Life: It Goes On - November 29

Hope that those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving all enjoyed the day! Did you spend it with family or have a Friendsgiving celebration? We spent time with both sides of the family; missed those that weren't there but sure had fun with those that were.

Heading through that tunnel there leaving autumn behind and straight into winter this week. Thanksgiving got cut short for three of the kids thanks to winter road conditions coming in and work schedules on Friday. And that was just the start of it - today we are scheduled to get freezing rain followed by the chance of snow starting today into Tuesday. Already ready for winter to be over!


This Week I'm:

Listening To: I'll be continuing on with Cry, The Beloved Country for my book read but I'm also mixing in some podcasts, including Book Riot's "All The Books," and I'm easing myself into Christmas music.

It all started with planes flying without cockpits closed
and Lt. George Gay, who was rescued from the
ocean - thanks, Midway for all of the laughs!

Watching: Guardians of the Galaxy; college football, basketball, and volleyball; and Midway, a Thanksgiving eve tradition. A movie meant to be serious (just ask my history teacher dad) but one my siblings and I found hilarious the first time it chanced to come on. Amazing what a couple of cocktails will do. Hence, my siblings in the pic below with their pillow flotation devices. Next year, we're thinking we'll add Gone With The Wind. My mom even said she'll get us curtains from the Goodwill for props. Now just to figure out how to stage the burning of Atlanta without actually burning down the house.

Reading: Still Kafka On The Shore and Extra Virgin (as I try to get in one more nonfic read in November). But it's slow going - I just don't have the reading mojo right now even though I'm enjoying the books.

Making: Pork tenderloin, broccoli/cheese/rice casserole, pumpkin muffins, Starbucks coffee cake, brownies, spaghetti and meatballs, peanut butter granola. I'm contemplating throwing something in the crockpot today to have ready for tomorrow. I have a feeling we'll be very late getting home from work.

Planning: On putting up the holiday decorations this week. The bins are upstairs but I just can't quite make myself open them yet. Might need to pick up some eggnog, pop in the Elf dvd, and mix things up a bit this year to get myself in the spirit.

Grateful for: Traditions like the Turkey Trot (grandkids are working on the puzzle to find their prize in the middle picture), field goal kicking, and Black Friday shopping with the ladies (which is as much about the time together as it is about the actual shopping).

Enjoying: Seeing my kids having fun with their cousins. Seems like only yesterday they were all underfoot and now they are all great adults!

Feeling: Like this next month is going to fly by - so much to be done. Just hoping we make sure to take time to enjoy the special activities that will be going on and find time to spend with friends.

Looking forward to: Sharing the crafts we've been working on. But not until after Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the United States!

Let us all take time today, and everyday, to remember all we have to be thankful for and to care for those who are not as fortunate.

Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt

Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt
Published February 2010 by Harper Collins Publishers
Source: bought for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
When Roger's daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition at age thirty-eight, Roger and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies.

Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, play-dates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death, they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law and the tenacity and skill of his wife, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

My Thoughts:
One of my favorite books of 2013 was Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. It was not just wonderfully written, it also showed me what real grief was like, not just what the so-called experts teach us about it. I'd heard about Rosenblatt's Making Toast on NPR shortly after it was released and was intrigued. Still, just how many books about grief does one need to read. The answer is at least two.

Long past the days of diapers, car pools, and dance lessons, Roger and Ginny had to master their grandchildrens' schedules and reaccustom themselves to things about small children they'd forgotten when they moved into their daughter's home after her death. "There were playdates to arrange, birthday party invitations to respond to, school forms to fill out." The two of them had to find ways to be helpful, not step on their son-in-law's toes, and help their grandchildren deal with their loss all while trying to process their own grief.

"We begin to fit in to Amy's and Harris's house. We knew the house only as visiting family, having stayed for a few days at a time, perhaps a week. Now it is ours without belonging to us, familiar and strange."

Along the way, they were helped by an enormous group of people - their friends and family, co-workers, the parents of the children's friends, and Ligaya, Bubbies' nanny who said to them "You are not the first to go through such a thing, and you are better able to handle it than most." Which is true. A group organized enough dinners for the family to last for six months, a scholarship was set up in Amy's name with donations from friends and colleagues, a bench was dedicated in Amy's honor at the children's school.

Even so, each member of the family had to deal with their loss and grief in their own way. Ginny wanted an answer as to why Amy died; Roger felt that knowing more would only deepen his anger. Ginny did not view the open casket before the funeral; in retrospect Roger felt she may have been right. Harris kept his emotions in check, Roger remained angry for months, Ginny felt guilt about taking over her daughter's role. Along the way, Rosenblatt remains honest about his feelings and shares what he has learned from the professional their family did turn to. In teaching the family about grief, she also gave them permission to have their feelings and hope. She spoke of "three elements of death difficult to come to terms with: its universality, its inevitability, and the fact that the dead are unable to function."

Catherine Andrews, the children's psychotherapist, told Rosenblatt that "one of the delusions of people in grief is that once a year passes, things will start to look up. She reminds us of what she told Harris at the outset, that grief is a lifelong process for everyone of us...As for the demarcation of a year, "Things actually get worse...you...are now realizing the hard truth that this is how life will be from now on. One year is no time at all." Something to bear in mind in our own lives as we deal with our own grief and that of others.

"This is our life. Without Harris and the children to fill in, we would be sitting in Quogue, manufacturing conversations between dark silences. I know we are creating a diversion for the children as well as a differently constructed life for them. Yet we are doing the same thing for ourselves. When Amy died, Ginny and I never had to confer as to where we wanted to be. We had to ask Harris, but not each other. Now, out we to ask him again? We decide that he will tell us when he wants us to go. And until then, my original answer of "forever" [when granddaughter Jessie asked him on the first day how long they were staying, he replied "forever"] stands."

Life: It Goes On - November 23

Good thing I don't call this the Sunday Salon any more - seems I'm getting worse and worse about getting it posted on Sunday! Or even Monday.

Mini-me and his girl decided to spend the afternoon with us on Sunday and, while we love having them over, it did put the rest of my day behind schedule. And by schedule, I mean the very long list of things I'm still trying to work through.

Also, Christmas cards took five or ten times longer than I planned. They always do. You'd think I'd learn. But I did get them ordered - now to get them picked up, addressed and mailed!

This Week I'm:

Listening To: Cry, The Beloved Country - beautifully read. I'm enjoying it a great deal.

Watching: The new Mad Max movie, "Fargo," "The Family Stone," "The Voice," and football, of course.

Reading: Still enjoying Kafka On The Shore, which I'm reading with Ti of Book Chatter but I did take a break to read Roger Rosenblatt's memoir, Making Toast: A Family Story, about life after the death of his daughter.

Making: Spaghetti pie, corned bread, chili - it's fall, time to bring out the heavier fare.

Planning: Thanksgiving with both sides of our family. The kids will all have to make a quick trip of it, with having to work on Friday. As for me, I'll be spending a good deal of Thursday scanning the ads for the annual plunge into Black Friday shopping with my sisters and nieces.

Grateful for: A snowfall Friday that was pretty but left no snow on the roads. Because I had a hair appointment first thing Saturday morning and my roots could not have gone another week! I feel ten years younger.

Enjoying: Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in my office and Miss H's "new" room finally looking like her room.

Feeling: Tired. There is too much to do and not enough hours in the day.

Looking forward to: Family fun, cranberries, whipped cream with pumpkin pie, the biggest bowl of mashed potatoes you've ever seen, and our special Thanksgiving traditions. I only hope the sleet doesn't arrive before the annual field goal kicking contest can take place!

Nonfiction November: Nontraditional Nonfiction

This week's prompt is hosted by Rebecca of I'm Lost In Books. Rebecca challenged us to focus on the nontraditional side of nonfiction.

The vast majority of the nonfiction I read is traditional publication - your basic hardcover and paperback print books. But I have tried a number of other formats:

Graphic: I've read a couple of graphic memoirs. In fact, my first ever graphic book (other than the comics I read as a child) was a graphic memoir. It was Marjane Satrapi's Perselopis, though, that helped me really connect with this nontraditional medium.

Audiobook: Ditto with a couple of nonfiction audiobooks, including Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes. Since I do all of my audiobook listening in the car, this is my least favorite way to "read" a work of nonfiction. It's too hard to focus, you can't stop and look up more information as you come across something you'd like to learn more about, and you miss out on any added pieces of the book, such as addendum. If I listened at home, I might enjoy nonfiction audiobooks more.

Ebooks: This might now be my favorite way to read nonfiction books since it's so easy to hit up the internet for more information as you go, including easy access to pictures. Another of Vowell's books, The Wordy Shipmates was my first Nook nonfiction. In fact, 20% of the books I have downloaded to my Nook are nonfiction reads. I'd love to get to a couple of those yet this month but with the holiday around the corner, I'm likely to get less reading down for the next couple of weeks rather than more.

Nonfiction Collections: For me, this means essays. Essays are something I've never read until the past couple of years. I've pretty much stuck to writers, so far, that had a good record for me before I even picked up their collections, Ann Patchett, Nora Ephron, and Anna Quindlen. Still, it's a type of nonfiction I'm definitely eager to read more of.

Clearly, I don't read enough nonfiction, and absolutely not enough nontraditional nonfiction, to be anything approaching an expert. But I'm dabbling and learning what I like. And while I'm not opposed to pushing myself to try new things, I think a lot of the enjoyment of reading comes from finding books that fall into your sweet spot.