I'm not necessarily a book club gal. I have joined several groups over the years but never lasted very long as a member. One of the reasons, perhaps the greatest, is the fact that I am a difficult-to-please reader. I need to feel totally in love with a book within the first, at the most, ten pages. I do have a pretty good sense for what I am about to either invest or not invest my time and finding the "right" fit in a book makes me gloriously happy. So, when I heard about this month's choice for my condo book group, I immediately went to my livingroom book case, found my copy of Jumpha Lahiri's "The Namesake" and re-entered the reader's world. I rarely remember all the details of something I have read, so doing a re-read is fairly easy for me to digest. Also, I tend to pass books on to other readers either personally or through depositories, holding on to only the most special and this one, I vowed several years ago, would be a permanent resident on my shelf.
I love "The Namesake". I love beautiful Jhumpha Lahiri. While she's a brilliant author, she isn't exactly prolific, doesn't crank them out and from what I understand, she now lives in Italy and writes in Italian, far from her native language. Perhaps another of the reasons she is near and dear to my own heart. But. wait, wait, there's more. It's the essence of her writing, the time and the place, that resonates and makes takes me back to a world that has escaped my touch and makes me melancholic. In the pages, the story of Ashoke and Ashima, young pre-arranged newly-weds who start their life together in Cambridge, Massachusetts and soon after their marriage, begin parenthood, I find myself drifting and dreaming of my own life as a new mother. Their baby boy. My baby boy.
No, this is not intended to be a book review. Rather, it is a repository for my flashes of memory. As I read on in The Namesake, I put myself back almost fifty years, remembering the first blush of motherhood, all those moments of uncertainty that accompany the birth of a first child to a person who, by today's standards, is barely considered a "grown-up", hardly ready to become as isolated from the real world as new motherhood demands. Rather than overly joyful, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and envied anyone who still enjoyed what I considered to be freedom. The windows of our apartment became mournful places through which I watched all those fortunates who were not chained down in a world of anxiety and confusion. My first born was a Winter baby and it was a true Winter that year. But, slowly, the Spring came forth and with it, my skills as a mother grew and what I had considered to be burdens became joys and the absolute pleasure of being a young mother intensified by the hour, building to a crescendo that lasted for years. I loved being a mother, and still do. The thing is, it's when we are going through the hours of uncertainty and the long days of Winter feeling like shut-ins, that we can't hear the voices that tell us that one day, we will miss all of it. That one day, we won't be feeling the satisfaction that a good day with a toddler brings. That we won't experience the reward of simply sitting with a good book at the end of a day that was filled with feeding, cleaning up after and changing the diapers of a helpless little person.
I'm sitting here, listening to the wind roar outside my window. It's a Winter morning and I have my time to myself. I am picturing a baby in a blue snowsuit, little red boots, big rosy cheeks, being pulled by a sled, and I see myself, a younger version, smiling and happy and I know there isn't anything I would not do to have one day of that back at any given time.
I love "The Namesake". I love beautiful Jhumpha Lahiri. While she's a brilliant author, she isn't exactly prolific, doesn't crank them out and from what I understand, she now lives in Italy and writes in Italian, far from her native language. Perhaps another of the reasons she is near and dear to my own heart. But. wait, wait, there's more. It's the essence of her writing, the time and the place, that resonates and makes takes me back to a world that has escaped my touch and makes me melancholic. In the pages, the story of Ashoke and Ashima, young pre-arranged newly-weds who start their life together in Cambridge, Massachusetts and soon after their marriage, begin parenthood, I find myself drifting and dreaming of my own life as a new mother. Their baby boy. My baby boy.
No, this is not intended to be a book review. Rather, it is a repository for my flashes of memory. As I read on in The Namesake, I put myself back almost fifty years, remembering the first blush of motherhood, all those moments of uncertainty that accompany the birth of a first child to a person who, by today's standards, is barely considered a "grown-up", hardly ready to become as isolated from the real world as new motherhood demands. Rather than overly joyful, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and envied anyone who still enjoyed what I considered to be freedom. The windows of our apartment became mournful places through which I watched all those fortunates who were not chained down in a world of anxiety and confusion. My first born was a Winter baby and it was a true Winter that year. But, slowly, the Spring came forth and with it, my skills as a mother grew and what I had considered to be burdens became joys and the absolute pleasure of being a young mother intensified by the hour, building to a crescendo that lasted for years. I loved being a mother, and still do. The thing is, it's when we are going through the hours of uncertainty and the long days of Winter feeling like shut-ins, that we can't hear the voices that tell us that one day, we will miss all of it. That one day, we won't be feeling the satisfaction that a good day with a toddler brings. That we won't experience the reward of simply sitting with a good book at the end of a day that was filled with feeding, cleaning up after and changing the diapers of a helpless little person.
I'm sitting here, listening to the wind roar outside my window. It's a Winter morning and I have my time to myself. I am picturing a baby in a blue snowsuit, little red boots, big rosy cheeks, being pulled by a sled, and I see myself, a younger version, smiling and happy and I know there isn't anything I would not do to have one day of that back at any given time.
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