Week Thirty Four - Books are humanity in print - Barbara W. Tuchman

I finished a book this week that left me in a massive puddle of my own tears.  I had a tough time getting started when my daughter gave it to me.  She loved it and said she knew I would too.  It was the last in a series of a young adult fiction I had enjoyed years ago - Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  Generally, my daughter and I don’t enjoy the same literature, she’s a hopeless romantic and Nicholas Sparks fan. Me.... not so much. It’s not that I don’t believe in miracles, and love, and fantasy, it’s just perhaps I have enough of my own life experiences now, and the fiction pales in comparison!  Who needs  50 Shades of Grey when you’ve lived it, better written. This book, Sisterhood Everlasting, was different and I felt so close to her in knowing we saw many of the same things in the rawness and beauty of Ann Brashares final episode of the Sisterhood. I think part of it just means she is growing into her own life experiences too, and can now relate to so much more.  It was a book mother and daughter became one. 

 At, first, I couldn’t figure out why I was dragging my feet in immersing myself further into the book.  I went so far, a few pages at a time, for weeks.  Then, I would stop.  I made up my mind, this past weekend was “D Day”...done...When I finished it Sunday afternoon, I knew why I had so much trouble.  The book was a very personal revisit to my life, decade by decade. I haven’t had a book impact me so intimately since Elizabeth Gilbert’s  Eat, Pray, Love which I read in 2008.   I think books, are like people, divine and dropped into our lives when we need them... to teach us, warm our hearts, and help us to know we are not alone. 

I think it’s hard for us to see ourselves as we really were/are in the present or even honestly, in the past tense.  Sometimes the words of another shine a light on those places in us left unspoken; those secret parts of us that need to be recognized, so they can come out and be shared, in order for us to make any progress in our own life journey and growth.  This book did that for me.  It set the stage for a revisit to the person I was at 20, 30, 40, and 50, in voices other than my own, That felt safe for me, and also allowed me to both grieve and rejoice at the woman that has/is evolving.  I bookmarked a few quotes from the book that told a part of the story of the woman I was and now am...

Me- Age 18

“Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give.”

Me - Age 30 

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.”

Me- Age 45

“Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and controlled it, whereas the sadness owned her.” 

Me - Age 55

“You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.  ... Maybe you think you'll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn't work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It's by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.” 

Me - Today.... Just for today.

“You just have to let people love you in the way they can.” You get older and you learn there is one sentence just four words long and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this… Ready?”

“Ready.”

“At least I tried.” 

WooHoo to those talented writers who have an ability to move us to take a look at and acknowledge our own humanity.  It’s only in the recognition that we are able to accept those bits of ourselves and see them for what they are, stepping stones to acceptance of who we have been, who we are, and who we want to be. WooHoo to my weekend of Traveling with the Sisterhood!