Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars by Lauralee Summer

For a month we lived in a shelter in a large institutional building. The inside was made up of cinder-block cubicles. They were coded by color and number; each had two sets of bunk beds with bare mattresses. My mom and I lived for a month in Yellow Number 3. I remember one day … being sick … Two children at the shelter gave me a get-well note. On the outside of the card a childish script scrawls: To Yellow Number 3.

(p. 75)

We didn’t have a checkerboard, but Ibrahim thought we might be able to make one. That evening he stopped by the family room [in the shelter] with a square of cardboard and a permanent marker. With the marker, he made a grid on the cardboard, coloring every other square in black. I found an old puzzle in the lounge. Many of its pieces were missing, but I picked out pieces of gray clouds and blue sky to use as checkers. We each sat on a plastic milk crate in the hallway and put the checkerboard on another between us. He was blue and I gray, fragmented pieces of sky and cloud.

(p. 127)

Children need to trust in their parents’ ability to provide for them, but many poor children cannot. They see their parents’ weakness, see them as slaves to the welfare dole. I knew that the welfare system was strong and powerful, and not my mother. This knowledge produced an inner conflict, a trauma, a yearning, a shame and anger and fear that battled with my desire to love and trust in my mother … I was afraid of being tainted by my mother’s shame and weakness.

(p.94)

We had a small refrigerator in our room. Many of the welfare motels didn’t. In another hotel, a woman we knew kept her two-year-old daughter’s milk cold by putting it outside the window ledge. She had to stop when the motel management said it was against the rules. “It’s so hard – we eat junk food all the time because we can’t cook or keep anything cool,” she complained. Food stamps can’t buy restaurant meals either, so people in the welfare hotels often have no way to eat regular, balanced meals.

(p. 131)

The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley

Back-of-the-book blurb: Susan Conley, her husband, and their two young sons say good-bye to their friends, family, and house in Maine for a two-year stint in a high-rise apartment in Beijing, prepared to embrace the inevitable onslaught of new experiences that such a move entails. But Susan can’t predict just how much their lives will change.

From road trips to the Great Wall and bartering for a “starter Buddha” at the raucous flea market to lighting fireworks in the streets for the Chinese New Year and feasting on the world’s best dumplings in back-alley restaurants, they gradually turn their unfamiliar environs into a true home.

Then Susan learns she has cancer.  After undergoing treatment in Boston, she returns to Beijing, again as a foreigner—but this time, it’s her own body in which she feels a stranger.  Set against the eternally fascinating backdrop of modern China and full of insight into the trickiest questions of motherhood, this wry and poignant memoir is a celebration of family and a candid exploration of mortality and belonging.

She Is Too Fond of Books’ review: Susan Conley gives equal play to the three unknowns in her family life – the daily challenges of parenthood, adjusting to a new life halfway around the world, and, her diagnosis of breast cancer.  The illness underscores the first two struggles, confirming that perhaps there are no “right” answers, only the “best” answer for each mother/ex-pat/patient.

The memoir is linear in time, yet the chapters are short, and read like journal entries that have been extended into essays.  This is not a negative, my point is that they are injected with emotion, but with the distance of time, so that Conley can fill in details and color around the events.

I connected with the universality of the struggles of parenthood, and appreciate Conley’s blunt (and somewhat funny, to one who nods in understanding!) honesty:

I should state for the record that I have secret mother superpowers.  Yes.  I have the ability to detach from my children and climb into my own mind at the exact moments my boys might be telling me something they think is vitally important.  And I know.  I know.  It’s not necessarily safe.  It’s not necessarily compassionate.  But what I do is build a small room in my head – closet-sized – and go inside and close the door.  I can still see them; I just can’t quite hear them.  I go inside this room so I can think clearly.  I go inside because the two boys exhaust me.  They never let up. … I go inside the room in my mind because it’s a way not to blow my top and lose it with them.

Conley writes about routines that will be familiar to any mother who’s moved with children, settling into new school routines, figuring out where to buy specialty groceries, and the dreaded “dating” of other other women – assessing each other’s children for playdate potential, assessing each other to see if the common ground of children might extend to a real friendship.  We have moved four times as a family, and it has been relatively easy to get the kids adjusted to new people and places (granted, we haven’t moved much away from the eastern seaboard of the US; an international, or even cross-country move, has its own set of challenges) – all my energy has gone into making them comfortable in their new home.  I really connected with Conley’s desire (need, even) for a true female friend of her own.

Once the children are reasonably settled, Conley can spend more time acclimating herself to Beijing.  She works with Rose, a private Chinese teacher, to learn the language.  Again, her memoir softens the struggle of learning this complex language with a bit of wry humor:

… Chinese is an old and vast lexicon, and there are thousands of those hand-drawn characters.  And then the tones – four different intonations on rising and falling syllables.  Things can get murky with the tones.  You can say you’d like to go to the grocery store.  Or at least that’s what you think you said, but because you missed the fourth tone, you said something about a boyfriend in high school.  This language is slippery.

Next Rose explains that you don’t conjugate verbs for the future or the past.  This seems fitting for a country in the middle of reinventing the past. …

When Conley is diagnosed with breast cancer, her walls come tumbling down.  How and where will she be treated?  What will she tell their two young sons about her illness?  Will she find support in her community in China?  Will her American friends and family offer a different understanding?  She grapples with these questions like any cancer patient might, regardless of where she receives her diagnosis, including thoughts like

… there’s no litmus test to prove that a woman’s been cured of breast cancer.  There’s just the waiting.  Waiting and living and living some more.

and

… most people, even the people who love me dearest, don’t always know how to talk about cancer.

Susan Conley gives a fairly complete picture of who she is in The Foremost Good Fortune; she’s a mother, an ex-pat, and a cancer patient, among other defining traits.  This memoir is a reflection of two years of the author’s life, and explores the results, or extended consequences, of those two years.

About the author: Susan Conley has received two MacDowell Colony fellowships for her work, as well as a Breadloaf Writers fellowship and a Massachusetts Arts Council Grant.  Her work has been published in The Paris Review, the Harvard Review and The North American Review. She was editor at Ploughshares Magazine in Boston and taught creative writing and literature at several colleges.  With two friends, she founded The Telling Room, a creative writing lab in southern Maine.  A chapter of The Foremost Good Fortune was excerpted in the January 2011 New York Times Magazine “Lives” column.

Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers by Adriana Trigiani

Back-of-the-book blurb:  As readers of Adriana Trigiani’s novels know, the author draws inspiration from her own family history, in particular from the lives of her two remarkable grandmothers.  In Don’t Sing at the Table, Trigiani has gathered their estimable life lessons, revealing how her grandmothers’ simple values have shaped her own life, sharing the experiences, humor, and wisdom of her beloved mentors.

She Is Too Fond of Books’ review:   I found myself nodding in recognition at the wisdom imparted to Adriana Trigiani by her grandmothers.  The kind of love and life lessons shared by Lucia Spada Bonicelli and Yolanda Perin Trigiani know no geographic boundaries; I haven’t got a drop of Italian blood in me, yet felt the universality of their lead-by-example spirits.

This is an amazing tribute to two special women in the author’s life.  She is fortunate that one grandmother “kept everything” – a sign of her thriftiness, but also a treasure trove when Trigiani went searching for photos to document this family memoir.  She is also, as she acknowledges, fortunate to have known both grandmothers, who modelled both how to run a business and how to run a home. 

I also have wonderful memories of my grandmothers; who lived only a few miles from me when I was a child.  For years I’ve been collecting family history data – the raw (boring) facts of numbers, dates, and places.  I want to turn these cold facts into stories for my own children, and Don’t Sing at the Table has inspired me to take the plunge and do that – one page at a time. 

I was hooked by the book early on, when one specific connection really made me smile.  Adriana Trigiani tells of her grandmother Viola, the seamstress who kept her home and yard very neat, believing that these represented as much about her as the garments she turned out from her blouse factory.  Viola would often ask her young granddaughter to help with chores inside and outside the house.  When there was nothing left to do, she’d be asked to “pick up sticks.”  Perhaps this was the 1960s/70s version of “busy work,” but I found a common thread.  I, too, would wander the yard looking for errant branches from windstorms and adding them to “the stick pile” in Gram’s back yard.  Guess what I suggest to my own kids when I hear “I’m bored!”?!  That’s right – go outside and pick up sticks!

Other favorites that I recall from Don’t Sing at the Table; this reminds me of the Freecycle system we use today:

The examples of bartering among the immigrants are legion, and it was a system where everyone benefited from the exchange.  Nothing was thrown away, as there was always someone who might use what you didn’t need any longer.  This exchange brought a civility and network of support that my grandmother would honor all her life.

Trigiani recounts that, aside from their families, most of her grandmothers’ accomplishments happened after the age of forty.  Being of a certain age, I appreciate the author’s sentiments that:

The best years in a woman’s life are after forty … It’s wonderful to be young, and there are gifts in it, but it is impossible to be young and have experience.

This is a treasure of a book; Trigiani presents personal reminiscences and a tribute to her grandmothers, a slice of social history, and a trigger for the reader’s own memories.

Sit down with Don’t Sing at the Table and a box of Kleenex.  No store-brand tissues; the author’s grandmothers – and your grandmother - deserve the best!  You might not need them right away, but you may find yourself with tears of happy memories running down your cheeks.  I hope you do … then grab a pen and notebook and write about them!

Read other reviews and reflections on Don’t Sing at the Table at the following blogs; some are also featuring stories of their own mothers or grandmothers, interviews with the author, and giveaways:

• 11/9/10  Booking Mama
• 11/10/10  5 Minutes for Books
• 11/11/10  Bookin’ with Bingo
• 11/12/10  S. Krishna’s Books
• 11/16/10  BermudaOnion
• 11/17/10  Devourer of Books
• 11/18/10  Presenting Lenore
• 11/19/10  My Friend Amy
•                   One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books

p.s.  I feel compelled to share a bit about my grandmothers, in order to jumpstart that promise I’ve made to keep these stories for my kids.  I realized that the day my post is scheduled to run (11/15) would have been my Nana’s 99th birthday.  Like Trigiani’s grandmother Viola, Nana did factory work (Waltham Watch; which is now fancy loft, office, and retail space).  Nana passed away 6 summers ago, when I was pregnant with our youngest child.  When I told her that I was going to give the baby her maiden name for a middle name she said “oh, don’t do that, pick a pretty name” … I disobeyed her

My father’s mother (Gram) lived to be 90.  Stories I remember about her work life include her time as a paid companion and as the housemother of a boarding school.   She took her homemaking (home management) skills seriously, and seemed a master of them all – sewing, cooking, baking, gardening; well, maybe she was a bit less than fastidious when it came to housecleaning (that must be where I get my “you’ll never see it going by in a bus” attitude about some of our dust bunnies!).  Earlier this year I shared a tribute to her baking magic in my “In Search of Grammy’s Hermit Recipe” post.

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life

Back-of-the-book blurb:  Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since her earlier memoirs appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life.  Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a “wilder” side of Tuscany–and with it a lively  engagement with Tuscany’s mountain people.  Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden.  Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review:  Have you ever ordered a meal in a restaurant, say a Western omelet, and when it’s served you think, this isn’t what I expected.  The ham and peppers are all mixed in with the eggs, instead of folded in the middle with the cheese.  But, you eat it anyway, and, hey, it’s good!  Really good.  Yummy,warm, melted cheese; salty ham; crisp peppers.  Well, if Western omelets aren’t your thing, substitute any other of your favorite comfort foods, forgive the mangled metaphor, and understand that this was my experience with Every Day in Tuscany.

It has been several years since I read Under the Tuscan Sun (and I haven’t read Mayes’ second memoir, Bella Tuscany), but I remember that book as having a clear beginning, conflict, and resolution (the filling separated from the eggs, if you will).  In Every Day in Tuscany, Mayes’ gorgeous prose take the reader through the seven or so months she spends each year in Italy; each chapter focuses on one particular theme of her “Italian Life” – her husband’s birthday celebration, time spent with her grandson, wandering the countryside for hours, visits to the sea and vineyards, local lore, and historic arts.  They are more of beautifully crafted observations than a story; in her heart, she always returns home, to Bramasole:

If I were a medieval woman weaving a family tapestry, the knowledge gleaned from living here would form my borders and backgrounds.  Instead of a procession of men with falcons on decorated horses, or a lady mincing along on a unicorn, there would be the iconic long table, the gathered friends, the servers and diners, all loved faces and richly colored threads for the rose, the lemon, the twining bean, sunflower, moonflower vine, and all the creatures who also are as at home as we are where we live.  Above the scene, I’d stitch the golden disk of the sun and jagged rays.  Bramasole, from bramare, to yearn for, and sole, sun, means something that yearns for the sun.

Central to each chapter are friendships with both locals and other ex-pats who have made their way either to Cortona (the home of Bramasole, Mayes primary Italian residence, which she lovingly restored in Under the Tuscan Sun) or to the mountain community where she and Ed have restored a stone cottage.  And where there are friends, there is food!  Each chapter discusses food – shopping at the loca markets, foraging in the area around her home for nature’s bounty, preparing meals (not to be hurried, Mayes enjoys making the meals as much as eating them), and dining.  From snacking on the terrace with Ed, to feasts for 25 or more, Mayes writes as if cooking were an effortless and sensous pleasure.

One of her passages about food and dining contrasts the Italian way with our typical American way:

At the call “A tavola!,”to the table, you flush with pleasure; you are coming into a celebratory ambiance.  Something wonderful is about to happen.  Food is natural, eaten with gusto.  It must affect your digestion if you think the first quality of pasta is that it’s fattening. If the word “sin” is attached to dessert.  I’ve never heard of a dish referred to as “your protein” or “a carb,” and there’s no dreary talk at all about glutens, portion control, fat content or calories.  Eating in Italy made me aware of how tortured the relationship to food is in my country  After a long Tuscan dinner, I feel not only the gift of exceptional company, food , and wine, but also an inexplicable sense of well-being, of revival.  Dinner invigorates the spirit as it nourishes the body.

In order to share some of Tuscany’s gatromic delights with her readers, Mayes has included dozens of recipes (and there’s not a Western omelet in sight!).  Here’s a sampling:

• Ravioli Ripieni di Patate con Zucchine e Speck al Pecorino (Potato Ravioli with Zucchini, Speck, and Pecorino)
• Pollo al Mattone (Chicken Under a Brick)
• Caldarroste (Roasted Chestnuts)
• Respelle al Procini e Ricotta (Porcini and Ricotta Crepes)
• Torta di Suisine con Mandorle (Plum Tart)

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life is an intimate insider’s view of a fairly carefree way to spend the majority of each year.  Frances Mayes and her family do experience some conflicts (some with nature, some with locals), but for the most part it seems relaxing and enjoyable.  She doesn’t flaunt the fame her earlier work has brought her, but welcomes the reader to share a bit of her ‘everyday’ experiences.  If you enjoy travel, history, or food, Every Day in Tuscany will be a vicarious pleasure.

FTC disclosure:  review copy provided by the publisher.

The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back 

Back-of-the-book blurb:  It all started when 14-year old Hannah Salwen, idealistic but troubled by a growing sense of injustice in the world, had a eureka moment when a homeless man in her neighborhood was juxtaposed against a glistening Mercedes coupe. “You know, Dad,” she said, pointing, “If that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.”

This glaring disparity led the Salwen family of four, caught up like so many other Americans in this age of consumption and waste, to follow Hannah’s urge to do something, to finally just do something. And so they embarked on an incredible journey together from which there would be no turning back. They decided to sell their Atlanta mansion, downsize to a house half its size, and give half of their profits to a worthy charity.

At first it was an outlandish scheme. “What, are you crazy? No way!” Then it was a challenge. “We are TOTALLY doing this.” Each week they met over dinner to discuss their plan. It would transport them across the globe and well out of their comfort zone. Along the way they would inspire so many others wrestling with the same questions: Do I give enough? How much is enough? How can I make an impact in the world? In the end the Salwens’ journey would bring them closer as a family, as they discovered, together, that half could be so much more.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review:  I knew from the moment I first read the synopsis for The Power of Half that it would be an emotional read.  Who could not be moved by this family’s generosity, inspired by their teenage daughter’s desire put into action her need to make a difference in this world?!  I expected perhaps tears of joy for a happy story which was inspired by Hannah’s empathy; perhaps tears of sadness for the situations of those the Salwens were trying to help.

My admiration for the Salwen family goes beyond the obvious, huge donation they’ve made to The Hunger Project; it’s an admiration (maybe a little envy?) for the amazing family dynamic that gave Hannah the confidence to first say “we should do something.”  That confidence, leadership, and sense of justice was clearly instilled in Hannah, and her brother, Joseph, as part of the value system modelled by their parents, Kevin and Joan Salwen.

Kevin and Joan were wise to see that Hannah and Joseph would be vested in the family project only if they were full partners in the decision-making process, not lackeys carrying out their parents wishes to make a philanthropic mark in the world.  This was a democratic process from the begining – equal weight given to parents’ and children’s input at family meetings, respectful sharing of ideas, a structure that was created on-the-fly, yet made each family member know that he or she fully owned the project and its results.

The Power of Half is written in parts by Kevin (Dad) Salwen, and Hannah (daughter, now a high school junior) Salwen.  Kevin writes the memoir in rough chronological order, giving information about how the family lived “before,” the process of their year-long research project which preceded their donation (identifying what issue/problem they wanted to address, whether they wanted to help “a lot of people a little, or fewer people a lot,” where they wanted to give the aid, and what agency might be able to help them get their money where it was most needed), and the long-term effects and benefits, both to the recipients and to the Salwen family.  Reading about the family’s incredible journey, and the ups and downs along the way, is certainly inspiring.

Kevin tells not only the step-by-step research and action plan, but shares the impact the entire project had on the family.  Again, my greatest admiration to the Salwen family for the balance they’ve created; each member of the family played a vital role.  Early on, Kevin says:

… two months after [we] had launched our project, we were already falling into the roles that would define our family.  Hannah was, of coures, the spiritual muse and catalyst.  Joan was the process manager, making sure we always had a logical next step.  I was the financial coordinator.  And Joseph was the skeptic.  These were the roles we fell into naturally.

Each of Kevin’s chapters is followed by “Hannah’s Take,” a two- to three-page essay that relates to what we’ve just read from Kevin, with Hannah’s personal spin and an activity for the reader.  In an essay entitled “Helping Small Kids Start Volunteering,” Hannah shares how at about age seven she was allowed to shop and prepare meals for those in her community who were working on Habit for Humanity projects.  She was too young to build, but feeding the workers was an important job, too.  Hannah suggests that children take on volunteer responsibilities where there are “quick, clear results,” such as seeing the joy on a hungry laborer’s face when a hot meal is delivered to the workplace.

As expected, I did shed a few tears when reading the Salwens’ story – joy for what they accomplished (really, bawling like I would at a Hallmark commercial when I was pregnant) and sorrow for the pain and suffering in the world.  What I didn’t expect was my anger; no, not anger at the homelessness, hunger, and lack of healthcare (to name 3 Hs) that run rampant, I wasn’t surprised to feel that anger roiled up in me.  What knocked me over was the way I identified with how the Salwens lived before they embarked on their life-changing project. 

Kevin talks about the ‘treadmill’ – always trading up, better cars, bigger homes, fancy camps, big vacations.  He mentioned the way the kids would divide their allowances into thirds – 1/3 for charity, 1/3 for long-term savings (college), and 1/3 to spend how they wished (this is exactly the method we followed during our allowance experiment); Kevin and Joan had an agreement, if they got a letter or phone call from a friend asking for support of a favorite charity (the walkathons, distance biking, and road races run as fundraisers), they’d automatically cut a check for $50, no questions asked (exactly our method of support).  So why did I get angry?  I like my big house; I like our vacations; I’m glad we can give our children the tangible things and intangible experiences that we can.  As I read of Kevin’s desire to step off the treadmill I thought, “well, I’m not selling my house.  That’s just not for me! We already give to [x, y, and z], and I don’t have $800,000 to spare!” 

And you know what?  The Salwens don’t expect other people to sell their homes and donate half the profit.  Their story is about the power of half; rather than say “I should do something” or “we should give more,” they’re suggesting that you quantify that “more” with “half.”   For example, one could take half the money he spends on coffee in a year, and donate it to an addiction center; or halve the time spent playing computer games and use that time to teach basic software skills at a senior center; or count the number of books you buy in a year and spend half that number of hours reading to home-bound people.

The Salwens’ story is inspiring, not just in a “feel-good” way, but in a “do-better” way.  We’ve talked about the Power of Half (the book) and the power of half (the theory) in our family.  Check in tomorrow for more about that, an author event I attended with our 12-year-old son, and a guest post from Hannah Salwen.  In the meantime, you can read more about the Salwen family and The Power of Half at their website.

FTC disclosure: review copy provided by FSB Media.

Lopsided: A Memoir by Meredith Norton

Back-of-the-Book Blurb: By the age of thirty -four , Meredith Norton had been a hymnal editor, art restorer, game-show producer, and a public school teacher. She’d even lived in a tree house and shepherded goats in Minorca. But none of these unusual experiences prepared her for the most dramatic turn her life would take: the diagnosis of an aggressive form of breast cancer. In this … memoir, Norton approaches the disease with a refreshing combination of humor and tenacity, railing against victimhood and self-pity and refusing to become a stereotype.

She is Too Fond of Books’ review: Meredith Norton has found her calling as a storyteller.  Following an ivy-league education, a string of unusual and varied jobs, marrying her French husband (Thibault) and settling in Paris with their son (Lucas), she returns to the US for a quick visit with family and to celebrate her son’s first birthday.  Her short vacation turns into an extended stay when she is diagnosed with breast cancer.

Lopsided is an account of her response to the diagnosis – the on-going treatments, the reactions of family and friends, her thoughts as she contemplates Lucas’ possible future without her.

Early in the book Norton shares when she first suspected there was a problem – thinking that she might have an infection stemming from breast feeding.  Any woman who has has breast fed will recognize the first part of the paragraph, maybe even smile and nod along as you read it.  You’ll continue nodding and agree with Norton that, yes, there’s a problem:

Anyone who’s ever breast-fed, or spent any time around a breast-feeder, knows how crazy lactating can be.  Nipple size and food-making capability aside, lactating breasts behave oddly.  One minute they are huge, the next minute deflated, then rock hard, then lumpy.  They squirt milk in the shower or soak your shirt when a baby cries on television.  One of mine was huge, throbbing, covered with a red rash, and radiating enough heat to defrost a lamb shank in ten minutes.  It was like an unpredictable little alien I carried around.  Even  in the kooky world of milk-making tits, this one worried me.

Don’t let that excerpt fool you into thinking that Norton is flippant about the diagnosis.  The lighter tone and snappy style make Lopsided a quick, personal read.  She shares her thoughts on friends who come out of the woodwork, friends who stay away, her reactions to some of the darkest days – when she learned that her ovaries had stopped functioning, when she was told that a mastectomy was not the end of her treatment, and when describing some of the side effects of the disease and its treatment, including peripheral neuropathy, a painful sensitivity in the extremities.

In a rare passage of introspection, Norton considers her, and our, ultimate cores:

People are who they are.  Personalities don’t change, just circumstances.  It is my firm belief that adversity only strips the insulation from the foundation.  If the foundation is weak, corrupt, or solid, its nature is simply revealed.  Few situations are so harrowing as to build or deplete character.  You either have it, or you don’t.

Meredith Norton has it – character in every sense of the word.  She puts it to work in Lopsided.  I recommend the memoir, and hope that Norton continues to write; her candid style is refreshing.

Here is the author at a reading at Book Passages (Corte Madera, California).  Note that the original title is Lopsided: How Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting, it has been shortened for the paperback.