A bubble, not a shell

A child was born and surprisingly, I've read some things

In the early morning hours of October 9th, we got a killing frost that wiped out the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and chard in the garden and the zinnias, celosia, and dahlias in the field. That evening, Jared, my sister, and I harvested what we could for market the next morning, but we never made it to the market. Two days later, after a 30-hour grueling and magical experience that irrevocably changed me, changed us, our child was born.

These last three weeks have been a total vortex. A whirlwind. Time has meant absolutely nothing. Sleep ebbs and flows.

It’s early days, but time to read has been hard to come by, and not because I don’t have time. There are hours available in the day while the baby sleeps in my arms or in the crib, and yet those are hours I just sit and watch him sleep. Sometimes I steal a nap myself. One day I took two hours to make a curry, bake bread, grind coffee, and it felt like perhaps for a moment, life hadn’t changed at all. But mostly I just sit and stare at the baby and wish he would wake up so I can look into his eyes. I’ve become a total sap.

There was one night, however, when I followed the wisdom of my favorite farmers market regular, Nancy, who also gave me my favorite piece of baby advice: Read the baby what you are reading instead of feeling beholden to baby books. And so we read act 3 & 4 of Makenna Goodman’s Helen of Nowhere.

Goodman is a god of descriptions. Her details in The Shame are one of the reasons I return to that book year after year. That, plus the plot and character details, are just so perfect. Helen of Nowhere similarly takes place at a rural farmhouse, one that I assume is in Vermont because that’s where Goodman lives and that is where The Shame takes place. In my mind, it is the same house from The Shame, though I know it is not.

The story follows an irrelevant and disgraced professor from a bygone era of thinking, pushed out by the louder, progressive voices of his female colleagues, including his wife (or so this is his impression). For reasons unknown to us, this brings him to tour the farmhouse and brings us into an incredible monologue by the character we know only as the real estate agent. Told in six acts, we are brought into the perspective of the man, the real estate agent, Helen (our only named character), the wife, and man and wife together, and the story we are left with is haunting, funny, and philosophical.

Certainly weirder than The Shame, it reminds me a bit of Samantha Hunt, who, coincidentally enough, blurbed the book (“Intrepid, reconfiguring, and full of the best hauntings.”). Although it is less plotty and more philosophical, it has these tiny pools of plot and description that are stunning.

Helen’s property made me think of our property and our way of living. It made me think of how many times friends or colleagues (especially those at my last job in the city) would express their desires to find refuge on our property when the world ends or commend us on setting ourselves up for success during a time of earth-shattering uncertainty. I think of how I’ve smiled and nodded because it’s true, we can put up potatoes to last us through the winter and we have a freezer full of sauce and pasture-raised chickens for the months ahead— but I struggle to identify with the scarcity and fear that those comments place on the way we live when I see our space and our life as abundantly full and ready to share now, not just in hypothetical crisis. I think of how these comments negate the hot summer afternoons spent in the creek or the days I lay in the garden listening to Pete Seeger while Jared tucks the garden beds away under thick layers of leaf mulch. Or the days where nothing gets done, we just exist in the slow liminal space surrounding us. I brush these comments off, and yet I understand that our life is not the norm. We do live in a bubble, a quieter, more isolated life full of hard physical work that never ends, and now includes way less sleep.

I wanted to thank you all for sharing your book and show recommendations in response to the last newsletter. And for friends who sent books in the mail, like my friend Emma, who mailed me copies of her two favorite Shirley Jackson novels, complete with tabs marking important passages. I can’t wait to experience these novels with you in mind, Emma.

While I haven’t had much time to read, I find myself wanting more heady reads. Thinky pieces. And poetry. Shortly before giving birth, I read A Truce That Is Not Peace in one sitting. I’ve always been a huge fan of Miriam Toews, and this work of nonfiction was no exception, marrying Toews’ dark humor with deeper introspection that scratched my thinky-itch. After A Truce, I cracked the spine on my beloved copy of Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, gifted to me by my husband during the years we were just friends, but put it down after a few chapters, thinking this would be a good read-out-loud experience for the whole family this winter.

After finishing Helen of Nowhere, I got out my copy of Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, whose latest novel, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye, I plan to get myself as a birthday gift. The last time I visited Pond was as the audiobook version, which I listened to on my way home from Boston two years ago after a commercial shoot. Right now, the slowness and zoomed-in nature of this novel is exactly what I’m craving. I’m craving pages upon pages of musings on fruit set on the counter, of seclusion and restlessness. I’m craving more of what Helen of Nowhere gave me, lists of the tasks that make up a life.

I hope that as I continue to exist in the newborn bubble, I continue to find time to read by the woodstove, which we started this week, as the frosts keep rolling in. It’s how I hope to celebrate my birthday this week, and how I hope to spend many frosty winter days in the months to come.

Until we talk again, be well, my friends.
Stay safe, healthy, and kind, and keep reading.

CM