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Inside this issue
What do we have to lose in order to grow?
Lost titles: revisiting Judith Viorst, The Lost Daughter, and “lost” stories
Two new resources for readers and writers
And, in case you missed last week’s issue about all the fictional bad mothers we love to hate, click HERE to check it out
Before we begin
Have you lost something or perhaps someone that altered you in a way that you didn’t expect? Has that space been filled since? Think back for a moment about something you’ve lost - it could be as small as a key or as monumental as a relationship or a home. Or, have you gotten lost? Tell us your story of the lost treasures in your life and how, if at all, it changed things for you.
Lost, Then Found
“It is the image in the mind that binds us to our lost treasures, but it is the loss that shapes the image.” —Colette
My friend has lost a word. It was right there a moment ago, or was it? Anyway, she knows there is a word for the animals that she is taking care of outside in a little structure with wire around it. She calls them critters for now. It’s not important to me what she calls them. She still remembers me when we talk on the phone from our homes separated by nearly 3,000 miles. She still remembers some moments we shared when we were ten, eleven, twelve. She gets angry when her brain refuses to do what she wants it to but more often, lately, it seems she is more focused on the critters and the joy they give her. She is finding her way through the days – it is up to me to find a way to accept her changes instead of longing for the easy confidences, the way we were before dementia began to change her.
Another voice. Another loved one. I’m a little lost, he said. It was the voice of a person I love deeply, another person who does not live close to me, a person I think about every day. That catch of sadness and surprise -- to find himself lost at a time when he’d hoped, perhaps even expected, to have landed in middle-age with a sense of achievement. He is still haunted by the notion that there is a destination of sorts, that is possible to reach a goal and rest. He is in the process of losing this notion, I think. I hope he finds a way to let it go, not that I have done such a great job of that myself.
I hang on to notions. I hang on to people. I hang on to things. I hate the powerlessness I feel when they are stripped away from me.
I hang on to notions. I hang on to people. I hang on to things. I hate the powerlessness I feel when they are stripped away from me. I am thinking right now of Mr. S, the elderly father of my old landlord back in New Jersey. He lived in the apartment below me in an old two-family house with his wife who’d had a serious stroke and couldn’t communicate with him. Bored out of his mind and struggling to find his own sense of purpose, he took interest in my life and my apartment. He would empty my garbage for me even though I asked him not to come into my apartment when I was away. He would check the plumbing, invent reasons to “take care of me.”
One weekend, I retrieved a box in the garage that contained old photos and everything I’d written in college: journals, letters, stories, and essays. They were mildewed from years of being packed away but I spent an entire Saturday afternoon going through them and rekindling my acquaintance with myself. I found a few pieces with ideas for essays or stories that I wanted to try to rewrite, from a new perspective. I felt the tingling that comes with a new beginning, a chance to start over.
When I was through, I found a plastic bag and put them all in it so the mildew wouldn’t contaminate the inside of my apartment. I left the bag on the kitchen table which doubled as my desk. When I came home from work on Monday, the bag was gone.
Mr. S. had taken the entire bag and emptied it into the recycling bin which had been picked up that morning, emptied. Every page had been fed into the maw of the Somerville, N.J. waste management operation. The helpless rage I felt returned to me for years. I could see the stubborn, uncomprehending gaze of Mr. S. as I teared up and shouted. I told him - told the whole neighborhood - that he had no business even throwing away my garbage, never mind a few years of my life. Shouting didn’t help. There was no way to get them back, or, I was convinced, regain that tingle of hope and confidence I had lost in the years since college.
I was convinced that those moldy pages were my foundation. They bore the encouraging comments of people I respected. They were proof that the writer in me had existed. Without them, I had nothing but a blank canvas and zero faith that I could fill it. I failed to begin again for a long time. Part of me blamed Mr. S. Most of me blamed myself – for not insisting on a lock change, for not putting the papers in another place, for letting it matter so much.
It was a while before I realized that my anger about losing the early writings was a way of clinging to them and to the notion that I’d lost the years they represented. As long as I was angry about it, I didn’t have to face two simple facts: those years were over anyway and nothing was stopping me from starting again except my own fears. It was a while before I found my way again but I did find it.
After I cooled down, I discovered that the upstairs apartment, where I lived, still felt like home to Mr. S. who, because of circumstances and practicalities, had made the house into two apartments. He could not let go of the idea that the house, and everyone in it, were still his responsibility. He kept going back up to my apartment to touch base with the life he’d had, the life he still wanted, the part of his life that was lost to him. He’d lost his wife as she’d been, then his house, then his sense of purpose.
Of the two of us, I gained the most when he threw out those papers. If he were still alive, I might thank Mr. S. for clearing the way.
Lost Titles
“There comes a time when we aren't allowed not to know.” ― Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up In Order to Grow
I’ve been thinking about Judith Viorst’s book Necessary Losses, a book that I read without the slightest comprehension when it came out in 1986 but resonates deeply with me now. I’ve drawn on it for research but also because it is a joy to read. It’s based on the “the vital bond between our losses and our gains…what we give up in order to grow.”
A poet, a syndicated columnist, writer of children’s books and nonfiction for adults, Viorst also studied psychoanalysis for six years. This last informs her book, Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up In Order to Grow but her trademark grace, thoughtfulness, and humor can be found throughout its pages.
If you are in the mood to remind yourself of all the very rational reasons we react to loss in so many different and often contradictory ways, pick up a copy of this book and leave it where you can reach for it. It reminds us that to be human is to lose what we hold precious, sometimes over and over again. We can’t pretend we are immune. We might as well see what it has to teach us.
And Speaking of Seeking Our Life’s Purpose: How Do We Know When We Arrive?
Josh Pillay writes thoughtful essays about how to live in a meaningful way amid the din of noise and chatter of the digital world. I often find a moment of thoughtful calm when I read his newsletter. That was especially true this week when I read his thoughts about having to give up his idea about what purpose meant in order to find his way forward.
“I was dizzy with anticipation waiting for time to bequeath me with wisdom and maturity, drawing me closer to that crowning moment of glory - the pinnacle of spiritual, material and intellectual success.
That moment never came.” - Josh Pillay, Have You Arrived? From Wait! Just Listen
Did you watch The Lost Daughter?
I could not stand to watch the movie based on Elena Ferrante’s novel, The Lost Daughter . Instead I will read the novel even though my friend has warned me that it is not a joyful read. Ferrante fascinates me precisely because she does not shy away from writing about women who feel real. They are strong or weak depending on the situation, complicated, intelligent, struggling, not always likable but always relatable.
Ferrante blessed this movie and I love Olivia Colman but everything from the camera work to Colman’s portrayal of the main character irritated me so much I had to stop.
If any of you have read the book and/or seen the movie, let me know what you think!
A few more fun links to get lost in
Resources for Readers and Writers
Here are a couple of recent additions to our growing list of resources for readers and for writers. Click on the links below to check out all the resources and please suggest any that you have found valuable.
Resources for Readers and Book Clubs
Through The Biblioscope by David R. Grigg offers book suggestions and reviews on the first and third Sundays of the month. You’ll find old and new books in many genres but they are usually organized in each letter according to a loose theme that makes you wonder why you haven’t organized books in this way
Resources for Writers and Writers’ Groups
The Writers Bridge and the The Writers Bridge Express Lane are two resources offered by a team of two writers, Ashley Renard and Allison K. Williams who offer advice aimed at helping writers build successful platforms for their work. Renard is a memoirist, social media coach and strategist. Williams a.k.a, “the unkind editor,” is a writer, editor, and book coach. They are effective communicators, have a demonstrably strong track record in their fields, and best of all offer free biweekly Zoom sessions on a particular topic, often offering complementary views. The archives of these sessions are also available along with other consultative services at Writer’s Bridge Express Lane. Their newsletters make it easy to pick and choose which topics and services to make time for.
That’s it for this week. Let me know what books you are getting lost in, how you are, what’s on your mind. If you have an idea for a book or an idea you’d like to see in a future newsletter, let me know. If you have links you’d like to share with the rest of us prompted by this week’s newsletter, share them below or email me by responding to this newsletter and I’ll make sure they get in.
As always, you can find the books we mention here at the Spark Community Recommendation Page over at bookshop.org.
Ciao for now.
Gratefully,
Betsy
P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…The Lost Coast Trail
Coming upon the beach that launches fifty miles of coastline where no road exists took our breath away when we drove north years ago. Here is a way to visit it vicariously. As I watched, I skipped the voices and just looked at the scenery. It would be worth getting lost there once again.
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.
Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
I can’t wait to see what you send!
A long comment prompted by the question (thank you Betsy for asking it):
Lost love letters. Not many. Two or three I exchanged, when eighteen, with a girl named Ann who went off to university fifty miles away, whilst I continued to do my day job as a trainee animal technician, that I had started aged 15, when I left school. She middle-class, a vicar’s daughter living in Romford on the east side of London. Me, illegitimate and working-class, the grandson of a plumber, living on the west side of London. We met on a beach in Essex, where she was trying to light a fire made of driftwood and I, passing by, never a smoker, just happened to have a box of matches. Both of us staying by chance on the same caravan site. Together we collected more wood and lit the fire. She had a blanket. The rest happened and, against the odds, we survived six months as a couple of sorts before we kissed one last time and Ann boarded her train to Reading. I was going to see her the following weekend. I never did. She was intelligent, tactile and interested in me - which gave me confidence I never had before. It was during the fateful week after she went off to Reading University that we exchanged the letters. I loved her. She loved me. What could go wrong? Sadly, a lot. I simply couldn’t cope with her ambitions and our days apart, and I felt unable to pull up sticks and join her, so I decided it better to end it. God knows what my selfish act did to Ann. When I met my future wife I read Ann’s letters one last time before burning them. Later in life, I realised class was part of it. My first marriage lasted ten years. My second is coming up to fifty years, to a university graduate. Her dad was a foundry worker, her mum an insurance collector. Working class through and through. The expectations of others is probably the greatest burden we carry into adulthood, none are just as dangerous as many. The loss of Ann’s letters occurred years after I had placed them on that fire. What I lost in that act was a me that could have been. What I realised was that my life has been full of such moments; with a few more waiting in the wings as I count down the years, of that I am sure. The lesson I have learned is that ‘loss’ is what we make of it. As simple as that. As for Ann she remains one of the great loves in my life. Forever eighteen. - Robert Howard.
I didn't read the book, but I did watch the movie of The Lost Daughter. I was deeply moved and reminded of how difficult mothering while trying to be a fully realized person can be. How mistakes can be made. As for losing ... I've lost many things in my life that meant a great deal. One was when someone stole my entire jewelry chest which included the Dick Tracy watch my father bought me when I was five. We were dirt poor, this was a treasure, and he died two years later. It was the only tangible item I had from him. It was not replaceable. All the other items are long forgotten even though they meant something at the time. Like you, I also lost some of my writing. All the poems I wrote in my 20s were in a notebook that I lost one weekend in Alaska. It was 40 years before I wrote poetry again, but now I've had four collections published with another coming out in a few weeks. 40 years! But I wrote many plays and a novel or two during those years, so not everything was lost.