Dreams of Distant Lives – Lee K. Abbott

I don’t have the ability to articulate exactly what it is about an author’s writing style which causes me to be attracted to them.


I wonder if it is the subtle foundations they build their story upon. The length of their sentences, the breaths between thoughts - paragraph breaks. These three “things” come immediately to mind. Does that even make sense? Are they really “things”? I don’t even know the right word to describe what they are!


This story made my heart hurt.


It touched nerves in me…perhaps a few raw nerves that I didn’t even know were exposed. This frightens me.


I felt stillness and chaos. This frightened me.


I felt as if I was standing on the edge of my reality, just ready to slip into an altered state…which would become my new normal state…and this frightened me.


This story pulled me into my dreams – my awful dreams – not the dreams that appear at night as I sleep – those are actually very pleasant. The dreams I have during my waking hours are the dreams I am the most afraid of. They are rooted firmly in some aspects of my reality and because of this…they are they most scary. And this is why as I read Abbott’s words, I had a heart ache.


And to push me even further – the narrator of this little short is …39. Yup. How old am I again? Yup. 39.


“My inner life, the world constructed from what I’d been and done, was speaking to me, patiently and calmly. I would hear what it had to say, and I would understand. And so I came to myself, observed the man I am now walk forward to the man I was then and take him, as a father takes his children, into his arms. The one held the other – the future cradling the present- and the one who had been left, the one whose interior hooks and hasps and snaps had come undone, gave himself up utterly. They were both there, in dreamland, under heaven and over hell, two versions of the same man, clasped in an embrace that would end when the world came up again.”


That’s so beautiful…and perfect – for me.

Circle of Prayer – Alice Munro

This was an unfortunate story to have to read over several sittings. I tried…I really did. I looked for assistance online – and I even made efforts to really slow down the pace of my reading in an attempt to digest this story a bit better. I found it difficult to follow and there was nothing that I could really pull from it.


There it is.

The Lie Detector – Madison Smartt Bell

Standing in the shower on morning back in 2008, the idea came to me to start this blog/project. One of many the reasons why I decided to take on this project was that I felt through the stories contained within these anthologies a jumping point for reflection and problem solving. A sentence, a character a theme of a story could send me down paths of exploration that would help me understand my past…or help me with problems I may be going through. The stories could be tools to open my thoughts and feelings. As an added benefit, I’d get a bit of an education - along the way, I’d be exposed some really cool authors. It’s 2012 and in a few months I’ll be into my fourth year in this space. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about my progress at that anniversary date.


Now let’s push forward and see what this next batch of stories brings.


I wrote the above because this particular story triggered a memory of mine dealing with apartments, shady landlords, lack of money and a lack of direction in my life.


I think it was the spring of 1996…or was it early summer? Thankfully, my mind has done a pretty decent job of erasing some unpleasant memories from that time in my life. I quit my job as a chef in a pretty popular restaurant in New Jersey due to the drug habits of a fellow chef. I wasn’t comfortable being associated with his lifestyle. I was living on a futon mattress in the house that my father and step-mother had just moved out of. The place was empty…except for my toiletries and some food in the fridge. Things like kitchen appliances, sofas, all the usual domestic features had been taken out by the movers a few days earlier. It was like I was living in an upscale crack house. Really upscale. So there I was, having just quit my job, needing to find a place to live. For the life of me I can’t remember how I even conducted my apartment hunting.


“So you don’t have a job?”


“No sir.”


“How do you expect to pay rent?”


‘Well, I’m pretty sure I’ll find a job soon and I’ll be able to pay you.”


“Look kid – I don’t think I feel comfortable renting out my place to someone without a job.”


--yeah, no shit – I wouldn’t have rented a place to me either.




The last part of my memory of that period of my life is me on the phone with my sister crying. I was lost. I had no place to go. She begged me to move back to Virginia. I resisted…I couldn’t return home. She offered to come up the next day to get me and my crap. I declined her offer. I was too proud.


Memory cuts to me loading my belongings into a U-Haul.


Something happened. Something right, something good.


I kicked my pride aside and moved back to Virginia. My sister saved me from…I suppose I’ll never know.


I was on the edge, and she pulled me back.


Finally, a sentence at the end of the story really wraps things up for me. It draws the painful past into the present day and forces me to face once again my very uncomfortable situation. One that plagues my thoughts every day of my existence.


“So maybe the lie was out there too, I thought, even if I couldn’t see it. It was just there, floating around with the other particles of the atmosphere, and everybody got a little piece of it, and it didn’t belong to anyone.”


And so here I am today. With these memories – stirred by a short story in The Best American Short Stories 1987. Thanks Madison Smartt Bell. You’re keeping me on my toes.

The Lover of Women – Sue Miller

 Thinking about this blog over the past several weeks and the entries I have completed and those I have yet to write, I realized that I haven’t devoted much time to writing about my mother.  Perhaps I am such that I needn't write about her because there really is nothing to write about and I tend to focus on very emotional subjects and she has not stirred the emotions in me that other subjects I have written about have done.

 Which is not to say that this is a bad thing and I don’t think anything more should be read into it.

 Perhaps there hasn’t been a story that has triggered me to think of her during my writing – until now. 

Funny how that works…isn’t it?

And so, this story comes along, and within it I find the perfect set of stairs to climb into a discussion with myself about my mother.

I really enjoyed this story and it’s one that will hang around with me for some time.  It wasn’t the relationship that the brothers shared or the relationship(s) that the brothers had with the family of sisters, but the relationship that the sons had with their mother.  These sections caused me to think of my mother and the mother son relationship I am seeing M and the boy develop.  A relationship so deep and intense, filled with such love and caring on a level that I will never have with my son -no matter how hard I try.

 

And I am fine with that. 

As a new parent, I think a lot about raising the boy and how much effort it requires to do a really good job at it.  I also think that it is getting easier and will get easier but also I realize that there will be new challenges that arise at each new developmental stage, presenting a whole host of new challenges for M and I and hopefully, over the years we’ll develop the ability to adapt to these changes quickly and deal with them without major disruptions.

  

I am completely clueless as to how my mother raised my sister and me.  As a child, I wasn’t aware of the “raising” that she was doing, or how her actions…or inactions would play out in the years to follow.  I wonder if she realized what would or wouldn’t happen with everything she said or did.  Did she give it that intense of a thought or was she flying by the seat of her pants?  Will I look that deeply into what I say and do as the years go by? 

Does my mother look back on the years she spent raising us and have any regrets?

I can’t imagine that she could have expended so much – and I should say too that I can’t imagine me being able to expend the efforts and energy.

 But I want that to happen!

I know that there was a period of time where all she wanted was for me to open up to her.  I simply couldn’t do what she wanted because I was a moody-self-absorbed teen and young adult.  She wrote me letters pleading with me to share more of my life with her, she asked me repeatedly on our phone conversations (from college or when I lived away from home) to offer her glimpses into my life…and I simply wouldn’t.   As I moved into adulthood, I opened up…slightly, and it took several years of fully being an adult before I could open up – and speak to her as an adult should.

I now know how difficult this must have been for her.  She gave me everything she ever had – tried her hardest and I shut down on her.  She was concerned for my well-being as she said multiple times during those conversations and that concern just didn’t faze me.

 

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t given her in return what she deserves over the years but it’s too late at this point and I can only move forward on our current course (which is a good one) and let our lives play out.

My mother is now a grandmother and she has assumed that role with much success.  She spends too much money on the boy and at times I am concerned that she needs to pull back a little.  She is in a tough space in life being the caregiver for my step-father and she really doesn’t see us or her grandson enough.

I wish her life wasn’t so hard.  She deserves so much more.  These past five years have been incredibly difficult for her and her mental and physical states are suffering.  There is hope that as time passes, that her world will change for the better, after a period of severe sadness that I am sure will come after the passing of her husband.

She will be alone, and it will be the duty, I feel for the children to provide the comfort of a parent, to the parent, as she provided comfort to us during our periods of loss. 

I can only hope that we do a good job – she deserves it.