Back when we were grownups

Well it's been a while, and nothing to do with being all blogged out over April ... I have been assisting Creature with her revision (interfering ... nagging ... whatever you like to call it); she has made it through the first two of eight exams, though I think the poetry is the really dreaded one, to come next week.


The crochet blanket that was started a month or so ago has become 16 pretty-much-the-same-size squares which will hopefully soon be attached together by some method yet to be determined. Having taken a trip with Caroline and Julie to Black Sheep Wools, where some of us who shall remain nameless spent far too much money, I now have yarn to keep me occupied for quite some time. Am doing a pair of socks for my dear dad for his birthday (he'll never know, he hardly ever visits here) in some Noro Kureyon Sock yarn. The other major project is some painting in the bedroom, but I will wait for a bit more progress before posting any photos.

To accompany the painting I have been listening to 'Back when we were grownups' by Anne Tyler. I have read quite a few of her books and enjoyed the quiet ordinary stories that she tells. This one was no disappointment. It is the story of Rebecca, who lurched abruptly away from her apparent chosen path when she was a college student and fell in love with and married an older man with three daughters. As an older widow she looks back on the life she ended up with, feeling as if it somehow wasn't the real one she was supposed to have lived. So you get this lovely picture of her wonderful extended family, the various lives of her daughters and her relationship with the elderly uncle who lives with her. Having been widowed only a few years after marriage she spends her life, and supports the family, hosting 'events' in their large picturesque house, and the book is peopled with the tradesmen and employees who take up her time. She attempts to recreate the life that she left behind, but of course finds that it no longer fits. It is one of those search for a sense of identity stories, of somehow having to learn in a roundabout way to value the important things in your life and not worry about 'what if'. I like her writing because the people are always so real, and the lives are so messy. The stories are not clever or contrived, just people struggling to make sense of life.