The Korean T-Shirts You’ve Heard So Much About

Posted on May 23, 2013 by The Waiting

ME: I should blog more about Korea. I mean, come on, that stuff is gold.

B: Yeah. There are hardly any blogs about expats teaching English in Korea. No one does that. You would really have the corner market on it.

ME: Hey, now.

B: Just don’t be all like, “ZOMG you guys!!!! Look at how badly they speak English!!! It’s like totes hilar!!!!”

ME: …..

Yum yum.

Good thing B rarely reads my blog because today, my friends, I am here to bring to you a fine assortment of t-shirts I bought in Korea. They have kept my top half clothed very well from my time of ownership. Are they totes hilar as well? You be the judge.

♥

Here we have a screen-printed shirt with two ducks outfitted in hunting garb. Leave it to an American to find the one t-shirt in Korea with a gun on it:

I got this one during the World Cup in 2010. Sharia don’t like it. Rock the South Africa. Rock the South Africa.

This next one blows the PG rating for my blog. Avert thine eyes, o children:

Ouch.

B’s little voice is in my head chastising me for showing off all my shirts. Here is a palate-cleansing gray shirt from American Apparel in Seohyeon Plaza in Seoul to clear your mind of the idea that everyone is walking around in Korea looking like a lunatic. Shout out to Wee Cee for getting oil stains all over my one normal shirt.

Don’t be too jealous that I have the coolest Nirvana t-shirt in the history of the world:

Another cool band shirt I have is of The Rolling Stones. Here I am wearing it recently:

Now here’s the detail:

Yup. Maybe Mick Jagger’s mom was born in 1923?

Actually, no. I Wikipedia’d it and she was born in 1913. Don’t know where they got 1923.

I simply love this next shirt. B is a fan of Harmony Korine (of Kids and Gummo fame) and he finally figured out that my beloved shirt was referencing a documentary called Beautiful Losers:

What did I wear in the winters, you ask? We-he-he-ell. I’ve also got some sweatshirts for when it got cool outside. I liked this one because at the time I was wearing red glasses so it kind of looked like me:

OK MAYBE NOT BUT STILL.

And when that one was in the wash, I wore this one for obvious reasons:

This is my mantra.

I will leave you with this yarn breast hat that my friends found at HomePlus (for you Brits, this is the Korean leg of Tesco.) That was the first and last time that previous sentence will ever occur naturally.

Enjoy.

I’ve caught myself a case of the human syndrome!

Sweet Relief

Posted on April 18, 2013 by The Waiting

C’s heart murmur is innocent.

I had just put her down for a nap when I heard my cell phone ring in our bedroom. The curtains were shut and the air had just cut off, leaving the room in a state of solemn coolness. I saw the local area code pop up and I knew the results from her echo cardiogram on Tuesday were in.

The call took less than 45 seconds. Forty-five seconds to let me exhale and know that she is OK. It almost seemed counterintuitive that good news could be shimmied into such a brief period of time. I called B to tell him right away.

“I always knew she was alright.”

“How did you know?”

“Because she’s happy. And even if she wasn’t healthy, she would still be happy and perfect.”

These are my people.

How Pandora Made Me Cool It

Posted on February 20, 2013 by The Waiting

Parenting is an exercise in giving up. You thought you were in control? Don’t let your relatively easy pregnancy fool you into believing that you were ready for what was coming. The instant that baby comes into the world, you surrender it all. Not just the restful nights when you think you can turn it all off. Nope. Even if the baby is a sleeper, she still keeps you up worrying. Why is she sick? Does she have typhoid? Why isn’t she sick? She should have had at least eleventy billion colds by now. Something’s wrong because she’s well all the time.

Yes, that last thought was one that I have had.

There is a lot of truth to the statement “I was a better parent before I had kids.” Everything you think you won’t do, you do do. And that do do? It rules your life. But I digress. You said you’d never give them snacks with added sugar, but that was before you realize that it’s really hard to find snacks without sugar in them that don’t cost at least 50% more than the regular snacks. You said that you’d make time for your marriage. There would be dates. But where are those dates? It’s hard to get romantic when you think about the extra cost of babysitters.

That giving up is good, though. Take the Great Pandora Debate that’s been going on in our household for the last week or so. I’d make a Pandora’s Box joke but that just seems too easy. So we have Pandora Internet radio. Not the kind you pay for and have the ads removed. When you look down our list of stations when they are sorted by “date added”, you can easily see when C started really getting into music because there’s a break from “Passion Pit” radio to ”Ella Jenkins” radio. ”Schoolhouse Rock” radio. ”Disney” radio. She likes that stuff. Granted, she likes some of our music too, but she likes that kid music better, and that’s OK by me because I only make stations for her that I don’t mind listening to as well. Do yourself a favor and make a Schoolhouse Rock station. You’ll thank me later.

So we listen to the music throughout the day, and sometimes my husband will just switch the music mid-song. Such a habit can be filed among the minutiae of life that one only notices when s/he has settled into a routine with his/her family. Switching the Pandora station without asking is our family’s equivalent of my own father’s annoying penchant for channel surfing during commercial breaks when I was a kid. Both of these habits just annoy me. Let the song play to completion, dangit. It’s going to be hard enough to instill any degree of patience in C since she entered the world at a time when all she needs to do is Google a query when she needs to know something. I can only image how my own ADD would have been exacerbated had I been born 25 years later than I was. The invention of Twitter decimated all the focus I was able to accumulate during the first 29 years of my life.

But I chose my battles. I give up not out of exhaustion but because doing so helps me keep control of perspective. Pro tip: the only thing you need to control in life is your perspective because everything else is gravy. This is for my own good as well as that of my family. The baby is not going to be scarred for life if B cuts off the end of “Do Re Mi.” She will withstand the onslaught of hearing Grimes instead of Raffi. She is completely aware of how much he loves her, and that is something that she will never second guess. Thirty years from now, she may not remember the third verse to “The Wheels On the Bus”, but she will know that her father adores her and has been doing so ever since she was a baby. And that’s what matters.

Here’s a piece of paper with Batman on it. I mean, I love you.

Posted on February 13, 2013 by The Waiting

104

I played the childhood game well. I was an active participant in all the fun that could possibly be had. I finger painted with pudding. I sang “I’m A Little Teapot” and did all the motions. I hunted for eggs like a boss. I ate my Happy Meal and I liked it.

I bought it all. I didn’t question much. That is, until Valentines Day rolled around. That’s when my skepticism was piqued.

For all holidays in elementary school, there was a party. The Halloween party was always fun. The room mothers would come in and let us stick our fingers into bowls of cold spaghetti and tell us it was brains while we wore store-bought costumes. I didn’t mind that there were always several Cinderellas or Supermans. I was in the spirit. My public school was so white bread that we could have a flat-out “Christmas” party and no one would question whether that title was exclusionary. We probably would have sung “Away In A Manger” if Ashleigh’s mom had remembered to bring the portable cassette player.

Come February, the Valentines Day party rolled around, right when the sugar highs that we had experienced from Christmas were starting to wear off. The thing about the Valentines party was that there was homework involved. You had to prepare Valentines for everyone in your class, making sure that “Andrea K.” was differentiated from “Andrea V.” I got a bit of a rise the night before the party when I thought about my crush Kevin P. making a card out for me. For the 10 seconds it took for him to write my name across the bottom of the card, I was in his head and heart.

I was always skeptical of these cards, though. They were the third grade equivalent of phoning it in. As good a sport as I always was in all things of Kiddom, Valentines cards could not fool me into believing that they actually meant something.

First of all, you couldn’t even fold them. Everyone knows that in order for a card to be legit, you have to be able to fold it in half. The entire point of a card is to read the outside and get your attention with a clever pun or at least a picture of a cute cat, and then open it up to see what the punchline/ real message is. Children’s Valentines cards have absolutely no merit in this respect. You just take it out of the unsealable envelope and boom! There is the message. Where is the romance? Where is the finesse? Where is the use of our highly evolved opposable thumbs?

The messages themselves are real winners too.

Why, yes. Yes it is, Garfield Valentine card. It is Valentines Day. I can tell by all these Palmer’s candies being passed off as chocolate and by Mrs. Buchanan’s giant pink and red sweater with cupids making out on the back.

This one isn’t even trying:

Well, since you spelled out “Whooosh!” with hearts for o’s, then love MUST be in the air. Look at Batman: he is running away from a giant heart! Affection is the literal nemesis in the milieu of this card.

Another reason I never bought into the charade of a Valentines card is that they all had some dumb theme that only appealed to the giver of said card. The point of giving a gift or a note is to tailor it to the recipient, not the giver. Tell that to an eight-year-old boy, who selects the box of Optimus Prime Valentines for his whole class:

Swoon.

Yeah, something tells me that Beth the Pageant Participant isn’t going to love her Transformers card unless there’s a tube of watermelon LipSmackers taped to the back. No worries; Billy will get a compulsive Barbie Valentine in return. He’s a free-thinking lad. He will for sure get the sentiment, right?

The smart kids were aware of the lameness of Valentines and would insist on including a piece of candy within the tiny envelope. However, when you’re six and without a refined palate, you don’t yet appreciate the premium offerings of Godiva or even Ghirardelli. Instead, you go to what you know: heart-shaped antacids, the Valentines day equivalent of circus peanuts candy. Um, thanks?

I realized I had finally come of age yesterday when I logged into Facebook. A notification indicated that my husband had posted a picture to my wall. I clicked over and this is what I found:

The man knows me and loves me. All that time he spent on Tumblr, he was actually just searching for the perfect card for me.

Happy V-Day to you all! May your day be full of chocolate-covered strawberries or full-strength Makers Mark.

Preferably both.

Grapes, Balls, Colds, and Love

Posted on February 11, 2013 by The Waiting

I just had one of those moments. One of those moments that I really, really need these days.

First, some background. I have not been sleeping well. I think the last time I slept all the way through the night without waking was about three weeks ago. Let that sink in a sec: my baby is sleeping better than I am. I guess that’s a good problem to have, but the problems and worries that are keeping me up almost cancel them out. B’s job hunt continues. We thought we had some leads, but they ended up being for naught. We are now about a month and a half away from having to re-sign another contract with his school, and I’m beginning to think that in that period of time he is not going to find another, better job. It makes me so frustrated to think that all the work we’ve both been putting into his applications isn’t going to pan out. It also makes me frustrated to think we likely have another entire year left here. I am impatient. I want to get a move on on this hypothetical life that I’ve imagined for us.

We were all sick today. This is C’s first real cold, and even though she’s handling it with a lot of grace, the fact that B and I don’t feel well makes it hard. Our apartment has been a disaster all day. All I did was pick up after the both of them. Since I praise B so much here I think I am allowed to say today that he is sometimes kind of infuriating to live with. He really doesn’t have the picking-up-after-himself skill set. I asked him yesterday if he could kindly show a little initiative and unload the dishwasher if it’s done running, to which he replied that all I had to do was ask and he would do it. I hate being a taskmaster. It’s such a cliche, but there’s a lot of truth to the statement that the sexiest thing a guy can do is perform some household chores without being asked.

So we’re sick. We’re run down. I’m resigning myself to another year here. I am not looking forward to taking C’s bassinet to Babies ‘R Us tomorrow and trading it in for a discount on a big kid carseat*. I don’t care if she slept *maybe* a total of 10 hours in that thing. It still makes me weepy. We already packed her infant swing away this week. This is more than one mama can handle in the span of a week.

*Which, BTW, never happened.

But then – BUT THEN – she makes me put it all in perspective. I’m sitting on the floor with her and we’re practicing rolling a ball back and forth to each other. That’s it. That’s the story. We’re rolling a ball. It’s meaningful to me that my girl can do this. I roll the ball to her and she gets giddy to grab it and push it back to me.

A few days ago C and I were Skyping with B’s cousin who lives and teaches in Korea. He and his girlfriend at the time moved there when we still had about eight months left in our contracts. B’s cousin doesn’t have kids and really doesn’t want them, but he’s interested in the whole transformation of a person into a parent. He was telling me about his friend who had a kid and was freaking out when the baby ate a grape. The baby ate a grape. And our baby rolled a ball. Woo woo.

The thing is, only two years ago this child didn’t even exist. Now she exists and rolls balls. And gets colds. And evidently wakes up at 1:30AM to talk to her nightlight? They are tight.

So when she eats a grape, you had better be sure I’ll freak out in a good way. That little grape grew on a vine to nourish my little grape, which is all oddly reassuring to yours truly, The Worrier.

I’m not freaking out this time.

Posted on January 21, 2013 by The Waiting

When I started writing here, I called this space The Waiting because I was waiting on C to be born and also because Tom Petty is awesome and I wish I were related to him.* But then she was born and I realized that waiting is kind of a big thing in my life, as it probably is for everyone.

*One time I was listening to Terry Gross and she was interviewing him about his early life in Florida. He apparently lived in a university town so she asked him if and how that influenced him, to which he replied, “Um, we weren’t affiliated with the college. At all.” And that is why I love him.

Waiting is mashed in with my minor obsession with time. For pretty much my whole life, I have felt like I was entitled to the accomplishments that a certain age would bring me. If I only waited so long, I would get married. I would get to live in a house that I own. I would achieve a certain level of success in whatever professional field I entered. I would get to be a parent. If I didn’t hit those marks, I was supposed to worry them into occurring. That was my default response. I am an expert worrier in that I tackle it with the professionalism that I lack in all other aspects of my life. Worrying will bring into existence all that I lack, or so I thought.

So I hit the getting married thing pretty earlier when I married B when I was 24 and he was 23. I hit the baby milestone too so I will never have to worry about my ability to conceive again. It seemed like I hit the professional thing when I got my first real job out of school, but then I quit when it was horrible and I haven’t had a “real” job since (even though I loved working at a restaurant and then teaching in Korea, those don’t count as serious professions for me because I could not do them for the rest of my life without petering out or getting bored.) The personal life things have happened but the professional stuff and the other things that I have filed under “GROWING UP ETC.” in the file cabinet of my mind have never been all that satisfying. And so I have worried.

I’ve been worrying about B’s job search for awhile now. We’re still plugging away, applying applying applying. I don’t want to say too much else because I’m afraid I’ll jinx it. But at some point (I think it was about two weeks ago) I just relaxed. I don’t really know what did it, but all of a sudden I was able to sleep through the night. I had been telling myself all along that things would be alright, and in the space of I week I actually started believing it and realizing the truth of it. That we are not failures. That we will never be homeless. That we’d survive if we had to through the worst, worst case situation I can fabricate in my mind. Things are never as bad as they seem.

At first, it was disconcerting not worrying. I felt like my mind was broken and that I wasn’t approaching things with the seriousness they deserve. Surely B wouldn’t get a call back from the jobs we really like if I was sleeping soundly. LOGIC. But in the past few days I’ve given myself a pass. I am entitled to not stress myself out over these things. I’m realizing that the trajectory of my life is not always in my hands and that sometimes I just have to trust that I just need to wait it out. There is no shame in waiting. There is no shame in being safe and content. If we don’t get what we want to do this year, then we will try again next year. We all love each other so the world can’t harm us.

Right now, I am complacently waiting. I am gently reminding myself that worrying does not bring changes about. It only makes me not sleep and stuff my face with carbs past 9PM. Which is kind of fun at the time but this baby weight is burning a hole in my pocket.

Thanks to everyone who has been thinking about us through all this. I have no doubt in my mind that my replenished, more healthful mindset is due to your positive thoughts and prayers.

A Plea To Young Parents

Posted on December 12, 2012 by The Waiting

I am knee-deep in presents today. I’m laying them all out nice and neatly under our Festivus pole for the big exchange on Friday. So today my practically-Aunt Ellen (she’s actually besfrinn Cameron’s aunt but who’s splitting hairs?) is here to entertain you with a little holiday PSA. Enjoy and I’ll see you Friday! -Emily

Once again it is the festive time of the year. There will be conviviality. There will be good cheer. For the health and well-being not only of yourselves, the parents, but for the safety of your young ones—Please Do Not Drink and Drive. The consequences of doing so could be severe and everlasting.

I myself have followed this wise maxim for years. It is only recently, however, that I have discovered an excellent unintended consequence of a strict adherence to this regime. My children are older now, and they often have to be ferried to and from various events at later and later times of day—or I suppose I should say night. And guess what? I don’t have to do said ferrying because I don’t drink and drive.

Herewith I offer for your delectation some real life examples. Quaff your preferred alcoholic beverage as you peruse.

Situation #1

Time: sometime after 6 pm

Son: Mom, may I spend the night with Andrew?

Mom: Sure! His mom will have to pick you up, though. I’ve had a glass of wine, and Daddy isn’t home yet.

Son: OK.

This exchange exemplifies with laser-like precision how this premise operates in the field.

Situation #2

Time: sometime after 6 pm

Daughter: Mommy, will you take me and Zoe (sic) to the store for ice cream?

Mommy: Nope. I just got through having a glass of wine with dinner. Maybe tomorrow.

Daughter: Rats! Okaay…

This episode earns double points as children were saved from their unhealthy snack urges!

Situation #3

Time: Approximately 6 pm

Mom: Son, what time will the wrestling match end?

Son: I dunno. Around 8.45 or 9 pm, I am guessing.

Mom: Well, you’ll need to find your own ride home unless you want to wait for Daddy to get out of his meeting. I’ll be putting your sister to bed, and I know I will be having a glass of wine then.

Score triple points for this encounter. Maternal bedtime duties remain sacrosanct while affording an adolescent the opportunity to take responsibility for his own life!

Free at last! Free at last! After all those long years of mommy taxi duties, I am free at last!

I promise this approach can work for you too. It will not be effective, however, to suddenly develop this good driving habit when your child reaches the cynical age of 9 or 10. No. It must be drilled into him from a very early age that Mommy (Sorry, dads. You’re on your own) does not drink and drive. This way your calm statement that you cannot drive them to or fro will be accepted as calmly as it was stated. For so many reasons, I urge you now not to drink and drive.

***

About Ellen: Ellen is a total bookworm and bibliophile completing her first semester of library school in the great state of North Carolina. If you live in or near NC, please check out the North Carolina Literary Map which has all kinds of links and info all about the literary life of the state. For those of you wondering whether you can trust the advice she offers in this blog post, it is based on 21 years and counting in the trenches!

Here Comes the Fun

Posted on November 15, 2012 by The Waiting

And by “fun”, I mean tedium, stress, fear, and general grown-up time.

Those who have been following my blog for awhile know that B and I have been less-than-thrilled with where we live and his job since we moved back from Korea. He is an English instructor at a community college in an economically depressed rural area in the South. His job itself isn’t bad, but he commutes from the bigger town where we live to his work each day. We only have one car, so that limits the possibilities of what I can do with C each day. There is almost no chance of professional mobility in his school. There are some instructors who have been teaching the same thing for 35 years with no raises outside of the ones that make up for inflation.

We want to leave. We want to live in a place where we have options and where we can settle for good. We thought about leaving earlier this year, but with C coming, it was just too much to think about B quitting his job, (hopefully) getting a new one, and moving with our first child who would then be an infant. So we stayed. I think it was a good choice, but still. It’s time to think about next year, again.

It’s not just a matter of quitting and finding a job. B’s school gives him a contract in January for the fall semester, which he must sign or not sign. Here’s the rub: very, very few community colleges post new openings that early in the year, much less hire people. So basically, he has to make the decision to not sign the thing before he even has a new job lined up. This prospect was scary before we had a child, but now it’s even more daunting.

But we’re doing it. We can’t stay here any more. The longer we stay where we are, the harder it’s going to be to move later. Also, we need to move somewhere where there are employment opportunities for me, since we are unable to save any money in our current situation. I’d like to work part time, but any money I’d make from doing that would go directly towards care for C, so living closer to friends and family in Memphis is something we hope for. B is not limiting himself to teaching, since he makes next to peanuts being a instructor. He’s going to look for jobs outside teaching, but I fear that it will be a tremendous waste of time since the economy is so bad and people with experience are not even getting hired. I’m just being realistic here.

This all exhausts me just to think about it. I’ve known it’s been coming for awhile, but this year has flown by so quickly with C that it just occurred to me last week that all this mess is on the horizon. It’s scary to think about moving on without even knowing if he’s going to find a better job, but I guess this is just life.

I have been thinking about writing this post for awhile. Every time I sat down to do it, though, I bummed myself out a lot because I knew I would bum you out too. My posts here tend to be on the lighter side. Also, more and more these days I’m becoming more guarded. This is likely because I have a child now and I’m hesitant to share some of the not-so-fun stuff in our lives simply because it may affect her. I don’t even know how it would affect her, but it’s a fear I have. I simply hate being vulnerable and I don’t want her to be vulnerable too. I hate admitting that things are hard, and I hate asking for help.

But this is my life. Things are not always fun. They are not always easy. I wouldn’t be authentic to myself if I didn’t admit that this was going on. I also wouldn’t be doing any service to myself or my family by leaving stones unturned and avoiding asking for help. I guess that’s the thing about making babies: when you have them, you need to get over yourself and just do what you need to do to give them the best life they can have.

So I just ask you for your thoughts and prayers through all this. And hey, if you know of anything, please don’t be shy in telling us about it. Although I loves me some image macros, I think this is what the Internet is for.

The Time I Met a Blogger

Posted on November 12, 2012 by The Waiting

It’s no secret that I love talking to y’all on my blog. It seems like one out of every eight posts I do is about blogging in some form, and that’s because it has become a big part of my life and something that I get a lot of gratification from. The World of Blog keeps revealing itself to me and I love it more fervently with each little thing I learn about it. I love the people, I love the writing, I love the comments, I love the reading, I love the projects. I even love the spam. O how I love the spam.

I can now add a new thing I love about blogging. Meeting the people face-to-face is wonderful. In the past several months, I have Skyped with L’Eric and Never Contrary, two of my favorite WordPressers. Both times, I put voices and faces with the words on the screen and was filled with warmth. The humans behind the blogs exceeded their online personae, and that’s saying a lot. They are real. Not only are they not scary, they are as delightful and smart and interesting as they appear in their blogging.

But there was still that screen involved. We find a lot of safety in our screens. Even when people leave nasty comments, we have the fail-safe of the delete button. We still remember that those things were said, but pressing delete is neat and tidy. The screen is good, but it’s not always as satisfying as we want it to be. Meeting a person in the reality of life gives us a sensory experience that can’t be matched.

So begins my thoughts on the time I met Kelly. Like, met-met her.

Guys, she’s as great as she seems.

I have been reading her blog since right before her Lucy was born, so when I held Lucy in my arms while Kelly unfurled a blanket for her to sit on, it was one of those Oprah-esque fully circle moments. My people met her people and it was so satisfying and fun. Her Emily climbed a tree at the co-op where we met while she, B, and I held our babies and gushed about the Internet and why we love this place. Scratch that. B didn’t gush; I don’t think he’s capable of doing so, but he had a time that leaned on the great side, so we’ll take that. As we made the longish drive home that afternoon, his approval of my online and now real friend came through loud and clear:

“You know who Kelly reminds me of?”

“No, who?”

“She reminds me of OG.” OG is one of our friends from Korea who is charismatic and exuberant. She fills the room with the bestest of energy whenever she walks in. She’s passionate and smart and she loves hard. The same can be said of Kelly.

A few minutes passed. I took a nap in the backseat of the car with C and when I woke, B had another comment.

“So, what does Kelly blog about?”

The fact that he asked this at all was a Big Deal. B likes all y’all alright because he knows I love you, but his world of the Internet is very different from my own. There’s not a lot of overlap between mom blogging on WordPress and publishing flarf poetry on Tumblr. But he asked. Kelly is apparently that bridge. She intrigued him, and that’s another not-small thing.

“She writes about being a mom and her life but her words are just delicious. She is a Mom on Fire.”

And she is. Kelly is the best of the web.

The reason I say all this is because in her specialness, Kelly is what I know you all are like. We are in good company with each other. Amidst the noise of the Internet, we have all found our ways towards each other, and that leaves me extremely grateful.

Photography credit goes to Emily, Kelly’s big girl. Wee Cee was zonked out in the background.

Life’s too short to read lackluster books.

Posted on October 14, 2012 by The Waiting

Not a lot of thinking goes into the titling of my posts. The only real rules I go by are, 1, make it somewhat snappy, and 2, try not to use the “On….” construction (ie, “On Corduroy Pants,” “On Day-Old Pizza,” “On Hipster Nonsense”, etc.) Today, though, the title of my post is a sentence because it is something that I feel quite convicted of and if you don’t want to continue reading, I want you to at least have that one line stuck in your head because I feel it is so true.

Don’t waste your time reading stuff you don’t love. Just DON’T.

I have been left with meh emotions about the last few books I’ve read. I’m not even going to tell you what they are because then the seed of reading them will be in your brain and you’ll want to read them to see if I have bad taste or not, and that’s not a good reason to read a book. So, sorry. I will tell you that they are very popular and I can see why, but they just weren’t a good fit for me. I put them down before I finished them and returned them to the library. Had I read them in years past, I likely would have finished them, but I am now the parent of a baby and my time is at a premium.

More and more these days, I find myself rereading books from my past that I think are wonderful. I know my time won’t be wasted on them. These are the books that challenge me, enthrall me, make me see the beauty in the world, and truly take me to another place. They are not the books for everyone, but they are the books for me. They are the books I am married to. Marriage is something you’re in for the long haul. You will change, but the other person will change with you and always teach you something new about life. Such is it with good, made-for-you books. They will always reveal their splendor anew each time you approach them, and they will meet you where you are.

I am in a polygamous relationship with several books. Here are my lovelies.

What Is the What by Dave Eggers

This is the true story of Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee living in Atlanta. He recalls his life as one of the “lost boys” of the Sudan. Sure, it’s about survival and hope. Sure, it’s inspirational. Sure, it’s entertaining. But it’s also about how things suck ROYALLY sometimes and things very rarely wrap up neatly. Any other book would fabricate Achak’s life in a pleasant, didactic way. Not this one. His struggles are muddled with his victories. And that’s real life.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

For some reason, each time I read this book I am traveling. This is probably because it goes fast and you can easily polish it off on a three-day weekend. But just because you can read it quickly doesn’t mean it’s not worth its weight in platinum. I read it for the first time after reading two or three contemporary stinkers in a row, and it taught me not to give up on the modern novel. Even my husband – who is basically the Simon Cowell of books – was impressed with it.

Now the Green Blade Rises by Elizabeth Spires

Elizabeth Spires is a poet who I was exposed to in college. Actually, it was in the class where I met B that I first read her poetry. It was her images of circles and cycles and continuity that really inspired me, and they still do now. For our very first Christmas together, B gave me Now the Green Blade Rises and I just love it. Her poetry is delicate and strong, and it made me finally “get” poetry.

The Once and Future King by TH White

I take every single opportunity I can to talk about The Once and Future King, a recent adaptation of the King Arthur myth (and by “recent”, I mean that wasn’t written in medieval times). I’ve hijacked a lot of discussions of perfectly good books so I could go on and on about it. I just freaking love it. This is likely because I wrote my thesis on it in college, so I got in good and cozy with it for a solid six months. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about it. It’s a sprawling story with so many layers that I could read it 100 more times and I’d still find something new to love about it. I have about four copies of it so I can always be lending it out to people.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I was turned off by Lolita the first time I read it, and I didn’t finish it. I don’t know what brought me back to it, but when I attempted it again with an open mind, I found it to be one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. Its melancholy is delicious. The language is beautiful and the prose just meanders. It’s sad and wonderful and disgusting and perfect.

What books are you married to? What inspires you?

The Waiting

Turns out, it's not the hardest part.

Category Archives: Marriage