A Thread of Grace

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  There’s a saying in Hebrew, he tells her.

No matter how dark the tapestry God weaves for us,

there’s always a thread of grace.

Mary Doria Russell’s A Thread of Grace  is a dense book. 

When I read it half-heartedly-dipping in here and there–I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.  There are many characters and more storylines than a modern novel usually has.  The place names are unfamiliar (many are fictional) and it is easy to become lost, dislocated.  Like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, it takes a while to settle in and get comfortable. 

His face twists, but he holds back the tears,

determined not to commit the sin of despair.

After I finished this story of the Jewish resistance in Italy, sniffling and throat-lumping, I count it in the top five books about civilian life during WWII.  Russell (who grew up in my hometown, Lombard, IL) obviously knows both Jewish and Catholic culture deep down at the roots in this well-researched and well-written story. 

She nods and his glorious gap-toothed grin apears,

utterly transforming the homely face. 

To make a man so happy! she thinks. 

To make this man so beautiful..”Yes.” she says, “Really.”  

The courtship of Claudette and Santino, written with sparse, elegant prose, remains long after the book is finished.  Santino, a solid man, builds stone walls that will be standing 200 years after he’s gone.  Claudia (she Italicizes  her name) is a young refugee who is forced to grow up in a short space of time.  Like any book with Nazis and Jews, there is difficult-to-digest terror and violence.   

The old words come back, prayers he learned as a child. 

Misere mei Deus:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.

The other relationship which barnacled my heart was between a Catholic priest, Osvaldo Tomitz, and Werner Schramm, a German Doktor who has deserted the Nazis.  The story begins with Don Tomitz hearing Schramm’s confession–who calculates that he has killed 91,867 people–and ends with Schramm acting as a priest to the father.  Don Tomitz wrestles with guilt, forgiveness, atonement and absolution as he ministers to broken people. 

May I share some of my favorite sentences?

~   Shutters open like windows in an Advent calendar.

~   Feeble as a good intention, he watches his own feet…

~   He could give a lecture on the natural history of terror.

~   He tries to thank God, but can’t help feeling like a thug’s wife who believe she is loved if a punch goes wide. 

~   Autumn light makes the varnished chesnut bookcases beneath the windows glow.  

 

Trollope’s Rachel Ray

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Beer and evangelicals: that’s what you’ll find in Anthony Trollope’s Rachel Ray. 

What Luke Rowan, the main man in this novel, cares about is brewing good beer. He inherits a portion of the brewery of Messrs. Bungall and Tappitt, gentlemen who consistently made muddy, disagreeable beer.  Naturally Mr. Tappitt objects to an upstart nephew suggesting ways to improve his beer.  To Tappitt, beer is business; Luke thinks there is a great deal of poetry in brewing beer.

He is “a young man, by no means of the bad sort, meaning to do well, with high hopes in life, one who had never wronged a woman, or been untrue to a friend, full of energy and hope and pride.  But he was conceited, prone to sarcasm, sometimes cynical, and perhaps sometimes affected.”  Perhaps the greatest compliment is that Luke “had the gift of making himself at home with people.”

In the character of Dorothea Prime, Rachel’s widowed sister, Trollope takes aim at pharisaic pietism.  “Her fault was this: that she had taught herself to believe that cheerfulness was a sin…”

Nice things aggravated her spirits and made her fretful.  She liked the tea to be stringy and bitter, she liked the bread to be stale; –as she preferred also that her weeds should be battered and old.  She was approaching that stage of discipline at which ashes become pleasant eating, and sackcloth is grateful to the skin.  The self-indulgences of the saints often exceed anything that is done by the sinners.

Sweet Rachel Ray is the antithesis of her sister.  “She walked as though the motion were pleasant to her, and easy,–as though the very act of walking were a pleasure.”  Rachel’s sister wants to keep her cloistered at home, leaving only for church services and afternoon teas at Miss Pucker’s house.  Rachel protests, “If I was minded to be bad, shutting me up would not keep me from it.”

Thus two views of marriage and courtship are at opposition.  Trollope poses “that great question,–What line of moral conduct might best befit a devout Christian?”

               
Marriage is the happiest condition for a young woman, and for a young man, too.  And how are young people to get married if they are not allowed to see each other?
versus

Men and women, according to her theory, were right to marry and have children; but she thought that such marriages should be contracted not only in a solemn spirit, but with a certain dinginess of solemnity, with a painstaking absence of mirth.

I loved the storyline but I adored the writing.  Phrases like “elated with dismal joy” and “she knew her mother must be appeased and her sister opposed” and “burial service over past unkindness” delighted me. 

If you are so inclined, click on the link in the first sentence of this post, then click Look Inside the Book, First Pages.  Read the first paragraph and tell me it’s not brilliant.

Rachel Ray.  Written in 1863; my favorite book of 2009.

Julie and Julia

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Julie and Julia follows the true story to two women: Julia Child in France, 1949, and Julie Powell, who cooked and blogged her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 2002 from her apartment in Queens.  It is an interesting technique to put two memoirs into one film, but it works.

If you like period pieces, you’ll especially enjoy the French parts of the movie.  I wouldn’t have thought post-WWII Paris could have looked so luscious.  My husband was salivating from the beginning of the movie…over the wood paneled blue Buick station wagon.

Meryl Streep delivers an award-winnable performance as the jaunty Julia Child.  She captures the voice, the mannerisms and the joi de vivre that is signature Julia.  One cannot help but love this woman who is so at home in her own skin.  Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, a cubicle worker and aspiring writer, restless and riddled with angst.  Julia becomes Julie’s role model.

Paul Child and Eric Powell, the husbands, play supporting roles.  The film portrays the Childs’ relationship as stable and secure, tinged with sadness at their inability to conceive; Julie and Eric’s marriage is threatened by the blogging project and her focus on it.  It is refreshing to see a movie with two married couples for whom fidelity is a given. 

The main message that I extracted is that Julia Child was her joyful, unflappable self because she was a woman adored by her husband.  His love “beautified” her.  We admire this woman who is plain and tall, with a voice that grazes the ceiling, because of her passion and zest and joy in cooking. The security of being  loved meant she didn’t have to edit the fiascos out of her television shows.  That woman could laugh.

My strongest criticism is that the intimacy of both couples was overstated and brought on screen.  Less is more.  The scene where Julia and Paul exit their Paris house holding hands until their fingertips part communicates their sexual sizzle better than the bedroom scenes.

Oh..the food!  Lots of butter, lots of whisking, chopping, and plenty of eating.  It’s delicious.

Random Reading Notes

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Lots happening in the “Shire” and it. is. glorious.  Our community is celebrating weddings, music, friendship and growth.  I had not factored in how fatiguing glory can be, but surely there will be time to rest in the winter. 

One of my dear ones is getting married this Saturday.  Here is a Tolstoy quote that landed in her invitation:

The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage
but to bring more love and truth into the world.
We marry to assist each other in this task.
The most selfish and hateful life of all
is that to two beings who unite
in order to enjoy life.
The higher calling is that of the man
who has dedicated his life
to serving God and doing good
and who unites with a woman in order
to further that purpose.
~ Leo Tolstoy

The irony of that quote is that joy is the byproduct of a life of service. 

I have so many good books on my nightstand I can hardly bear going to sleep. 

You know, if you’ve read this blog for more than a week, how much I admire Wendell Berry.  I have two new book of essays and I love to read them wherever they fall open. 

Love is never abstract.
It does not adhere to the universe or the planet
or the nation or the institution or the profession,
but to the singular sparrows of the street,
the lilies of the field,
“the least of these my brethren.”
Love is not, by its own desire, heroic.
It is heroic only when compelled to be.
It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.
~ from “Word and Flesh”

Another author in my top five favorites is Neil Postman.  The Disappearance of Childhood is teeter-tottering in my pile of books.  Some quotes such as “Reading is, in a phrase, an antisocial act.” need a bit more background to be appreciated.  My antipathy to television needs no bolstering, but you can’t blame me for chortling a bit over this Reginald Damerall quote on how television erodes the dividing point between childhood and adulthood:

“No child or adult becomes better at watching television
by doing more of it.
What skills are required are so elemental
that we have yet to hear of a television viewing disability.”

I’m revisiting a book that had a powerful impact on me thirteen years ago: Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman.  It is curious to re-read the book at a little more emotional distance.  I asked my husband to read the introduction and the first chapter in order to understand me better.  While he believes Wendell Berry is a better grief counselor, Curt appreciated this:

“How do I keep my mother’s death from being a lifelong lesson?
How do I keep it an isolated incident,
something so overarching, so devastating,
so pervasive in my life still?
How do I keep from being crippled by it?”
The answer, I believe–if there is such a thing
as a concise answer to such questions–
is to slowly learn to live with the loss and not under it,
to let it become a companion
rather than a guide.

Helene Hanff is kick-in-the-butt fun to read. 84, Charing Cross Road is high on my list of lifetime favorites.  She uses a strange and intriguing convention in Apple of My Eye, a book about New York City.  The entire book is a diary about a book she *plans* on writing.  Her friend  Patsy is forever commenting, “Put that in the book.”  Her humor is irrepressible, her writing wonderful.  She is one of those friends who is a walking encyclopedia, able to give you a two minute synopsis of the history of anything.  Thanks to Hanff, I’m am SO ready to visit the Big Apple.  The Cloisters, a collection of twelth and thirteenth century buildings, torn down and reconstructed in NYC, is now on my “must see” list.  I had never heard of it before this week.  Anybody been?

Then you look out,
and the splendor of the city
smites you all over again
with “astonishment of the heart,”
as it says in the Bible.

Finally, I am snuggling into Donald Hall’s memoir of his childhood summers with his grandparents in Maine, String Too Short to Be Saved.  I have to finish this so others (who are not yet aware that their earthly happiness depends upon reading this book) can begin.  When our kids were all together last weekend, we spent an evening reading sections of Aunt Doris’ memoirs aloud.  Whenever it sparked a memory, Grandpa filled in his own memories.  Stuff like his Grandpa who died in a field, sitting next to his tractor. My kids heard about the fine art of burning a page of the catalog and throwing it into the outhouse hole before you did your business so the seat was warm.  This book reminded me of that evening.

The idea of their [Donald’s grandparents] mortality
was never far from the surface of my day,
for a flush or a sigh or a hand pressed to the heart
brought death to me,
as if I had heard someone say the word.
It was a pack on my back,
and I would feel the sharp, physical pain
of their approach to dying,
something becoming nothing–or
was it my own approach to bereavement
that made my side ache?

What are you reading this summer?

Motherless Daughters

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By 1996 I was certain sure I had made peace with grief.  Sorrow was a sealed file with the words RESOLVED stamped on the front.  I had been “moving on”, as they say, for decades.

Suddenly, with the stealth of a B-2 bomber, grief pounced and hijacked me.  While I was held hostage, facing my familiar adversary, I had the sense of confusion and disbelief: This cannot be happening to me.  It seemed surreal, disconnected, in short, unbelievable.

It was in that context of confused ongoing mourning that I first read Motherless Daughters.

My mother-in-law wanted to help; she gave me this book with the hesitant hope that it might give me something she herself couldn’t give.  I planted myself in the small bathroom at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night and started reading.  By 4:00 a.m. I had finished the book, exhausted, soggy,  numb, and emotionally done-in.

When Hope Edelman wrote about experiences, emotions and situations that I knew firsthand in my soul but had never spoken aloud, it could only be described as cathartic.  Edelman gave me words to articulate the sorrow and, more than anything, helped me to understand the nature of grief.  The first chapter, The Seasons of Grieving, is the best concise summary of grief that I have ever read.

I recently revisited Hope’s narrative.  I was surprised to see statements I’ve been saying so long that I thought they were my very own.  The words of the first chapter are still powerful and continue to resonate in my soul.  Back in 1996, they reassured me that I wasn’t some freak of nature who refused to “get over it.”

Having said that, I found the predominant value of this book much more in its diagnosis than in its therapy.

Quotes to copy:

Like most other families that lose a mother, mine coped as best it could, which meant, essentially, that we avoided all discussion of the loss and pretended to pick up exactly where we’d left off.

“My mother died when I was nineteen,” [Anna] Quindlen wrote. “For a long time, it was all you needed to know about me, a kind of vest-pocket description of my emotional complexion:  ‘Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes–I have long brown hair, am on the short side, have on a red coat, and my mother died when I was nineteen.'”

Ten years ago I was convinced I’d finished mourning my mother.  The truth was, I’d barely begun.

Edelman describes a random incident years after her mother’s death where she is balled up in physical pain, clutching her stomach.  She had thought she had sailed through the five stages of death and moved on.  I had a similar moment when, as if lightening from heaven, I was struck, pierced, skewered, with overwhelming grief.  I thought I was well-adjusted, “normal” and that everything was copacetic.  For no discernable reason (I mean the timing of the episode) I was brought to my knees, in tears, and incapable of articulating anything but deep, deep pain.  I ended up in a seldom-used restroom in our church, gasping for air, howling in anguish.  Someone got my husband and told him to go in and check on me.

Here’s what I’ve learned about grief since then: It’s not linear.  It’s not predictable.  It’s anything but smooth and self-contained.  Someone did us all a grave injustice by first implying that mourning has a distinct beginning, middle, and end.  That’s the stuff of short fiction.  It’s not real life.

Grief goes in cycles, like the seasons, like the moon.  No one is better created to understand this than a woman, whose bodily existence is marked by a monthly rhythm for more than half her life.

Fine Art Friday – Watercolor!

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A Moment Spurred,  Ann Yoder


My goal as an artist is to create paintings
that share a ‘voice’ that your heart hears.
~  Ann Yoder

People!  I have a real treat for you.

My friend, Ann Yoder.

Our kids were in play group together.

Whenever we meet randomly in town,
it is talk, talk, talk…

Please don’t skip this link, she does excellent work.

Portfolio.

The stories behind the paintings are like
the “Vivid” setting on a camera.

Inspiration Behind the Art
Your day *will* be better because of her art.

Found in the Laundry Room

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Our cousin’s laundry room sports this sign.
Did her husband make it?
This looks like something her father might have made.
 It makes me smile.


Emily at “Not so idle hands” blog is giving away a sign she makes.
Crafters, you’d love this blog.
You can enter to win a sign by clicking on Emily’s name.


I love looking at this Degas when I’m scooping
up wet clothes from the washer.
Who knew ironing could look so romantic?
All it takes is watercolor!


Folk art from my sister-in-law.

 
The background picture at Nettie’s blog.
I love pictures of woman hanging the wash.

What’s in your laundry room/nook/space (beside stinky socks)?

A Friendship for Bedtime

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My friend in Zimbabwe is reading Andy Catlett by Wendell Berry.

This morning’s inbox has these lines in response.

I started on Andy Catlett last night.
Oh, what a friendship for bed time.
Is that whole book set  on just one day?
Wendell Berry is truly gifted, to tell a story like that.
I left reading off just where grandma was making a raspberry pie.
I cannot wait for that pie to get out of the oven.