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The
Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a Family by Jeanne Marie Laskas Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Shines Sunday
morning doesn’t seem right at our house until we’ve read Jeanne Marie Laskas’ “Significant Others” column in The Washington
Post Magazine. On the Sundays when her column doesn’t appear, there’s a real
feeling of loss. One way to fill the gap is to read one of her books, the
latest of which is The Exact
Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a Family. If there’s a proper genre for Laskas’ writing, it would be creative non-fiction. More
than a memoir or a biography, and different from essays, her writing
captivates readers with insights from everyday life in relationships and in
community living. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 7 (pp. 116-123): Those
sumac trees are weeds. There is really no polite way to say it. The poor
things. Tall and leggy with pointy leaves that look like knives sticking out.
A child could draw a more convincing tree. The only thing is, every year I watch
them. Because they're the first to go. While the maples and oaks and other
hardwoods are out there basking in the summer sun, basking as if there is no
tomorrow, as if this is summer and summer is here to stay, the sumacs get the
slightest tinge of crimson red. They're the ones that say, "Hey, it's gonna happen. It's gonna be over." No, not just summer. Me. I don't know. Am I being melodramatic?
Well, what do you expect? It's the first of September. In twenty-one days I
turn forty. Twenty-one puny days. Forty. Forty! I've started to design my headstone.
Yeah. Something simple, I think. Maybe just an ivy design etched around the
edges. Then inside the border it should say something like "Whew. That
was complicated" Or maybe "Why does life have to be so complicated?"
The main thing is I want italics on the word complicated, so as
to connote protest. Because I don't want complicated. I never wanted
complicated. If, as I was being born, I got to stand in the cafeteria
line choosing the menu of characteristics that would define my life, I would
not have chosen even one spoonful of complicated. I would have chosen . . .happy. I would have chosen amusing.
I would have chosen honest and clean and dignified. Then
for dessert I would have chosen a dollop or so of adventure. And I
would have walked out and felt glad. Instead—complicated. So why did I marry a shrink? There's a
reasonable question. A shrink-spouse would, you might imagine, just
complicate things. A shrink-spouse would be the worst kind to have if, say,
you were forced to wrestle through an "issue" such as: He's turning
fifty-five and he doesn't want kids, and you're turning forty and you
desperately want kids, and now what in tarnation
are the two of you going to do? You would think, oh, I have a headache
just imagining how those conversations went. You would think the two of us
might have spent night after sleepless night processing this
complicated matter, and re-processing it, and taking responsibility
for our feelings, and owning our emotions, and locating our
true selves, and honoring each other's fears, and doing all that sort
of complicated talking that leaves the average person needing to run and hide
and curl up and watch reruns of Gomer Pyle. But, no. This is not what happened, and
this is not the complication I am talking about. What happened was, we took more walks. Walks to the old lady's house, just
to say hello, to bring her some of our corn and some of our peppers and some
of our friendship. Walks to George's to say
"How about this drought, hub?" (He was right.) Walks to the mailbox
with Betty and Marley and Wilma. Walks on the ridge with Skippy and Maggie in
tow, or Cricket and Sassy. It seems as though we've walked away much of this
summer. I did not, by the way, wear my hiking
boots on our walks. Oh, no. I got a pair of flimsy fluorescent-green sandals
at Wal-Mart. They have a big pink flower motif on the soles. I am still
wearing these sandals everywhere. Alex hasn't quite gone to this extreme, but
I have noticed him caring a lot less about his feet. Walking in flimsy sandals, visiting
neighbors, telling stories. This is the way of the country. This is the way
we did it. We told stories to each other. We told stories of every person we
could think of who'd decided to raise a child later
in life. We couldn't think of one person who regretted the decision. And that
went for plenty of second-time-around dads, some of them older than Alex. We told enough of these stories that
pretty soon we could see a more or less predictable plot. It really was the
same story, over and over again: A man and a woman talk about having a
child. The child in question, when it is still just a question, is simply
that: a question. An abstract notion. And there is no connecting with an
abstract notion. An abstract notion is one hundred percent imagination. You
can turn it into anything you want. If you are a person who wants a child,
you probably turn the abstract notion into a cute little bundle of joy
running up to you with nothing but kisses and hugs
on her itty-bitty mind. If you are a person who does not want a child, you
probably turn it into a howling goo-coated creature
in a car seat that won't stop kicking you in the kidneys. Each figment of each imagination is as
valid as the other, in that both are born somewhere along the continuum of
desire and fear. That is, neither of them is born in the world known as the
real one. The here-and-now. Enter
actual child. What happens when the actual child is
born—that real-world creature with more or less ten fingers and ten toes—is,
love takes over. Of course it does. This is not the
complicated part. This is virtually instantaneous. Because this is just what
love does. Love is like gravity. It really has no
choice but to pull. This is why people, no matter what
their age, tend to end up wondering what in the world they were thinking when
they suspected they might regret having this child. How, you wonder, could
you even have thought that? When little Sammy or Mary or Tiffany or Jamal is
here, in your arms, the abstract notion has vanished. In its place is Sammy
or Mary or Tiffany or Jamal. Love has taken over. It was the same story, over and over
again. It wasn't so hard to figure that we were living it, too. And yet if we were living it, then our
answer was already made. This lent an inevitability that sat uncomfortably on
both of our shoulders, and so for a while we fought it. I thought about love. If having a kid
was about the transforming power of love, well then, let's look at love. Any
relationship will teach you that love often means sacrifice. Love almost
always means sacrifice. When a man loves a woman, he wants to make her happy.
When a woman loves a man, she wants to make him happy. You sacrifice in order
to make life better for the other. Sometimes you feel you'll do just about
anything. This is why, for instance, a loving husband might be inclined to
drop a big wad of cash on a wife's birthday present (read: sapphires?). But I
digress. As Alex and I took our walks and told
our stories, I kept asking myself, in private, this question: What sacrifice
is too great? I mean, if bringing a child into our lives has even the
potential of making Alex's life miserable, I shouldn't do it, right? If
he thinks he's too old, if he really, and quite reasonably, would rather not
spend his retirement years dealing with the inevitable storm of adolescent
angst headed our way were we to have a child now, then I shouldn't do it,
right? That's a sacrifice I should make. And yet. That sacrifice? Really? That's what I kept asking myself. What
sacrifice is too great? But then one day while we were walking,
Alex was the one, he was the one who brought up the word. "Its not like it would be some
huge sacrifice," he said. "No?" "It's not like I have some big retirement
plan I'd have to cancel," he said. "All I've ever done is work.
What else am I going to do? Buy an KV and drive
around the country? Take up golf? Canasta?" "I hadn't thought of it that
way," I said. We were on the ridge overlooking
George's sheep. Kind of a sacred spot, really. This was where we walked on
our very first trip to this farm, the day we discovered it, the day we
discovered the view that made us both fall head over heels in love with this
place. We promised, back then, to put a gazebo up here. The gazebo is still,
at this time, an abstract notion. "So it's not like I'd be
sacrificing anything, really" Alex said. "Well, you'd be sacrificing
freedom," I told him. "Any parent sacrifices freedom." "Yeah." "And in your case, you'd be sacrificing
the freedom that retirement represents. You'd be giving that up, and in its
place you'd have . . . algebra homework." "Yeah." "And
working on science projects, you know, a volcano you
spend all night helping your kid create and then at three in the morning you
flick the switch and the damn thing doesn't spit the lava." He thought for a moment on that. He
said: "Well, if I imagine my so-called retirement years—if the choice is
between troubleshooting a volcano and sitting in a chair with nothing more to
do than watch Magnum, P.I. reruns, I've got to go with the
volcano." "Yeah." "I'm telling you, I could get into
this." "You don't think maybe you're
trying to talk yourself into something?" "I think it might be fun to raise
a kid with someone who actually likes me," he said. His
relationship with his children's mother had never been easy. "Well, I do like you," I
said. He smiled. "So that's what it comes down
to?" I said. "Boy, this was a lot easier than I thought." He just . . . smiled. "Look," he said. "We
have to make sure you get to be a morn. That's just—that's what we have to
do." "Well, I think—" "Think about it. What if you live
out the rest of your life regretting that you never got to be a morn—" "It's not an easy thought." "No. And for me it's an impossible
thought." "Impossible?" "Well, let's try to imagine it.
Here I am watching you live out the rest of your life regretting that you
never got to be a morn—and it's because of me? I couldn't live with
myself. You
know what, I couldn't." "It
wouldn't be because of you—" "It would be like you were a
dancer, but because of me you never got a chance to dance. You know? What the
hell is that?" "It wouldn't be because of
you—" "Or you were a singer, and I'm
holding my hand over your mouth—" "Wow." "And I can't be that. I won't be
that. I'm not that." "No, you're not." "So it's an impossible
thought," he said. "You know, Sherlock Holmes had it right. He said
if you eliminate the impossible, what you're left with, however improbable,
is the truth." "The truth," I said. "The truth," he said. "How about that Sherlock?" "Underestimated." "Well, doesn't this put you in a
sort of dilemma?" I asked. "You don't want a kid, but it's
impossible for you not to have one. Doesn't that make you trapped?" "I don't feel trapped. I feel like
this must be what's next." "Okay, then." "Okay, then." And that really was that. We stood at
the gazebo spot and looked out over these now-familiar hills, hills that
always remind me of the jolly beer-bellies of men, we stood there, and we let
go of the impossible. It was miraculously simple, but a miracle all the same. Then, on the walk home, Alex put his
arm around me. "One thing" he said. "If you get to have a kid,
shouldn't I get to have a pool table?" "A pool table," I said,
pausing to consider. "All right. In fact, for the rest of our lives you
get everything you could possibly want." "Good,"
he said. "Good," I said. "I want to be in the NBA," he
said. "I’ll see what I can do" "Not a benchwarmer," he said.
"I want to start" I imagined him in a pair of snazzy,
shiny shorts, with tattoos all over his arms, dribbling his bad self up to
the kneecaps of Shaquille O'Neal. "You need to
think about that one, okay? I just want you to think about it." If
you’re looking for a book that will lift your spirits through brilliant
writing, poignant stories, and great insight into human behavior, pick up The Exact
Same Moon, and enjoy. Steve
Hopkins, January 22, 2004 |
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ã 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2004
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Exact Same Moon.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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