Now Is Then: Snapshots from the Maresca Collection

I think good found snapshots (like those collected in this book) are a lot like crushes--singled out of the plethora of others because of pleasing aesthetics and intriguing subject matters, but attractive also because of what you don't know, because you are able to take the pretty pieces contained in the small square frame and then just make up the rest.

The Florist's Daughter

Author: Patricia Hampl

I started reading another of Patricia's memoirs (A Romantic Education) a couple years ago and I liked it but didn't have the time or patience then to be sucked in and therefore I never finished it. I've been wanting to return to her work for sometime now, especially as I am visiting the cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, the setting of almost all her work) more often and am contemplating possibly living there myself or at least having it as my closest city when I move back to the farm. When I saw this memoir, her lastest, still in hardcover and costing more than I really should spend, displayed at W&CF, I couldn't help but pick it up and carry it around the store with me. My friend says she likes to grocery shop by walking into the produce section and seeing what vegetables she picks up. She believes her body will tell her what food she needs if she just surrounds herself with the options. I almost didn't buy it. I can wait until it comes out in paperback, I thought, or maybe get it from the library. I should read the one I started first and then come back to this one, I thought. But I wanted this one. The connection to her father's work in the title, but a summary that made it sound like it was actually more about her mother, and the Pat Conroy praise on the cover: "Patricia Hampl writes the best memoirs of any writer in the English language." I needed it.

For the next couple weeks, I would read a chapter or part of a chapter before bed, and like A Romantic Education I liked it, but whether it was me being busy and tired or her meandering, I didn't get sucked in. I brought it with me to Memphis last weekend but didn't open it up to read until Monday morning when I was waiting at the airport for my flight. I continued to read after I boarded the plane, as we waited longer than usual to take off, in the air, back on the ground in Chicago and waiting again for O'Hare to lend us a gate, on the blue line (I took a quick break to call work and tell them I would be late), and then on the red line. I laughed at the Belmont stop. I cried at the Lawrence stop. I finished the book at Berwyn, with just enough time to reread the last page before I got off at Thorndale. So good. I didn't mind paying for hardcover, and I definitely didn't mind showing up to work late because of a delayed flight.

Genre: Memoir

The Church of the River

I went to Memphis last weekend to meet up with Leslie, my roommate from college who was there on a grad school interview, and stay with my friends Sara and Lauren who I've been promising to visit since they moved there. Before coming, Sara and Lauren asked what I wanted to do when I came. "Graceland? Beale Street?" they offered almost fearfully, but I told them I was coming to see them and that I wanted to see their Memphis, not the the tourist packaged Memphis.

It was great. We drank Budlights at a (the) trashy dyke bar, BBQ'd salmon and chicken on their backporch, drank coffee and ate whole wheat bagels at the "hippie" hangout, chilled in the park by the art school where all the "different" people of Memphis hang out, watched tevo'd reality MTV, played guitar hero and a little bit of real guitar. On Saturday Sara and Lauren mentioned that they had been attending services at a Unitarian church. I had learned about the Unitarian Church from living with Leslie in college, but I had never been to a service, so on Sunday morning the four of us went and I have to say it was one of the nicest church experiences I've had. The music was pretty and the sermon was thought-provoking (although I think it could have gone deeper), but what really got me was the windows. The pews are tiered and face a front wall of all window that overlooks the river. (This is the best picture I could find of the church, but it doesn't really do it justice. And we also didn't stand up at the front like that.) It was so nice to sit there and watch the trees and the river and feel the music and contemplate the sermon. And to be with a whole room of people that are sitting with you watching the same river and feeling the same music and contemplating the same sermon. Afterwards the four of us got brunch together and talked about what we had been thinking about and that was pretty damn great too.