Fantastic Fiction

You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page

and feel a little as if you have lost a friend

~ Paul Sweeney

 

 

The above quote captures the way the way I felt when I recently finished reading, "The Light Between Oceans." by M.L. Stedman.

 

If you are looking for a book of fiction that will transport you to another time and place, then I would highly recommend "The Light Between Oceans" to you.  It is beautifully written and for a first novel, an amazing piece of storytelling.

 

Essentially, it is a story of stunning loss, healing, the resilience of love and the consequences of choice.

Tom Sherbourne, who has just returned to Australia after four combat filled years on the Western Front, takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock for the stability and peace of living on an island.  Janus Rock is nearly a day's journey by boat to the nearest coast.  Tom falls in love with Isabel, a young and headstrong girl who returns his affection.  They get married and Tom brings Isabel to the isolated island. 

 

Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby's cries somewhere near a beach.  She discovers that boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

 

I won't tell you anymore for you need to read it for yourself.

 

I would like to point out a particular passage from the book which struck me for its simplicity, clarity and truth.  This will give you a flavor of M.L. Stedman's insight and beautiful touch with regard to the power of letting go of a hurt, a loss or of a heartbreaking tragedy:

 

"She was about to go back inside when she caught sight of the Cape gooseberry bush, and remembered that terrible day after Grace's return when her daughter had wedged herself behind it.  As she sank to her knees in the grass and sobbed, the memory of a conversation with Frank floated into her awareness.  "but how?  How can you just get over these things, darling?" she had asked him.  "You've had so much strife but you're always happy.  How do you do it?"

 

"I choose to," he said.  "I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget."

 

"But it's not that easy."

 

He smiled that Frank smile.  "Oh , but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting.  You only have to forgive once.  To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.  You have to keep remembering all the bad things."  He laughed, pretending to wipe sweat from his brow.  "I would have to make a list, a very, very, long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount.  That I did a very proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No" -- his voice became sober -- "we always have a choice.  All of us."

 

What Am I About?

One of the presents that my insightful son gave me for Mother's Day is a book about blogging.

From the very first post I wrote, he has always been my biggest supporter.  I love it!

He is always asking me what I am going to write about and I run ideas by him to get a younger point of view and I also ask him for permission to write about him or something he said or did.  Some writers would disagree with requesting permission from him but I feel it is the polite thing to do and asking also prevents angry or hurt feelings. 

At 22 years old, my son has very good instincts about life plus he visits completely different websites than I do.  He is happy to give me a heads up about an idea that he thinks might translate into a timely post and I am glad he does.  He has given me some great ideas! And so has my son's book!

One of the first exercises the book suggests is to make sure that you know who you are as a blogger.  Are you a baker? A decorator? An athlete?  I am a little bit of all of those things but that's not why I chose to start writing my blog.

 

 

I started Cry, Laugh, Heal in December 2010 because my husband died in 2003 and I was raising our son by myself and working a full-time job.  I had spent two years attending a support group for widowed persons and then decided that I wanted to contribute to the online conversation about grief.

 

In the beginning, I only wrote once a week and I only wrote about grief.  As I started to work my way through some major grief feelings, I began to see that I was doing more than surviving and getting through a day.  I was slowly but surely, with the help of others, rebuilding my life.  It's not the life that I thought I would be leading, but it's a life I feel good about and a lot of it has to do with blogging.

 

I am still working a full-time job but I always find time to write.  I too am still working through my grief and just like you I need support.  In every post, I try to be as honest and as straightforward as I can be.  It is important to me to call things what they are, for that is when you truly start to untangle a feeling, a problem or a situation.  I love the comments that readers leave and I look forward to all the different kinds of feedback that blogging makes possible.

So to answer the question of the exercise in my son's book asking who are you as a blogger?  I am a widow, a mother, a former journalist and a dancer.  I love life and I try to do something every day that scares me, that challenges me and that I am passionate about.  I try to stay authentic about what grief is and how I deal with it; how sometimes it just pounds you down.

 

But you can't give in to the pain for there is so much in life to discover anew and it's usually on the other side of the pain.

 

Thank you so much awesome readers for visiting my blog, Cry, Laugh, Heal.

I'm not sure where life is taking me but let's travel together.

 

Revisiting Maurice Sendak

 

 

 

 

Maurice Sendak is known as an internationally renowned prize-winning children's book author and illustrator but he also has a message for adults too.

 

When children read his most famous book, "Where The Wild Things Are," they run around and play as if they are monsters, just like the ones in Sendak's book.  Spontaneously and instantly, children enter Sendak's world with love and abandon.

 

Adults may want to join the children in their play but their "adultness" sometimes holds them back.  "Oh, that's a child's book" or "I can't play like that" or "I shouldn't play like that" are some of the many things adults think after reading Sendak's book.

 

But Sendak's message to adults is one that children get right away: Say "I can" not "I can't."

 

One of my son's great friends sent this YouTube video to me so that I could share it with my readers.

 

It is a touching interview that NPR's Terry Gross did with Maurice Sendak near the end of his rich life.  Sadly, Sendak died last May at the age of 83 from complications of a stroke. (http://crylaughheal.blogspot.com/2012/05/maurice-sendaks-night-kitchen.html

 

In this wonderful NPR interview, Sendak talks about "the creative man" but more importantly he poignantly addresses aging and what life feels like for him at this stage.

 

To me, Sendak's message is short and sweet: Live your life!, Live your life!, Live your life!

 

Please click on the above to have a listen and watch the accompanying "wild" illustrations of artist Christoph Niemann.

Mental Relaxation

 

 Planes, trains, cars and boats are not always at the ready to take us to dreamy destinations.

 

Work, finances and other life responsibilities sometimes get in the way of traveling even though everyone needs take occasional breaks from their surroundings, especially if life is particularly stressful or painful. 

 

You can't always take a vacation even if you really need or want one.

 

But you can read a book.

 

I saw this wonderful saying from Dr. Suess (posted above) on one of my favorite websites, The Silver Pen (www.thesilverpen.com) and was reminded of the magical healing power of reading and books.

 

I know this may sound simplistic but books can be short-term solutions to an ongoing need to give your brain something else to think about.  After I experienced the loss of my husband, I couldn't concentrate when I tried to read the newspaper.  Every morning I would go out and get the newspaper from the sidewalk and try to read it and couldn't get past a sentence or two.  It was frustrating and I would end up tossing the newspaper.  This went on for months. 

 

Then I discovered reading poetry.  Slowly, I would let my eyes go over the words and try to absorb them.  Sometimes I discovered that I had been momentarily transported in my thoughts and sometimes not.  Eventually my ability to focus returned but I learned it's a process that you can't hurry along.  Healing happens at its own pace.

 

Reading is truly a gift.  Movies can give you a similiar mental break but I always think our imaginations are better than anything a movie will show us.

 

Fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry, it's all good.  To loose yourself in a book is so relaxing.  Ever since I learned to read as a child, I have loved books and sometimes hold on to a book that I've already read just so I can go back and read various parts of it again.

 

There are some books that grab you right away and totally bring you into the story to the point that you feel as if you know the characters and you don't want the story to end.  I have read books where this has happened and as I am nearing the end of the book I purposely slow down my reading because I know it's going to end and I really want to enjoy each and every last word the author has written.

I hope you have found books that mentally allow you to fly away and go places you never imagined.

Sweet reading to you!

 

 

 

 

Remember Bookstores?

Washington, DC's historic Union Station

I read yesterday that another bookstore -- Barnes & Noble in Union Station -- is biting the dust and it's just incredible to me that a bookstore, in the nation's capitol, in a train station, where you can buy a wide variety of things to read, is closing.

 

I posted about this wonderful book store in December 2011 (Books @ Union Station December 8, 2011) and find it sad that it will soon be closed.  Do people not read books anymore?  I find that hard to believe.  Whenever I'm on Metro people are reading and books are everwhere at the beach. 

 

Maybe Kindles and a rocky economy are the cause.  A Barnes & Noble spokesman told The Washington Post that the company had to leave because of redevelopment around Union Station.  That's another bad idea but I won't even get into that project.  Barnes & Noble was offered a new location but decided instead to close its Union Station store.

 

I'm sure I am showing my age by saying this stuff but I can't help it.

 

I love bookstores.  Books allow your imagination to run wild and escape to other worlds and learn about new things.  Books help you feel you are part of the larger human community and help you heal and become resilient.  You read about others who have experienced the same thing you have and feel less isolated.  Plus, remember that most movies were inspired by a book. 

Buying books online from Amazon just doesn't do it for me.  If I happen to know exactly what book I want, then it's different.  But I can't go on Amazon's website and pick up the book, twirl through the pages, hold it and read random parts of the book so I can decide if I'm going to buy it or not.  Or ask the Amazon website if it has read the book, and if so, what does it think of it?  Hey Amazon, what did you think of this book?  Is is worth reading?

 

I can see myself as an elderly person (which of course is way off in the distant future) with a young child on my lap trying to explain to them what a book store was:

"Really?  You mean there used to be stores and all they had inside were books?"

"Yes, dear, and you could browse among all the books and look at the new titles and the books on sale and sometimes, just by chance, you would find a wonderful book that you never heard of because you spent time reading the covers and talking to other readers."

"Oh, but it sounds like a lot of wasted paper! Think of the trees!"

I used to spend my lunch hour at the Borders bookstore at 18th and L Streets but that closed last year after declaring bankruptcy.   Now there are only two bookstores close to my office: the Barnes & Noble on 12th Street and the independent bookstore, Kramer's, located  at DuPont Circle.

Books @ Union Station

I was downtown at Union Station the other day and was surprised to see that Barnes & Noble is still open.  Now that Borders has closed and the Barnes & Noble store in Georgetown has been bought by Nike, I am always happy to see a book store open and bustling with customers. 

It's such a luxury to browse in a book store.  To go from table to table and shelf to shelf, to look at the covers of the books, pick them up, read through them and just feel the weight of the book in your hands is to get lost in your imagination.  I find books to be comforting when they reveal new information to me, when I can escape in them and when they help me understand something that I have been trying to wrap my brain around.

Amazon is very convenient but it's just not the same.  When you're hanging out in a book store you see books you've already read and enjoyed and you also think about how much work went into writing them; at least I do.  Others may  think that books are work and not pleasure but I think that means they just aren't reading the right books.  Let's be honest, then there are some books that in a million years I can't figure out how they got published.  But that's a different story.

I'm afraid the book store as a store will no longer exist in a few years and that will be very sad.  As a place to sell books, Union Station is the perfect location for a bookstore because people are hopping onto trains everywhere and it is also a Metro stop.  Even though the chains don't seem to be staying afloat in this economy, there are two independent bookstores in my area, Politics & Prose and Kramer Books, and they seem to be doing very well.  I'm crossing my fingers that it stays that way.

I used to think that if you saw a store with people inside buying merchandise that it was a good sign.  I no longer think that because it doesn't really mean anything other than there are people in the store while you are looking at it.  The corporate offices of the stores you are in could be literally selling the store out, merging with another store or simply making really bad financial decisions.

When in doubt of what to buy someone, always buy a book!