
The fire crackles in the soapstone. The pomegranate and pine candle flickers, enswathed in heavy green patterned glass. Lamplight glows warm on the north wall where we laid brick last Saturday. Of course, by we, I mean my good farmer man, our son, and my brother.
I curl into the curve of the couch, dig my toes into the minky dot of my buffalo plaid blanket.
In my January ordering and re-ordering, organizing and decluttering, I’ve lined Fredrik Backman’s books in a neat row on the basement bookshelf standing sentinel beside our Samsung Frame.
Tonight, in the lamplight, a slim volume catches my eye. It’s been in my home library somewhere between one year and two. I pluck it from the shelf.
Opening the cover of the novella, I gradually immerse myself.
The flames dance. The low light colors our basement room all manner of cozy.
I turn pages.
Across the room, my good farmer man alternates between turning pages and nodding off after a long day in the shop.
On page eight, I chuckle and I agree with Grandpa.
Page twenty-two brings tears. I sniff. Sniff again. Tears run. Nose runs.
I’m caught up in his wrestling to remember what was and what is. This crossover in a brain to distinguish between who is son and who is grandson. A fog wisps in and out, hiding, jumbling, confusing.
Page forty brings laughter again and a poignant pang swirls from my chest downward to my gut as paragraphs transition to page forty-one.
Page fifty-two and fifty-three reverberate silently around the room.
I swipe a stray tear. Reach for another tissue.
A memory hovers on page fifty-four. Grandpa converses with his wife, his love. She’s been gone for some years now.
Page fifty-five and I read the words. Re-read them. Hold them gently like a string of pearls.
“ We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.”“ An ordinarily extraordinary life.”
And then, “They dance on the shortcut until darkness falls.”
I pull the edge of my blanket closer. Stretch my legs. My good farmer man lifts his book fallen to his lap during a nod-off.
I read on, turning pages fifty-six and fifty-seven. Laughter bubbles in my belly in the second paragraph on page fifty-eight. The bottom of fifty-nine brings the shadowed fear that this unnamed beast in his brain will obliterate his favorite timestamps.
Regret skims across page sixty-two followed by hope-filled reminders on page sixty-three.
And if I had a highlighter and if I was highlighting as I do sometimes, on page sixty-seven I linger on a sentence I would trace in yellow. “Darling obstinate you. It’s never too late to ask your son about something he loves.”
I read on. Only a few pages until the end. By now the tears are streaming again. I gasp and snort and sniff. With three pages left, page seventy-three opens with the very same paragraph page one opened with.
“There’s a hospital room at the end of a life where someone, right in the middle of the floor, has pitched a green tent. A person wakes up inside it, breathless and afraid, not knowing where he is. A young man sitting next to him whispers. “Don’t be scared.”
And even now, as I sit and type and re-read this paragraph aloud, my eyes brim all over again.
Seventy-six pages and a box of Kleenex. {Almost.}
Sometimes the simplest sentences say the deepest things.
I swipe at my eyes with the hem of my favorite faded ocean blue hoodie, Hatteras NC lettered across the front. The cuffs are frayed from ten+ years of wear. My gray sweater pants, as I call them, with the cable knit twist down the legs are a comforting hug.
I lay the little book gently on the floor beside me. I sniff and snort violently. My reading glasses are fogged, cheeks stained with tears. The good farmer man snores in his chair.
I read this little novella and I cried.
I cried because it was so gorgeously written.I cried because it was so beautiful and moving and powerful.
I cried because it was brimming with simplicity and love and complexity and compassion and kindness and empathy.
I cried because it was real and gritty and carried tones of regret and remembrance.
But it also carried tones of triumph and hope. It spoke about a life lived. One pressed into wonder and curiosity and imagination.
The life of a person who fumbled and faltered, who tried again, who made sense with numbers, who made mistakes, who found his way forward again and again.
And once again I’m reminded of the magic of a story to whisk us away on a carpet of experience and imagination, wonder and emotion, and empathy and life.
I’m grateful for writers who hunch over keyboards, scrawl in notebooks, erase and backspace, edit and labor, to bring us words that touch our lives.