Month: December 2012

Christmas books, 2012

My go-to gift for everyone, from child to husband to parent, has always been books.  Each year, more than a handful of people ask me for ideas for books to give to people in their lives.  I know it’s late (though not too late for a gift certificate with some suggested titles!), but here are some of the books I read in 2012 that I have been recommending this year:

A Thousand Mornings – Mary Oliver’s new book of poetry is a balm, as is the rest of her work.  The slender volume practically radiates wisdom, and I know a great many Oliver worshippers who are looking forward to reading this.

Help, Thanks, Wow – Similarly, Anne Lamott has a legion of committed and adoring readers.  Her latest work is a worthy addition to her canon; I read it in a single sitting, wiping away tears, giggling out loud, and underlining madly.

The Anti-Romantic Child: A Memoir of Unexpected Joy – Priscilla Gilman’s gorgeous love letter to her son is a great book for any of us who have been surprised by life not going precisely as we thought it would.  And for any of us who have found tremendous joy in the surprising and sometimes disorienting terrain of real life.  Which is to say: all of us.

The Light Between Oceans – I loved this beautiful novel, in particular the first half, which contains some of the most breathtakingly gorgeous imagery of light, ocean, space, and the sky I’ve ever read.

Wild – Cheryl Strayed’s memoir lived up to all of the hype.  This book is inspirational, comforting, and a powerful testament to the human spirit’s ability to grow, overcome, and see beauty.  Plus, Adrienne Rich’s work, The Dream of a Common Language, on which I wrote my senior thesis, beats through the story like a pulse.

The Age of Miracles – I read this book in a plane ride and it floated, gossamer, shimmering, in my mind for weeks.  I felt like I’d woken up and couldn’t quite tell if the story, a thought-provoking meditation on change, fear, the wild unpredictability of the universe, and our human need for control – was real or imagined.

The End of Your Life Book Club – I loved Will Schwalbe’s memoir of the end of his mother’s life for the palpable love it exudes for his mother, but also for the ways it celebrates a lifelong love of reading.  This book made me want to re-read some of my most treasured books, first and foremost, Crossing to Safety.  That’s next on my list.

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green’s narrator may have my favorite voice ever, in all of literature.  This book made me weep but also reminded me of the immense bravery and strength that is contained in some of the youngest, most ostensibly fragile people.  We all want love, and wow, does Green give it to us.

There are so, so many more books I loved in 2012, and of course a long list from other years.  These are just a few that came immediately to mind.  If you are giving books for Christmas this year, which?

 

 

2012: May

Grace broke her collarbone.

Into the Summer Wishes box, amid wishes like “ride bamboo shoots at Storyland,” “play family Monopoly,” and “go to Water Wizz,” Whit put a small piece of paper that read, “Grace is able to go on all the rides at Legoland, because she is healed.”  I wept.

It was Matt’s birthday.

All four of us went to my 20th high school reunion.

My favorite blog post: Bones.

We spent Memorial Day in New Hampshire with our two dearest family friends.

I read The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont, The Red Book by Deborah Copagen Kogan, Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon, and went on a thorough re-reading of Wendell Berry’s work spree.

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

there is still so much here I do not understand

Toward the Solstice, 1977

The thirtieth of November.
Snow is starting to fall.
A peculiar silence is spreading
Over the fields, the maple grove.
It is the thirtieth of May,
Rain pours on ancient bushes, runs
Down the youngest blade of grass.
I am trying to hold in one steady glance
All the parts of my life.
A spring torrent races
On this old slanting roof,
The slanted field below
Thickens with winter’s first whiteness.
Thistles dried to sticks in last year’s wind
Stand nakedly in the green,
Stand sullenly in the slowly whitening,
Field.
My brain glows
More violently, more avidly
The quieter, the thicker
The quilt of crystals settles,
The louder, more relentlessly
The torrent beats itself out
On the old boards and shingles.
It is the thirtieth of May,
The thirtieth of November,
A beginning or an end.
We are moving towards the solstice
And there is so much here
I still do not understand.
If I could make sense of how
My life is tangled
With dead weeds, thistles,
Enormous burdocks, burdens
Slowly shifting under
This first fall of snow,
Beaten by this early, racking rain
Calling all new life to declare itself strong
Or die,
If I could know
In what language to address
The spirits that claim a place
Beneath these low and simple ceilings,
Tenants that neither speak nor stir
Yet dwell in mute insistence
Till I can feel utterly ghosted in this house.
If history is a spider-thread
Spun over and over though brushed away
It seems I might some twilight
Or dawn in the hushed country light
Discern its greyness stretching
From molding or doorframe, out
Into the empty dooryard
And following it climb
The path into the pinewoods,
Tracing from tree to tree
In the falling light, in the slowly
Lucidifying day
Its constant, purposive trail,
Till I reach whatever cellar hole
Filling with snowflakes or lichen,
Whatever fallen shack
Or unremembered clearing
I am meant to have found
And there, under the first or last
Star, trusting to instinct
The words would come to mind
I have failed or forgotten to say
Year after year, winter
After summer, the right rune
To ease the hold of the past
Upon the rest of my life
And ease my hold on the past.
If some rite of separation
Is still unaccomplished,
Between myself and the long-gone
Tenants of this house,
Between myself and my childhood,
Between the childhood of my children,
It is I who have neglected
To perform the needed acts,
Set water in corners, light and eucalyptus
In front of mirrors,
Or merely pause and listen
To my own pulse vibrating
Lightly as falling snow,
Relentless as the rainstorm,
And hear what it has been saying.
It seems I am still waiting
For them to make some clear demand
Some articulate sound or gesture,
For release to come from anywhere
But from inside myself.
A decade of cutting away
Dead flesh, cauterizing
Old scars ripped open over and over
And still it is not enough.
A decade of performing
The loving humdrum acts
Of attention to this house
Transplanting lilac suckers,
Washing panes, scrubbing
Wood-smoke from splitting paint,
Sweeping stairs, brushing the thread
Of the spider aside,
And so much yet undone,
A woman’s work, the solstice nearing,
And my hand still suspended
As if above a letter
I long and dread to close.

(Adrienne Rich)

This is the seventh year I’ve honored this holiest of days with this poem that I cherish.

(2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)