Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I just read a terrific legal thriller by Steve Cavanaugh, "Plea".  It was like riding a roller coaster, and I had trouble putting it down, except I didn't want it to end.  It was super twisty, and with lots of juicy courtroom scenes.  The protagonist, Eddie Flynn, is unlikeable at the beginning, but grows on you as the book barrels along.  The characters are all fully fleshed out and interesting, and the underbelly of the issues is how plea bargaining has become unjust to the defendants.  The plot keeps pullling the rug out from under the reader.  Tricky!  Now I have to read an ordinary book, doggone it.  Luckily, I have a stack of those by my bed, and one of them just might turn out to be as riveting.  But I doubt it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night I babysat my younger grandson, which consists of watching the monitor while he tosses and turns.  Every time I do it, I flash back to when I babysat as a teen, especially the one little boy I took care of frequently for many years.  He was the son of my parents' best friends, and he was adorable, but hard to get to go to sleep.  I'd read, tuck him in, get him glass of water, tuck him in, read some more, tuck him in, and on and on.  Finally, he'd conk, and I'd try to settle down to study or read but by then I was restless myself, and remember stalking the pantry looking for something good to eat.  There never was anything appetizing.  His parents were skinny and I could see why; no food.  I often ate stale, and by stale I mean brick hard, marshmellows.  They must have been bought in a previous decade and lingered in the pantry for the hot chocolate they never drank.  At least my kids have real food.  I ate some Ranier cherries last night and had herbal ice tea.  I was engrossed in a riveting mystery, so the time passed quickly, and before I knew it they had returned and my son-in-law drove me home.  He's easy to talk to and we had a conversation about coffee and appliances and then I was home.  I had strange dreams, but I'm not surprised:  I was already in a world between being sixteen and my current age, and time and place had been, shall we say, displaced.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I vegged out last night.  I watched a movie I find romantic, mainly because the hero is so gorgeous, and was able to drool without my husband as witness.  He doesn't like the movie anyway.  Something about plot and plausibility.  Who cares?  I was able to get into my inner adolescent and eat grapes and a fudge pop.  I was amazed at how the star just couldn't look bad.  There was no way to make that happen.  I kinda of have the reverse experience.  The more effort I make the worse it gets.  And I even got that the love interest, who was Chinese, was perfect for him.  He could cuddle her up and cradle her like a baby.  I'm short, too.  Of course, I'm not beautiful with sweeping black hair and puffy lips, and I'm the age of her grandmother, but otherwise...
Today my husband comes home and I'm back on the straight and narrow.  We'll fight over what to watch and COMPROMISE.  Thus we both will be seeing something we feel lukewarm about, but we're used to it.  I predict it will be adventure, sci fy or a history drama.  Oh, wait, I'm babysitting tonight, so he'll get a night of watching what HE wants.  That usually means a Disney movie for his inner child or "Twelve Angry Men" or something.  Let him get it out of his system!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I spent the day with my one and a half year old grandson, and we had fun.  We went to the park, and he was pushed in the swing, then he rode a rocket ship and another plastic vehicle for a while, and then got up and down a small slide by himself.  He organized the trucks, getting them out of the sandbox, then pushing them back in.  After an hour, he announced "snack" and I put him in the stroller with graham crackers and we headed home for lunch, a bottle, then a nap.  He woke up happy and ready to read books and rock in the rocking chair.  After my daughter picked him up, I lay on my bed and tried to focus my eyes on the mystery I was reading, but I was zoned out.  When my daughter called later to suggest I join them at a nearby pub for a very early dinner, I happily strolled down a few blocks, and we ate chips, had a beer, then I had a fried green tomato for dinner.  It was delicious.  They dropped me home, and I intend to watch something mindless on TV or a DVD.  My husband's away, so I can pick anything I wish.  Nice day!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a lunch and took a walk with a friend yesterday, and naturally we wandered into a bookstore.  We are both avid readers.  I picked up David Sedaris' new book of essays - "Calypso".  I had begun a mystery, but one sentence into "Calypso" and I was hooked.  Several sentences later I was laughing, and soon tears were rolling down my face.  What a gift he has of being the butt of his own jokes, and seeing himself clearly yet compassionately.  And then I got to the part about the suicide of his sister Tiffany, and I felt like a dear friend was expressing my own mixture of shock, disbelief, confusion, and gory details that no sister or brother wants to know.  Hard to process?  Impossible, actually.  He spoke for me during the crazy time I flew to Texas, saw the splash zone in the hallway of my brother's house where he shot himself in the head.  Sedaris discovers from a sister that Tiffany was found with a plastic bag over her head, so not only had she taken pills, but suffocated herself for good measure.  This is haunting stuff, but I'm grateful he had a brother, three sisters and his dad there.  I lost my only sibling, so speculation and apartness is all I'm left with.  No, that's not quite right.  Now I've got Sedaris' book. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend lent me her copy of "Hillbilly Elegy" and at first I wasn't that engaged, but then it dawned on my how relevant it was to some conversations we'd had in the past about our poor background and how difficult it was for us to negotiate going to college, since our parents hadn't had the opportunity and had no guidance to give us.  Both of us, luckily, had two parents and stable households, but we saw our parents struggle with what being middle class might mean and how one could become so.  I'd love to have gone to a small private college, a girl's school, but didn't dare ask.  The state schools were a bargain and in fact the one I went to was excellent.  But I had no sense of choice.  My friend struggled with finances then raising a son alone, and she had little choice in where she got her B.A.
The poor white trash element was present in both our families, and the right wing politics, but we both carved out our lives away from that bent and forged our own paths.  Luckily, we are not mired in a culture of laziness and hopelessness and blame.  But we've seen it close up and personal.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We just spent three days at our cabin, doing spring cleaning, discovering the toliet needs fixing, adjusting to the eight trees now gone due to the drought, and walking along the lake and sitting on our deck reading or playing Scrabble.  I finished the two books I was reading simultaneously:  Overstory, by Richard Powers and The Bright Light at the End of the World by Eowin Ivey.  Both are engrossing and powerful.  I think I prefer Ivey's first novel, The Snow Child to Bright Light, but the history of this book is gripping and the major character an interesting woman for her time and place.  She discovers an affinity for photography, and has her barrenness become the embracing of an art of looking still and deeply.  The Overstory also has scientific details that are factual, and the main characters in this book are trees and the people who try to save them.  I was blown away by Annie Proux's Barkskins, about the history of the decimation of the forests in North America, but this book is about now, and what is happening and going to happen when we lose our forests.  It is a passionate book, as are the human characters who come alive in relationship to trees.  Their own histories are intertwined with trees.  Reading this novel in a forest had me listening for the trees and observing them.  I also allowed myself some grieving for the loss of the firs around our cabin because of  the drought, and I stared at the stumps which  recorded the years of their lives.  The woods are my spiritual home, from the time I was a child in Virginia.  I understand better why now.