Small Acts of Liberation

Alright, folks.  I did it.  I finally finished The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg.  Now, in case I have yet to pound it into your heads enough that short stories just aren't my cup of tea, I'll say it again.  I'm more of a novel girl.  This just didn't really do it for me.  That being said, my notes are pretty brief!  Yay!  I have about one note per story, sometimes a bit more if I paused over something that struck my fancy.  So, shall we?

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted:  Eating whatever I want is luxurious as it is disappointing.  I'd have chosen my food very differently and not cooked an ounce of it myself.  Aren't you among the many who believe that it always tastes better when someone else makes it?  I am.  I have never tried Weight Watchers, but I've been thinking about it lately.  I have always been a skinnyish person but my metabolism is starting to slack off in my late twenties. 

Returns and Exchanges:  Many of us have (will always have) that someone we still wonder about and yes, it would probably be just as disappointing as Agnes's meet-up with her old flame.  But really, Agnes is not that common of a name.  Even if Jon did not recognize her physically right away, don't you think the name Agnes would trigger the ol' memory box and give him a new lens to see the woman before him?  I hate when literature acts like I'm the idiot.

The Party:  I have no notes.  It must not have sparked anything in my mind.  If it did for you, please feel free to share.

Over the Hill and into the Woods:  Motherhood is more thankless than it is regarded with gratitude.  I need to thank my mother, mother-in-law, grandma, grandma-in-law, etc. more in ways that they can feel appreciated and loved.  I also found Berg's picture of family interesting in that we can be linked by blood but so different from one another.  And in this way, we desperately need our space from one another.  (I also desperately need closeness).

Full Count:  Poor Janey.  I don't think we ever fully recover from that first shock when we realize that we aren't particularly gifted, special, beautiful, smart, or funny, but that it is only our loved ones' gentler perceptions of us that lead us to believe we are so.  Learning that we are not the favorite grandchild or student, but, "simply loved.  It is good, but she had thought it was more." was probably the deepest striking chord for me in this whole book.  Ah, yes, I know that I am loved, but I remember that very moment in my life when I realized I am more special to some people than to others and not special at all to some. 

Rain:  Possibly the best story in the lot of them; at least the one I think I remember the most.  It may be because the character most talked about is a man and this is a very female book.  Michael is refreshingly down to earth; just slightly over the brim of believable.  I loved his lifestyle out in the cabin he built and the simple pleasures of blueberry pies left by friendly neighbors and contra dancing (I absolutely adore contra dancing.  It is the only dancing that I thoroughly enjoy in spite of my two left feet and no rhythm to my name).  This story, too, talks about the person who might have been (the female narrator), had she chosen a different path and gone with her friend years ago.  I think about such things.  I think of how differently my life would have turned out if I had: stayed in high school rather than the career center; gone to Florida for an internship I was offered after college; stayed in Chorale my senior year; gone to a different college altogether; stayed in the mission field in England long term; stopped going to church when the church hurt me personally; etc.  So many choices (these were all big choices I made, like the narrator's choice not to go), so many different possibilities I have forsaken.  And yet, I am very happy in the life I have now.  I think accepting where we are is the best approach, don't you?  Woah, that was all just free thought.  I didn't even get to my notes.  So, a fantastically, painfully true line in this story was, "But our visits fell off: the distance, the necessity of living our own lives, the way one becomes used to anything, even a good friend dying."  Ouch.  It hurts to acknowledge that we can move on.  It digs to remember to grieve, but we eventually get to the point where we look back and see we've gotten used to it.  And then it tends to hurt again.  My other note states:  "Could-Have-Been - That person is very real to me.  One (one!) different decision and my life could have turned out completely different."  "Favorite story so far."  "Opposite sex friendship."  Ah, that's very special.  You don't get a lot of purely platonic opposite sex friendships anymore.  Really, not even in this story, though I sort of think their more-than-friends feelings were only occasional.  I have had a few platonic friendships with men in my college days, some of which still exist.  And an enormous blessing and view into the male psyche they are, along with just every good thing true friendship provides: laughter, good conversation, support, etc.  The narrator (did anyone catch her name, or is it given at any point?) holds closely to what she has while still having the imagination capacity to dream of what could have been.  I admire it.

The Day I Ate Nothing I Even Remotely Wanted:  Well, that was depressing in a new and different way, wasn't it?  Kyle and I sometimes decide to do a "super cheap" grocery list.  When we do, he recommends that we have cereal for dinner one night.  I always shoot this suggestion down.  I may have a food problem, but knowing that I will have a (usually) hot and (hopefully) delicious meal for dinner when I get home sometimes is all that gets me through the day at work.  Even when it isn't, I get pretty excited for lunch and for dinner.  This is especially true when there is something simmering in wait in the crockpot (like this delicious potato corn chowder, to which I have altered the recipe only slightly).  And this is why I am having such a slump when it comes to my lowering metabolism.  I've sort of grown up going against the dieters' thinking of food as fuel "rather than, oh, a reason to get up in the morning." 

Mrs. Ethel Menafee and Mrs. Birdie Stoltz:  I'd like to first point out that I become aggravated with "hospital" stories.  I'm afraid that most people are woefully ignorant about hospitals.  More goes on there than nurses doing things that frustrate you, long waits for doctors, and codes over the loudspeaker meaning someone has died.  It drove me nuts when the woman thought she might be sharing the elevator with a dead body and imagined the morgue full of people covered in body bags.  I do not claim to know everything about hospitals, but in my years working in Medical Records and ER Registration (what!?  I worked in the hospital and wasn't a nurse?!), I sometimes (much less often than you'd imagine) had to release bodies from the morgue.  They were not in body bags.  They were covered up in white sheets.  So Ethel's hope to be "wrapped up in a sheet with a decent thread count" did not have the gently dark humor to it that I'm sure the author intended.  And Code Orange did not mean "another soul going to heaven" in the hospital where I worked.  It meant a hazardous spill.  Not every thing in the hospital is life and death.  You would not even believe the number of non-emergencies I saw in the emergency room.  Toothaches, stubbed toes, minor bloody noses, colds, people who started throwing up an hour ago and have only thrown up once since... Really.  It's obnoxious.  So please stop writing morbid and depressing things about hospitals always being life and death.  Please. 

On another note, I did like the idea the two old birds had about moving in together to die.  Yes, it's morbid.  But in a way, I think it is lovely.  Your best friend might be your husband or your sister or your mother or just that, your best friend.  Don't you want to be with them and put a little pleasantness into your last days?  It is also in my notes that I finished reading this particular story the day before my boss's best friend died suddenly of a heart attack.  She was there with him when it happened.  I know it is very hard for her, but I'm sure that he was happy in his last moments before it began and ended. 

Double Diet:  I was getting tired of all the dieting by this point, weren't you?  I did enjoy the couple finally talking openly with each other about their weight issues and their attraction and caring.  Caring is far deeper, but of course we still have the desire to be attracted to our loves.  And I loved the part about children bringing sorrows and joy, "but, oh, the joy."  I am so excited to become an aunt in May 2014!

The Only One of Millions Just Like Him:  This one was a struggle for me.  I wanted to like it because grieving over losing a pet is so overlooked, but Monica was not "believable as a human being" as was once stated on Friends.  No one gets all gussied up to sit around with her dying dog.  Sit around with her dying dog, I get.  Wearing a yellow blouse and bangle bracelets and fancy sunglasses and lipstick to do it, nuh-uh.  That said, I am somewhere in between when it comes to love for my pets.  I madly love my animals.  I miss and worry about them while I'm at work.  It gives me unspeakable joy to have my fluffy grey cat Polly come running into my room first thing each morning with sweet meows and ankle wraparounds just for me.  I daresay I love my animals more than Ralph loved Dogling.  I would be absolutely devastated if something happened to them and I know that from experience.  When Fiona was in the accident rendering her a one-eyed kitty (after two emergency trips to the vet, both of which were for days at a time), I was in complete, shaking hysterics.  When my old yellow lab Max was diagnosed with glaucoma and we were told he was completely blind in one eye and likely to lose his vision altogether, I was distraught.  Even so, I felt Monica was taking it a bit far.

Truth Or Dare:  I now think that I remember this story the best as it was the first one I picked up when I resolved to finish the book.  It's another one full of the what-ifs and could-have-beens.  Really, I guess that they all are stories about what could have been in their own ways.  But this one struck me in a way with which I decided that I wanted to know what happened to some people who used to be part of my life.  And maybe not even know.  Maybe just tell them I'm sorry, in the instance of the brand-new Physical Science teacher I had in 9th grade and tormented with the rest of my class, though she was nothing but nice to me.  I want to extend my apology for making her first year (ever?  just at my school?) much harder than it needed to be.  Then again, I want to write the nastiest of letters to my junior high History and Language Arts teacher, who was the meanest, sliest, loathsome old hag who ever darkened a school's doorway.  I want ask her what her problem was with me and I want to make her cry.  I won't.  But I want to.  I want to thank the student teacher from 7th or 8th grade who helped me through my Literature class.  I'd always loved reading but I was struggling to care about school with all of the changes happening and my hormones out of whack.  I want to tell her that she was wonderfully gentle in her encouragement and gave me hope in a time when I was feeling pretty hopeless (some of it being teacher #2's fault, I might add). 

How to Make an Apple Pie:  This is not a very usable recipe, unless you are willing to read it and write down only the steps, saving room for bits and pieces Flo puts in late in the game. However, it's a nice little letter and a vivid history.  I'm sure that if Ruthie were real, this would indeed be her favorite birthday gift.  In giving of ourselves, like Flo does in this letter, we often receive.  I also loved Flo's description of why books are better than movies: ""I remember how you and your sister would lie on your stomachs or your beds or on a blanket in the back yard in the summer and read and read and read and I could just about see the heat of your imaginations rising up off you like steam.  You can say what you want about movies, but to my mind they leave too little to the imagination, it is always better to read the book.  Make up your own pictures, they are always realer because they come from inside out, not the other way around."  Lovely.  

Sin City: Here's a lame ending to my blog... I liked this story but my only notes I took on it are that of mentioning that I absolutely love my charm bracelet and charm necklace for the very reason Rita likes the one she buys, already done up: it is a whole life represented in little bits.  In my case, it is my life.  Mine.  And that means something.  The sum of all of the stories come together on the last page in this line: "But time does not hold still, and Rita thinks now that it's a blessing, she thinks that what it means is that your life is free to make or unmake every day." 

And there you have it, my friends.  Another day, another story.  Or in this case, me dragging my feet for many days, and many little stories pieced together in one binding.