Life with a side dish of lemons: the remedy

 

So, on Sunday, ten days into my Mac experience, I got the message in fourteen languages to shut down. In IBM speak, it’s like the dreaded blue screen. Had all gone as expected, I would have rebooted and the Mac would have cleared up the issue and zoomed into life, but all did not go as expected. Turns out there’s something haywire with the RAM. I took it for repairs yesterday and on the way home stopped in at the drugstore, came out and the car wouldn’t start. Now it’s in the shop, too. Lemons. Life is handing me lemons. The nerve! I love my Mac; we had bonded, and I love my car; it’s paid for. All that love . . . squeezed now into lemons. Squeezing my dollars! Sitting on the curb, waiting for the mechanic, I wished for a diversion. Something to take my mind off its tendency to worry. I tried calling both sons, but they were each one traveling in separate parts of the country and without cell service. I sat some more and wished for my Kindle.

Reading, it’s the best diversion

No matter what is happening in my life, from a one-lemon tiny trouble to a five-lemon, full-blown disaster, I have always sought refuge in reading. I can read anytime, anyplace, almost anything--the side of a cereal box, a clothing label, a recipe--and, even if it’s only for a moment, I’m transported. My brain and heart rest in the words, the story. Reading is restorative. Words have the power to create imagery, a pseudo-reality that is different from the one you’re standing in and that interlude, however brief, takes you out of yourself, providing a respite. Joan Reeves blogged recently about this, not reading so much, but about Happiness Amidst Life’s Lemons. In fact, I read her post yesterday, after the mechanic jumped my car, followed me to the garage, and then brought me home. (I wish it were just the battery.) But before that, sitting on the curb waiting for rescue, I wished for my Kindle. If I could have read something, it would have stopped my mind from chewing over the lemon rind so to speak, until I had scared myself with every possible scenario up to and including, or nearly, becoming homeless as the result of being served so many lemons. Where will it end? I asked myself. Why me? I said. What next? Can it get worse? (That’s a bad one to ask!)

If only I'd had my Kindle. . . .

I could have been reading, Jane I’m Still Single Jones, by Joan Reeves, say, a recent download (A romantic dream of a high school class reunion story that zipped along like a fun evening spent with a group of wry and entertaining characters, and cleverly spiced with little nuggets of wisdom that gave me pause. I love Joan’s voice!) Had I been reading that, I might have been smiling.   I know I would have been engaged. Or I could have been reading Innocent Deceptions, a historical novel by Gwyneth Atlee aka ColleenThompson, another recent Kindle download. Reading that would have transported me back to the Civil War era and a story of love and betrayal. (Watch for more of her historical and romantic suspense releases in the near future. Her latest release, Phantom of the French Quarter, is an eerie and atmospheric tale of love and murder). Or I could have taken another look, at Crazy For Trying, by Joni Rodgers. I read that on my Kindle not long ago, loved it and reviewed it here. (Look for her latest release: The Hurricane Lover, a stunner of a literary thriller coming to Kindle this month.)



Instead. . . .

I chewed my virtual nails, pondered all sorts of even graver consequences, indulged in brief acts of self pity, and tried calling my kids so I could serve them a few of my lemons, all of which only increased the sour taste. When I could have been reading. I’m not sure what the lesson is, but I think it goes something like this . . .  don’t leave home without your Kindle (or e-reader of choice) and don’t share your lemons. As Joan suggests, make lemonade. Maybe she’ll even share the recipe she mentions in her post. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind at all if, as a diversion, you were to read my books on your Kindle, too. The Volunteer and The Ninth Step aren’t exactly a laugh a minute, but the stories, the suspense just might hook you in. At the least, you’ll be transported to another world where the lemons aren’t your own.

If this post looks wonky, blame it on the old PC.....

 

The Volunteer: It's not about what you might think

 

It’s about time

Really. Time is what started the whole story. I read about a man in the newspaper who was sentenced to death and called off his appeals. The court obliged him and set the date of his execution. I tried to imagine it, what it must be like for him to know the date of his own death. Would he mark the day on the calendar with a red X? Would he X off each day before that one? What would his thoughts be, his emotions? It was hard to imagine his fear and yet I was drawn to it. To explore it. Time running out, ticking down to zero. By law, he could reinstate his appeals if he chose to, or his devastated family could talk him out of it. So, as the day draws closer, will he buckle? Some might say, Who cares? Obviously if the guy’s on death row, a convicted murderer, he’s no asset to society. 

The choice

Still, given that the self-preservation instinct is purportedly the strongest natural instinct a human being has, how desperate does a man have to be to ask to die? Or how remorseful? Or sickened by himself and his acts? According to one source I read, nationally, as many as one in six who are facing execution ask to die. The first was murderer Gary Gilmore, who was put to death via firing squad in Utah in 1977. More recently, the Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh was a volunteer and serial killer Ted Bundy reportedly told police that he purposely committed murders in Florida because the state had the death penalty. Obviously there are few who mourn the passing of these men. Their families perhaps.

 

The fallout

And what about the family? Suppose you’re related to someone on death row who’s made such a decision? That big red X marks your calendar too. What if you’re his kid or his wife? Or his mother? The questions seemed enormous to me. Research for The Volunteer led me in several directions. There’s the ongoing argument that surrounds the death penalty in general, but more specific with regard to volunteers, there is the issue of whether the inmate is using the system to commit suicide versus the other cold-reality contention that calling an early end to the often years-long appeals process saves money. Statistics I read indicate that confining an inmate to death row is a great deal more expensive because of the heavy cost of the appeals. But appeals aside, according to sources I found, it costs Texas an average of $16,000 to house one inmate for one year. In California, the cost rises to a whopping $90,000 per year per inmate.

The more intimate focus

The story The Volunteer tells, though, is one of family. As parents, in general, we raise our children to be good people. We want them to be happy, but then they grow up, become adults. Whatever authority or control or means we had to keep them safe ultimately slips from our hands. In the blink of an eye, a choice is made, and they are plunged into circumstances that are not just life altering but life threatening.  Hearts are broken; freedom is lost. How much of this is the fault of parenting? Of mothering? In this case an inmate might well be put to death for his mistake, but what sentence does a mother receive?

The Volunteer tells a story about mothers and their children, guilty and innocent. It tells of the crimes that go unpunished. It tells how a terrible act done in one generation might not bear its evil fruit for several. It’s about collateral damage and extenuating circumstances. And it’s about the resilience of life and the human spirit. I think about that a lot, life’s resilience… every time I see a flower sprouting through cracked pavement, it reminds me how tenaciously life holds to itself.

 

 

Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam, A Review

Bonnie Nadzam in her debut novel, Lamb, has created a complex and disturbing story. David Lamb is a fifty-something-year-old man whose life is falling apart. His father has died and his wife has left him. With nothing solid to anchor himself to, Lamb is cruising, mentally, emotionally, physically. One day, cruising on an unfamiliar street, he’s approached by an eleven-year-old girl, Tommie. A couple of her “friends” have dared her to ask him for a cigarette. Lamb realizes the situation immediately. That it’s a dare and it raises something inside him. He’s incensed that Tommie is being used in this way. She begins to look like a cause to him, like a project that maybe he can fix up since he can’t fix anything in his own life, in his own head. As the reader you want this child to be all right. You really hope Lamb is going to be the good influence he’s striving toward, that he’s going to improve this child’s circumstances. Tommie wants this too; she’s yearning for it, for something, anything. But that’s what adolescence is, an ache, a gigantic, exquisitely painful, joyful hole inside that demands to be filled.

Looking back, I guess it could be said that adolescence is the yearning for experience, the longing to be master of one’s fate, but whatever it is, this is Nadzam’s forte, the way she makes you feel inside, like this eleven-year-old-lost child. You pray that Lamb is going to do the right thing by Tommie when he goes back into her neighborhood multiple times to feed her, to bring her gifts, to talk to her. But the whole time you know, you sense this relationship is not conventional. This man and this child have strayed into unknown territory and when Lamb takes Tommie, when he basically kidnaps her and drives her from Chicago west into the Rocky Mountains to some remote cabin ostensibly to teach her about the wilderness, to introduce her to a more organic connection to life, it is scary. It is a rude ride through a mountainous setting that is vividly beautiful and ruthlessly painted.

This novel reads like a rising heartbeat. It is a tale that knots your stomach. You want to put it down, to put it out of your mind, but the writing is so taut, so compelling and haunting that you can’t. At least I couldn’t. Nadzam is a master at point of view. At times, it’s hard to know from what position the story is being told. In a way you might be seduced into believing you are telling it to yourself, Nadzam takes you that far into Lamb’s mind. Not a comfortable place to be. And as intimately as you are there, you are also in Tommie’s mind and emotions, but this is no Lolita redux. There is nothing overtly sexual and yet . . . and yet. . . .

Readers and authors will often say that books should be entertaining, that people don’t want to be reminded of their very human condition, their frailties, vulnerabilities--weaknesses. They don’t want a story about which they have to think. But sometimes a book can do both. If you are drawn to gorgeous writing, disturbed characters, a plot that could stand alone as a taut thriller, Lamb does do both. In a manner that is reminiscent of Lionel Shriver’s, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lamb is an unsettling journey as hard to put down as it is to forget.

For more about this wonderful author, visit her website.