Summer reading

When I wrote this post, I was still in the middle of my second Margery Sharp, The Nutmeg Tree. It’s several weeks later, and I’m still reading Margery Sharp novels. I think she’s going to keep me occupied well into July, if not for the rest of the summer. 

*****

The Nutmeg Tree ended very abruptly, leaving me hanging on several fronts. I never did find out definitively what happened to Julia and Susan. It’s reasonable to assume that Julia ended up happily married to Sir William but whether or not Susan and Bryan ended their disastrous engagement or went on as stubborn young people will do to the altar and an almost-certainly disastrous and unhappy marriage, we will never know. I’m guessing that The Nutmeg Tree was an unfinished novel that Margery Sharp’s literary executors just threw into the collection. Anyway, it’s just as well because Julia and Susan were beginning to wear me out a bit, and I was ready to move on to volume 3, The Flowering Thorn. There’s a four-year-old orphan boy and a beautiful and young and stylish but impecunious young woman who has thus far lived a wild and carefree life. We can easily guess where Margery is taking us, but she will make the road there very interesting and entertaining. 

*****

And it was. The Flowering Thorn is absolutely wonderful. Imagine if Rebecca West and PG Wodehouse collaborated on a novel about a hard-bitten, cynical, beautiful upper class English woman who adopts an orphaned boy and moves out of her stylish London flat and away from her stylish London life to a rustic cottage in the country, and you’ll have some idea of how great The Flowering Thorn is. 

Yes, Lesley (the beautiful protagonist) did adopt the orphaned boy just as I predicted, though it happened much sooner in the story than I expected. By the midway point, Lesley adjusts to motherhood and country life, and even makes a few friends. She doesn’t fall in love with her young charge; at least not right away, but she cares for him scrupulously and faithfully.

When Lesley arrives in the village, she’s determined to do her duty by her adopted child, to keep him safe and fed and clothed until he’s old enough to go to boarding school; and then she plans to resume her former life in a fashionable London neighborhood. She has no sentimental attachment to the child, nor any idealistic notions of motherhood. But eventually, she comes to love her new life in the country. Sharp writes about Lesley’s realization that a little boy, a dog, a cat, and a rough-around-the-edges village woman who helps with cooking and cleaning all depend on her for their sustenance and safety. We understand that just months earlier, Lesley would have been horrified by such a realization; instead, she is somewhat humbled, but also proud of her position as the center of the world for her unconventional little family. 

Does this sound like a Hallmark Christmas movie? In the wrong hands it could have been. 

Without giving away too much, Sharp manages to tell the story of a woman who finds fulfillment in family and home life, without making it into a morality tale or drawing an unflattering and judgmental contrast between the devoted country mother that Lesley eventually becomes and the self-involved single city woman she had once been. Lesley herself rejects this dichotomy, dismissing friends and acquaintances who praise her for her self-sacrifice. She is only fulfilling a commitment; and she doesn’t even believe that she loves her adopted son, but the reader understands that she does love the child. A person doesn’t give up a life of freedom and glamour and excitement for a rustic life of chores and children and animals for any reason other than love. Love is an action, not an emotion. Love is what you do for a person, not how you feel about them. 

*****

OK, we have just imagined a Wodehouse - West collaboration; now, just imagine if Shirley Jackson and Muriel Spark had worked together to write a novel, and then you might have some idea of what The Innocents is like. This was the last of the four novels in the collection, and the second one in a row about a single woman who adopts a young child. And there the similarity ends. The Flowering Thorn’s Lesley, a rich and spoiled London socialite, impulsively adopts an orphaned boy, regrets this impulsive decision almost immediately, but is then determined to fulfill her commitment, and ends up finding meaning and purpose in the process. In The Innocents, the unnamed first-person protagonist also cares for a child not her own, an arrangement that is supposed to be temporary but becomes permanent as a result of the untimely death of the child’s mother. In this case, the adoptive parent does have a deep, emotional attachment to the child, who is autistic, although Sharp does not use that word. I’ve read some reviews of The Innocents that suggest that it is a heartwarming story of an elderly woman’s unselfish love for a developmentally disabled child. But without revealing anything, let me just say that the love is far from unselfish; and the titular innocents are not the child and her caretaker, but the child and her unfortunate mother. It is both bitingly hilarious (that’s Muriel Spark’s contribution) and macabre (that’s where Shirley Jackson comes in). 

*****

Cluny Brown is probably Margery Sharp’s most famous non-rodent literary creation, and I picked up volume 2 of the collection expecting that it would be included, but it’s not. So I got a stand-alone copy of Cluny Brown, and it is my favorite Margery Sharp so far - an absolute delight of a story. Margery Sharp must have read PG Wodehouse, not to mention Jane Austen and George Eliot and George Bernard Shaw, because I can hear all of their voices in her writing. And Sharp herself was obviously an influence on Muriel Spark, with the same wry, sharp humor, but more tempered with kindness than Spark. Muriel Spark would have written Cluny Brown in the first person, and her Cluny would have judged Uncle Arn and the Carmels and Mrs. Maile and (especially) Mr. Belinski much more harshly. Of course, she would have been entirely right about Mr. Belinski, who is a self-important cad. 

I’m about 70 percent through Cluny Brown, and I’ll be sorry when it ends, except that at least I will know what happens to Cluny and Andrew and Mr. Wilson and Betty and the obnoxious Mr. Belinski because right now I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Anything could happen. And of course, I have another whole volume of Margery Sharp novels waiting for me as soon as I finish with Miss Brown. Margery Sharp is filling the gap left by Hilary Mantel and Muriel Spark, whose work I have read from start to finish; and she is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. As far as reading is concerned, it is shaping up to be a delightful summer. 

Peak summer

It's Saturday, and a swim meet morning in the DMV. It rained hard last night but the sun is out now, bright and warm; and morning cool is giving way to humid June heat. It smells like chlorine and coffee and sunscreen and wet grass and bacon egg and cheese sandwiches. IYKYK.

I'm no longer a summer swim parent, although my son is still a coach. But I am a summer swim aunt, so I'm here at the Manor Woods pool to watch my 11yo nephew, a summer swimming veteran; and my 7yo niece, who is making her A meet debut. 

I know some people here, so we have other races to watch; and it's fun, though a little weird, to be just a spectator. But the music is loud and the tents and deck chairs are all over the lawn and the kids are in full spirit mode with painted faces and blue and green fingernails and silly costumes. A summer swim meet is a summer swim meet. 

*****

The nice thing about being a summer swim aunt, rather than a parent is that you can come and go whenever you want. We rolled up at 9, and then found that the meet actually starts at 9, so we didn’t miss anything. And we left when the kids had both swum their best events. 

And then what did we do with our extra free time? Well yes, of course we went to another swim meet. A 17-year habit is hard to break. And what’s more fun on a Saturday morning in June, anyway? 

*****

It’s Sunday now, another beautiful June morning, and we're on our way to yet another summer swim meet. My son and some friends joined a local rec league for summer swim alumni and other adult swimmers; and their team, the Swim Reapers, is competing this morning at another old school DMV swim club. It's all sprint distances. It's going to be silly. 

*****

It was actually awesome - swimmers of all ages and many heats of each event, arranged in reverse order by age. No officials - swimmers are on the honor system - and each heat grabs a stopwatch as they finish their races, so they can time the next heat. It works very well. My son and his friend helped the Reapers to a first place finish in the men's medley relay, and he picked up an individual first place in the 19-29 men’s 25 breaststroke, breaking the Reapers’ team record in the process. That was a fun way to spend Sunday morning. Better than church. Sorry, Lord. I’m just keeping it real. 

*****

I usually like to swim laps, but sometimes I like to just get in the pool and swim around the large wide-open shallow end, counting nothing, just moving through the water in any which way. That’s how I swam when I was a child, and it’s still fun. I stay in motion the entire time because even on a hot day, I can’t stay still in a pool without getting very cold. I swim around the perimeter, and back and forth from the wall to the rope that separates the shallow and deep ends. After a morning at a pool that we couldn’t swim in, we spent part of the afternoon at our own pool, swimming like children. I stayed in until I couldn’t stop shivering; until my eyes burned a little bit and my fingers were pruny and I was just plain tired out. Then we went home and grilled dinner and watched swimming again; this time, the Olympic Trials on TV. Meteorologically it’s still technically spring but this weekend was peak summer. 10/10 - would recommend. 

As a matter of fact, I DO have the cholesterol to be out here

It's 8:34 AM on Tuesday morning and I'm sitting in the waiting room at LabCorp, waiting for my 9:30 “appointment.” Why quotation marks? Well I'll tell you. LabCorp doesn't take appointments, so you have to just show up. It's first come first serve. And then when you come, you sign in on a list of assigned 15-minute time slots. Almost like appointments. Why they don't just take appointments in the first place is a question whose answer is unknown to me. 

I arrived at 8:30 and am now signed in for 9:30. I brought something to read so it's fine except that I can't have any coffee until after the blood draw. I didn't realize how dependent I am on coffee in the morning.  I'm really quite miserable - I can't stop yawning and I'm slow on the uptake. Fuzzy-headed, really. Muddled. Not sharp. Not on my A game. 

*****

I might be the youngest person here, and I'm 58, so I’m not accustomed to being the youngest person anywhere. But a medical lab at 8:30 on Tuesday morning is a hot spot for senior citizens, and this crew thinks they own the place. They gave me the fisheye as I approached the lab sign-in list, as if they’re thinking that the young people should step aside and let their elders go first. Normally, I’m all about respect for elders, and not just because I am one. But I have to go back to work after my blood work, and everyone else in that waiting room is going home to watch “Matlock” reruns. They can jolly well wait their turns. 

*****

I read for a bit, and then wrote for a bit, and then watched “House Hunters International,” featuring a young Canadian woman who was moving to Playa del Carmen. At 9:27 I received a text message notifying me that the lab tech was ready for me, demonstrating that they DO in fact know how to use technology and that they could conceivably figure out a way to schedule appointments that doesn’t involve a clipboard hanging from a hook. 

The lab technician was curt to the point of rudeness, responding to my cheery “good morning” by pointing to a chair and barking “sit there.” But she was reasonably competent because the blood draw was quite painless, although I’m left this morning with ugly track marks on my arm. It’s kind of cold today anyway, so my long sleeves will cover the damage. And everyone knows I’m not a heroin addict. 

*****

But it seems that I am a bit of a coffee addict because I was literally shaking by the time I got out of there at 9:50 or so. I was going to just drive home and make some coffee but there’s a Starbucks right across the street from the lab. Starbucks smells lovely, and it really was unseasonably chilly on Tuesday morning, almost fall-like, a very Starbucks morning. Starbucks doesn’t sell pumpkin spice latte in June, and that is a good thing, given my well-documented hatred of Godforsaken PSL, which is a hate crime against coffee. I ordered a vanilla latte, my favorite Starbucks drink. Vanilla latte tastes like 1997. Had I sustained a head injury halfway through that latte, and then been asked who the president is as part of a concussion protocol, I’d have said Bill Clinton. Or maybe I wouldn’t because that latte cost almost $7, so it’s definitely 2024. On my salary, I can have two children in college OR I can buy $7 cups of coffee. I can’t do both. That’ll be the last Starbucks for a while. 

*****

It’s Friday now, and if I’m being honest (and I am always being honest), I’m patting myself on the back for all the progress I’m making on my still-long-but-shorter list of administrative catch-up tasks and medical appointments. With the blood work out of the way, I now have to make two more specialists’ appointments, get an old filling repaired, and then deal with my apparently quite high cholesterol. I’m already taking anti-anxiety meds again because the panic every time I left the house and especially any time any member of my family left the house was getting out of control, and it is a bit better. But I don’t want to take any more medication. So I guess I have to do this the hard way. And since I do pretty much everything the hard way, this shouldn’t be a problem. Everyone in my house is going to be eating very healthy food this summer. They’re not going to like it. But by the end of August, I’m going to have a crossed-off to-do list, and much better triglyceride and LDL numbers. I need to live long enough to glare at the young people in line at LabCorp.