The Book Club Drama

 

Sometimes I wonder why I keep blogging. Surely I’ve said everything worth saying then I remind myself it’s exercise for my brain and it comes in handy when I want to look up something I’ve done in the past, something with details too fuzzy to recall without my blog's search feature. The most recent search of my blog was to find a review I wrote for a book we were about to discuss in my new book club here at the continuum care complex. I didn’t remember reading The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Pkhilipp Sendker, a saga that GoodReads says is “a poignant and inspirational love story” until I got about twenty pages into it. Then it hit me, my extreme dislike of the book I’d read for another book club and how everyone else in my old club loved it. 

This time there was one person who agreed with my criticism of how the author used a character to be an omniscient narrator who delivered long, rambling monologues about the backstories of a half dozen other characters including their innermost thoughts---stuff that no one character had any way of knowing. The other woman who said that bothered her too was a retired librarian which is probably why she knew what the heck I was ranting about (in a nice, sweet old lady but cynical kind of way). We both thought the book needed restructuring to make the author, not a character the omniscient narrator. I can't move past glaring flaws like that and apparently a couple dozens publishers turned the book down for presumably the same rookie mistake so there's that to rub on my lack of literary forgiveness wart.

Despite the impression you might have of our book club the discussion was well balanced with everyone having their say and we all agreeing at the end that having different opinions makes for good discussions. But for me it ended on a sour note when a brand new member to the group asked what kind of books I like since I didn’t like that “wonderful piece of literature” and I couldn’t name a single author or book and I was finally forced to admit I read a lot of trashy romances but I stupidly just had to add, “And I’ve studied a lot of how-to-write books.” She replied in an oh-so-sweet voice, “Maybe one day you’ll get published.” I’m surrounded by teachers and professors in that club who’ve never treated me like a literary flea for liking romances, but her comment and smirk seemed condescending. I felt like I was ten years old and I wanted to blurt out that I’ve had 12-15 articles published at Associated Content before they got bought out by Yahoo. But I kept that to myself and got tongue-tied for doing it.

The newbie must have taken my floundering as a call for help because she suggested a mystery series I should try to “improve my appreciation for literature” in a genre I was not aware was even a genre---‘magical realism’. Apparently the ‘Heartbeats’ book is classified as magical realism. Back in my apartment I googled ‘magical realism’ and sure enough it is a thing---never too old to learn. 

It dawned on me that I just finished reading a mystery that could be classified as magical realism and cynical me didn't like that book either. The main character was an FBI agent who could see red circles on the ground where bodies were buried and where evidence was stored between walls of a house, etc. All the leads to solve the case came, not from good detective work but by her magical power. If only life was that simple. Whip out a magical power and crimes get solved by human bloodhounds, and no daughter is left to wonder if the father she loved is dead or alive when in fact he just ran off to play Romeo to his Juliet. (‘Heartbeats’ was basically a Romeo and Juliet plot with Burmese folklore thrown in.)

The next book up for discussion in our club is one I picked for the group to read---The Death and Life of the Great Lakes---so I hope the newbie is there to see I read more than books written for flea brains. But the book club discussion continued later on at dinner, minus the newbie when a couple who had witnessed me getting flustered was asked what the ‘Great Lakes’ book is about and the guy says, “Jean picked it and it’s a romance, isn’t it Jean?” I like this guy and so I took it for the teasing it was meant it to be and I replied, “Yes, with a little mystery and sc-fi thrown in.” The three of us laughed while the woman who asked the question looked on confused. She’s not in our book club but she often reads the same books we do, she just doesn’t want to be committed to the formal club discussions. She’s not the only one who does that so in any given month there are 12-16 people walking around campus who we can talk 'book' with---“How far did you get?” “Do you like it?” “Does so and so die?” It’s pretty cool to have fictional characters to gossip about guilt free. 

And let me just add that the hour and half we spend at book club is my one of my favorite times of the month. I love the debates that sometimes happen, the sharing of personal anecdotes that relate to the story, the challenge of thinking on my feet and, yes, even when I fail to think on my feet like I did this month. Even when what happens in book club doesn't stay in book. ©

Wild Ducks, Wild Man and Wild Conversations on Campus

 I went down to visit the swans today after lunch but they were on the other side of the lake, which is a mile walk to get there and back. So I sat on a bench 15 feet from the water’s edge and not more than a minute later four Brown-Teal Ducks waddled by me and dove into the lake right in front of me. Seconds later a mother Mallard and her six babies came marching by and the babies got herded into a stone-lined creek that meanders through the campus and ends up by the underground parking garage entrance. The stream was cast in dark shadows and the babies seemed to be taking a bath. It was Saturday so why not.

As I tracked the swans as they moved ever so slowly closer I was thinking, “Why would someone put a pole right in the perfect viewing spot for lake gazing?” Then I noticed a 7-8 inch pulley with a chain attached to the pole and my eyes followed the chain upward. It ended with a 16 unit Purple Martin condo. I’d been to that bench before but I’ve been so busy watching for goose poop I don’t want to step in that I hadn’t bothered to see any higher up than the cattails along the shore.

Speaking of water foul poop, the maintenance man put on quite the show this week. He is tasked with scraping goose poop off the sidewalks every day and he was using a golf cart to get around when he encountered a group of 35+ geese in our parking lot which isn’t far from the lake the way the crow flies (or in this case a goose flies) but it's quite a long away from the lake if you walk around the building to get there. Our poor maintenance man was chasing on foot and by golf cart all the geese, trying to round them up so they’d all go in one direction---back towards the lake. Those of us who were on our decks were having a good time watching and worrying at one point he’d tip the golf cart over or run it into a tree. But the harder he worked the more the birds tried to scatter in all directions. Of course we had to heckle him and he shouted back, “As soon as those babies can fly there’s going to be an all out war!” 

I’m from the camp that enjoys seeing and hearing the ducks, geese and the bullfrogs but there is another camp that would love to see them all shot or poisoned which is against the law. Some hate them because of the poop and others because their honking, quacking and bullfrogging around interferes with their sleep. I keep reminding them they chose to live on a lake. Lakes come with wildlife. And ohmygod, this lake comes with tons of dragonflies which probably explains why we don’t have the mosquitoes that everyone feared we get. As I sat on the bench I easily saw several dozen dragonflies playing tag in the cattails. By the way, did you know that dragonflies can literally die of fright at the sight of fish, according to an article I just read? Everything is relative, isn't it. If a pride of lions was stalking me I would hope I'd die of fright before they started eating me for dinner.

Speaking of dinner, recently four people spent the entire time talking about their dissertations in great detail while I and another woman without an advanced degree sat stone quiet. At one point I wondered how something that happened so long ago could be so important to them now when the world around us seems to be falling apart. Mass shootings, the January Sixth Hearings, supply chain issues in the stores. Covid. Current events are rarely ever discussed here, except in book club as it relates to something we’ve read. (I love that group.) I miss talking about current events. Admittedly my husband and I used to be news junkies, but here those kinds of conversations get shut done quickly when certain people are in the mix. They want to pretend we’re living in Never-Never Land where the illusion is that everything is fun and beautiful. But ignorance is not bliss when there’s a darkness waiting to destroy Never-Never Land aka the world as we know it.

At that dinner it came out that I was taking art classes on the same campus at the same time as one of the women talking about their dissertations and she was naming professors trying to figure out if we’d been in any of the same classes. I could no more name the professors I had back in the ‘60s than I can name the countries in the old Soviet Union or the members of the Backstreet Boys, for that matter. I’ve always known my mind tends to focus on the broader context and not the details but here that foible smacks in the face every time my peers talk about this kind of stuff. My peers can even name their grade school teachers. Not me, but I could describe what my grade school teachers wore to work---their sensible black shoes with the chunky heels, their dark colored cotton dresses with their padded shoulders and broad, white lace or matching collars. I can remember the kindness of one teacher and the pure evil of another who smacked me and the other left-handers daily with a ruler.

At the end of our last book club we talked about getting our Life Enrichment Director to start a monthly discussion group for those of us who want to talk about current events. She’s usually very responsive to our ideas so fingers crossed I might find a place where those of us who want to compare our reactions to the world outside our campus can go and not get the Never-Never Land treatment. ©

 

Photo at the top is one I snatched off the internet of a martin house located in the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuse. Ours is below and was built by the residents in the assisted living building. I can't take good photos anymore but I tried with my phone. (below).

This is our bird condo with the bench I sit on to the right. In the distance on the right is the Memory Care building, on the left are our town houses.

Hard to see but it's a swan chasing a goose as seen from the bench in the photo up above. Also hard to see through the trees is the independent living apartments where I live.

One of the swans, photo taken from the bridge in between the town houses and the Memory Care building.

This is the creek where the baby ducks played and that's an assisted living building on campus. Being on a continuum care campus it's comforting to know where exactly I'd get down graded to if something drastic happens to my health. There are 7-8 couples here where one of them lives in our independent living apartments but their spouses are a short walk away in one of these other buildings on the lake.

Old Women Having Fun

 

It’s easier to write when I’m all fired up mad or annoyed by something than when I’m mellowed out due to having a good time at one of the ‘laugh fests’ we have around the continuum care complex. Laugh fests can happen over the silliest things and silly things do not translate easily to the written word---at least at my keyboard. Like last night at dinner in the fine dining restaurant when I got seated with three others I know well but rarely get paired up with by the hostess. And maybe that’s because we tend to laugh a lot which grabs everyone’s attention as opposed to when conversations are strained because I’m at a table with Ms. Manners and her canary soft voice that barely makes it across that table.

Last night we ran through the usual opening question of “What did you do today” and as a reply one of the ladies was telling about how tired she was from working on a cottage that she’s putting up for sale soon and she said, “When I finally crawled into bed I yelled out “Yes! Yes! Yes! Then I worried that my neighbors heard me through the wall and they’d think I was you-know-whating.” 

“You know whating?” Lady Two asked with a confused look on her face and Lady Three answered, “Having sex, dear.” Ladies Two’s confusion slowly got replaced with a huge grin, “That’s what we used to say, isn’t it. It’s been twenty-five years.” “And we can gather you haven’t seen a x-rated movie or porn in twenty-five years either?” I added to the conversation. Lady One burst out laughing and said, “Fifteen years for me" and Lady Three shared, “Ten for me. I might be 93 but I used to have fun!” By then I was laughing so hard I was afraid I’d fall off my chair. For the rest of the night one or the other of us would say, “Yes! Yes, yes!” and we’d all burst out laugh. “Oh, this pork roast is really good,” and a chorus of ‘yeses’ answered. “Are you having dessert? “Yes, yes, yes!” “Are you going to the movie after dinner?” “Yes, yes, yes!” That’s a laugh fest at its finest.

Another night, another dinner and eight of us were around a table each taking a turn at trying to get the top on a take-out container that looked like it would fit but didn’t. I got up to get myself a cup of coffee and as usual they didn’t have the right size tops to fit the cups and I came back to the table complaining about that. “We have free coffee now but we can’t carry it anywhere because the tops never fit.” Someone else piped in with, “that’s because they buy them from the same company where they buy the take-out containers.” I kid you not these two things have been on-going problems here---not life threatening but mildly annoying and that night this issue turned into a comedy act.

If you manage to get the tops on a take-out box then when you go to take it back off it’s like trying to break into an cast-iron safe. One time I thought I’d end up in Urgent Care trying to pry one open with every conceivable tool in my kitchen drawer. Another woman ended up with the food on the floor. We swapped so many stories and laughs so hard around that table about miss-matched lids that the cafe’ manager came out and took all the coffee lids off the rack. And of course whenever the topic of coffee comes up the woman who single-handedly talked our CEO into making the coffee available all day long and for free has to re-tell the story. Big game hunters bragging couldn’t story-tell that accomplishment any better. 

Also this week at a social hour outside on our piazza the guys got started on a topic that had all us ladies scratching our heads when Guy One says, “I couldn’t decide between having pie tonight or having an affair behind my wife’s back.” Did I hear that right? Yes, I did. And Wife One was sitting right beside him and heard it too. Then Guy Two stepped into that pile of dung and said, “I’d always pick an affair over dessert.” There were 8-10 of us ladies around our outdoor fire pit and someone said, “We all know who to stay away from now on, don’t we, ladies.” And one of the women from my dinner table the night before yells out: “Yes, yes, yes!” I still don’t get in what universe a guy gets to pick between pie or an affair but three times this week my belly actually hurt from laughing too. So I knew I had to try to write about these little episodes that happen routinely around here at the CCC. I've written---probably too often---about the gossip train that goes through this place so hopefully this post gives a proper balance to what life is like around this place. ©