March Reading List

Eleven books read in March:

The Tenth Hour by Jodi Picoult  - Still reading my way through the Picoult novels because no matter the subject, she is always worth the read.

A Divided Loyalty by Charles Todd - This is book #22 in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series. I will continue reading these as long as they continue writing them. This one was especially good.

The Flight Girls by Noelle Salazar - is her debut novel. I totally enjoyed this novel about the women who trained to be WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) during WWII. I have read one other book about this subject and am in awe of those young women, the chances they took and their service to our nation.

The Wicked Redhead by Beatriz Williams is the second of her The Wicked City series. This is a new author for me. The story was okay; not sure I would read more of her books.

Under Occupation is book #15 in Alan Furst's Night Soldiers series. It is also the first book of his I've read. I see my library does have a few more by him which I will most likely check out.

Strangers She Knows by Christina Dodd is the third book in her Cape Charade series and the first I've read. My library does have some of her other novels and I will keep her on the list of my possible reads.

Smoke Screen by Terri Blackstock is a first-time author for me but our library has many of her titles so, like the above, I'll put her on my authors to be read list.

The Giver of Stars is Jojo Moyes' latest novel and the second book I've read about the Pack-Horse Librarians of Kentucky, the women who delivered reading materials to remote families during the depression. I really like Moyes as an author and I love books based on historical fact.

The Burning Air by English writer Erin Kelly is a well plotted story about a stranger exacting vengeance upon a family for years without their ever knowing, with a final act meant to shatter their family forever.

The Vendetta Defense is my first Lisa Scottoline novel. I have found a new writer to read my way through and as prolific as she is, I'll have reading material for some time.

Bygones by LaVyrle Spencer - The preceding five books were the last I checked out before my library closed (except for curbside pickup services) due to the Covid-19 regulations so I have delved into the boxes of books I have which I haven't read in years.
The first book of Spencer's that I read was Morning Glory. I remember being in Mpls/St. Paul to visit my daughter, going to a mall and buying a paperback version. I liked it so much that I began reading all of Spencer's books, buying most of them in paperback.
When Kari completed her years at Macalester College in St. Paul, she started working at Barnes and Noble in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. Kari learned that LaVyrle Spencer would be at her store for a book signing and let me know. I went up for the weekend, met Ms. Spencer and got my own autographed copy of her 1992 book, Bygones.

I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted with more of the favorites I saved when we down-sized and moved here going on twelve years ago. It'll be like reading them for the first time. 😉

Not Only the Ides of March

Thanks to William Shakespeare and Julius Caesar, we learned to "Beware the Ides of March". For me, I needed to beware the entire month not just the 15th. In fact I was looking forward to the Ides this year as that was the day we were going to help celebrate Brynley's 3rd birthday.

It was the first week of March when I started getting the watery, itchy eyes. I tried so hard not to rub them, but just like four years ago, I have had a month of dealing with spring allergies. Even before the Covid-19 crisis and the edicts to avoid crowds and self-isolate, I was already doing so. I made it to a grocery store three times - the 6th, 12th and 19th. I even quit going out on the deck for fresh air as the runny itchy eyes seemed worse afterward.

Missing Brynley's birthday party was the biggest disappointment. Thank goodness her mommy, granddaughter Katrina, sent me some pictures.

My eyes have gotten better the past three days; yesterday they hardly watered or itched at all. Early this morning I took the trash out and fed the birds. I felt SO GOOD to be outside again.

And to see how nearly ready the daffies are to opening. There are still no confirmed cases of the virus in our county (though there are some in surrounding counties) so I am considering going to the store for a few things tomorrow.

There were no St. Patrick's Day celebrations this year but I had a very nice surprise on the 17th when I received a small package from my niece Christine.

She sent me this beautiful scarf with illustrations based on the Book of Kells. Now if only I were adept at scarf tying!

This is the card and note she sent along with the scarf: "I found this scarf in a second-hand store & it made me think of you! It was less than the cost of a card so I thought I would send it your way to let you know you popped in my head & made me smile - I hope it made you smile."

The scarf was redolent with the most wonderful fragrance. In subsequent e-mails I learned that it was her favorite perfume, Egyptian Goddess Oil. I'm thinking of getting some and remembering how I always wore Coty's Wild Musk Oil back in the day.

Christine's gift and Brynley's picture were the bright spots of March. Last Tuesday when the phone rang my cousin Glen's name showed up on caller ID. I knew it was going to be bad news and it is. His sister Glenna had just learned she has cancer throughout her body - bones, lungs, brain. They have given her 4-6 weeks to live. This news has hit me harder than the pandemic news because it is more personal; more immediate. My cousins were my first friends. We grew up with one another. And now I won't even be able to attend her funeral or see her to say goodbye. I regret not going to see her those times she invited me to stop by her lake home. But that's the way, isn't it? We always think there will be time.
Until there isn't.

What To Read?

I had five library books on hand when the library closed except for curbside pickup. I decided when I finished reading those five I would do something I've been meaning to do for years - go back and read Mom's diaries.

Beginning with this one - "An Old Fashioned Keepbook - Our Old Fashioned Country Diary for 1983".

It is a very attractive diary with pictures and quotes on every two-page layout. Mom used the small left hand space to record temperatures, wind direction, sky conditions, basically the weather for the day.
In the larger right hand spaces she wrote about her day - what she did, who she went to see or who might have stopped by, who she wrote to or got a letter from, when she changed the furnace filter and when the fuel oil barrel or propane at the stock tank was filled and what it cost. Daily life.

On June 9 as her neighbor Bryan was helping her take the ring out of the boar's nose, she got her finger ripped open by a tusk. It required 10 stitches and help with the chores and milking for several weeks. I went over every morning and evening to be her chore girl. It was on those morning's, having some toast and, for me what would usually have been tea, I learned to drink coffee because that is what she drank. Forty years old and I became a coffee drinker. I had to have lots of sugar and alot of the milk I had just worked for in mine in order to drink it, but eventually I came to like it and then depend on it, gradually dropping the milk and sugar.

This diary also had a two page spread for each of the holidays. Some of them are still blank but on this one, for Halloween, she kept track of the little trick-or-treaters, mostly neighborhood kids, and what she handed out - 'Snickers candy bars'.

At the back were pages for 'Weddings & Anniversaries of 1983' (blank), 'Graduations, Promotions & Milestone Days of 1983' (blank) and this one - 'Birthdays' with only one entry, the birth of the last of her grandchildren, Ian Michael born April 21.

I, my younger children, Kari and Preston, older son Douglas and his son Brock were usually there several times a week, even after Mom got the stitches out of her finger. (Doug had temporary custody of his son that year.)

Reading my mother's entries brought back so many memories. So many that I got out my journal from that time (83-84) and reread it. Thirty-seven years ago - moving from 'the little house' over to 'Mrs. Elliot's' and back again. It was an unsettled time in my life, but oh, the memories.

Grandson Brock and my sheep at Mrs. Elliot's

This diary of Mom's begins with the last five days of December, '82. I was hoping she had recorded who gave this unique little book to her, but alas. Does any family member remember? It might have even been me. I can't remember, but it is the kind of diary I would have chosen for her. This morning I found my Christmas ideas list from 1982 and while her name isn't on that same page, two pages before I wrote, "Mom-Diary?".

What other memories will be triggered as I continue reading her diaries?

Did You Get What You Wanted?

         Late Fragment

And did you get what 
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself 
beloved on the earth.
         Raymond Carver

On the Anniversary of His Death

For the Anniversary of My Death
            (W. S. Merwin)

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

American poet William Stanley Merwin was born in 1927 and died at his home in Hawaii one year ago today. His poem 'For the Anniversary of My Death was published in 1993.