Fortune of the Day – There are beautiful and wild forces within us. – St. Francis
Over the winter break, I read Ann Leary’s The Children. It was on sale at Barnes and Noble. I really enjoyed reading Leary’s The Good House, so I looked forward to reading another one of her books. Leary’s characters tend to be very direct, and very matter-of-fact, in the way we sometimes stereotype people from New England, where many of her stories take place. I like that aspect of the characters. Her books are also filled with interesting tidbits and asides, which might be my favorite feature about her writing. For instance, The Good House described, in amusing detail, how to be a fake, yet credible fortune teller and The Children was chock full of ideas on how to commit minor fraud crimes, plus a bonus survival tip. This tip claims that if you can find the star Polaris, at night, and then find a landmark underneath it, you will always know where true North is pointing, even while hiking in the light of day. Now I don’t plan on committing any fraud, but it was kind of vicariously fun, to get into the mind of someone who amuses themselves by committing petty crimes. The best part of the book, is that I feel like I got two-for-one deal while reading it: one, the joy and relaxation of reading interesting fiction and two, a possibly life-saving survival tip, which will come in handy, should I ever agree to going into the Montana wilds again.
An interesting fact about Ann Leary: She is married to the actor Denis Leary. In 2013, during a troubled time in her marriage, she wrote an essay for the New York Times’ Modern Love feature called “Rallying to Keep the Game Alive”. You may have seen this essay depicted on the Amazon Prime video Series, “Modern Love.” Her essay was the one in which Tina Fey plays Ann Leary. Playing tennis with her husband is what brings their marriage back to center. Ann Leary is also a recovering alcoholic and her insight into the mind of an alcoholic is really explored in her book, The Good House. Fascinating stuff.
However, I will finally get to the real reason why I am writing about Leary’s book, The Children (which I found to be a good read, not a fabulous read, but definitely worth my time). I mention this book because the main character is a blogger. The main character is a 20-something/never married/never had children undiagnosed agoraphobic. And guess what the main character’s blog subject is about? She blogs about her adorable, active family and lovely children. Seriously. And Yikes.
Readers, I assure you that I am the REAL DEAL. A lot of my readers are friends and family, and they will verify is that I am just as kooky and wide-openly honest, as I write. I am happily married to my college sweetheart and we do have four adult-ish children and two dogs. I have watched many, many episodes of the TV show Catfish (a show that catches on-line fakers and liars) and while I find that show fascinating, it is not at all, in my DNA to make strange, elaborate lies. That’s why I don’t think that I could ever write fiction. Do I exaggerate and dramatize and use creative license sometimes? Yes. Definitely. Life is more interesting when you dress it up with some flavor, but I am not a liar. I was honestly kind of surprised that Ann Leary, a mother herself, really believes that a never married, never mothered, never had much exposure to many children at all, could really capture in writing, all of the emotion, exhaustion, hilarity, and growth that comes from being a female head of household. I like to think that we women could spot a fraud like that in a second, but then, I guess a lot of the times, we believe what we want to believe. That seems to be a major theme of life these days. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
So now that we’ve cleared that up, I am going to take some baby steps and try to leave the house today, so that I can get more fodder for my blog about my “adorable” family . . . . . .