never misbehave. I take a stronger hand with them, trying to mold them into the young ladies I want them to be, but I feel like I have less influence with them than with my sons.



Or perhaps I find fault with Sophie’s suffering because I sympathize with her mother too much – and thus my mother too. What mom doesn’t want her daughter to remain pure, not just physically, but emotionally, too, so she will not have to know the pains of love, only its joys. Both my girls are very much themselves, not similar to me, but perhaps because it is so clear how easy it is for girls to fall into trouble, I don’t want them make my mistakes. And I appreciate more fully how my mother must have felt when I betrayed her as an adolescent.



I may have pushed her away at that age, but now I’m trying to make up for it. Maybe it is because I am a mother myself – the first and each subsequent time I headed to the labor unit, a part of me repeated “I want my mom, I want my mom,” with each contraction (sorry, husband, I wanted you, too, on one side, and Mom on the other…).



And that refrain still comes to mind when life becomes difficult, and becoming childlike is the only way to approach some struggles. Thanks, Mom, for hearing it.

Spring Break Road Trip

Returned Friday evening from a week on the road: Departed Holy Thursday for Houston. Celebrated Easter with my husband’s sister and her family and my in-laws: a cousin lovefest sweetened with plenty of chocolate. Then travelled north through the Texas bluebonnets to Dallas to give my brother’s boys a few not always welcome squeezes. From there we turned east back to Mississippi so my second son could participate in the state National Geographic Bee in Jackson. Took a break at the Vicksburg battlefield park before sneaking too many children into a not quite sleazy hotel. Followed up the Bee with a drive by Eudora Welty’s house and a quick stop at the Mississippi Natural Science Museum to see the two headed snake.

Both heads seem to smile.

Miss Welty lived in this house right across the street from Belhaven College

All in all, we logged about 22 hours in the car. While browsing my sister-in-law’s Parents magazine, the thought occurred to me that perhaps I have earned the right to write one of those articles I’ve seen in nearly every Parents magazine on how to have a good road trip with children. I’ve learned how to pack and how to entertain bored youngsters, what snacks travel well in the car, what toys do not travel well. None of these articles mention the final struggle upon arrival back home: Unpack the car, bemoan the books ruined by tromping feet in the back row of the GMC, excavate lost shoes and hair clips, toss half eaten sandwiches that have been crammed into cup holders. Then start the sorting: spoiled food from that which will hide in the fridge until spoiled, dirty and clean clothes, junk mail and the good stuff +bills. Then pour a stiff drink and review the phone messages and emails. This time, because of the Lenten fast, the only drink with legs in the house was my dear husband’s 15 yr Balvenie, a gift from his sister which I intended to preserve untouched for the duration of his deployment. But I’d just spent a week on the road with the six kids, who all were well behaved 90% of the time. It was the 10% that wore me down. Plus, I had been on good behavior myself for a week. I don’t even like Scotch, but we had no beer or wine, I was tired of overdosing on chocolate eggs, and a cup of tea requires sitting down. Either my taste buds are dying or this was really good Scotch because it didn’t make me grimace at all. Does drinking alone make me an alcoholic?



This is the second long road trip from Mississippi and back, but I’m still not sure that pulling into our driveway feels like coming home. The house still smells like someone else’s house. I don’t have many plants to welcome me back, although I did plant some lettuce that is being suffocated by falling live oak leaves. I was happy to see that the azaleas are starting to bloom – spring here has been surprisingly colorless, but now the azaleas are breathtaking.

Perhaps part of the rootlessness I feel on our return has something to do with the absence of my husband: his temporary absence makes everything about living here seem temporary. And while I am proud of myself for making this trip without major mishaps, it was a lonely drive without anyone else in the front seat. I had to do the driving, food tossing, and refereeing myself this time; no getting lost in a book while husband drives, no long conversations about the peccadilloes of various relatives or arguments over how to spend money, no one with whom to sing tunelessly along with John Denver or James Taylor. I spent most of the drive with my eyes glazed over lost in thought while the kids entertained themselves with books and movies.

They also played in dirt.

At least I saw more of the countryside than I have in awhile. I actually enjoyed driving for maybe two thirds of the 22 hours. Louisiana has beautiful water birds and swamp cypress. Texas has its broad skies with spectacular sunsets and rolling hilled ranches to rest your eyes on. The landscape seemed to alter immediately as soon as we crossed the Texas line, or maybe it was just that after the crossing every car morphed into a pick-up truck.

Hill rolling at Vicksburg

I wonder about the memories my husband and I aren’t sharing – he spent the week in a city in Afghanistan while we hung out in Texas - is there anything in these experiences that will change us essentially? Some experiences seem less affective if they aren’t shared, like pretty sunsets on a drive, or touring the battlefields at Vicksburg – they just don’t seem as memorable if you don’t have someone to talk about them with. On the other hand, my experiences this past week resembled previous vacations: spending time with family, enjoying Easter traditions, listening to the same stories and movies we listen to on most of our trips. I reminisced about our early married life in Dallas as I drove past the exit for our first apartment and had coffee at UD. Even the excellent Houston Children’s Museum and the revamped Dallas Zoo seemed familiar, though we’ve never been to either place before.  My husband will have no trouble picturing what life has been like for me.

These experiences can hardly be transformative when they mimic life as it has been. Although I should have been gaily chatting with the kids in the car, I felt a part of me growing cold as the miles ticked on, sort of a numbness of soul inappropriate for Easter. It’s almost as if even the new experiences that we’re having will have no toehold in my consciousness until my husband returns.

But my husband’s experience of living in a war zone will hardly leave him untouched. His voice sounds unchanged on the phone, but I’m sure we’ll have some recalibrating to do when he returns. He sent some photos the other day of himself in a strange land with people I don’t know, and the dissonance of the unfamiliar was jarring. Sometimes I forget that while we go about our daily routine, he is making new memories; his life is not on hold. I imagine some large part of our reunion will be spent reclaiming familiarity. A welcome process.

Then again, a part of our homecoming routine after road trips has always been spent reviewing our different impressions: Even when we’ve shared the drive and the same room on our vacations, our perceptions and evaluations have often been different. Our memories of events we attended together sometimes vary widely - largely because I tend to confuse things. I suppose that is why lifelong monogamous marriages can avoid monotony – the experiences and memories shared by two people knit together so closely can remain unique to one and fascinating to the other.

A break

A blessed Holy Week to everyone. We are off to Texas to see family for the week, since the kids are on spring break. The car is mostly packed, the laundry is mostly done, directions printed out, kids excited to see their cousins. ..

I’m reposting this prayer for my friend, a mother of five young kids, who has terminal kidney cancer. The fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death is Good Friday, so she and family and friends are increasing their prayers and offerings that day. If anyone wants to add a prayer for her and her family, here is the prayer they are using:




O Holy Trinity,

We thank you for having given to the Church Pope John Paul II,

and for having made him shine with your Fatherly tenderness,

the glory of the Cross of Christ and the splendor of the Spirit of love



He, trusting completely in your infinite mercy

and in the maternal intercession of Mary, has shown himself

in the likeness of Jesus the Good Shepherd

and has pointed out to us holiness

as the path to reach eternal communion with You.



Grant us, through his intercession,

according to Your will, the grace that we implore,

in the hope that he will soon be numbered among your saints.

That he may seek a miracle healing for K. H. - mind, body and spirit.

Amen

A couple of novel reviews

While subbing in a math class last week (where I had no comments to add to the teacher's assignment of in-class exercises), I was able to finish reading A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, a beautiful collection of short stories by Yiyun Li. My sister sent the book on the recommendation of S. Riddle – and my pleasure in it is thus some small justification of time spent reading blogs.

The stories in this collection are all either set in China or about the experience of Chinese Americans; they reveal a deep love of the human person in contradiction to the facelessness of Communist ideology.  But I think what I most enjoyed about this book is that the stories were good stories well told. Perhaps the dominant impression this book left on me was that love is worth the risk of pain and betrayal. Despite the fact that others remain essentially unknowable, that they are never completely who they appear to be, love continues to seek connection and knowledge. Love makes people more interesting, as in “The Princess of Nebraska,” the story of a love triangle between a middle aged man, a young college girl, and a male opera singer who sang female roles: The girl muses about her rival, the older gentleman: “A man like Boshen should have an ordinary life, boring and comfortable, yet his craze for Yang made him a more interesting man than he deserved to be.”

These stories circle around the idea of betrayal, marked by emotional restraint, but also by faith in the redemptive power even of unrequited love. In “Love in the Marketplace” Sansan holds onto bitterness 10 years after a betrayal, but feels tenderness for a street man who seems to hold to principle, like herself. Uncle Bing in “The Arrangement” remains a celibate devoted to serving the object of his love, a sickly, bitter woman, whose parents rejected his proposal of marriage in favor of a more wealthy suitor, who came with money but not love.

Another story, "Extra," has a girl singing a song with this line: “The happiness of love is a shooting meteor; the pain of love is the darkness following.” This first story was perhaps my favorite, about an old cleaning lady’s love for a little rich boy ignored by his family. She gets fired from her job for losing track him, but holds onto his sock collection as a memento of her love affair.

I also liked the insight into parental love in “Son”: “Her god is just like a Chinese parent, never running out of excuses to love a son. But he stays quiet when he looks up at his mother, her eyes so eager and hopeful that he has to avert his own."

And in “The Princess of Nebraska”: “Being a mother must be the saddest yet the most hopeful thing in the world, falling into a love that, once started, would never end.”


I almost put the book down after reading “After a Life,” about a couple hiding their grown handicapped daughter. For a week or so after reading this story with its ambivalent ending, I put the book down, not sure whether or not I wanted to spend more time with it, but I returned to finish them before my mom and sister came to visit. I'm glad I did, otherwise I would have missed out on this: from “Death is Not a Bad Joke If Told the Right Way”: “I wish Mrs. Pang would smile at me when she puts away Mr. Pang’s clothes, and I would know that she is proud of him, earning his life between hills of envelopes at seventy-nine, being a useful man, defending himself, dying with dignity.”

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Also finished Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, which I loved until I reached the last page. I can’t decide if the ending has soured the entire book, a book that transfixed and transported me into another place, Haiti in the 1930’s. Danticat writes about Amabelle Desir, a Haitian living in the Dominican Republic as a serving girl at the beginning of the story. But when the Presidente Trujillo turns on the Haitians, Amabelle, her lover, and his sister decide to escape. Only she survives, along with a friend of her lovers, because they were not with the people planning to escape at the time. They are still tortured and next to death when they finally cross the river in Haiti.


The second half of the book is weaker than the first; it gives glimpses into Amabelle's life while hoping for the return of her lover, but her character is shadowy. It's as if Danticat really just wanted to tell the first half of the story and then didn't know what to do with the second.  I kept expecting Amabelle to learn to love Yves, the friend. Their one attempt at love-making results in a deeper sense of alienation. They never intrude again on each other’s person. Amabelle lives primarily on her own, sewing for others and reliving her memories. Some 20 years later she returns to the Dominican Republic to visit her former mistress, who also has lived a life set apart, alone, because her husband, a military man, helped execute the massacre of Haitians. After this brief visit, Amabelle returns to the river where her parents drowned, and her friends were shot. The ending is reminiscent of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening – I’d like to hope something gave her reason to live.


Was browsing my sister’s The Art of Fiction while she was here and came across John Gardner’s opinion that taste in writing is a nobility of sentiment that never discourages lonely old people, angst ridden teens, or disappointed middle agers from living: "To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful." Amabelle seems determined to persevere through the massacre, and she seems to want to provide some record of those who died so they won’t be forgotten – perhaps in keeping alive the memory of the dead, she gives up the will to live, even those she seems to be want to be a comfort to the mother of Yves. Does she give up in the end or just go for a swim to feel a moment of communion with all those she lost in the river?


Not the ending I expected, instead it is an ending that prevents me from recommending this book, even though I was captivated by the story, because the ending suggests that if you lose all you love, life isn’t worth living, you can’t really start again after such a great tragedy – so is it a tasteless ending? If I put down the book knowing something I never knew before about a forgotten tragedy, while the murderer exists in history books, was it worth reading?