Last night I went to hear Paul Harding read at Brookline Booksmith, which is a local bookstore in no danger of going under. Until yesterday I had no idea who Paul Harding was. I ran into someone who was part of my book-group-that-is-no-longer--the mother of 5 children and an aspiring writer--who told me that her teacher, the next BIG WRITER, was giving a reading. She used words like Faulkner and Hemingway, so I was incredulous but intrigued.
"No, I don't think it'll be feasible, but thanks for the invite," said I with 3 kids, 3 clients, a husband, a house, a garden, and aspirations of writing myself. No way, I thought as I bounced Dahlia on my hip in CVS pharmacy where I'd run into this woman on my way to the diaper wipes.
My philosophy of life is to water things in turn, and my writing/reading life has been seriously parched for some time. So despite the lack of feasibility, with 45 minutes to spare until the reading, I arranged it with our au pair and with Hadley that I would go. But the kids, who usually get me on Wednesday afternoon and evenings were not happy. Especially Miles, who is usually the least overtly needy of the bunch. However, last night he showed me that he was mighty dry too, despite the tears that he produced with such dramatic effect.
While Alec was frolicking in the back yard with a stick torturing inch worms and alternately collecting them in a Tupperware container, and Dahlia was crawling and standing, and generally cavorting in the early evening light, Miles was protesting, "But Mommy, don't go!" He pleaded. I explained to him that I wanted to go to meet other writers and that I wouldn't be gone for long, but he wasn't buying it. "Stay!" He whined as he waited with me outside on the curb for the woman with 5 kids to pick me up in her massive SUV. And once she had my phone rang.
It was Miles and he was crying. "Mommy, why did you have to go?" He has a very high pitched cry and it was hurting my ear drum. I moved the phone a little away from my ear and tried to explain again, "Daddy will be right home." I added.
But at this point he just wanted to punish me, "You're a bad mother," he said as he continued to sob. I refrained from calling him an ungrateful little pissant, and told him instead that I was sorry he was so upset and that I would be happy to stay on the phone with him until Hadley got home. He continued to whimper and screech until I said I'd make sure we had some "just Miles and Mommy time" this weekend. Then he said, " Ok, bye mommy," and that was that.
But I was sure that I had made the wrong choice going to hear a reader on the advice of an acquaintance whose judgement I couldn't vouch for. I knew the kids miss me, and that being the juggler that I am sometimes balls get lost or sat on or forgotten until they're moldy. So I had a hard time joining the lively discussion in the Suburban among the other literary women in the car pool that the woman with 5 children was steering.
When I got to the reading I was reminded why I hadn't put all my eggs in the literary basket. It was a gathering of maybe 30 people, mostly middle-aged women with some men thrown in, and a sprinkling of younger students. But the average age of the attendees was probably 55. The basement room was lined with used books and lit with a churchy flourescence. Not very auspicious I thought as I took this in and viewed the little white book that he'd be reading from. I'd rather be home with the fam.
But then Paul began to read, and despite myself I found his words captivating until I'd forgotten all about my drama with Miles and was hearing only the rhythm of the words and the eccentric details of his characters. And then I remembered why such quaint things as novels and readings at book stores attract me. There is alchemy in good writing that overcomes all personal drama and all technological boundaries.
Despite the threat of Facebook and the Kindle and all other new media, there is still nothing quite like the smell of books and the witnessing of a writer reading from his own work--connecting directly with readers in the most immediate form. But is this just because I and the geriatric attendees were raised with this? Will Miles grow up with anything but an aversion to literary gatherings?
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