Britt-Marie Was Here

I've listened to Fredrik Backman's novel Britt-Marie Was Here three times. I love Britt-Marie.

I listen to a lot of reading material: novels, non-fiction, scriptures, and religious works. It helps get me out the door for long walks, do weight-training, and sweep and scrub my kitchen floor.

When I was a schoolgirl, I invariably answered the question grown-ups often asked children, What do you like to do, with a one-word answer: read. Reading opened up worlds to me.

 

When reading became difficult, a few decades ago, it was a deep wound to my self-image. I was a reader, that was near the core of my identity. Yet my depression, and medication, took that away.

 

After several years of resignation, I finally took my son Matt’s advice and tried audiobooks. It opened up the world again. I still have trouble retaining what I hear, but at least I can comprehend and enjoy it at the time.

 

I belong to a women’s book group and in November 2021 Brit-Marie was on offer. A book about a socially-incompetent old woman, a ‘nagbag’ who starts coaching a children’s soccer team? I took a pass. But it was late fall of 2021 and the group was going to meet in person. Introvert though I am, I was starved for social contact. So, four days before the meeting I changed my mind, got the audiobook, and was smitten.

Backman has a marvelous talent (I’ve now listened to A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, Beartown, Us Against You, The Deal of a Lifetime, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World, and Anxious People. The Winners is on my Libby hold shelf). He draws complex and sympathetic characters and helps readers fall in love with unlikely candidates. He’s an astute chronicler of human nature with all its nobility and foibles.

Many of us may be like Britt-Marie, more complex and layered than can be detected from the outside. Britt-Marie is so much more than her nagbag exterior. She has a history no one fully knows and appreciates and capacity even she is unaware of. I believe that’s part of being human.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most famous American poet of the mid-nineteenth century, observed, “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

I whole-heartedly recommend Britt-Marie and every other Fredrik Backman book. If you do read it, or already have, leave us a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Home-making

 Today Jim and I drove to the home on the “little mountain” that Thomas Jefferson developed over 40 years of his life.

As a teenaged girl I was infatuated with the Thomas Jefferson of the movie, 1776, which was released as I was turning 16. Thomas Jefferson was tall (no boys in my junior high school were as tall as I was) and boyishly handsome with his red ponytail and knickers. Now I prefer the piercing blue eyes of William Daniels (John Adams), but in my girlish eyes it was all about Thomas and how he played the violin for his beautiful and beloved wife. 

Living in Massachusetts for the past 20 years, and influenced by my Adams-phil husband, my feelings for Jefferson had waned.

But Monticello rekindled my appreciation of the man. Jefferson designed so many thoughtful touches to his home. I love how he filled his entry hall with maps and objects of interest. He placed his bed in the wall, opening into both his study and bedroom, so convenient. And his books: he owned about 10,000. We moved closer to that number, buying four books in the gift shop at Monticello along with three at Mt. Vernon.

Both the tours of Mt. Vernon and Monticello emphasize the tremendous work that enslaved people were forced to do to create and maintain these plantations. I’m grateful for the ongoing work to document and bring to light the efforts of countless unnamed people and the need to live up to the ideals of American liberty for all people.

On a lighter note, I’m thinking about house decoration and home. We attended the Washington DC Temple open house with Xiomara and our grandchildren. Jim and I started our marriage there 43 years ago. We stayed with my oldest brother and his wife. Visiting my niece, a busy mother of five children, reminded both of us of raising our children. When R’el was about four, I helped her paint the alphabet, one upper-case and one lower-case letter on twenty-six manilla folders. We taped them together and posted them around the kitchen wall above our heads. We had no living room in those days, just a dedicated playroom with toy shelves and bookcases. How did we ever manage?

When younger moms have asked, I usually say, well, you only have 24 hours in a day. You do what you can and move forward.

But now we don’t have such a busy, demanding life. We can tour Virginia and let others raise children, focus on careers, sustain life. “Sustain life” is a phrase I latched on to in southern Indiana back in the eighties. At a church meeting a woman used it to describe her role as a mother of young children. There were certainly days where that was my goal. I hope I accomplished more; I know I tried.

As I sit here in Gordonsville, Virginia, listening to Bach on YouTube, I’m savoring the memory of our lunch today at La Michoacana restaurant we happened upon in Charlottesville and the sunshine on the mountaintop.

I’m looking forward to returning home and making it ever more of a home. Washington and Jefferson were gardeners: it’s time to plant mine.