Nothing much happens in “The Summer Book” by Tove Jansson except death, life and love on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland. It is comprised of 22 vignettes and features mostly just two characters: Sophia, a six-year-old girl whose mother just died, and Sophia’s grandmother who is her wise and sometimes cranky summer playmate. They build a forest of animals out of driftwood. They row to a nearby island and break a lock to peer into someone’s new summer home. Sophia dictates her stories to grandma so she’s not slowed by pesky spelling.
 
It’s small in size, just 184 pages with wide margins, and huge in character study and language and fierce tenderness. You’ll read it in an afternoon but it will lodge itself in your heart for a long time after.

You've got plenty of time to see Beauty Surplus: Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels at the John Michael Kohler Art Center because it will be on exhibit until May 24, 2020. But her powerful images will be forever burned on your memory. This piece took my breath away. So much upheaval concentrated in one room! I heard a docent tell someone that the original flooring is beneath this piece. The artist and her helpers laid the new flooring on top.  

No mud,
no lotus.
 
Thich Nhat Hanh




Pink Tipped Lotus, c. 1934
Henry Keller (American, 1869-1949)
The Cleveland Museum of Art

First one to the finish line may win in a horse race  but in the heat of a Facebook Marketplace race to buy one of my prized possessions, you need more.
 
Dozens of “Is this still available?” notes popped up within 10 minutes of my posting of a white-washed carved wood privacy screen. Since I was a Marketplace virgin, I fretted over how to decide on the winner. Until I read this story.
 
“I’m getting married soon and would love to use this to divide the service area from the hall.”
 
When I told her I would hold it for a couple days, she was thrilled.  
 
“It’s perfect for our wedding and can’t wait to use it in my office afterwards. Thanks so much!”
 
A story wins with me every time. But if I can’t get a story, at least I want a little foreplay.
                   
“Good morning Lora I would love to purchase this exceptionally gorgeous wool area rug if it still happens to be available Thank you, H.”
 
Apparently I broke a Marketplace "rule" because after I marked all items sold, I received this message.
 
“Dang I contacted you right when u posted it. Not nice.”
 
 Before the Race, c. 1887-1889. Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

The thought of reading a book in which the main character endures a rampant case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder terrified me. But I heard the author, John Green, interviewed on NPR and I began to trust him -- mainly because he wrote the miraculous “The Fault in Our Stars” and because he admitted in the interview that he suffers from OCD. Not only did he admit to the disorder but he said he would not talk about how his OCD manifests because doing so could launch a full blown OCD episode. Because he knew how to take care of himself, I knew he would take care of me.
 
Friends and family of OCD sufferers experience it as an extreme narcissism. The compulsion is all the sufferer talks about. Nothing else matters. Asa, the protagonist, is obsessed with germs, ingesting them and absorbing them.
 
Green nailed the self-focused nature of OCD, the way it eats away at the integrity of many relationships. To be with someone who has OCD requires either an uncanny ability to self-protect (Asa’s best friend) or an instinct to over-protect the sufferer (Asa’s mother).
 
What Green did not write about was the rage.
 
I had neither the ability nor the instinct to be with my mother who, when she wasn’t washing her hands, talked about washing hands -- our hands as well as hers. I mostly raged. At her for her lack of control. At myself for my lack of compassion.  
 
Even though she tried mightily to connect with me by doing things like sewing the latest fashions for me, her OCD always interrupted or threatened to interrupt. OCD and my mom felt like bullies who crossed every line, who betrayed me, who could not possibly love me. If she loved me, she would stop.   
 
So I did what every good adult co-dependent does, I surrounded myself with people just like her. For years, I didn’t recognize her in them because they didn’t wash their hands compulsively. But narcissism roiled inside them.
 
I didn’t address this tendency in me until my dad died and my mom needed me. We were honest with each other in a way I never thought possible. I saw her sense of humor. She saw mine. We laughed and healed. And finally I felt loved.
 
I had just a couple years with her before she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease and as she descended into dementia, I righted my life. I loved her and protected her fiercely. She let me hold her for the first time. She held me. She somehow knew I was going through a wretched time outside of her nursing home life but by then she couldn’t speak. By the time she died, I was on a completely different path. Less rage. Fewer narcissists.
 
Green’s characters continued to suffer even at the book’s end; there’s no blue ribbon cure for OCD or really any human disorder of the mind. But “Turtles All the Way Down” gave me an opportunity to reflect on OCD’s heartbreaks and gifts. And my mother’s legacy.

“Leave your front door and back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”
 
Shunryu Suzuki
 
 
Decorative Panels, Double-leaf Doors, Overdoor Paintings. 1790s. Pierre Rousseau. (French, 1751-1829) The Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access Collection.
 

Why revisit the rigors of motherhood, I wondered when considering “Workin’ Moms,” the Canadian television sitcom now on Netflix. One dose of motherhood was enough, I thought. And it’s sooo boring, when it isn’t terrifying and humiliating. But the show’s writers and cast make mothers’ garbage dump of insecurities sooo funny. And the music is sooo nervy! Try it and let me know what you think!

“In the struggle between yourself and the world, you must side with the world.”
 
Franz Kafka

 
I received a four-page letter from someone who blamed me for all the ills of her world. Her pain might go deeper than Kafka’s message can penetrate.
 
Cupids Leading the World. 1881. Auguste Rodin. (French, 1840-1917). France, 19th century. The Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access Collection.

Even if two of my poems weren’t in this anthology, I’d still be singing its praises. From Connecticut to Ohio to Bend, Oregon, the poets assembled in this book write of their small towns but really write of all towns.
 
Some poems dwell in memories like “Remember the Clothesline.” Some poems dwell in the present like “Aldi’s Blues.” Some poems blend the two like this first stanza from George Ella Lyon’s poem titled “Where I’m From”:
 
            I am from clothespins,
            from Clorox and carbon-trtrachloride.
            I am from the dirt under the black porch.
           (Black, glistening
           it tasted like beets.)
           I am from the forsythia bush,
           the Dutch elm
           whose long gone limbs I remember
           as if they were my own.
 
At heart, each poem is about relationships -- with mothers, cousins, locker mates -- and what we learn from each other. And the book as a whole is so well-curated that each poem flows into the next almost as if written by the same poet. Kudos to the book’s editors, Tom Montag and David Graham!
 
I have several of these books so I could loan you one or if you want your own you’ll find order information here:
 
https://www.facebook.com/smalltownpoetry/
 
 

Alternately, Max Garland makes me want to write my brains out or stop writing completely. He's that great. He judged the recent Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring contest and I can't wait for his feedback on the poems I submitted. 

This poem of his from "The Word We Used For It" reminded me of the hollyhocks I recently saw driving in the neighborhood. A half dozen hollyhocks rose from concrete to ring a signpost in front of a business whose owners lost a child this year. Ghostly beauty.