Old Books

The A to Z Blogging Challenge is keeping me engaged with writing and reading. Not that I have a problem finding time to read or doing it.

I read when I go to bed. I read when I get up. I read when I eat, when I watch television, while I wait. But, you'll be glad to know I gave up reading while I drive. Thank goodness for audio books.

While visiting other blogs in the A to Z Challenge I ran across one who talked about rereading books and how the book was different the new time we read it. They asked which books we reread and how we read them differently each time. (I never think to ask my blog readers what they think, but I always appreciate them taking their time to comment. And I love reading the comments on other bloggers' posts.)

I reread Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. It keeps me writing. It keeps me sane.

I know what's going to happen next, so I can put it down and get back to writing, or do the laundry, or keep a commitment. When the daily stress gets to be too much, I can jump back into whichever book I'm on and escape to a place where the stress is so much greater than mine that mine is forgotten. Who'da thought books about impending doom with characters racing from battle to battle, facing terrifying mutants would be my security blanket?

It's hard to justify rereading books when there are so many out there that I haven't read yet. So many old ones. So many new ones. So many yet to come. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to have experienced all the books you want to read without having to take the time?

Ah, but I started out thinking about old books. An 'old' book is any book written by Dickens or by any other author that I've read. New books are those I've not read yet regardless of when they were written.

That inspired me to reread Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I started it, but I can't finish it. I've learned too much about writing and can't turn off my inner editor to enjoy it. It tells the story too much from the outside. Why that should stop me, I don't know. But I've the same problem with Julian Fellowes' new book Belgravia.

It's not that I need a story in first person, to feel a part of it. To be there. But I do need the story told from the characters' points of view, not the author's.

Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was required reading when I was in high school. What a terrible choice to require of teens to read. His Of Mice and Men would have been a much better choice.  It's a deliciously tragic story of friendship. They did have us read Romeo and Juliet. Teens love tragedies. Life, at that age, is so intense and in the moment.

The tragedy in Grapes of Wrath takes too long for people too young to know just how long life can be especially when it's tragic. And it often is.

Grapes of Wrath is the story of a lifetime of human endurance. By the time I'd slogged through it as a teen, the ending was just another in a long line of dreariness. I completely missed the characters' strength to carry on even though there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I'm so glad I reread it thirty years later.

And Dickens? Reread Dickens? Certainly not. I get tired of him about three-quarters of the way through and swear never to read him again. But I always finish the book and find myself later looking to read him again -- maybe nine months, maybe two years, but I always come back. It's his characters. The situations they find themselves in. I know them personally. Not just from inside Dickens' books but from down the street, from my childhood, from my family.

There is something in Dickens about writing to be learned by rereading. How does he make them seem real? Involve us in the story?

I can feel an old Dickens book coming on.

Shakespeare, Downton Abbey, and Banana Bread

image from Vic Trevino on Pinterest

                                                    "All the world's a stage,

                                                    And all the men and women merely players"

                                                    "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
                                                    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
                                                    And then is heard no more"

The first quote is from Shakespeare's As You Like It, classified by scholars as a Comedy. The second is from MacBeth, classified as a Tragedy. The difference my friends is that a comedy ends happily for its main characters. In Shakespeare's tragedies, they usually end up dead.

As a writer, I have a tendency to see my life as stories. Not perhaps the most pragmatic way to live, maybe not even the sanest way to live. But I'm still here.

These past few weeks have been difficult. My 90-year-old father's mind is failing. That's not unusual, unfortunately. Since I am, for all intents and purposes, responsible for his care, I've been trying to find an appropriate place for him to live.

Until last September, with a bit of help from home care givers, Daddy lived with my husband and me. That had been a good situation. Daddy has always been a social person, interested in the events of the day and the people around him and their lives. His care givers were kind, efficient, and best of all, they enjoyed visiting with him.

As his dementia worsened, it was obvious that we needed someone awake 24 hours-a-day, so he would be safe. It would have been financially prohibitive to have individual care givers around the clock, and it was too much for me. So he moved into an assisted care facility.

The facility was beautiful. He had a studio apartment and could push a button on his wrist for a care giver and they would come right away. The food was excellent -- a priority for my father. His enjoyment of food has not diminished in spite of the dementia.

Now, Daddy has always been the kind of man to get things done. He would analyze a problem, consider the options, then solve it. His natural inclination to jump-to-it has not diminished.

Therein lies the problem. He could remember to push the call button, but he couldn't remember to wait for a care giver. He's wobbly. And the disinclination to wait has led to a number of falls. None has caused injuries more serious than bruising, but injuries were inevitable if we went on this way.

Looking for a facility that offers 24-hour care was in the realm of tragedy. I would visit one. It would smell clean. The rooms were bright and cheerful. The staff were gracious and attentive, but the patients were all sitting in wheelchairs staring off into the distance.

Then a friend told me that her father had been in a residential care home. These are regular houses modified to take care of people. They have six or eight patients with trained care givers 24 hours-a-day. In the one I visited, the patients were all involved in various things. The sun had come out and a good ending to this story seemed at hand.

Before Daddy moved to his new home, he was concerned that the other people there would not "be as bad off" as he. I reassured him that some would not be and others would be worse off.

And truly that was the case. His roommate uses a walker and oxygen, still reads the daily paper and works Sudoku puzzles. One day the man was watching a television show -- on a Spanish language channel. He is not Hispanic and multilingual people are a rarity in our society. I asked him if he spoke Spanish. He looked at me as though my question made no sense at all. "No," he said. So his Sudoku puzzles may be only an entertainment in the same way. I don't know. I've not looked too closely.

When Daddy's doctor asked him if he had a roommate, Daddy surprised me by saying there was "a man who rides the same broomstick." He meant his roommate. Comedy? Daddy has always had a good sense of humor, but this was not an example of that. His confusion is advancing.

Daddy moved March 5. We moved all Daddy's stuff out of his apartment Sunday, March 6. Kind of sad really because there isn't enough room in his new bedroom for his things. He does have the really big clock that he can see in spite of his macular degeneration and the wedding picture of him and Momma and Momma's high school graduation picture.

But that night I had Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey has been my favorite TV series for all of its six years. My husband calls it a soap opera, and I suppose it is. But I care about the characters and it always seems to come out pretty much right for those characters or at least give me hope that it will. Eventually. It is the hour that I can escape my own dramas and enjoy someone else's.

The final episode. Everything changes. Everything comes to an end.

I was actually afraid that the whole thing would be tied neatly up with a shiny red bow. Words like "syrupy sweet" and "maudlin" hovered around me, threatening to undo my great regard for Fellowes' writing. How was Julian Fellowes going to end it without caving in the most Hallmarkian fashion to the public's desire that Edith be happy?

I was more concerned with Thomas. I know, I know. I adopt unlovable parrots that bite. Lovable dogs that bite. Eccentric cats that bite. I even liked Snape all the way through the Harry Potter books.

And, whether Fellowes handled it well or not (which by-the-bye, he did handle it well) the more anxiety provoking was what was I going to do with the rest of my Sunday nights?

Then, to top it all off, I decided to make a banana nut bread with the bananas Daddy had left in his apartment.

I turned on the oven to preheat, mashed the bananas, chopped the walnuts, stirred up the batter, poured it into a Pyrex baking dish that once belonged to my mother, and discovered that my oven was not heating.

Well, #$#@!

A new question -- does banana nut bread dough freeze well? Even more importantly does it bake well after being thawed?

But my husband looked it up oven repair on the internet and ordered a part. It's so nice to be married to him. Yesterday the part came and he fixed the oven.

Today is Sunday. And we have banana nut bread to eat with whatever I do with my Sunday night.

All's Well that Ends Well, not a line from a Shakespeare play, but the title. A play that the critics cannot put into a single category, but must be included in both his comedies and his tragedies. Just like life.

                    

           Thomas in a bowler, a sure sign of success at last.        A fine loaf of banana nut bread.