Dear Book Club Members,
With only a day to spare, I am writing the email up to the very onset of our next meeting, Wednesday, September 29 at 6:30 P.M. This meeting will take place at Ginnie’s house , Glenford Village, Chicora. We will be discussing the book Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. Butler people will leave from my house at 5:45 and from the old Eastland Diner, now Butler Heart Center, at 6:00 P.M.
In attendance at our August meeting were Barb, Becky, Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Lori, and Tammy. Junior member Makenzie, and “honorary male member” Vince also attended. (Now our Italian correspondents, we hope that Vince and Makenzie will allow us to live vicariously through them as we do the many characters we read about in our books.)
In October, we will be celebrating six years as an organization. As we recollect the discussions at our meetings from childbirth, sending kids off to college, marriages, becoming grandparents, to the passing of loved ones, breakups, and health problems; we have shared many changes in our lives. So often we have woven our feelings and experiences with those of the characters we have read, and we have learned from them either how to let go or how to go on. Change marks us, especially in unique ways as women. The August read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout was a perfect example of a woman’s continual efforts to deal with change.
Olive Kitteridge was a teacher by profession. No single profession deals with change more than teachers. When I first started teaching, I would become so attached to my students that I would literally sob when the school year was over. Knowing I would never share the daily routines of school life with that specific class of children ever again was heart breaking. Olive was hard and tough; however, I think she dealt with the graduation of students in a different way. By doting on her only son, tying him tightly to her hip, she gained a certain amount of control over change. We all tend to control the things we can. As change is always lurking, our natural instinct is to “batten down the hatch.”
Change can cause us to do foolish things, as we see when Olive becomes indignant with her new daughter-in-law. Childishly, she rakes through Dr. Sue’s closet to find a valuable sweater then takes a Magic Marker and smears ink down one arm. She even steals one of her daughter-in-law’s shoes. Olive did the unthinkable, what a sane mind would only dare to consider, she purposely carries out. It is not surprising, then, when Olive’s son Chris and Dr. Sue move to California. Olive and her husband Henry deal with their son Chris’s departure with shock. “Henry, if you met him at the post office, only lifted his mail as a hello. When you looked into his eyes, it was like seeing him through a screened porch.” Henry and Olive hadn’t been able to absorb the permanence of their son moving a way. As parents, we know that the most ideal scenario is to have our children live near us always, but as life is like a deck of cards, we must play with the hand we’re dealt. We can learn from Olive and Henry’s apathy.
The Kitteridges suddenly become quite old after Chris’s move to California. Henry’s sullenness may or may not have been the cause of his stroke, but Olive’s preoccupation with suicide, her own loneliness, shows the depth of depression that can result from life’s major changes. Needing to be needed, Olive later finds herself hoping to be of service to her son. “She remembered what hope was . . . that inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place that was new, and where she was needed. She had been asked to be a part of her son’s life.”
When Olive later discovers her relationship with Chris is barely hanging by a thread, she is still unwilling to let go of her petty issues. Olive angers us with her childlike stubbornness, and we learn from the mistakes she makes with her adult son. As our children grow older and we become wiser, we should recognize the fragility and delicateness of the time we spend with them. Olive “had not known what one should know; that day after day was unconsciously squandered.”
Despite Olive’s juvenile behaviors, she somehow comes out smelling like a rose in this book. To her credit, she clearly loved her husband Henry. In the end, “she was glad she’d never left Henry. She’d never had a friend as loyal, as kind, as her husband.” Olive reminds us to cherish our own spouses when she recalls the days when as middle-aged people Henry would hold her hand as they walked home. “Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely, they did not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.” We all take our marriages for granted, but we are reminded by Olive that time is running short.
In my final notes on Olive Kitteridge, I have to say I
like her. With Olive, you can be yourself. If you want to say “shit” around
Olive, you can say shit - shit, shit, shit! One of her favorite expletives, as
a matter of fact, is “Hell’s bells!” Olive is quite a card in her observations
of life and her sarcastic translations of the mundane. Her advice, for
instance, for succumbing to change is to think of life as a series of “big
bursts” and “little bursts.” “Big bursts are things like marriage or children,
intimacies that keep you afloat; but these big bursts hold unseen currents,
which is why you need the little bursts as well”: a yoga class, the BC3 gym, a
good movie, dinner out, a bike hike, a kayak trip, but most of all book club.
Sincerely yours in reading,
Tammy
P.S. Don't forget our Book Club Blog http://tsmithkcwwbc.blogspot.com/
