The Thing About Book Clubs

Mimi hosted book club tonight in her semi-empty house. Her furniture is enroute to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina so we draped ourselves on the familiar loaner couch and chairs that have graced all of our homes here at one time or another during the coming and going phases, helped her clear out her liquor cabinet, and talked about Half Broke Horses, Jeanette Walls' biographical novel about her grandmother Lily who grew up on ranches in Texas and New Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century.

The book reminded me of Sandra Day O'Connor's autobiography, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American West, which I read aloud to my father-in-law a few years ago.  Stuart also grew up on a cattle ranch in the American West and pronounced O'Connor's book "authentic".  He would surely say the same about Half Broke Horses. It is incredible to imagine that less than one hundred years ago a 14-year old girl was riding a horse across two states to take a teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse.  These days we're afraid to let our 14-year old daughters walk half a mile to school on their own.  What happened?


You see a bush; I see a weed

 Book clubs force me to read books I would never in a million years pull off a shelf if left to my own choices. With the notable exceptions of Three Cups of Tea and Eat, Love, Pray, I have never resented the time spent on a book club assignment because reading books chosen by other people forces me to see life from new perspectives. New perspectives appeal to me.  That might be why I've enjoyed living in Japan for four of the past five years.

Tomorrow I'm going to see Ishii-san, her mother's health permitting, and admire some flowers while catching up on my friend's life since her mother was released from the hospital a week ago, five weeks after back surgery.  Her mother is 83 and her father is 90.  I wish my parents had lived to be that old, and I remember the joys, sorrows, trials, and tribulations of caring for my father-in-law when he was in his nineties.  How will our perspectives be the same?  How will they differ?  Is there some sort of universal help I can offer?

I'm sure the answers lie within the pages of a book.  Unfortunately, I haven't read that one yet.