Magical Thinking
June 20, 2006 at 3:45 The kids are out of school now. I’m still getting used to a life that doesn’t begin with a long walk and a few hours of uninterrupted blog writing and reading time. Yesterday my summer schedule for Mr. A and E-Grrrl called for a morning cooking project (we made deviled eggs), writers’ workshop (the kids wrote letters to Grandma), and an afternoon at the pool.
Getting to the indoor pool at my husband’s workplace isn’t straight-forward if you don’t have a car. We had to catch a public bus, get off in Brussels, and then catch a shuttle to the pool. Because the bus and shuttle schedules aren’t compatible, there was lots of waiting involved. All told, it took us 90 minutes to get to the pool. By the time we arrive, I’m feeling cranky and thinking this is so not worth the effort!
The man tending the pool speaks only French. I struggle a bit trying to communicate with him—the kids are swimming, I am not. I need to pay and he wants exact change. We discover after we get there that my son has left his swim cap at home (though he was repeatedly told to pack it). I’m forced to buy another one on the spot since swim caps are mandatory. Grrr.
As with all Belgian pools, swimmers go through a corridor that’s like a car wash to enter the pool area. After they’ve been spritzed and sprayed by shower jets, they have to walk their feet through a disinfectant bath. Because I’m not swimming and I’m fully dressed, I have to enter the pool area through the exit, by climbing over (or squeezing under) a turnstile, while carrying my handbag and the kids’ towels. I feel like a camel trying to get through the Bibical eye of the needle. I finally get in and collapse on a bench, a little worse for wear.
The pool is part of the staff center at my husband’s work place, and it’s crowded with lunch time swimmers. A portion of the pool is supposedly reserved for kids but there are adults swimming laps in it. I tell the kids to pretend the adults are sharks and that they have to stay out of their way. For the first half hour, my kids are characters in their own live computer game, trying to dodge the relentless swimmers in the pool.
As I watch them making the best of the situation, my irritability starts to unknot. They made the 90 minute trip without complaining. I’m proud of how considerate they are of the other swimmers, and I love the way they play together. When my son patiently teaches his little sister to dive, I’m thrilled that this is my family, and that we have each other.
After an hour, the kids shower off, get dressed, and we take sandwiches and drinks out to the courtyard. We’ve missed the shuttle back, so we’re going to stay here until E is ready to leave work at 4:30 p.m. A two hour wait.
The weather is nice, there’s a fabulous playground in the courtyard, and I settle in a chair and grab the book I’ve brought with me to read, Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.”
This is Didion’s account of her journey through grief, beginning with the moment her husband and writing partner dropped dead at the dinner table a few days after Christmas while their adult daughter was struggling for life in the ICU with flu that turned to pneumonia and then went into septic shock. In the aftermath of this disastrous set up, Didion describes what it’s like when your world falls apart.
Didion does not create a tidy narrative or chronology, and despite the subject matter, her book is never sentimental or maudlin. She writes about her “year of magical thinking” with the immediacy of one who experienced it and yet with the objectivity of a journalist who observed it.
She is the book’s narrator and the subject and the researcher. She delivers the story in dreamlike sequences dissected by her considerable intellect and her personal search for answers. She anchors it with academic excerpts on the psychology of grief that she collected as she attempted to put her experience into a larger context. The writing wanders and loops back in on itself in neat arcs. It’s both raw and refined. Her story isn’t inspirational, it’s not a tear-jerker, it’s not meant to be comforting or a “how-to” treatise, it simply is what it is. It won the National Book Award.
Over and over again Didion comes back to the first words she wrote after her husband of 40 years died: Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
Glancing up at my two blonde children laughing as they circle in a tire swing, I vow to forget how long it took to get here and be glad for this moment. It’s all I have. And it’s perfect.
© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.
June 20, 2006
Family
Reader Comments (6)
I've heard that's an excellent book. I've thought about reading it but I can't decide if I can handle the subject matter while I'm still on the climb out of a moderate depression.
How beautifully written! I am all teary. I, too, enjoy this glimpse into Belgina life. Thanks for showing us a little of it.
I enjoyed it and felt for her and myself throughout the book. Life IS like that. Changing in an instant. Scary.
There are times I watch my kids and tears form. I want to capture the instant and I realize that I am living the very best years of my life RIGHT NOW. Great post and I liked your write up about her book better than Amazon's.
My friends mother and sister both died within 2 days. So very sad.
I always pictured your kids with dark hair. How old are they?
Did you ever read Isabel Allende's 'Paula'?
You might enjoy it.