Reading Over the Decades

February has been a hard month so far both on the weather front and on the family front. As I wrote in late January, we were hit with snow and way cold temperatures. And while I rejoiced over being able to walk again in early February, between the remaining icy mounds and then the family matter, I did not walk from February 5 until the 12th, causing me to write where I keep track of my time/distance: FINALLY—A WALK! (Frankly, I'm surprised I only gave that note one exclamation point.)

The family matter was that on the 8th, while making his bed in his apartment, my dad caught his foot in the blankets he'd placed on the floor and went down, breaking his left femur in the fall. If you have to break a leg, Dad did it in the best possible way: one clean, sharp break in his upper femur and not his hip. Surgery was the next day, and a few days later he was released to the Rehab Center at the complex he lives at: all good. Assuming all goes well, he has several weeks of rehab ahead of him before he regains independent mobility (he uses a rollator) and moves back into his apartment. But, as the adult child in the area, I spent most of last week at the hospital by myself or with my sister-in-law Kate, and have been at Rehab every day since then while Dad gets acclimated and settled in. Let's just say a lot (A. Lot.) of my last 8 days has been away from home. I am grateful I still have a father (he will be 93 this August) and do not resent the time one bit. I am also exhausted. 

So while I have been so occupied, other things have gone by the wayside. I was starting to do more photography, and that got sidelined. My reading has been hit and miss, to say the least, both reading blogs (Laurie! Kim! Sam!) of friends and books. And my writing, which I really, really want to delve back into, took a huge hit.

I'm tired right now. And there are chores to do. But by golly, this post has been circling in my head for DAYS and I am going to get it done and posted! 

In recent months, I reread the two books shown above: My name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. And out of the gate, I will say both of those books read way different at age 70 (well, almost 70!) than they did when I first read them in my teens. 

Like many younger people, I first read All Quiet when I was high school. A. W. Wheen was the original translator and the version I just read was his translation. (Maybe it is THE English translation.) I think I read it again in my 20s, but then did not pick it up until this winter when it popped up in a Little Free Library.

The cover says "THE GREATEST WAR NOVEL OF ALL TIME." Perhaps the version I read decades ago did too, but I don't remember reading it and thinking that. Good? Sure. The greatest? I don't know if I thought that then or not. 

But I sure do now. At my age, with way more life in the rearview mirror, I am stunned at how Remarque paints the absolute meaninglessness and hopelessness of war. And maybe because I was just finishing the Auden book, in which the author paints a vivid picture of how, for the English, World War I was the war that forever defined England, I was more acutely aware of what that war meant to those who fought in it and those who would have fought had it not ended. As I shared with a friend after reading the Auden, I now realize why World War I was the defining war for my beloved Grandmother Skatzes, despite her sons and grandsons fighting in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

And the last lines are heartbreaking and beautiful: 

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was quiet and still on the whole front that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Wester Front. 

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come. 

And then there's Asher Lev. As I have mentioned before (and more than one time), Asher Lev was put into my hands by one of my English teachers in high school, wanting to make sure I did not stop writing the poetry I wanted to write rather than write "nice" poems. Unbeknownst to her, she kicked open the door to Judaism to me, a comment I made at her memorial service this fall, causing her very devout Christian younger daughter (who I'd been in school with in our teen years) to whirl around in the front pew to stare at me. 

Chaim Potok helped shape my beliefs and spiritual leanings, and truly his memory is blessed. Asher Lev is where it all started. Rereading it now in these times, especially with the sharp rise of antisemitism in this country, impacted me even more. 

I last read Asher Lev in 2018, apparently. Not as long a gap as All Quiet, but long enough. But still, it reads way different at my age than it did before (and that 2018 read may have been a quick read). This time, the conflict that Asher works through as he pursues his artistic calling, in direct conflict with his Chasidic community, his father, and his ancestors, made me all but tremble. It made me think of the different choices and turns my life has held, including those that were in direct conflict with family and others, made me feel the emptiness when I don't write or shoot, and made me grateful that Barb Humphreys took me aside all those decades ago and put Asher Lev in my hands.

I don't know what the next several weeks hold on the Dad front. Continued improvement, I hope. I know there will be time commitments and that just is what it is. Warren is very supportive and that helps me beyond words. 

But I also want the coming days and weeks to hold reading. And photography. And writing.

May it be so.