Amy Loves Books

Tuesday evening, we drove through rain and traffic and arrived in Edisto Island, SC around two in the morning. Wednesday morning, we woke up to the sound of the ocean and beach lined with shells.




As a child, I always wanted to find a perfect shell, unbroken and untouched. I wanted the kind of shells they sold in tourist shops. I would search the beach for a shell worthy of display. Time and time again, I would find that what looked beautiful when it was half-buried in sand was actually chipped or spotted with holes. My parents tried to convince me that shells with holes in them were fun, because I could make them into a necklace. I was not buying their explanations.

On the Island, I had been picking up shells for about an hour before I realized that, somehow, I had changed. My kids were hunting for perfect shells, but I was picking up little broken bits of shell that had been worn smooth by their journey to shore. I looked for scraps of color in the sand, and appreciated the lovely irregular iridescence that erosion had brought to the surface of the fragmented pieces. I picked them up and rubbed them with my thumb against the palm of my hand. I wanted shells that felt good to hold, shells as smooth as polished stones. I held spirals of curvature that had once been hidden in the center of shells, and tiny bits of shell that had been consumed by so many holes that they looked like pieces of coral. I slipped these small treasures in my pockets.

I found two pieces of sea glass, and a bit of painted tile that had been smoothed and rounded by its time in the sea - but by far, my favorite keepsake is a pearly scrap of white shell that had been worn down by the power and violence of the ocean until it was not much larger than a nickel. It had been broken down into the shape of a heart.

It's Perfect.

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My brother is a resident in Austin, Texas. Right now, he is working in the intensive care unit. During the day, the unit is staffed by a contracted group of doctors; but at night, my brother is the only doctor in the unit. My mother tells me that my brother does not sleep when he is on call. They give him a room and a bed, but he worries that someone will become critically ill - and if he sleeps, he may make a bad decision as he struggles to wake up. So he stays awake, alert, and he waits all night in the ICU for someone to need him.

A few weeks ago, they brought in two men (ages 34 and 70), both with massive heart attacks - at the exact same time. The patients had been stabilized in the ER, but my brother had to make a decision about which one of the men he would work on first. He decided to work on the thirty-four year old. The other man died.

We all say he did the right thing. I say he did the right thing. I think of the men on stretchers like the X and Y of an equation. If the average life span of an adult male is 73.4 years, then the value of X is greater than the value of Y. From a distance, it's basic math. But, then again, I didn't have to tell anyone that their husband of fifty years is dead. I didn't have to go to bed at night and realize that I saved someone my own age, and let someone my father's age die.

Life and death is immediate when you are a doctor. You have to decide when to turn off the respirator, or put away the defibrillators. The nurses look to you to announce when to stop trying to save the person on the stretcher. They wait for you to take your hands off of the patient, to call a time of death.

Before school started, they had Georgia's Teacher of the Year come and give us a motivational pep talk. He told the story of the man saving starfish, and it was supposed to inspire us that we could make a difference. His message was simple: You can't save them all, but you can save a few. Pastors use this story as a sermon illustration. I hate the starfish story. I am sick to death of the stupid starfish story. It sounds so pretty, tossing starfish back into the sea. It's not that easy. People are not like starfish: they require energy and presence and time and sacrifice. You might have to decide which ones to save. Nobody tells you about having to decide which ones to save.

I am beginning to realize is that in many ways, I too make my brother's choices everyday. I imagine most of us do. We live in a broken world. Many of the people around us are suffering massive heart damage. They may not come to us on a stretcher, but they are there. This story about my brother in the ICU is haunting me. Unlike him, I am afraid that I don't make the best choices most of the time. Too often, I take my hands off of people. Too often, I don't reach out in the first place. Too often, I am motivated to give because I want to get something back - or because it doesn't look like it will cost me very much.

Last week, I went to a wonderful place called Kids In Need. It is a free school supply store for teachers in low-income, at-risk schools. I sat on the bench outside the warehouse, waiting for them to open, with another woman. She was in a bad mood. She looked tired. She started complaining about the fact that we had to wait, then she said she heard that they didn't even have good school supplies this year. I tried to talk with her a little bit, and not be put off by her ugly attitude. I told myself that she might have a headache. She was obviously hurting, and I thought that maybe she needed to be encouraged. I didn't try very hard. After a few brief exchanges, I ignored her. Worse than that, I judged her. I thought she was a bitch, and I felt sorry for the seven special education kids that spent each day with her.

That is one example, I could rattle of thousands if I took the time to really examine my heart. I don't want to. I don't want to admit my absolute failure, and my desperate need of Grace. If I am going to take my faith seriously, then I need to let the reality of my brother's story sink in. I need to reexamine my own heart, my own failure, and be willing to ask God to make me less like me, and more like Him.

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1. Alice - Alice was the first girl I fell in love with. The idea that, just a rabbit hole away, there might be a place like Wonderland, captured my heart and has never really let it go.

2. Tia - I wanted everything: The pet cat. The twin brother. A starbox with a map inside. The cool room with the ice cream shop and marionettes. The ability to talk to animals. I wanted to be a stowaway, and, most of all - I wanted to learn, in the end, that I belonged.

3. Flora - because of the way she danced by herself on the beach. It looked like what it must feel like to be free. I hope in heaven I get to dance like that.

4. Wendy (but only in the live action version of Peter Pan) - because she was strong, brave, beautiful, loyal, and kind.

5. Anne - because Gilbert Blythe said she was the smartest girl in school, and being smart was better than being pretty.

6. Sarah - because she was lost, and then found.

7. Susan or Sharon - because I always wanted a twin (see #2)

8. Marty - she is actually really similar to the way I was when I was young. When I saw the movie, it made me want to be like that again- I realized that I had lost something somewhere. A few months later, I got a letter from I a very good friend who knew me when I was younger. He wrote after he saw the film because he said there was a character in it that reminded him of me. I've never had anyone tell me anything that made me feel both so good and so bad at the same time.

9. Veronica - this movie had to be the defining film of my high school experience. I don't remember how many times I saw it in the theater - but it was at least ten. Teenage suicide - don't do it.

10. Drummer Girl - because she was so cool. She was the best friend, and she got the boy. And did I mention that she was so cool?

11. Lucy - because she ended up following her heart, and choosing an unconventional life. I love the fact that she struggled with her decision - but in the end she choose authenticity over conformity.

12. Trinity - how could I not want to be Trinity? She was brave, and willing to sacrifice everything for what she believed in.
And she was cool. I've always wanted to be cool.

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I loved kelly's post so much that I thought about it all day, and tried to think of which characters from movies I had wanted to be. As I started to make my list, I noticed and odd trend - even as an adult, the characters that tend to make me long to be like them are often young girls. I'll post my reasons for each pick tonight, but first, a contest. I'll send a prize to the person who can correctly identify the most of these characters (by first name and film)
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(inspired by kelly and her incredibly beautiful montage of film characters she has wanted to be)

When I was 16, my best friend Elizabeth and I would rent movies and spend the night almost every weekend. We always rented the same movies:Stand by Me, The Mosquito Coast, and Lady Jane. We rented the first two for River Phoenix. We rented Lady Jane to cry. If I could be any character from a movie, without a doubt, I'd be Jane.

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For steph.

These are so good. I am not kidding. (My apologies for the very unprofessional instructions.)

Toffee Bars:

Preheat oven to 350 and butter the sides (and bottom!) of one of those smallish square baking pans.

Beat together:
1 cup of butter (which you probably should soften ahead of time but I usually just stick it in the microwave for a few seconds)
1 cup of brown sugar

Once you have the butter and brown sugar nicely beaten together, mix in (with a spoon or spatula):
1 egg yolk
1 tsp of vanilla (I always just splash a bit more in - I really like vanilla)
2 cups of flour
1/4 tsp of salt

Spread the mixture (which is very paste/taffy-like in consistency) in your square pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes

Optional (which I HIGHLY recommend):
About five minutes before they are done, sprinkle a layer of high quality chocolate chips on the top. Once they are soft and melty spread them over the top of the toffee bars and let cool.

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My daughter wants stories. Tell me about when you were little, she begs. She asks me to tell stories while I am driving. I am usually not in the mood to tell stories. Lisiten to music, I tell her. Play Gameboy. Let your father tell you a story this time.

No Mommy, she says. I want your stories.

I sigh and say there is too much traffic. I say later. I tell her to give me time to think. I protest that I have shared all my good stories, and this is the truth (almost). It is hard finding new stories for a six-year old. I've been telling these stories for years. We live in Atlanta, we are always driving somewhere. She knows that I remember when Capri Suns came out. She has heard about my pet rabbits, and the path through the woods where I rode my bike. I told her about the neighborhood boy who built me a treehouse and dug out a pond, lined with black garbage bags, that he filled with water and two goldfish.

Always, lingering at the edges of these stories, is something sad that I hold back. I don't tell about the water that slowly seeped out of the edges of the makeshift pond, and the dead goldfish we found in the morning. I leave out filling the dirt back in and stomping it flat with our feet - hearing the boy say they were moving away, to another state. Florida was a place for passing through. I feel tired. I am all storied out.

Tell me a story, she asks. What kind of story do you want? A story about when you were a little girl. I put off her requests. Later, I say. I have to think about driving now. Give me time to think of something to tell.

So, on Saturday, we were in a parking lot in the middle of the city and I smelled skunk. Smell that? I asked her. That smells like skunk. But Mom, she asked, how do you know what skunk smells like? I've smelled it before, I said, and we walked into the mall to buy long sleeve pajamas. She was in a bad mood, pouting, because buying pajamas was not her idea of fun. Then, she saw that all the Christmas decorations were out, and Santa was already there posing for pictures, and her mood brightened.

On the way back to the car, the smell was gone, but the asphalt and streetlights must have triggered her memory. She asked again. But Mom, how do you know what skunk smells like?

I don't know why, but I started to lie.

Well, you see - I used to have a pet skunk.

Her eyes widened. She wanted to know what my skunk looked like. It was black and white, I said. With a big fluffy tail.

I could have stopped there - but I went on. I said that I named him bandit because of his stripes. He had sharp little black toenails that scratched my legs when I held him. He slept on my bed, curled up like a cat, and I fed him cat food and fruit. I knew about the smell, I said, because when Bandit got scared, he would spray me and I would smell so bad that I had to take a bath in tomato soup.

My daughter interrupted me. And vinegar?

Yeah. I said. Tomato soup and vinegar.

What happened to him? she asked.

He ran away, I said. Things run away. She nodded solemnly.

We drove home in silence.

Later, as I tucked her into bed, she asked another question. Where did you get that skunk you had when you were a little girl?

I confessed. There was never a pet skunk. I just made the story up.

She was skeptical now. If I never had a pet skunk, how did I know what skunk smelled like?

I told her that once, when I was on the way home from school, I saw a dead skunk on the side of the road. It must have sprayed right before it died, and I could smell it through the open windows of the bus.

She wanted to know why I made up the first story. I told her that I made it up because I thought it was the sort of story she would like. I made it up because she always wanted stories about when I was a little girl.

Yeah, she said, but I only like your stories when they are true.

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Last week, a co-worker saw the two packed bookshelves in my classroom, stopped, and asked me for a list book recommendations. I buy books compulsively. People that know me well express concern. Still, I get nervous when people I don't know ask me to recommend books. To be honest, I am freaked out these requests.

When I worked at Barnes and Noble, I was required to put a book on the "Staff Recommends" display each month. I can not express the anxiety this caused me. To make things worse, there were weird rules about the books we could choose. They could not be current bestsellers, or on current displays. They had to be available in trade paperback editions. It was enough to make me slightly nauseous. I hated filling out the little one line description that was intended to lure customers. I always wanted to write something like this: "Well, I liked it, but maybe you won't".

The truth is, I like often like books for odd reasons. Once, I recommended Year of Wonders. I really enjoyed reading this book, but a big reason I liked it was because I am fascinated by stories about the plague. I find it amazing to think that people lived through such dark times, and that they persevered. Should I recommend these books? I don't know. If you like books about the plague you might like it. It might depress you. I also loved Oryx and Crake, which is Margaret Atwood's naturalistic meditation about a man-made plague and the End of the World - a sort of postmodern extension of Twain's Mysterious Stranger. It does not have a happy ending. It is not a hopeful book. You might like it. It might make you want to kill yourself.

This is why I start to get nervous about recommending books. Letting someone see my bookshelf feels too revelatory. I get nervous that someone will read a book I recommend and wonder why on earth I would like a book like that.

So, it has been a week, and I still have not responded to this man's request for a book list. I just can't do it. I can't list my twenty favorite books. It would be like making a list of old boyfriends. People would shake their heads. "What did you see in him?", they might ask. I would not know what to say. Actually, I would know what to say. The answer is simple really. Maybe they look strange, but they interested me at the time. I can't explain why; there was just something intriguing about them. I'm this way with books. I read because I am interested. Sometimes, I read to escape. Sometimes, I read to be inspired or encouraged. Sometimes, I read because I enjoy well-written words. Sometimes, I read books that I would feel confident about recommending to strangers. But most often, I read because I am curious. I am intrigued. I am interested.

So this is not necessarily a list of books I recommend. This is not a list of my top eight books. This is simply a list of the most recent new books I have purchased for myself. They interest me. I have not read the majority of them yet. I might end up not liking them. Still, they made me curious.

In order from the most recently purchased:

1. Gilead. I bought this one because of the glowing reviews. I also bought it for the title. Of everything here, Gilead has the greatest potential to end up on the list of books I feel comfortable recommending to strangers.

2. Facts Behind The Helsinki Roccamatios
and Other Stories . I bought this because I really enjoyed Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi.

3. (and 4) Some Things I Never Though I'd Do and I Wish I Had a Red Dress. I bought these because I had a chance to hear Pearl Cleage speak and she was fabulous.

5. The Final Solution. Because it's written by the brilliant Michael Chabon, one of those authors that compel me to drive bookstores on the day that their new book is released.

A pause here to confess that all of these books were purchased in the last seven days. This is not a typical level of new book consumption for me, it was just a very good week for books. (Thanking Barnes and Noble for giving me an Educator Discount Card.)

6. Mr. Timothy. It was cold and raining when I wandered in for a cup of coffee and saw this book on display. I am drawn to books written about other books. They are sort of my personal version of literary crack cocaine. I can't seem to pass them by without buying.

7. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. I saw this on a bargain book display for 5.98 (minus my 20% discount!). My students don't have a variety of novels to read, because the school can't afford them. I can, however, get by with asking the copy guy to photocopy a class set of short stories from time to time. I bought this hoping to find something to teach, but it had way too much adult content to bring into the classroom. I really liked it. I laughed and I cried.

8. Lit Riffs. My friend Roar told me about this one. I think it is a brilliant concept: short stories inspired by songs.

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a very long engagement

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Last night, I realized that one of the reasons I love the seasons of fall and winter is that they make me want to linger. I don't want to get out of the bathtub or the shower and face a blast of cold air. I settle down on the couch with a blanket and a book, and I am tempted to ignore the phone and the dirty dishes I see out of the corner of my eye. Let me just stay here another minute, I think.

I like this. I like this savoring. I like slowing down and trying to hold on to every last moment of things. I really should go - but Baby it's cold outside.

My music tastes change with the cold weather. I want slow, moody music: songs that blend into each other. This fall, I am hooked on K.D. Lang's latest offering, Camera Obscura, and (as always) Belle and Sebastian (see sidebar link). Yesterday, I had "Don't Leave the Light On, Baby" on repeat for almost an hour.

The cold calls to me. It says Slow Down. It says Stay. It beckons to me with hot tea, wool socks, and comforters. I carry a book and a tin box of tea bags in my purse. I want to sink in and curl up. I move more slowly. I am aware of being warm. I am thankful.

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My daughter asked me if I wanted to hear a song she wrote for a boy in her class named Trevion. I told her I'd love to.

I was not expecting her to break into a rant.

Watch your back Alanis Morissette.

And Trevion honey - her heart does not belong to you. Don't wake up and think about kissing in a pond. Life is not like some kind of "happily ever after". Don't imagine you're the prince and she's Ariel. Because dude, she is so over it.

Now, if only she sings like this when she is sixteen.

Sorry for my absence in the blogospere. Chip went out of town on Friday, leaving me the only parent on duty. In between preparing lessons, grading, housework, grocery shopping, and full-time parenting - something had to give.

So, for the past two days, I have been giving a unit exam on the second part of The Odyssey to my ninth graders. While I was grading the short essay section, I noticed that every now and then, a student had turned in their exam with doodles drawn in the space for one of the questions. The doodles were usually of the hearts and flowers variety - not terribly unusual for ninth grade. Still, it was a little weird to see them on a unit exam.

Then, it dawned on me - the question for the short essay in that section was this:

"After reading The Odyssey, what conclusions can you draw about the way that women were treated in Greek society?"

Yes.

They were literally drawing conclusions.

Evidently, they felt that Greek women were loved.

Sigh. Have I mentioned that I am tired?

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Yesterday, the school where I work was closed because of the election. Because my kids were out of school as well, we decided to take them to the high museum to see the Van Gogh exhibit.

Although I love museums, and have seen art by many of the "major" artists - I had never seen a Van Gogh in person. It was an amazing experience. I have never had the sense of the artists presence the way I did when I looked at these paintings. At the High, nothing is roped off, and there is no glass to separate you from the art; you can get within inches of the paint. Van Gogh's paintings are thick somehow, almost three-dimensional. The paint was applied heavily, and it looked like clumps of paint or pigment were stuck in some of the strokes. It was as if the paintings were alive in some way, and it was a strange experience to sense that presence in the brush strokes and color.

My six-year old daughter felt it to. We came to a painting of an old man with his face in his hands. My daughter said that it looked like he was crying. I told her that she was right, the painting was called Sorrowing Old Man, and that "sorrowing" was a big word for crying. "Why do you think he is crying?", I asked her. I was expecting that she would say because he was old, or maybe because someone he loved had died.

Instead, she glanced nervously around the museum room.

"I think he does not like all these young people looking at him", she whispered.

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Last night, I had a dream that I went to vote. When I pressed "Done" on my touch screen voting machine, a long strip of paper appeared. The poll worker handed it to me. "What's this?", I asked her.

She told me that the voting machines were now programmed to give each person targeted advertisements and coupons, based on their voting record. I looked down at my strip of paper: "Test Drive a Subaru". There was a little black ink sketch of a pickup truck happily climbing a rock-like surface.

I protested. "But, I don't even like Subarus - or fancy pick-up trucks". The poll worker just shrugged, "It pays for the machines".

The first time I voted for president was in 1988. I turned eighteen on October second, and Florida requires registration twenty-nine days prior to an election. I really wanted to vote. Coming of age in the mid-1980's, my classmates and I honestly believed that there would be a nuclear war and everyone would die. In ninth grade, we read 1984 in honor of it actually being 1984, and the book scared the hell of me. There was a long unit on nuclear winter in science class. My teacher assigned the movie The Day After as extra credit, and images of radiation sickness and dead babies kept me awake for weeks. It felt like the world was on the verge of ending, and not even cute little Matthew Broderick would be able to save us when the real war games inevitably began. My political views were simple and visceral at the time: no nuclear wars, no fascists.

I was skeptical, however, about the actual power of a single vote. Learning about the electoral college had been a traumatic experience for me. I had been under the impression that they added up all the votes (just like in school elections), and whoever got the most votes would win. I did not like the idea that my entire state got marked red or blue on some little electoral college map. It was almost enough to make me not want to vote at all. I knew that, in some ways, my vote would not really matter, but I wanted to vote anyway. I wanted to assert my new, eighteen-year old, legal adult status. Just because I could. Just because I had arrived.

My polling place was located in the old Armory, a building that had been the location of numerous birthday parties throughout my childhood. If your parents had money, they might have your party at the fancy, air-conditioned Skate Inn East, where you could buy Hot Fries from a vending machine, where you roller skated on smooth blue floors, and where you could just skate right into the bathrooms when you needed to.

The Armory was the cheaper, and far more frequently utilized, alternative. There, you skated over uneven hardwood slats that made your teeth vibrate. Huge fans built into the walls circulated, so that as you skated in a circle, you got sudden bursts of air on your sweaty neck. If you had to use the bathroom, you were required to sit down and unlace your roller skates, retrieve your shoes, and walk down three flights of stairs to the basement of the old building.

I had not been back to The Armory since the skating parties of my childhood. When I walked in, I saw the sides of the building had ben lined with retro, curtained, metal voting booth machines. I had one thought: The voting booth thingies were cool.

I waited my turn, and was directed to a machine of my own. I pulled the lever, and the curtains mechanically shut behind me. I looked at the rows of candidates and I suddenly found myself feeling like the breath had been knocked out of me. For all of my cynicism about the process, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the unexpected feeling I had while I was inside that booth. Somehow, this was what freedom felt like. I realized that people had died to protect this, this moment of eighteen-year old me, in a curtained voting booth, casting a vote. I started to cry.

So today is voting day. Your state, like mine, is probably already marked blue or red on the little electoral map. You might not like Subarus or fancy pick-up trucks.

Vote anyway. It's worth it.

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