Paths Leading to Masada

This month's book club book was The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman.  One of our club members had visited Masada last year; she was the one who chose the book.  For her the story came to life, and she could retrace her memory of that place.  Having seen this book advertised in the Barnes & Noble and Amazon email newsletters I was intrigued by the plot description: four woman's journey of love, pain and secrets that led them all to Masada.

Toni Morrison described the story as harrowing.  A reviewer on Goodreads.com described it as bleak.  I have  ventured past the half way point but decided to stop.  To put it simply, it is a sad tale.  There were a few  points in the story where a spark of happiness was likely to be kindled but alas no.  The story is told from the perspective of four different women, each retelling her story.  The details differed somewhat, but the narrative voices were not distinct.  However, the book is a grand feat.  Very wordy and imbued with LOTS of sensory details.  I wanted to like the book, but that is not to say I dislike it...at least I don't strongly dislike it.  It did not capture my curiosity as I had anticipated.  Perhaps it was because after having completed sixty percent of the book (that's roughly 307 pages) I found the women's stories to be rather repetitive.

Sarah Fay of The New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote: 

The abundance of overstatement and clumsy description minimizes the impact of actual dramatic events. When the women take lovers, steal babies, cast spells, their actions feel contrived. Although, toward the end of the novel, one of the characters explains the uniformity of expression by declaring that she is passing on the stories of those who did not survive, this seems equally unconvincing.

In her acknowledgments, Hoffman reminds us that she is neither a historian nor a religious scholar and declares that the novel is meant to “give voice” to the women who participated in the Jewish struggle, whose stories “have often gone unwritten.” I have no doubt that “The Dovekeepers” was conceived as a worthy project, but good research and good intentions don’t necessarily yield good novels.

Melissa Allison of The Seattle Times wrote:

"The Dovekeepers" is a stunningly crafted work about a tragic and heroic time. It also showcases Hoffman's immense gift for telling stories about women, magic and complex relationships. Perhaps "The Dovekeepers" is the masterpiece she has been working toward all along.

Lesley McDowell of The Independent wrote:

It is a story full of contemporary resonances, from the fleeing of families away from the fighting, the building of a giant wall round the Jewish fortress, and the atrocities committed by both sides during fighting. It is primarily a woman's story, though, in which childbirth and love play the largest parts, and mothers and daughters populate the landscape, even when those mothers are absent. When Hoffman first began publishing, her world – in which women organised themselves against patriarchal laws with secret codes and signs, ancient spells and rites – was less familiar. Since then, this alternative view of female power has become more commonplace, almost a cliché. 

Whether Hoffman is conscious of that, or whether she is responding to tougher times, she effectively sets both Yael (who sees off a leopard by herself) and Aziza (who goes into the heart of the battle) against the feminine power of Shirah. These dove-keepers are not a happy alliance, cohesive in their womanly tasks. They possess different histories, but are forced to confront a common enemy. But this is still a feminised version of this moment in history, and Hoffmann has made it a real tour de force. 

Quietness

There's a certain sense of quietness that I am quite protective of especially during this time of the year.  The holidays are descending upon us.  As if under a delirious spell people dash here and there as if mad.  The things people say and do are more contradictory now than at any time of the year.  Commercials announce that buying a new Honda will guarantee a great Christmas.  Toys R Us flash toys in front of children so that all they can think about is what they don't yet have.  Church marquees announce peace on earth and joy to the world, but adults are stressed over work, relationships and wants.  Banks offer refinancing specials in order to give you more cash for the holidays.  It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year will soon be playing on radio stations as people wait outside in line on Black Friday for shops to open and then push and shove their way into the store to grab what they want.  Seriously?  

There's a show on CBS called Blue Bloods, starring Tom Selleck.  It's a story about a family of New York City cops.  Last week's show was their Thanksgiving episode.  The grandfather and daughter-in-law were in the kitchen making Thanksgiving dinner.  Grandfather said that Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, because there was no pressure to buy gifts; family could just spend time together and eat.

I agree.  Thanksgiving is the national dinner party day.  Families from California to Maine will cook a big meal with side dishes outnumbering the main dish seven to one (if not more).  The host home will be crowded with people and infused with so many aromas that pets go crazy waiting for scraps.

But it's a festive time.  When the turkey is done and the table is set, that's when the hustle and bustle comes to a halt.  When there's so much to eat that your plate can't hold everything, when you're sitting with people you love and care about; it's a good setting for giving thanks.  

Giving thanks is something I don't want to lose sight of...and that sense of quietness (meaning an undisturbedness from the holiday chaos). 

The North Wind

The North wind is blowing.  It picked up speed in the late afternoon as if in a hurry to get somewhere.  As I walked outside to take out the trash the wind reminded me of the movie Chocolat.  When the North wind blew, it carried Vianne and her daughter to different towns where they would set up shop for a while and make decadent chocolate.

Perhaps I could say the wind blew in my friend and the dinner she purchased from Panera, soups and salad.  Like Vianne, she, too, came bearing chocolate, dark chocolate to be exact, and plump red raspberries.  We both are anticipating winter and all the delights it brings: sweaters and warm coats, cozy fires, hearty stews and spice cookies, apple cider and mulled wine.  As far as we're concerned, the North wind can keep blowing for a while.  

Collecting Stories

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and once again I am ill-prepared.  Last year, like this year, I had great hopes of preparing well in advance.  Come November I would have an outline of a story, I told myself.  Yeah, well...  Here it is once again, and I am still not prepared.

Last Tuesday evening my aunts and uncles came over with boxes and envelopes of photos of Dad.  Aunt Evelyn had a wealth of black and white pictures.  Aunt Mildred had images of us and Dad that were pretty funny.  We swapped stories.  Dad loved to tell stories.  He and his brother and sister grew up on a farm where they milked cows, fed pigs, mowed hay, harvested corn.  By the time he was twelve he drove a pick-up truck back and forth from the house to the fields.  In the winter he, his parents and siblings would wake up early, hours before dawn to tend to the animals, while his mother would be inside the house cooking a big breakfast.  The children would trudge a mile or two in the snow to school.  His brother, my uncle Bob, would end up eating the cake his mother packed for him in his lunch pail during the morning walk.  In the summer they played outside by the pond or in the fields.  

The black and white photographs are a glimpse into the past.  I can just imagine a movie picture screen, big and white, in a large theatre.  The lights dim, and the movie reel begins to roll.  The film flickers; you can hear the distant click-click and soon a steady hum.  In the darkened theatre you see the beam of light and dust dancing in its glow.  As the film steadies, the movie begins.  Black and white.  Sun-drenched afternoon.  A tall lanky boy with a tan cowboy hat.  A younger brother, running to the house for lemonade.  A little sister with golden curls damp with perspiration.  A mother washing her hands by the water pump.  Her husband reluctant to stand in front of the camera.  The photographer finally corals everyone, and there, set against a back drop of trees and a barn, the family with three children stood before the picture-taker.

Many, many years later Dad carved out a pond behind those trees to the left and built a comfortable home for his wife and children.  It was there outside my bedroom window that I planted a Kentucky coffee bean tree during my fourth grade year in observance of Arbor Day.  The tree is still there.  It's one of the first trees to shed its leaves during the autumn season.

As the days and years go by we will collect more stories and more pictures.  It's just odd to think that Dad won't be in any of the new ones.  Then again...as we live out those stories we'll carry him with us inside our hearts.

Pieces of the Day

Saturday, October 29, 2011

The doings of the day drain us reminding us of the space that is vacant.

The house is quiet save for the humming of the refrigerator.  Bright late afternoon sunlight filter through the window where I positioned the ironing board this morning.  Mom is asleep.  I sat with her and held her hand as tears welled behind closed lids.  Dad had a bad dream one night, she told me.  He didn’t want to talk about it.  Perhaps he knew more than they did of what was coming, she said.  

Perhaps.

It is autumn here.  The timber behind the house is vibrant with colors.  Near the front drive is a tree swathed in yellow.  This is a magnificent season.  The flowers that draped Dad’s casket were red gerbera daisies and another flower with layers and layers of petals that fanned tight and compact like a powder puff, yellow tiger lilies, roses and orchids and peach roses.  I had suggested we do an arrangement using fall colors.  A lady at Mom’s church created the arrangement and donated it to us.

Tuesday, October 25, when I landed at the airport, I felt the hand of reality press on my shoulders.  It wasn’t heavy, but I knew its touch.  When Matt, my brother, stepped out of the vehicle and came around to greet me, I cried.  I cried, too, as Mom held me.  Kevin and Susan, friends from my mother’s church, took us to Houlihan’s to eat before we left the city.  We often stopped there as I flew out or flew in to the city.  Dad would take us, and he knew where to go.  We passed the booth where we normally sat.  Lunch was at first awkward.  I was acquainted with Kevin and Susan when I attended Mom’s church, but I did not know them very well.  Perhaps also the news of Dad’s passing was still fresh and we were working on getting acclimated to it.  Every now and then Mom would call out to him mournfully as to why he left her. 

Life is not always filled with certainty.  We expect one outcome only to find that what transpired was not according to plan.  I wanted very much for Dad to be restored in his body, for him to walk again and do those things he had always done.  He had become so frail and thin.  Only a miracle could raise him.  

We grieve because he is not tangibly here.  We grieve because he did not gain back the weight he lost.  We grieve because he did not get to walk again and do those things he longed to do.  There is a vacant space in the house.  The hospice bed that was positioned next to the French double doors that led to the deck is no longer here.  The bottles of medicine that crowded the kitchen counter are gone.  As is the wheelchair.  As is Dad.

I did cry because of the suddenness of it all.  But I take comfort in knowing that he is no longer imprisoned in a broken body.  That was the saddest part, to see him, who for as long as I’ve known him was so strong and independent, frail and unable to do things for himself.  Knowing that he is free is a relief.  I will miss him; I do miss him, but as my brother so aptly said, he lives on inside us.  

We stopped at the funeral home.  We had to decided on the service, when it will be, the flowers, who will speak, who will sing, who will be the pallbearers.  We had to pick a casket, choose between a box or a vault, select the program and thank you cards and swallowed hard once the total was tallied.  

We chose a beautiful casket of warm wood. 

That evening Mom asked if she could sleep in the same room with me.  She said she would sleep on the floor.  No such thing, I declared.  She will sleep in the bed.  In the middle of the night, I balanced between the state of sleep and wakefulness.  Pieces of the day lay afloat on the surface so that I was conscious of where I was, but when I felt something next to me that was not a part of my body, I swat at it.  It did not leave, and by this time I panicked, swatting more vigorously.  Only when Mom spoke did I remember she was beside me.

Dad & Matt

Pictures of the Past

Today promised to be a full one as we nailed down the last of the details.  We needed to be at the funeral home to give the director pictures we had selected of Dad to be shown in the presentation before the service.  There were a lot of good ones.  There was one of him as a baby; he had super chubby cheeks.  Another one of him when he was six or seven holding his baby sister like he would a large bowl of salad.  There was one of him with his brother and some cousins, all of whom were lanky with wind blown hair and lopsided grins.  There was one of him in the 80's with his brother and sister and their spouses and little children on the beach in Mexico.  They drove from the States to Mexico the day after Christmas.  Then there is the wedding picture and the one of him holding my brother as a toddler while riding the lawn mower.  My favorite one is of him waving while we were in Oregon in 2010.  He had a happy smile, and he wore a straw hat.  That one will be the last picture shown.

 

Later in the afternoon we went back to the funeral home to view the body.  I entered the room with trepidation.  As his body lay in the casket I am amazed by the fact that he didn't look like the dad I have stamped on my memory.  The dad that I remember was strong, vibrant, sometimes ornery and can fix anything.  That is the memory that I will hold on to.

 

Tomorrow is the funeral.   I am typing this as my mother irons her dress, and my brother's closest friend is playing the piano.  Our minds are so full, our bodies so tired.  Mom wants my brother and me to say a few words regarding Dad during the service tomorrow.  I told my brother he should tell the story when Dad demonstrated how to swing like Tarzan from a tree vine.  My brother was five years old at the time, and after the second demonstration the tree vine broke and so did Dad's leg.  It was not a happy moment at the time, but our family still gets a kick out of hearing that story.

 

Good night, world.  Good night, Dad.

 

 

The Day

The words I did not want to hear were spoken today.

 

My mother called me at 4:30 a.m. and told me that Dad had passed away. 

 

It happened too soon; we did not expect it so.  I cried until my head hurt.  A dear friend came over to be with me while I gathered my thoughts.  Then it was time to plan.  I called the airline, purchased a ticket, made coffee, and packed.  Within hours we were out the door headed to the airport.  As I sat on the plane, I kept my head turned towards the window.  Occasionally a tear or two would slip.  Dad's passing was like the gunshot at a race signalling the start of many changes that will take place rapidly.  Just the thought of seeing my family at the airport induced more tears.  

The day became progressively more challenging as we made preparations for the funeral.  Oh my god, it was almost overwhelming.  Just when it got too much for Mom, I stepped in with the decisions.  When it got too much for me, my brother stepped in.  But you know what, even the funeral director contributed.  He gave us the sign-in book, the memorial cards and the thank you cards for free.  He asked me which collection would I choose.  I picked the one with the painting of Thomas Kincaid's garden steps.  I could image Dad walking again and going up those steps to a place far grander.  Once I told the director my preference, he then said he wanted to give us the set at no charge.  That brought more tears to my eyes.

This evening the aunts and uncles came over with their treasure troves of pictures.  We scoured through photos and laughed, retelling familiar stories and remembering ones we had forgotten.  It helped Mom to have many people at the house.  Now that everyone has left, reality reminded her of what took place much earlier today.  She will get through it.  We will get through it.  But it will take time.

Rest in peace, Dad.  I'm here...but it's not the same without you.  I love you.