Today, even better 50 years later

David recently posted this picture on Facebook along with a line from the 1964 hit "Today" (New Christy Minstrels): "I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine."

I love that song even more than I did fifty years ago, but for different reasons.

Back then it was a sweet love song for the uncommitted. I was 16, living away from home for the first time, falling in love every week (not that the lucky guys were aware of this), living on the edge (if hitchhiking in Italy counts), and thinking I might spend the rest of my life wandering the world. I had no trouble with the line from the second verse, "I'll be a dandy, and I'll be a rover..." As far as I was concerned, "Green, green, it's green, they say, / on the far side of the hill," and I was goin' away to where the grass was greener still.

"Today" is still a sweet love song, but if a million tomorrows haven't all passed away, 18 or 19 thousand have. Now I'd just as soon skip over that second verse and go right to the third:

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine. 
I can't be contented with yesterday's glory; 
I can't live on promises, winter to spring. 
Today is my moment and now is my story. 
I'll laugh and I'll cry and I'll sing ... 

A few blossoms are still clinging, but people my age had better not live on promises of future springs. And if we're contented with yesterday's glory, we become awful bores. Today is our moment, and now is our story. Let me suggest a rewrite of verse 2 for those of us who came of age in the 60s:

Though now we're grandparents, we still can be lovers.
You’ll know who we are by the songs that we sing. 
You’ll feast at my table, I’ll steal all the covers, 
Who cares what tomorrow shall bring?

Or we can just sing another 60s song, one that hit the charts right about when David and I got engaged:

On becoming a senior citizen: morning-after thoughts

[A toast to a new era]

Yesterday I turned 65.
Twelve days ago my Medicare insurance (parts A, B, D, and supplemental) took effect. Any day now my RTA Reduced Fare Permit will arrive in the mail. On Friday my husband, who is also 65, will be officially retired from the job he held for 28 years.

It feels like adolescence all over again, but with less energy.
Like our three teen-aged grandchildren, we are making big decisions that will affect the rest of our lives. Should we stay in our familiar environment or move to a different part of the country? Our granddaughters have opted to move: Katie is beginning college nearly 2000 miles from home, Susan is considering colleges all over the country. We've been involved in a wide variety of work and extracurricular activities: is it time to refocus and choose the one(s) that interest us most? Our grandson Chris, about to start high school, is making similar choices.

It also feels like being two years old, but with less cuteness.
Our grandson Max, who is impossibly cute and universally adored, still has daily trials that seem a lot like ours. How do we deal with the frustration of knowing what we want to do but not being able to do it? Do we want to be independent ("Baby self!"), or do we want the security of nearby family ("Mommy come!")? The answer, of course, is both, and when we can't have both at once, we might fuss just a little.

Or is it more like a midlife crisis, but with fewer distractions?
Our middle-aged children's lives are in as much transition as ours. One daughter has recently gone back to work after a 16-year hiatus, and it won't be long before her nest is empty. The other daughter has, in only three years, become a tenured professor, gotten married, had a baby, and bought her first house. One son-in-law's company and the other son-in-law's industry are undergoing major changes. And they're all starting to think about how to help their aging parents make good decisions ("Move closer to us!" "Don't buy a house with stairs!").

Well, as C.S. Lewis wrote in an entirely different context,

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

--Mere Christianity

Note to self when, overwhelmed by change, I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall: maybe I'm just banging my beak against a permeable shell.

THE CASUAL VACANCY by J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults was released a week ago, and a lot of reviewers have weighed in since then (Google them, if you care: some of the best are from U.K. newspapers). The professional reviews mostly range from "OK" to "Oh dear," and Amazon customer reviews stand (right now) at 2.7/5.0 in the U.S., 2.9/5.0 in the U.K. Maybe the higher U.K. score is because more U.K. readers know what Ms. Rowling means when she says things like "the rubber soared right across the room."

In my review for Books and Culture (online edition) I look at an aspect of The Casual Vacancy that other reviewers didn't mention, to my knowledge--its fairly obvious theological underpinnings. (Quite a few other underpinnings are fairly obvious in the book as well, but I decided not to mention them in the review.) It would make me and B&C editor John Wilson very happy if you'd click the link and read my review on the B&C website.

In the review, I argue that Rowling's village of Pagford is post-Christian. Indeed, it is post-moral: love of neighbor is sorely lacking. Instead, we see status seeking. Middle-class chauvinism. Decreasing funds for social services. Increasing poverty. Love of money. Selfishness. Bullying. Disdain for outsiders (gays, people of color, people on welfare, mentally ill people, ugly people). Abuse. Fractured relationships. Polarization. And on, and on. If you've been paying attention to U.S. or U.K. politics recently, the picture will look depressingly familiar.

In Pagford there's a shabby little street called Hope. Three of the book's characters have lived there. One moved out long ago and became one of the town's biggest (literally) hypocrites. One died. And by book's end, one is getting ready to leave. There are still plenty of people in Church Row, though. You just might not want to spend time with them.

A lot of readers have found A Casual Vacancy dull. I understand: it didn't grab me until I was past page 200 (I stuck with it because I had a review to write). Then I read it a second time, and found it interesting right from the beginning. I think that's because by then I knew all the characters and could just read the story without trying to sort out Colin and Gavin and Simon (why do Brits have so many five-letter names that end in "n"?). To make your reading more enjoyable right from the start, here's a list of the book's major characters. Print it out and use it as a bookmark:

• Barry and Mary Fairbrother and four children including the twins, Niamh and Siobhan. Barry, who was born in the Fields but became a banker, dies. The family lives in Church Row.
• Miles and Samantha Mollison and two daughters, Lexie and Libby. Miles practices law and Samantha owns a bra shop. They also live in Church Row.
• Howard and Shirley Mollison, parents of Miles and Patricia (who now lives in London). Howard owns the village deli and is president of the Parish Council (sort of like being mayor); Shirley is a hospital volunteer. They live around the corner from Church Row in Evertree Crescent.
• Colin and Tessa Wall and their son, Stuart ("Fats"). Colin is deputy headmaster at the comprehensive school (=high school vice principal); Tessa is a guidance counselor. Fats is in high school. They live in Church Row.
• Simon and Ruth Price and two sons, Andrew ("Arf") and Paul. Simon works at the printworks; Ruth is a nurse. Arf is in high school.
• Vikram and Parminder Jawanda and three children including Sukhvinder, the youngest, a high school student. Both parents are doctors. They live in the Old Vicarage.
• Gavin Hughes, divorced, a junior partner in the law firm where Miles Mollison is senior partner. He lives outside town at the Smithy.
• Kay Bawden and her daughter, Gaia. Kay is a social worker; Gaia is in high school. They  live in Hope Street. Kay and Gavin have a rocky relationship.
• Terri Weedon and her children Krystal and Robbie. Terrie is a junkie and a prostitute who lives in the Fields (a subsidized housing project). Krystal is a classmate of Fats, Arf, Sukhvinder, and Gaia. Robbie is three years old.
• Nana Cath, Terri's grandmother. At various times she has taken care of Terri and Krystal. She lives in Hope Street.

OK, now you're ready to read. Or to resume reading, if you gave up early. The Casual Vacancy, as everyone points out, is not Harry Potter. All the same, it's worth getting into if you want to think about what the Muggle world might look like without Hogwarts, without Dumbledore, and without Harry.

LABOR DAY by Joyce Maynard

We've survived the Republican National Convention. Next week we will endure the Democratic National Convention. In between, we get Labor Day weekend--our last chance, according to our foremothers, to wear white linen and read lightweight novels.

I recommend Joyce Maynard's 2009 book, Labor Day, though no one in it wears linen of any color and its weight is more middle than light. The story is engrossing, the characters are fascinating, and it includes a fine recipe for pie crust.

Henry, the narrator, is 13 years old and about to start seventh grade. The book's first paragraph lets us know that his family situation is complicated:

It was just the two of us, my mother and me, after my father left. He said I should count the new baby he had with his new wife, Marjorie, as part of my family too, plus Richard, Marjorie's son, who was six months younger than me though he was good at all the sports I messed up in. But our family was my mother, Adele, and me, period. I would have counted the hamster, Joe, before including that baby, Chloe.

A  seemingly random encounter with a weirdly inappropriate stranger (he's dripping blood, for heaven's sake!) turns everyone's lives upside down--but it's not what you're thinking. In a series of mildly suspenseful chapters, we find out who the interloper is and what he wants. We also learn a lot more (maybe even more than we wanted to know) about Henry and his mother.

Labor Day would be a coming-of-age novel if it didn't end when Henry was still 13, with only a couple of closing chapters to bring us up to the present. It could be a middle reader if Maynard hadn't included quite so much sex (though perhaps that's no problem these days, alas). Its unobtrusive but elegant prose and gradually unfolding characterizations would make it a literary novel if Maynard hadn't told the story in a fairly straightforward fashion, with more action than interior monologue.

It could not, however, be chick lit.

The one thing that bothered me about Labor Day did not occur to me while I was reading it. Only afterward did I think, wait--were there any strong females in the book? Adele: eccentric beyond belief, and probably mentally ill. Marjorie: conventional, a bit narcissistic. Evelyn: overwhelmed. Mandy: manipulative, lying, and cruel. Eleanor: worse.

And then I wondered, why were the males so likable? One is weak, to be sure, but not evil. Another is practically divine. The stepbrother is a nice enough kid; and young Henry, though he makes a serious error in judgment, is a delightful (and amazingly articulate) little nerd.

The fact that I'm still thinking about Labor Day two days after finishing it is why I've found the category that best describes it. It's an excellent book-club book: a well-written, enjoyable, not-too-demanding page-turner that begs to be discussed with friends. I should have expected as much, since I learned about it at my public library. It's the contemporary book group's pick for September.