Story Worthy

For Father’s Day this year, I gave my dad a subscription to StoryWorth. Each week he’ll receive a writing prompt to inspire him to write down stories from his life. At the end of the year, all the stories will be printed in book form. This week I learned that since his family never went on long vacations as a child, he wanted to make sure that his own kids experienced that. And we did. Annual camping trips to New Mexico and road trips to both coasts, including Disneyland, were a big part of my childhood summers. We also took trips, like he did, to see family, most notably our trips to Arkansas to visit my grandparents. Here’s a repost from 2011 inspired by those trips.

 When my grandparents lived in Arkansas, we used to make the six hour road trip to visit two or three times a year. Our rewards for that much time in a car were afternoons spent listening to my grandmother's stories, a bag of Snickers in the produce drawer, and a coffee table stacked with magazines. My mom and I would settle in on the sofas catching up on Hollywood gossip and the latest his side/her side drama of the advice columns.

My fascination, some might say morbid curiosity, with marriage (troubled or not) led me to pick up a new novel by Carol Edgarian. In Three Stages of Amazement, we are thrown into the marriage of Lena and Charlie. And from the first paragraph, we are almost certain this marriage can't be saved. His failing startup, a baby with medical issues, and an ex-boyfriend (Italian ex-boyfriend) are but some of the factors pulling their relationship asunder.

The others? Well, you'd be amazed. And you might need a Snickers to get you through it all.

Going Viral

I may have mentioned a few months ago I tried reading Stephen King’s The Stand. Definitely too soon.

Being fully vaccinated, and more than a little hopeful, I was still a little hesitant to open one of the books recommended for this week’s challenge. The Pull of the Stars  by Emma Donoghue, as you might expect, also largely takes place in a room. This time it’s in the maternity ward of a hospital in Dublin set during another pandemic, the Great Flu of 1918. Julia, an experienced nurse, cares for her charges despite the scarcity of supplies. In the midst of the inherent drama and uncertainty of childbirth, Julia finds herself drawn to the volunteer helper who infuses the ward with a different kind of life. An added bonus is the inclusion of propaganda signs that might sound more than a little familiar.

Libby’s algorithm also led me to an older book by Alice Hoffman called At Risk. Set during the height of the US AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, it follows a family living in New England. Polly, the mother, has just taken on a new project, photographing the seances of a local seer. Her husband Ivan is an astronomer who has passed his love of science onto their eight-year-old Charlie. Their daughter Amanda is excited about the prospects of her middle school gymnastics team. When Amanda gets sick, her pediatrician decides to check her for the virus.  When the result comes back positive, friendships, school policies, and her parent’s marriage are also tested.

#vanlife

Thanks to Instagram, my daughter wants to live in a van when she grows up. Turns out it's in her genes.

To educate myself more about her aspirations, I sought out Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. The book follows several van and RV dwellers through temp jobs , caravans, and conventions.

Many in the nomad community support themselves through seasonal jobs. Amazon actively recruits this demographic to work in their warehouses, bending, lifting, and doing repetitive, mind-numbing work, for around $13 an hour. Another popular option is working as a camp host at campgrounds around the country cleaning latrines, picking up trash, and policing noise.

Between gigs they gather in the desert of Arizona with like minded folks, swapping goods, advising the newbies, making treks to Mexico for cheap dental work and prescriptions, and figuring out how to rig their ride to cook, shower, or pee more efficiently.

In a sense, this lifestyle offers freedom from debt, cutting ties from property ownership, taxes, and storage units. For some this is a choice, but for many others in the book, it’s a last resort solution. As Bruder writes, “The last free place in America is a parking spot.”

Home foreclosures, lost jobs, divorces have set them on this path. For others, affording an apartment near their workplace is impossible. Some have retired, selling their home to fund the first leg of their journey.

Although I haven’t seen the movie inspired by the book, I would like to watch it with my daughter. Either the difficulties of the lifestyle will dissuade her, or its joys will entice her even more. Regardless, this book will be required summer reading.

Sonic Youth

The heat wave in Washington this week (it got up to 84, y’all), reminded me of this post from 2009. It makes me nostalgic, not only for air conditioning, but also because that three year old can now drive herself to Sonic.

The air conditioner in my apartment sucks. This is June in Texas after all. So I pile the kids in the station wagon and drive down the block to Sonic. Rolling down the windows lets in a light breeze tinged with the smell of the afternoon’s tater tots. Moments later our drinks arrive. I unwrap the extra straw to keep the nine-month-old occupied, hand back the strawberry shake to my daughter, and open The Red Convertible.

Louise Erdrich’s collection of short stories is part tart, part sweet, just like the cherry limeade in the cup holder. And I even manage to finish a couple of the stories before my three-year-old pokes a hole in the Styrofoam cup, and we find a use for all those extra napkins.

Looking for more summer reads? Try this list for 2021.