.SOMETIMES RAW.

I received awesome feedback after posting the last book recommendation. Thank you! Then I came up with an idea. I am a voracious reader with a huge library (pictured above is one of many bookshelves, sigh!) at home. Since I love books so much, I will write weekly book recommendations or small reviews every Thursday. Why? Because I want you to read. And of course head over to your local bookstore and purchase some books.

Today I want to share some of my favorite memoirs…

How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key. I spent an entire weekend clutching this book to my chest. I even read it in the car. Harrison is hilarious but also introspective, repentant and clear-eyed about why his wife ended up cheating on him and how they tried to reconcile, repeatedly. I laughed out loud, while also rethinking all my past relationships. I will read anything he writes from now on.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: This novel follows light-skinned Black twin sisters who grow up to live in two very different worlds — one white, one Black. I could not get off the couch reading this book and read it past sunset.

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop. This escapist thrill is a coming-of-age story meets midlife malaise, in Greece! Who knew that was the perfect combination?! With two timelines in one woman’s life — her teenage summer of love and intrigue in Greece with a much older man who has suspicious friends, and then later as an older woman in a humdrum marriage — the reader is catapulted back and forth between the Greek islands and London, between passion and feeling stuck. My favorite part — aside from the plot, which unfolds in a delicious, heart-pounding way — are the quieter lines about the lives not lived. There’s a soulfulness to the whole story.

Hope by Andrew Ridker. This dark comedy had me laughing out loud in recognition of some of the characters. It follows the Greenspan family in Brookline, Massachusetts, and what happens when the cardiologist dad is forced out of his profession after falsifying blood samples. A perfect read.

Everything All at Once by Steph Catudal. The way Steph writes, even about ordinary things, takes my breath away. But her life story — her brother’s childhood cancer, her father’s early death from lung cancer, and the cancer that comes for her beloved endurance-athlete husband — is incredibly powerful. The details she describes, the slivers of pain, and her inquiry into faith is just different from other memoirs. It’s so real and gratifying.

My son (10 years-old) looked over my shoulder while I wrote this article. “Mom, this is great but you also need a kids book recommendation section! Right on! So here it goes:

My son loves books by David Walliams. The books are for children ages 7-12 and super funny which actually makes my son want to read. Walliams’ books are also great to read aloud to your child (which I still do almost every night!)

Are you ready to meet the worst parents ever? Sure, some parents are embarrassing – but they’re nothing on this lot. These ten tales of the world’s most spectacularly silly mums and deliriously dads will leave you rocking with laughter. Pinch your nose for Peter Pong, the man with the stinkiest feet in the world… and of course, Supermum! (that’s me!)

What books do you recommend? I’d love to hear…

via The New Yorker

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

– – – 

I went to the bathroom because I wished to live deliberately, to sit on the toilet while doing the New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle, and see if I could learn the solution, and not, when I came to die—probably one week from now, smothered by a LEGO avalanche—discover that I had not lived. I would have liked to go to the woods instead, but I didn’t have a nanny.

When I wrote these words, I lived alone, in the bathroom, away from any family member, in a house of solitude which I had built myself, by locking the door, with the labor of my hands only, as well as one of my feet, which I used to gently force my child out of the doorway without pinching any fingers.

The mass of men and women lead lives of quiet desperation because they are trying very, very hard to do Gentle Parenting and not yell at their children.

While I am in the bathroom, I discover that I would rather sit on a porcelain seat and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. But if I could have my own velvet cushion, that would be nice, too. Would it be weird to install one on top of the toilet?

I could take a nap in here. Yet to be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a parent who was quite awake. I can tell I don’t look well-rested, because Instagram keeps showing me ads for Botox and facial fillers. We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake by an infinite expectation of the dawn, since we are all out of coffee, and I forgot to put it on the grocery list.

Is it any wonder I forgot? Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your activities number two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand birthday parties every year. Instead of three meals a day, plus two snacks, plus ten emergency snacks, let your kids feed themselves by dragging a chair to the kitchen counter and figuring out how to use the stove.

I love to be alone. I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude on the toilet. We are, for the most part, more lonely when we go out of the bathroom, among our family, than when we stay in our chambers and yell, “CAN YOU HOLD ON A MINUTE, MOM’S HAVING PRIVACY!”

And yet even here, I am not fully alone. You only need to sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the bathroom that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns: the patient spider waiting in the upper corner, the industrious ant toiling near the sink, the other ant near the shower, another ant right behind that one—oh shit, we have an ant infestation.

Never mind them. The universe is wider than our views of it, obviously, since we are staring at the shower curtain, and according to Facebook (which we checked after getting stuck on the Spelling Bee puzzle) our friends Mike and Caroline are in Santorini again living the life. Oh, all those food and beach pics (damn legs and feet in the sand) while I am still sitting on the toilet.

It matters not how much time will pass before my next vacation. Time is but the stream I go swimming in. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains, kind of like the contents of this toilet, which I’m just now remembering has been clogged since earlier today when my child did an experiment by testing how many toilet rolls can be stuffed in before it wouldn’t flush.

If life emits a fragrance like… let’s say flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more starry, more immortal, that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. I just squashed a whole bunch of ants with a tissue, and it felt amazing.

After approximately six and a half minutes, I left the bathroom for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, but more likely, it seemed to me that the child/dog fight going on outside the door had escalated to a dangerous point.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, I mean the bathroom, and endeavors to live the life which she has imagined, I mean a life where she can just sit and look at her toenails for a minute, she will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. She will put some things behind her, like her child, who is trying to outrun the dog and make him a comfortable bed in your newly washed bedsheets, and she will live with the license of a higher order of beings, I mean people without children who can go live in a house in the woods, by the beach, travel whenever more easily if they want to, or just have peace and quiet for, like, five seconds—I SAID MOM IS COMING!

With this being said, I wish you all a Happy New Year. With kids, without kids, whatever makes you happy. I enjoy a little quiet time in the toilet here and there when things get too much. Or travel to see my parents which is the ultimate “kid-break” – just minus the beach. I wish you all your very own hiding place. I think we all need one. I SAID MOM IS COMING! LEAVE THOSE NEW YEAR ROCKETS UNTOUCHED!

Hey! What’s up? Long time no see. Listen, I’ve spent more money on skincare products in the last few years than in any other period in my entire life. Why? Well, because I’m aware that we—women only—must fight the war against ageing every single day. I see all the ads and read all the literature you print, like in Vogue, Cosmo, and Architectural Digest. They all read like brochures for getting a facelift, and, no thank you, I’m not interested.

Hey, wait, don’t start scrolling on your phone. I’m still talking. Now that we haven’t seen each other in over a year, you might notice that there’s a little bit of loose skin draped like a curtain dividing the left side of my neck from the right side as if each side suddenly became modest. Please don’t tug at it. It’s skin. No, I don’t want to put on a turtleneck.

Look, I tried to fight it. I bought a five-hundred-euro neck cream that boasts a “tri-structural complex” while simultaneously injecting algae from the bottom of the Mariana Trench!! I figured one of them could hold up skin or reduce wrinkles. I figured one creme could reduce dark circles under my eyes. I used a seventy-euro jade roller that needed to be put in the freezer twice a day in the hopes that I could roll the skin back into place. This is all simply expensive bullshit that DOES NOT WORK. How can a creme make your wrinkles disappear? THINK, woman!

Yay! At least no one grey hair yet. Nice! But sometimes dark circles under my eyes from studying all weekend with my son. Dry hands from cleaning and chopping food. Hold on, where did this wrinkle come from? Please take it off my face. I just want to talk to you. Speaking of my face, I did facial exercises every day to keep my cheeks right up against my eyeballs, but they’re doing their own thing.

Yeah, I’m still good on the facelift brochure; I haven’t changed my mind about it at the last minute. No, that’s incorrect. Women don’t change their minds every minute. Quit spreading that myth, please, and let me talk.

I’ve also lost several kilos because I had so much stress during the last couple of months that I couldn’t eat…and now some weirdo is honking a car horn at me because I AM DRIVING TOO SLOW TO GET TO MY SON’S PARENT/TEACHER MEETING AFTER WORK! Why is he doing that? Never mind, I’m trying to make a point about how my body has changed and how I’ve changed along with it. For fuck’s sake, stop trying to give me that facelift brochure! Oh, it’s not the brochure. What is it? Ah, I see; it’s a coupon for a facelift. Yes, you’re right: I shouldn’t have assumed. I’m sorry.

Do you want to hear the great news? A byproduct of ageing is that I love myself exactly as I am, and I don’t need anyone else’s approval… I’ve simply grown wiser, gained confidence, and discovered inner peace. SEE HOW PEACEFUL I AM ? WHY IS THIS GUY BEHIND ME STILL HONKING ???? The straitjacket is unnecessary too, my friend. I don’t feel crazy (yet) and I’m NOT HYSTERICAL. I’m just saying that I’m a happily unmarried, single-child-raising-woman over forty, and it took a lot of physical and mental work for me to realize that I am okay and to get me to where I am not in life.

Where are we going? Why are we walking into the utility closet at a local supermarket? Are we even allowed in here!?!!!? Holy shit, this store has a secret portal!?!? What is this white room that extends to infinity in every direction? And who are all these women…?

Wait a minute. Is this a place where women can just be the way they are? And these are all the women between the ages of forty and fifty-five who have decided not to fight aging? Wow! I always wondered where we disappeared to in Society’s (your) eyes. Honestly, a theoretical void is a lot kinder of a result than I would have expected.

Thank you, Society. I feel better. You wanted to make me feel sad, rejected, frustrated, insecure, unfulfilled, and completely discouraged? I’m sorry to let you down. What we see in these commercials and beauty magazines is not real anyway. Ageing is okay. It is normal. We all do it and you cannot hide behind cremes, lotions, potions and Botox. I guess I forgot to mention the other byproduct of ageing: lack of self-confidence and insecurity. I no longer feel any of those things because they’ve all been replaced with happiness, self-confidence, and inner peace. Most of the time. STOP HONKING!