Things I Learned in 2019

~Witnessing parents navigate the death of their child stills me.  2019 contained too much loss.

~Guiding couples on their wedding day as they make their sweet marriage promises is an honor like no other.

~ One-year-old flower girls understand their power.

~I am a ripe candidate for becoming a snowbird. 

~Standing in my backyard at dawn or dusk to watch the International Space Station flying  248 miles above leaves me awestruck.

~Text alerts stating when this orbital wonder will happen make me gleeful. (Thanks Starman!)   https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/signup.cfm

~Divided: we struggle.  Together: we conquer.

~When a 2 year-old wants to stand on the front lawn to touch the reflection of twinkling lights on Christmas Eve, I remember how wonder feels. 

~Living in a world where Joni Mitchell is still among us is enough.

~Listening to Brandi Carlile cover Joni Mitchell is the next best thing.

~Home ownership is tiresome.  

~My desire to experience Christmas elsewhere in the world is strong - maybe in 2020.

~Securing Newport Folk Festival tickets eight months in advance delights and sustains me.  

~Sharing this with my eldest, music-loving daughter boosts the delight factor by 100. 

~South Korea is on my daily radar while my youngest, adventure-seeking daughter follows the experiential narrative of her life while teaching there.

~Coldplay's latest offering- Everyday Life - is not what I expected. I am smitten.

~Lizzo is a juicy wonder. "If you feel like a girl, then you real like a girl, do your thing, run the whole damn world."

~The Daily (NYTimes) podcast is platinum-level news reporting. We must support the fourth estate (not state television) regardless of/and because of the colossal ignorance that wants to bury it.

~My 2-year-old grand nephew and 6-month-old grand-niece run the whole show.  Our family's role is strictly that of infatuated support staff. 

~The Met is a gorgeous Philly venue.      
                                                                           
~Parking my car for free near a South Philly subway stop and taking the subway to the Met is the best concert parking tip of the year. (Thanks Concert Guru!)

~Having to lock your phone away during a performance is l-i-b-e-r-a-t-i-n-g!

~Author and activist Glennon Doyle lives her truth as a Love Warrior.  She dazzled us at the Keswick Theater this summer. 

~She also has some amazing sports aptitude as evidenced in this tutorial given on the first day of the 2019 Women's World Cup.  (This video brings me joy.  Every. Single. Time. "Offside is a force that is beyond human understanding. Offside is a matter of spiritual surrender." )

Thank you, dear Reader, for taking time to read these meanderings. Peace in 2020. 
As we step into another decade, time, as usual, has the last word:

"Time is the substance I am made of.
 Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; 
it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; 
it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire” 
Jorge Louis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

Our Bodies Ourselves

In 1974, the book Our Bodies Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective rocked my parochial world.  

It was the Fall of my college freshman year and Ellen, a fellow coed (with whom I am still friends) had a copy on her book shelf.  Just as we would laze around dorm rooms analyzing album covers while listening to music, my fellow dorm mates and I would flip through Our Bodies Ourselves with equal intensity, ingesting every morsel.  

Written in plain detail with line drawings illustrations and some photos, it described a woman's anatomy, sexuality, birth control, being lesbian, abortion, pregnancy, miscarriage, and much more with clarity and frankness that rattled my sheltered teenage experience.  The pre-Internet world along with my catholic school education created a moat around knowing myself as sexual being whose body was my own.  Our Bodies Ourselves finally lowered the drawbridge into a wider world celebrating women and sexuality. 

Our Bodies Ourselves was just in its 4th year of printing but it already stood as a significant resource.  

Previously, in the Spring of my senior high school year, a guest speaker addressed my classmates during religion classes. The visitor was a young, married woman who was a school alum.  She must have been in her early to mid-twenties, but to my 17 year-old self, of course she projected as someone much older.

Her presentation's core message was to abstain from sex and "save yourself" for marriage.  I recall her manner as pleasing, earnest.  I also remember feeling separated  from her message since she was married which translated into 'old' which translated into not relatable. 

At the intersection of intention and reality, this chaste effort fell flat.

Earlier that year, a classmate, Maureen, a girl who sat behind me in homeroom for almost four years became pregnant and left school to have her daughter. Maureen was boisterous, joyful, outspoken, a free thinker, and smiled through every day.   

One day she arrived on campus at lunchtime to catch up with a group of us as we sat outside at our usual spot.  Maureen was in her third trimester.  She joked with us like always and the appreciation in being together was mutual.  But her visit was cut short when one of the faculty, having spotted her on campus, abruptly and awkwardly shooed her off telling her she was not permitted on school grounds. 

I recall that dismissive moment so sharply.  This was no stranger.  It was Maureen.  She was our beloved high school friend.  Yet, now she was unwelcome because she was pregnant. She represented the great unclean. She was shamed. 

It's no leap to see the fear her situation gave to school faculty.  Maureen did not 'save herself' for marriage.  She did not represent the only option offered catholic school girls.  Fear drove the shunning.  

Where was love for Maureen? Where was the kindness? Where was the support? 

It infuriated me and scared me.  

I thought about Maureen when the visiting alum spoke to us regarding abstinence.  While this woman promoted one lone path of 'purity,' it seemed so narrow and unfair for the bright light that was Maureen.  I felt conflicted, not about Maureen, but about a philosophy of fear and unreasonable choices.  Maureen, who made a brave, life changing choice became unwelcome to the very school which taught a now skewed value system:  be chaste and, if you 'fail,' be damned. 

Which is why paging through Our Bodies Ourselves months later as a first semester college coed became a sort of protest to small thinking.  It was the first time I understood that I was in charge of my body and desires whether I chose to have sex or not.  I controlled what I did with my body.  I felt celebrated.  I felt empowered. And I had options. Shame had no place in sexuality.  

A couple of years later I ran into Maureen at a local shop.  She had her sweet toddler daughter with her.   I don't remember what we said but I do know what we felt.  We were two young women incredibly happy to see one another.  Maureen's effervescence sparkled as it always had.  A teen pregnancy didn't break her nor did the disrespectful lack of mercy from her religious high school.

Maureen is one of my early heroines.  She navigated hypocritical shame and she decided about her body.  She chose to have her baby at a time when she could have chosen not to have her baby.  The important point, to me, is that she had a choice - her choice! 

I am forever grateful to the women who wrote, published, updated, promoted, supported Our Bodies Ourselves for so many years.  Their clarity helped mold mine. 

I am pro-choice.
My body.  
My choice.  
Mine. 

NOTE: Here is the pdf of the 1970 course booklet "Women & Their Bodies" which became Our Bodies Ourselves.
https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/cms/assets/uploads/2014/04/Women-and-Their-Bodies-1970.pdf

NOTE: On April 2018, the board, founders and staff of Our Bodies Ourselves came to a decision that Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) no longer had the resources to continue paying staff to develop health information and collaborate on translations and adaptations with our global partners. As of October 1, 2018, OBOS transitioned to a volunteer-led 501(c)3 and scaled back OBOS’s core work to two primary activities: advocating for women’s health and social justice and providing limited technical support to OBOS’s global partners.  

Since its inception, OBOS has had a tremendous impact on the lives, health, and human rights of women across the world. https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/

Anne and Liz: My Mother's Day Guides

Writing about Mother's Day jams up my brain. There are a precious few things I know about being a mother and here they are:

I know I always wanted to have this experience.
I know I was unqualified.
I know the last fact didn't matter.

I am grateful that my 92 year old mom still inhabits our lives and this Earth.  Thank you Mom! 

Writers Anne Lamott and Liz Gilbert both write about mothers and Mother's Day in a way that resonates with me so I happily reprint their well thought out opinions and embrace them as I embraced my children when we lived together and now, as they find their way in the world.   

Oh - and Liz, in her decision to not parent, offers this perfect description of parental commitment. "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face.  You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."    

Yep- that covers it.  

From Anne Lamott:

"...Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. These mothers are on a diet.

I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s. 

There is no refuge — not at the horse races, movies, malls, museums. Even the turn-off-your-cellphone announcer is going to open by saying, “Happy Mother’s Day!” You could always hide in a nice seedy bar, I suppose. Or an ER."

From Liz Gilbert:  

"What we, as a culture, expect from our mothers is merely that they not be human. Mothers are meant to be some combination of Mother Mary, Mother Theresa, Superwoman, and Gaia. It’s a merciless standard of perfection. Merciless!

God help your mother, if she ever fell short. God help your mother, if she was exhausted & overwhelmed. God help her if she didn’t understand her kids. God help her if she no gift for raising children. God help her if she had desires and longings. God help her if she was ever terrified, suicidal, hopeless, bored, confused, furious.

God help her if life had disappointed her. God help her if she had an addiction, or a mental illness. God help her if she ever broke down. God help her, if couldn’t control her rage. God help her, because if she fucked up in any way, she will be forever branded: BAD MOTHER. And we will never forgive her for this.

So this is my question: Can we take a break today from judging the mothers, and show them mercy, instead?

This doesn’t mean that what happened to you at the hands of your mother was OK. This doesn’t mean that your pain is not real...it just means that maybe her pain was real, too.

And if you are yourself a mother, and you never stop judging yourself for how you are failing...can you let it go for one day? Just for one day, can you drop the knife that you are holding to your own throat? Mercy. Just for one day. Let us find mercy.

Mercy on you.
Mercy on everyone.
Mercy on the mothers."

Julia 2012 ~ 2019

She is forever six and a half years old. 

She does not suffer fools.

She loves red grapes, colorful sweet pepper slices, mini Babybel cheese rounds, and key lime yogurt for lunch.

She has a weak spot for Reese's peanut butter cups (and most chocolate confections.)

She calls out adults on our obvious nonsense.

She is a solid friend who's in high demand among her peers. 

She sings and dances to Katy Perry's song, Roar.

She is a lioness in a cub's body. 

She asked Santa for 100 boxes of Nilla Wafers.

She giggled seeing the over-sized red sack containing 100+ Nilla Wafer boxes on Christmas morning. 

She makes the magic.

She knows her own mind.

She embodies Tom Petty's lyric:  I won't back down.

She chooses turquoise as her favorite color.

She loves to complete every line of the "See Ya Later Alligator" poem from memory. 

She invents new lines to this sweet rhyme.  She knows they work.

She corrects me EVERY SINGLE TIME I screw up the poem's order. 

She is genuine, as are most six year-olds. 

She loves to dance.

She says she can belly dance, Irish step dance, as well as dance hula. 

She immediately demonstrates each dance to prove it.

She is a unicorn devotee.

She shares the same birthday as my 27 year-old daughter.

She asks, "What's the name of your daughter who has my birthday?"

She has perfected the pouty face and weaponizes it expertly.

She dressed as Wonder Woman for Halloween.  

She is, indeed, a wonder.

She firmly rejects my usual greeting of "Hi Toots!" with,  "I am NOT a Tootsie Roll!" 

She often points her tiny index finger as she admonishes me.

She sometimes includes a foot stomp, yet, she indulges me each time.

She giggles with a semi-deep timbre. 

She fiercely loves her older brother.

She teases her older brother with equal ferocity. 

She is masterful in her role as younger sibling. 

She is a beach bum.

She loves a good hot tub soak.

She adores her mommy and daddy and extended family.

She sparkles.

She is so much more than these few cursory descriptors.

She has been dealt the cruelest of hands. 

She has left us much too soon.  

Dear Reader: Help honor our little friend, Julia, and the too many youngsters like her who have been taken from their loved ones by DIPG and similar childhood central nervous system cancers. 

Childhood cancer research receives only 4 percent of all federal government cancer research funding - 4 percent!!  Help us defeat this beast so no other youngsters and their loved ones suffer.   

Please click on the link below to donate to The Cure Starts Now. 

Then go hug the little folks in your life. Thank you. 

Donation link:  https://thecurestartsnow.org/donate/general-donation/

Heroes link: https://thecurestartsnow.org/heroes/view-heroes/julia-bitto/

A Curious Deck of Cards

My unintended collection of memorial cards.

NOTE: This post mentions suicide. If you have suicidal thoughts call 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. 

 

It's early February 1967.  I am 10-1/2 years old.  I am about to receive my first card.

A phone call early on that snowy morning confirms that my best friend's brother is dead.  The 'adapted for children' story goes this way: he was playing with his belt before bedtime and it was looped on his bedpost.  His head somehow got tangled in the loosely closed belt during the night and he accidentally died. 

I accept this explanation because I am 10-1/2 years old. Suicide is not in my orbit.  My friend and I never talk about the circumstances of her sibling's death.

But I have his card.  

This month, the dad of another grade school girlfriend died.  The viewing is held in my childhood church because hundreds of mourners are anticipated.  The queue extends out onto the sidewalk and down the street.  We wait in the frigid winter night to honor an 87-year-old wonder.  

Phil E. "Pops" Martelli was a St. Joseph University legend. He supported the basketball team in every way.  His son began coaching the Hawks in 1995. Pops retired from the DuPont Company that same year so he could attend just about every team practice and game. 

Mr. Martelli (as he was known to me long ago) was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and Hawks fan.  

I now have his card. 

These two cards, separated by five decades, are the current bookends to a "deck" of over 70 others.  All are stored in a small, green wooden memento box painted with doves and flowers.  Each new card, tucked inside without fanfare, acts as a placeholder for the deceased.   

The keepsakes make up an odd blend of memorial cards offered to mourners when someone dies.  As an unintended collection, they become the afterthoughts of souls who have passed through my life.  

Each holds a soft echo:  I arrived. I mattered. I am gone. 

I'm not sure what moves me on this February day to look at each one, but I do. The feeling that bubbles up is an achy wonder.  

The younger the deceased, the more I wonder about what could have been. What future gifts from them did the world miss opening?  A different wonder surfaces when I consider the older person. Did they live the life they wanted? Was it satisfying?  Sweet compassion pulses for them all.

Sliding the first few cards from my left to my right hand, I notice not one, but five cards saved when my grandfather, Vincent Labate, died in February 1979. Why would I keep so many?  The answer makes easy sense to me.  My grandfather was the first close family member to die in my lifetime. My 20-something self must have grabbed what I could as a sort of armor for the grief. The protective bubble burst later that year when my two surviving grandmothers followed him in death.  

My teeny card collection doubled in eight months.  Death became real from then on.

Included with my grandparents' cards are those for aunts, uncles, cousins, and all forms of friends: friends' parents and grandparents, a revered college Jesuit, friends' spouses, a friend's fiancee, and a friend's 22-year-old child.  There is one name I cannot place, even after an intensive internet search.

For a quick breath, I think: after I am long gone, what is to become of this little grouping?  In my next breath, I know.  It will also be gone, as it should be.  It's not the job of my children to hold on to these memorials of folks who are mostly strangers to them.  It's enough to acknowledge that I savored these lives too.  

George Harrison sums it up well when he sings, "All things must pass, all things must pass away."

A melancholy spreads as I deliberately shuffle through the pile, whispering each name. The memories ooze a sweetness that only Time can grant.  The further away the death, the more manageable the pain, making room for other emotions.  

It's comforting to know we can simultaneously hold mixed feelings, unwieldy as they often are. Sadness ebbs as joy flows.  Happy memories percolate yet succumb to the pain of loss, again.  It's a game of emotional hot potato.

The decorative box has become my tiny altar.  In a world where buildings, statues, theaters, highways, street signs, parks, and even turnpike rest stops commemorate the infamous dead, the dear deceased souls within my world are remembered less opulently but no less deeply via one fragile card. 

The following link is of George Harrison singing "All Things Must Pass" in 1997, in what turned out to be his last public performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yufsEgTcEOc

For The Love of Cooking

Julia Child's kitchen in the
National Museum of
American History 

I love to cook.  As for cooking shows, well, there has been a lot to love and hate.

Years ago, the enormously likable (and a little wacky) Graham Kerr, "The Galloping Gourmet," and Jeff Smith, "The Frugal Gourmet," entertained and informed my culinary interests thanks to public television.  Both men stood on the shoulders of Julia Child. 

Julia's early television efforts not only demystified French cuisine for American cooks but highlighted her lovable, self-effacing approach to making mistakes while cooking.  She educated without being stuffy. 

All three chefs portrayed a stress-free, lighthearted kitchen where goof ups happened as a matter of course.  They offered sweet relief for home cooks charged with the everyday chore of meal planning and prep.  

Graham Kerr would cook in front of a live audience and invite one of them to feast with him on the freshly prepared meal at the show's conclusion.  He would sometimes include footage of a visit to the country where a recipe originated.  And of course, the British accent made it better.  At 84, he continues to instruct in small gatherings near his Seattle home.  

Some critics noted Jeff Smith had a haughty way about him, but I never found it so. I enjoyed his show until charges of sexual abuse ended his television career. He died the same year as Julia - 2004.

While my mother, grandmother and aunt - my Italian Kitchen Trinity - inspired me to cook, the welcomed ease of these early television chefs gave me confidence.  Inspiration and confidence: what more could a neophyte home cook ask for?

I can tell you what I did not ask for - the hyped up, competition based, tense music, and dramatic lights of many 21st century cooking shows.  The explosion of offerings such as Top Chef, Chopped, Iron Chef, Final Table and most anything with Gordon Ramsay as host has created a culinary hysteria that kills my cooking buzz.  I understand mania runs the day in many restaurant kitchens. Replicating that tension for television feeds an audience that is hungry for more.  But for more of what? 

Life outside my kitchen bombards my overworked senses enough each day.  Cooking is my respite - a creative and delicious outlet.  Seeing chefs and chef wannabes tensely rushing around a kitchen fearing failure under a militaristic barking (I hear you Gordon Ramsay) or being given a surprise "mystery ingredient" all under the sound of harsh music and stark spotlights ultimately leaves me uninspired.  

It's the difference between "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Jeopardy" - both are fun quiz shows but one injects dramatic hype (again with the lights and music!) while the other showcases each contestant's intellect and strategy (wagering before final Jeopardy answers are revealed - brilliant!) Plus "Jeopardy" gives the home viewer so many more opportunities to answer questions from a wide category spectrum, making us feel smarter or perhaps less smart.  Within the walls of my kitchen, I choose instructional over intensity. 

With an appreciative nod to Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Nigella Lawson, Giada DeLaurentis, Carla Hall, Alton Brown, Lidia Bastianich, and Mollie Katzen as well as chefs with no television show i.e. Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Michael Solomonov, Steven Cook, Marc Vetri, here are some of my favorite food shows: 

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat with Samin Nosrat on Netflix:  Four episodes so beautifully filmed and executed that I floated along inhaling every visual morsel.   Samin  has the culinary chops from her work at Chez Panisse and understands how the four elements of food prep in her show (and cookbook) title are foundational to flavorful, satisfying meals. Also, she mostly chooses local female chefs as her culinary partners. I must become Samin's friend. I must cook with her.  (Hear that Universe?!?)  My daughter gifted me Samin's cookbook and had it personalized after attending a Brooklyn book signing, so this clearly puts me three degrees closer to meeting her. Amen. 

The Great British Baking Show (all the varieties): Bloody brilliant. Peacefully delicious.  Even when the baked goods fall apart, Mary Bell, Prue Leith, and Paul Hollywood keep perspective and support the contestants. They seek quality results always with a kind approach.  The show's persistent civility shocks my American senses.  The Welford Park setting creates an insulated, pastoral oasis framing the irresistible gentility taking place under the big white tent.  And, yes, I am sucker for the contestants' British, Scottish, Irish accents and colloquialisms.  I have cried because the heartfelt tone comes through each episode.   Stunning bake!

Chef's Table: I initially avoided this show solely based on its title thinking it was another intense cooking competition. How wrong I was.  The first episode of Season 5 with Christina Martinez contained everything appealing to my sensibilities: a compelling personal personal story, cuisine birthed from culture and tradition, glorious filming.  It is instructional in both culinary choices and life lessons.  We are immersed in the country of origin and each chef's specific journey while glorious visuals celebrate the food.  If "smell-avision" ever becomes real, shows like Chef's Table will be perfect.  I am now binge watching all previous seasons. 

Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown: More travelogue than cooking show, every episode is an immersion because of Bourdain. He seeks cultural experiences born of genuine curiosity. He is the perfect visitor because, for all his bravado, he listens. Bourdain absorbs the setting and locals all the while persistently searching for authenticity in food.  His love of language is a bonus. From West Virginia to Manila, he instructs through experience. Of course he is intense, but it is not gratuitous.  I checked out my library's audio book of Kitchen Confidential last year and found the best time to listen was while I prepared dinner.  Bourdain's high velocity chatter and bottomless restaurant tales were often head spinning, yet I listened because this chef offered himself 100%.  I also listened because I wanted to hear that voice once more. Sigh. 

Doorknock Dinners with Gordon Elliott: In 1999, these little PBS shows were my favorites. Elliott would select a neighborhood and, with a film crew and chef in tow, knock on doors to ask if he and his merry band of food folk could prepare a meal in the owners home using only what was in their refrigerator/freezer.  He hit on the day to day conundrum of most home cooks: what do I have to make dinner?  Elliott's humor disarmed the homeowners while the chef liberated them with easy meal prep and delicious results. This was one of the smartest shows for anyone who makes meals. 

If you enjoy cooking, who inspires you? 

Between the Lines

I lock the bedroom door behind me and perch at the end of my bed as I am filled with tingly expectation.  I have invested in this moment for the last month. The well timed payoff is tonight.  I feel more and more like myself as I watch the clock inch closer to the prearranged start time.  This will have been worth all the effort- I know it!

It is the early 1990s.  In those years I have changed employers, been promoted, moved twice, married, bought my first (and only) home, and given birth to a sweet baby girl.  In hindsight, this whirlwind of change seems less like who I know myself to be. Yet, Life's goal lines move fast as a thirty-something woman and I'm determined to meet every single one. 

In those days, an hour-long daily rail commute into the city usually finds me doing work reviewing resumes of potential job candidates. (This is way before algorithms usurped the task.)  The quiet, uninterrupted block of train time is perfect for this effort.  It is a better choice than using the gorgeous exhale of eventide after I put my infant daughter to bed.  

Yet, I yearn to read something more for myself - the Me who is not someone's wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, employee.  I rediscover my love for reading books. 

Reading has, for as along as I can remember, been pure pleasure.  Summer days in the late sixties, early seventies were spent reclined on the hard plastic cushions of my parent's front porch iron glider as I gently rocked to and fro, a book resting on my tanned stomach.  Our restless little street of compressed row homes bursting with kids and pets faded away on this screened-in roost once I cracked open those blessed pages. 

Whether I was transfixed by Mario Puzo's The Godfather (before the film release) or entertained by the mindless fluff of Coffee, Tea or Me? (and its sequel) I did what most readers do - willingly offered myself over to an author's invented or real world. 

(Fun fact: I seriously considered becoming an airline stewardess (not yet called flight attendants) because of the fictional hijinks of characters Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones and completed applications to a few airlines in my senior year of high school.  Airlines could incredibly still ask for such personal data as birth date, height, weight, hair color, eye color.  My work as a corporate recruiter years later would see this type of job application as folly (and discriminatory) but at the time, I was all in and, sadly, rejected due to my age.)

Back in my adult bedroom, filled with anticipation, I turn on the radio to my local NPR station - 90.9FM WHYY - and its inaugural book club radio show.  This predates Oprah's infamous book club.  Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife is on the docket. I have gleefully devoured its rich story and am poised to hear what others think as well as listen to Ms. Tan field questions, share her writing experience, and inhale the intimacy of her responses.  I stare at the radio during the hour long show trying to conjure an image of the author as she describes her story's intention and her complex relationship with her mother.  

Fellow listeners/readers call in with questions.  I comment aloud to them.  It is more interactive than I could have imagined and ends much too swiftly.  This, I murmur, this is what I have been missing! This radio book club becomes my literary life raft as I navigate the world of adulting. 

Several years later a friend kindly invites me to join her book club.  Two decades after this sweet solicitation, this precious book club sustains the reader, writer, inquisitor alive within.  While we fellow readers navigate Life's relentless drumbeat of births, miscarriages, divorces, raising kids, jobs, second marriages, and the crushing death of a beloved friend/member, we hunker down for the essential purpose of gathering - to discuss the book.  

This is no wine club posing as a book club. We enthusiastically do a deep dive into the authors' efforts, parsing themes, imagery, plot, symbolism and character development as well as criticizing what failed to resonate.  We read passages aloud that have touched or deepened our understanding.    

Biographies, autobiographies, poetry, short stories collections, science, fantasy, classics;  all genres come calling each third Thursday as the host chooses that month's literary selection.  My preference for fiction has been forcibly pried open as some books take me to uncharted territory.  

I have learned to trust the diverse process because whether or not a book fully satisfies is secondary to what I will learn in conversation with my fellow Book Babes.  Discussion always ignites something my reading failed to consider. It is sweet reward, a jackpot moment where context broadens and interpretation sparkles. 

Visitors from the Netherlands, Poland, and Australia have enjoyed membership to our group adding rich worldviews.  Our Aussie friend, Vicki, travels to our town several times a year for work. She stays up to date on what we are reading so she can literally jump in on the discussion.  It is magnificent. 

We have met in the Poconos, at the shore, and on several patios by candlelight during  dreamy, warm summer nights.  We've enjoyed a poetry evening where everyone arrives with a memorized poem because, as our then 90 year old guest host, Mrs. Van Pelt, noted, "Everyone must have at least one poem ready to recite from memory in their lifetime!" She would regale us with her favorites: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and The Walrus and The Carpenter.  

Every so often a member hosts a couples night where our 'special someones' join in the conversation.  This gender mixed gathering consistently produces some of the richest discussions.  Even food sometimes plays a silent role in our discussion when we nosh on meals or morsels contained in that month's narrative. 

As a bonus to all this goodness, Joanie, an original member, consistently emails a discussion recap to the group so those who missed the evening can still share in the conversation. I am grateful for all of it! 

In the Fall, one of our members will see her original work published! This feat amazes. We will enjoy another first - the member/author of our monthly selection will be at the table to take questions and share her process.  Look for A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity by the talented Nicole Valentine later this year! (published by Lerner/Carolrhoda Books)

Let me close this love letter to reading with conversation openers I've used for all these years. They are questions I love to ask and be asked.  I hope you'll reply: 

 "What have you read lately and what did you think?"  

Note: In 2014, we were featured in an on-air book club discussion of Karen Russell's Sleep Donation. Here is the link to the post I wrote about that experience: https://asubjectforconsideration.blogspot.com/2014/07/on-radio-whoaohhhhhoh.html

                                

                  Some recent book club selections

 

“Some books are tool kits you take up to fix things, from the most practical to the most mysterious, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some books are wings… Some books are medicine, bitter but clarifying.”  Rebecca Solnit

Read more about Rebecca Solnit and how books saved her life on the always interesting brain pickings website:  “https://www.brainpickings.org/