Upside Ann

 From "The Pleasure of My Company" by Steve Martin. It was not that I missed her; she was far from me by the time it was all over that our communications had become spare.  She lived in me dead or alive.  Even now, the absence of her letters is the same as getting them for when I have the vague notion that one is due, I feel the familiar sensation of comfort that I did when I held a physical letter in my hand. She lives in me dead or alive.  I'm still struggling with the horror that the mother who I carry is the one I didn't recognize - the new one - the one who was sad and afraid and didn't like me.  I hope and fear for the day that she steps aside for the funny, warm, supportive mother I spent most of my life thinking I could never live without her.  On that day that I welcome her back into my heart, I will break. 

 "But our love was extinguished quickly, as though someone had thrown water from a high tower onto a burning dog." The man has a way with words. A super-strong contender for the book I send everyone at Christmas this year.  Keep that to yourself.  You don't want to ruin the surprise.  This book is a compilation of Martin's short pieces - not sure if they are better called stories or essays - but I do know for sure I can call them short- and two novellas.  Smart. Touching. And, yes, funny. "...innumerable obstacles I would face on such a trip.  I could list a thousand impossibilities: I cannot get in an elevator.  I cannot stay on a hotel floor higher than three.  I cannot use a public toilet.  What if there were no Rite Aids? What if we passed a roadside mall where one store was open the others were closed? What if I saw the words apple orchard? What if the trip took us in proximity to the terrifyingly inviting maw of the Grand Canyon? ...

I've got a new boyfriend.  Landon.  He's going into the 5th grade next year.  I'm not sure if I'm cheating on my husband or my son. We meet at the pool.  As soon as I arrives, he's beside me asking "Do you want to dive off the board with me?" Absolutely, Landon.  Absolutely.   Zupe stopped playing with me 2 years ago.  If I swim up to him, he points me to the nearest ladder.  But, Landon... "Want to do a cannonball this time?"   "Let's run up to the edge and dive in!" And, he's so charming.  "How old ARE YOU?"  "Did you sleep OK last night? You look tired." Once again, I'm having fun and in demand!

 I know.  I had a plan to make 2025 about reading women authors...but this book was calling me from an end-cap at the library- an old friend from those giddy zombie days in the early-20-teens.  I caved.  I must say that this story read differently 10 years later: post COVID, post trump/ICE. Take this for example: You were't worried about public disclosure? From who? The press, the media. The "media"? You mean those networks that are owned by some of the largest corporations in the world, coporations that would have taken a nosedive if another panic hit the stock market? That media? So you never actually instigated a cover-up? We didn't have to- they covered it up themselves.  They had as much, or more, to lose than we did. And besides, they'd already gotten their stories the year before when the first cases were reported in America...It had become "manageable." People were learning to live with it and they were already hungry of something different.  Big...

 Even where there's nothing to live for, there's always the next meal. Amen, sister. 

 Remember how I commented that I was disappointed NOT TO BE BLOWN AWAY by The Atlas Six?? (Hmmm maybe that was my comment on The Antidote?  Well, spoiler alert.) And, yet it ended in a bit of a cliffhanger and got all exciting near the end... so I read book two.  Yep. No. However, I can always find a few quotes to enjoy. There was no villain.  Atlas Blakely might have wanted Callum dead, but that didn't make him the bad guy.  Tristan might have betrayed Callum, but he wasn't the bad guy, either.  This was just the world.  You trusted people, you loved them, you offered them the dignity of your time and the intimacy of your thoughts and the frailty of your hope and they either accepted it and cared for it or the rejected it and destroyed it and in the end, none of it was up to you.  This is just what you got.  Heartbreak was inevitable.  Disappointment assured. Maybe that was my problem with these books.  Maybe I need...