Yes, it was time to soak in some good stories….
Our cabin is full of books, received as personal gifts over the years since childhood; my Dad belonged to two “Book of the Month” clubs, and every birthday and Christmas, my brothers and I each received a large book; my Mum also loved to give me the translated classics which she had grown up with as well as many others.
Firstly, I searched in the large paperback tome ( also a gift from my Mum), of The Lord of the Rings by J. J. R. Tolkein…. looking for a quote of Bilbo Baggins that I recalled:
“Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”
– Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring, A Long-expected Party
I must confess that I have not read this book yet….I started it when I was 18 years old when I was waitressing during the summer. I read a chapter each night I was home but was too tired to keep the continuity going…. more recently, I loved the movies, and I remember the above quote from the movie😜 (movies and TV series are not all bad!!)
However, being exposed to samples of Tolkien’s vocabulary while searching for this quote, and loving this epic story of the triumph of good over evil, has made me want to set time aside to finally read the trilogy!! Planning to start this Labour Day weekend!
Yes, I did indeed feel “thin, sort of stretched….” – and not because I had turned eleventy-one years old and had lived under the spell of an evil ring for many years like Bilbo. I had only just turned 60 years old!
Through the winter and Spring this past year, I was definitely not myself, and Gary and the boys were worried about me. Eventually, I went to see a counsellor whom my GP recommended.
After I talked with her for an hour, I came home to say: “ I just paid $160 to be told I am “sad”, and that I have been “working very hard”.
As Gary has benefits, I actually only needed to pay $36!
However, I shouldn’t have been so sarcastic about the counselling session! I discovered with some reflection, that her very simple but completely accurate diagnosis validated my present grief and helped me to name the many losses I’d had over the past two years.
Two recent moves in our living situation meant that both our Richmond neighbourhood, friends and church communities were meaningfully gone, or at least very distant, from our lives.
There had also been a rather sudden end to seven years of my beloved and well-paid surgical work, due to a nerve injury. My nerve injury healed as well as it could, but I made the difficult decision to stop surgical assisting ( before it could seriously affect my work negatively!) Arthritis usually progresses!
Overnight, I lost connection with three hospital’s surgical staff. Although I didn’t work fulltime, I was quite well connected with the nurses and doctors; we pulled together through long days of surgical slates and bonded during middle-of-the-night surgical emergencies. We knew about and cared about each others’ children and families and lives. I miss my surgical colleagues, and haven’t yet gone by to say “hello”, let alone say “goodbye”.
[correction here….I did connect through tears and hugs with some of my Peace Arch Hospital colleagues at a July memorial service for our OR head nurse Paul Bennett, who was shot to death while sitting in his own truck in his own driveway – a tragic case of, still unsolved, mistaken identity 😢]
Our move from Richmond also meant that we stopped hosting the monthly OMF prayer meetings, which are a gathering of folk involved in or interested in overseas mission work. (We had also recently resigned from OMF- International as active members after 23 excellent years, when Gary started work with the Seafarer’s ministry).
Then there was meeting my Aunt Lisl for the first time in 2016, losing her in 2017, and recently arranging a trip to Vienna to commemorate my mother’s family flight and to remember those who had died, as well as to meet a living cousin. These were truly awesome experiences!! My “hard work” came in the processing of all the facts and emotions – and that is ongoing at present.
Yes, I felt “thin”, “stretched” and very alone in the deep pain of grief.
Now, in the peace of the cabin with a break from work, I had time to turn to books and allow my story to connect with others’ stories. Time to absorb some indirect direction from others’ lives….full of joys and sorrows along the journey.
Being out of practice in reading “for fun”, I began slowly and with effort to concentrate, until I became engrossed with the characters and their story in Possession by Mazo de la Roche (a young man inherits a large country estate and farm in Ontario and moves there…), and I finished up the book in a day and evening.
Next, I found my old childhood copy of Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, and paced myself, savouring a few chapters nightly reading in bed. I knew this book so well, although it had been many decades since I had read it….and I never did see the TV series, which I’ve heard is good. Sadly, many women I meet today have only watched the series and have never read the books!
Anne’s childlike imagination, her ambition along with hard work and determination, her hopeful faith and the story of her blossoming from an innocent orphan child into a beautiful thoughtful young woman were an anodyne for me!
I started to feel refreshed and hopeful again, and completely understood why I had re-read that book every two weeks – literally – during a phase of my girlhood! (My mother had given me that precious book about fifty years ago, when I was age ten or so.) The book’s thickly textured pages used to have an earthy satisfying smell….as a girl, I used to savour the book completely….gently rub the pages between my fingers, and pause in my reading to hold the book close to me, inhale deeply, then return again to soak up Anne’s story.
A fitting quote from Anne Shirley, of Green Gables, for my patient readers: this post is long, but I have taken time to trim it!!
“….although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how much I want to say and don’t, you’d give me some credit for it.” 😊
―
L.M. Montgomery
As well as books from my own childhood, we also keep most of our boys’ childhood books at the cabin.
In this collection, I found “The Musical Life of Gustav Mole”.
“Gustav” was on my mind, having just been to Vienna the previous month. There I appreciated the Opera House from the outside ( I didn’t take in a performance), and saw a street memorial to our great-grandfather’s first cousin, Gustav Mahler, who was a composer and a conductor at that very Opera House; we also saw a street beside the Opera House named after him!
“The Musical Life of Gustav Mole” (no connection to Mahler, except in the name and the musical theme), had been a favourite to read aloud to our boys when they were little. It comes with a musical recording, which we no longer have, but reading it through, I could hear much of it in my mind!
I am so thankful that our sons still have music in their lives🎼🎹🎸And I’m thinking I need to find access to a keyboard and get back to tinkling the ivories….and perhaps even taking up violin again, though I’m not sure my arthritic hands (nor the people around me!) will tolerate this….🎻 BTW, I received only a very small dose of Mahler musical genes; my older brother John got a big dose!! 🎹
“Happy the mole born into a musical family!” – Kathryn Meyrick
Next, I spotted a small book I had retrieved from my father’s massive and diverse collection: the original trial transcripts of Joan of Arc. It is not in novel form, and I found it rather hard to follow (and actually did not finish it), nor do I comprehend how a 15th C seventeen year old village woman could influence high court officials and lead a French army victoriously causing a siege to be lifted and a change of kingship, based on visions and voices she heard! Quite an amazing story.
As a girl I either read Bernard Shaw’s play St. Joan (or more likely, saw it performed). At any rate, I have never forgotten her brave and committed attitude (given voice by Bernard Shaw):
“It is better to be alone with God. His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die.” – St. Joan (Bernard Shaw)
Jeanne D’Arc was burned at the stake at age nineteen. She had lived her short life committed and obedient to the heavenly vision and guidance given her.
Reflecting on Joan’s brief but God-focused life and on these words helped me to re- orient back to God in my aloneness. Having sought God since a child ( I was raised in a secular mixed Christian Jewish family, and began learned Bible stories at school starting at age 5), I had walked with Jesus since age ten. I knew that most of all I needed my God’s companionship and the shoulder of my Elder Brother, Jesus, to lean on through this time of grief and loneliness.
And so, i did return to my favourite devotional over many years, A Private House of Prayer, filled with scriptures, poems, journal and literary excerpts. The book, by Leslie D. Weatherhead, a British preacher and theologian, was given to me by a wise older friend when I was 23 and struggling…it is now tattered with yellowed pages coming loose!)
I had brought it with me to the cabin even though I had not opened it for some months. And i began to read on the 25th day of July.
Gradually, I experienced God’s grace and inner presence bring calmness and peace and a soothing balm to my aching heart and mind, as my body was also slowly recovering from the virus.
In that holy quietness (just as much in the chatter of the girl, Anne of Green Gables), I continued to appreciate refreshment and hope☺️
JenniEliz 