It Only Hurts When I Breathe

"I don't know why I'm doing this to myself," I said to the man at the deli who saw me reading this book and remarked that he thought it was excellent. I mean, yes, it is, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to read.

One December evening, after visiting their daughter in the ICU, Joan Didion and her husband sit down to have dinner, and he suddenly dies. Right there at the kitchen table.

What follows in this book is Joan's journey through her grief. She doesn't go to support groups, she doesn't turn to religion. What she does do, without meaning to, is slip easily into denial quite often. John will be home soon. I can't donate John's shoes to charity; he'll need them when he gets home. She eagerly reads over the results of the autopsy. There is something about if I can just find out why this happened it can be undone. That's the magical thinking. He's not really dead. It's the disconnect from reality. If you don't accept the fact then you don't have to hurt because he's not actually gone.

My mother died when I was 21, but there was nothing sudden about it. She had a long, slow battle with breast cancer that spread. For a long time after that, it didn't seem real. I was there, physically there, holding her hand when she died. But I still sometimes expected her to come home. There were times I would forget for a second; a song would come on the radio and I'd think, "I'll have to tell her I heard this." Then I would remember. But that's not even what I'm talking about. There was also the magical thinking.

That whole year was an alternate reality. For months, I would hear, "I'm sorry about your mom." The first person to say it was my then-boyfriend's mother. I called him after everything calmed down from the spike of activity. I was alone in the room with her when she died. I'd told her it was OK to let go, and she did. And then I freaked out. My dad was at the pharmacy getting more pain medication and we'd never talked about what exactly to do at the moment it happened, and I lost my mind. I called 911, which was exactly the wrong thing to do. They swooped in and did CPR until my dad could produce the hospice paperwork stating that they shouldn't be doing that. One of my sisters noticed the neighbors all standing outside on our normally very quiet street, staring at the ambulance in the driveway, and she started yelling at them. "My mother just died! That's what happened! Go home now! Stop staring at us!" Dad calmly brought her back inside. I called my aunt and just said "She's gone." That's all I could choke out. Then I called my boyfriend because my aunt and I couldn't bear to stay on the phone; she called my grandmother. My boyfriend was at work, but his mother answered. When she said he wasn't home I just said it again. "She's gone." "Oh, Chrissy, I'm sorry."

I'd just started my job two weeks before. I took a week off for the services and the day I came back, people I had only seen once or twice were coming up to me. "I'm sorry about your mom." "I'm sorry about your mom." It would blindside me sometimes. I even heard it at a chiropractor appointment. I went to see a doctor because for some reason I was storing all my stress in my right shoulder. It was at the point where turning my head was painful, and for some reason I thought a chiropractor would help. After my appointment, I was paying the receptionist and she said, "I'm sorry about your mom." I said, "How did you--" "That lady who just went in after you is your sister's French teacher. She told me." Is it crazy that that enraged me? Because it enraged me, but I said thank you and left.

Everyone was well-meaning but it was so stressful. First of all, I really wanted to compartmentalize and not think about home at work. That wasn't happening. Also, nothing to be sorry for... because the whole thing just felt like a lie. When I would tell people my mother died, a voice in my mind would say, "No she didn't! Why are you saying that?"

This past fall I went to the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Kent, CT. One of the events was a screening of a film made by Edward Herrmann's daughter called Home. Edward Herrmann, known to all of us as Grandpa, died of brain cancer, and his daughter made a beautiful short film about magical thinking called Home. In it, a young woman can't accept her father's death to the point where she keeps looking for him and trying to call him. I told Emma after the film that I got it.

Mom died almost 19 years ago and I still look for her.

Home by Emma Herrmann:

Fixer-Upper, Moroccan Style

We just visited Fez, which is why I decided that I had to pick this book up when I saw it at The Book Barn. I love to read books that take place in cities or countries we'll be visiting. It helps me prepare for the trip.

My boyfriend first floated the idea of visiting Morocco in the winter. We've gone on a few vacations overseas before, but always to Europe, so the idea of going to Africa was really exciting. First we spent a week in Spain, then took a boat to Tangier, and a bus to Fez. I finished this book during our first couple of days in Spain, and left it in the hotel where we stayed in Cordoba on the communal book shelf.

Before setting foot in Fez, I will say that it was hard to picture exactly what this author was talking about. She and her husband are Australian journalists who spent time in Fez and found that they missed it so much when they got home that they decided to buy a house in the Medina and fix it up. This was basically like Fixer Upper, Morocco-style. If you like to read about home renovation but get bored when things seem to mostly go smoothly, this book will keep your attention.







They buy a house in the medina. Before we arrived at our hotel in the medina, I really didn't appreciate how complicated it really is.














The medina is truly a dizzying maze of dead-ends and cobblestones. Most of it is covered. Take ten steps in the wrong direction and you're hopelessly lost. Duck your head, go down this passage and through a door that looks like it will just lead to another dark lane, and suddenly you're in a gorgeous riad (a large house) that is covered in gorgeous tiled walls and serves as the carpet shop. Go down another road and you're in the middle of merchant stalls, where people sell everything from dates and figs, spices, shoes, bags, ceramics, jewelry, and fish and meats. We literally came face-to-face with camel heads. Just the heads, hanging there. Stray cats dart in and out between your feet. People yell out to you to buy this and that in Arabic, French, and English. It's overstimulating and claustrophobic. Thank God we hired a guide for a couple of hours; otherwise, we would still be lost in there. Since cars can't get in there, goods are brought in by donkey. On the morning we left, it was garbage day. A man was leading his donkey up the street with a huge box on its back, collecting garbage from people's front doors.

All of this is to say that it's really hard to imagine buying a riad here to remodel and bringing in all the building materials, but they really did, via donkey. Suzanne and her husband ran up against some cultural differences, including a plumber who shows up when he feels like it, layers and layers of bureaucracy, and language barriers. You get to know some of her employees, but I really wanted to know more about them. What kinds of homes did they live in? What were their lives like? I'm hoping she writes a sequel at some point.










Meanwhile, her husband Sandy maintains a blog, The View from Fez. Here you can keep up with some of their adventures.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Books

Somewhere on Facebook a couple of months ago, I came across an interesting offer in one of my book groups. Fill out the Google form and you would be assigned to a group of four strangers. Each person in the group chooses a book to read and marks it up as he or she reads. Underline, annotate, draw little pictures, whatever you want. Finish it within a month and then mail it off to the person under you. In the end, you make notes in four books and read what the person or people who had it before you wrote, and finally you get your own book back so you can read what everyone else was thinking. It's like a real-world version of S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst.

I looked on my TBR shelf for something I'd been meaning to read and texted three titles out to the other members. Since everyone in the group had already read a book by Kate Morton, I settled on The Clockmaker's Daughter as my selection. I am ashamed that I finished it really late and set the group back a bit... We had a vacation in the way. I tried to finish it before we left but there was just no way.

Anyway, my marked-up copy of this book is wrapped in brown paper and will head to the post office tomorrow morning!

It was really fun to write in the book, if I'm being honest. I never do that, nor do I fold pages, nor do I set them down open in case I wreck the spines... so it felt like an act of rebellion. ;) The next book that I need to read for this project is The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan, and I need to get started on that one ASAP!

The Clockmaker's Daughter is the story of Birdie, a young girl whose father leaves her behind in 1860s London to seek his fortune in America. He promises to send for her, but in the meantime, she ends up in the hands of some unscrupulous people. The book jumps around in time, including timelines in the 1940s and 2017. I will say that I would have liked to see more of the 2017 characters. The 1860s chapters were just a little repetitive for me. However, I would say that the tone of this book and the atmosphere that Kate Morton creates are just perfect. This book is exactly the right companion for curling up on a rainy day. It's partially a ghost story, it has elements of Oliver Twist, A Little Princess, and even Titanic. You'll see what I mean!

Pick this book up if you're in the mood for historical fiction, Victorian England, and a ghost story that isn't scary.

4/5 stars

How it always should be

Rosie and Penn have five growing sons. At least, that's what they think.

When their youngest child, Claude, is five years old, he starts telling them that when he grows up, he wants to be a girl scientist. He wants to be a girl doctor... he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn are very present parents. They are very liberal people. They are open-minded and at first just have a gender-neutral household. Sure, Claude can wear a dress if he wants to. His grandmother buys him a pink bikini and they don't argue with her about it. They let him grow his hair out.

Eventually, it's pretty clear that Claude is a girl, and when Claude asks, the family makes a seamless transition along with her. Just like that, Claude is Poppy.

Penn and Rosie are doing their best for their child. They even move the family to a more liberal part of the country in hopes of keeping Poppy safe and happy. They have meetings via Skype with a social worker who helps them navigate these waters. Sometimes it seems that they've overcorrected and done too good a job, and this is also to Poppy's detriment.

But who can tell what the right thing to do is in every situation? There is no control sample in a human life. Parents have to keep making the best choice the best they can, and then again, and again, and hope for the best. This is how it always is.

I gave this book a solid 5. The writing is stellar and the subject is handled with great care. Poppy does seem a little too old for her age sometimes, but that's chalked up to having four older siblings. Rosie and Penn are the parents that ever trans child deserves.

Swept Away

Wave is a memoir by Sonali Deraniyagala. I found it through Anne Bogel's excellent podcast, What Should I Read Next? Anne does such a great job describing each book that she recommends that I would read the back of a Cap'n Crunch box if she described it. I have so many books on my TBR list from her!

This is the story of Sonali's family, her sons, husband, and parents. They were all swept away and killed by the tsunami on December 26, 2004 in Sri Lanka. Miraculously, Sonali survives. She doesn't feel that it's a miracle, though. She spends the next weeks... years... wondering why she's still alive.

Somehow, though, she goes on, and she tells us about it in this gripping little book. One of her sons is identified right away, but she has to wait to hear about her husband and other son. They are eventually identified after authorities dig up a mass grave. She continues to visit the site where their hotel used to be and finds pieces of their belongings in the debris; a t-shirt, a toy.

I wasn't going to pick it up off my pile just yet. It sounded so depressing and I already had a couple other books I was in the middle of, but I was intrigued so I figured I'd just read the first few pages. When I looked up again, I was on page 50. The writing is beautiful and doesn't allow you to put the book down.

I lost my mother in 2000. It's amazing to believe that it's been almost 19 years since I saw her. I was the first of my friends to lose a parent; I was only 21. When people asked me what it felt like, I told them that grief is like a wave. It comes at you when you have your back to it and it can completely knock you off your feet. Sometimes the waves are smaller and just distract you from what you're doing. Other waves are overpowering and you need time to recover as you relive the loss. They can be brought on by a song on the radio, a smell, even a commercial on TV. They're farther apart for me now than they once were, but there have been big ones in recent years. A college friend of my mother's found my family on social media and wanted to return a charcoal portrait she'd had done during her senior year of high school on a trip to France. He gave it to me and I'm glad I was sitting down because it's a perfect likeness. My sister has two children who would have loved to know their grandmother. She would have adored them. I met my boyfriend 5 years ago; I wish he could have known her.

I am in awe of Sonali's strength as she navigates this tragedy. Every day is a step forward.

What if your best friend vanished and nobody would listen to you?

Latest audiobook: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

Maude is an elderly woman you meet on page 1. She is telling everyone who will listen to her that her friend Elizabeth is missing. She's missing! And nobody seems to be taking her seriously, which is frustrating to her and to you, as the reader. Why won't they listen? Elizabeth is missing.

As you spend more time with Maude, you realize that dementia is setting in and she's a very unreliable narrator. The fact that Elizabeth has gone missing has stirred up some long-buried memories of a trauma in her family when she was a teenager, and the author expertly carries you along as Maude's thoughts weave in between the past and present. What happened to Elizabeth? And what happened in the past?

This book was disorienting and suspenseful. It was made even better by the fact that it was on audio, and the narrator did an amazing job. Davina Porter's voice and skill made Maude come to life for me. Your heart will break for her when you realize how quickly she's losing her grasp on reality, and you'll want to step into her world and tell someone, "Just tell her what happened to Elizabeth!"

This book is a great combination of a thriller and a heartbreaking family story.

Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Yesterday the beloved children's author turned 103 years old, which is an amazing feat all by itself. In an interview on the Today Show on her 100th birthday, she said, "Well, I didn't do it on purpose!"

In honor of her birthday I wanted to read one of her books, but I don't own any. Well, I have one of the Ramona books in my classroom, but I didn't think to bring it home for the weekend. However, I read an article on Slate about her memoir A Girl from Yamhill, and I decided to see if my town library had it. They do, but it's out. However, her subsequent memoir, My Own Two Feet was on the shelf, so I brought it home.

It was surprisingly hard to put down. During the Depression, California was offering free community college to all of its residents. Beverly lived in Oregon, but she had relatives in California who invited her to live with them so she could get an education. She wasn't asked to do anything but keep her bedroom neat and bake two cakes each week for the family. Her grandfather sent her $5 every month, which was a big help back then. After her first year, she had to find other living arrangements because her relatives had an elderly grandmother move in and take over her bedroom. However, she proved in this book that she's nothing if not resourceful. She found a roommate and they rented a space in an old woman's home where they shared a pull-out couch bed. Whens he graduated, she moved on to a four-year school and hemmed skirts and knitted in order to make money for her room and board.

Other fun facts about Beverly Clearly:

• She got a D in botany and decided to retake it. Her subsequent A made her grade average out to a B.
• She took geology and loved it.
• She needed glasses but her mother absolutely refused to pay for them, saying that men wouldn't find her as attractive if she was wearing them.
• She took a fencing class during her junior year (epee, in case my fellow fencers were wondering).
• She and her husband eloped because her parents wouldn't approve of her marrying a Catholic.

The book ends with the publication of her first book, Henry Huggins. She wanted to write books for the children she knew when she was a children's librarian, who didn't want to read the classics. They just wanted to read stories about kids they could relate to. 

The first book I ever read by her was Ramona and her Mother, which my mom picked out for me at the Enfield Public Library here in Connecticut. I remember the story as well as the cover, which was yellow and had the two of them blowing on dandelions on it.

Beverly Cleary, like Judy Blume and Lois Lowry, is one of those authors who has just always been around for me. It was really fun to read more about her real life and family and see what obstacles she had to overcome in order to achieve her two main goals: to become a librarian and to write children's books.