Preparing for the annual trek across the ocean means stocking up on reading material. Experience tells me the planes will be long, the layovers fraught with early morning awake hours and children too hyped up and overstimulated for much sleep to occur.
I've spent the early part of my vacation painting furiously, writing frequently and reading frivolously. I have a weakness for crime novels. After gorging on these potato chip reads, I am ready for something real. On the heels of lost loves, deception and dissolved friendships, I am looking for novels of substance by women with insight. I am searching for empowerment and strength of the kind inspired by early college days when exposure to new ideas was breath taking and profound. Ah, but where to find such depth of work?
Internet searches have done little to offer illumination. I realize I don't want to read any more accounts of ethnic heritage, having none myself. I am not interested in strong families and supportive friends, living in the isolation of Africa. So what is left to make a woman strong?
I found some solace in Falling Under by Danielle Young-Ullman which seemed to reach inside me and grip my soul. Books about painters often seem to do that. The only other one I can remember having such a hold was White Oleander (my ability to remember the title after some ten years of my first reading speaks volumes. I am never good at titles and authors....) Unsurprisingly, both of these feature lonely, tormented spirits on the edge of self-destruction. Luckily, art serves as their savior.
What I found in Falling Under were recounts of emotions I never imagined anyone else could feel. And that's why we listen to stories. We are searching for a connection to others and reassurance that what we're going through is something countless others have experienced before. The undying strength of the African oral traditions have at their base a human desire to assure ourselves that people before us have walked these roads and persevered. They strive to comfort, inspire and educate. Yes, we can learn from the errors of others- or of ourselves. Yes, we can make better choices. Yes, the path we are on is the journey we are meant to undertake.
Good literature serves to impart the messages of our ancestors with poetry and prose that creates images we cannot deny. It captures the essence of who we are and unravels the mystery of the individual. Nothing we feel or endure is unique.
But it is also about recognizing the stages of life we pass through. I see the young kids, spending their days on the street and remember when it was me searching for shelter, bouncing and tumbling about trying to pull loose ends together. I talk to college students and remember those days, when my eyes were opened and the world held out its hand to me. I see young couples and remember building family foundations- only to watch them crumble away I look at new mothers and remember being enraptured with the fragile wonders occurring daily- only to see them grow and declare their independence. So I've arrived at this new stage- occasionally feeling the patience that comes with age, the acceptance that comes from fighting long and hard and well to attain some semblance of life, and the desire not to rest- to keep searching, keep envisioning, keep moving forward. If only I could find the direction.
And so begins the search for myself in a good read. Stocking up on novels for the trip across the ocean to that other part of me.
