This is my symphony

What I read

Our book club read this month was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Since we had a few absent members, we met at Panera for discussion and a sweet treat–a little change up from usual. This book club was total serendipity. We first met and organized on a neighborhood social media platform and the mix of women is amazing. We are all pretty much on the same page when it comes to current events, we are a comfortable mix of married, divorced, remarried, and widowed, and our ages are within a decade of each other.

But I digress.

Eleanor Oliphant is a touching character: a survivor of childhood abuse, socially illiterate, and incredibly endearing. (I even wondered aloud if Eleanor might be on the spectrum.) But when this fragile woman with a horrific past meets love and friendship, she finds within herself a strength I think few of us possess. And courageous?! Eleanor comes to realize she must face her tormentor to put the trauma behind her.

Now if I sound cryptic here, I really don’t mean to be. But this is one novel where it might be best to let each reader discover Eleanor as he or she reads the novel, especially since Honeyman makes a style choice that is not revealed until the end of the novel.

It won’t, however, hurt to tell you about Eleanor’s first-ever friend, Raymond, the IT guy at the small graphic design company where she works. Raymond is frumpy–Eleanor dismisses his baggy pants, trainers, mussed hair, and whiskers. But he treats his elderly mom like a queen and is kind to a fault. Which brings us to Eleanor’s second-ever friend, Sammy. Eleanor meets Sammy (if you can call it that) when he collapses on the street outside her office building. She and Raymond come to his aid, staying with Sammy until the ambulance arrives. That ‘stay with him’ part was all Raymond’s doing, though. Eleanor thought Sammy was a drunk, homeless old man and would have stepped right over him in true Eleanor fashion if Raymond hadn’t convinced her they couldn’t leave him. From there, Eleanor, Raymond, and Sammy–and even Sammy’s family–are irrevocably connected.

And it’s in that connection that Eleanor begins to heal.

What I lived

Actually the title of this post is something of a misnomer. Although yesterday was the first day of summer and we are barreling into July at breakneck speed, it could hardly be described as “summer-like” in this Great Lake state. We have had day after day of cloudy skies and rain. Lake levels are at an all-time high and beaches are underwater. And can you say chilly? It’s been one of the coldest, wettest springs on record–and summer isn’t turning out to be much different.

So can you blame a girl for picking up a needle and starting to stitch a little? (Reading goes without saying!) I haven’t done any hand stitching since my children were young when I crafted my little heart out: cross-stitch, basket weaving, doll-making, and more. But by the time my daughter was three, I was working part time–and then it was divorce and back-to-college and all the craziness such life events bring.

I have missed it.

So a few weeks ago I took a hand loom weaving class from Jennifer Haywood of Craftsanity–and although the piece I started in class was an embarrassment (I’ve since unwoven it Penelope-style!) I ordered some yarn stash packages from an Etsy seller, and I’m now weaving my little heart out.

I’ve also stitched four of Ann Wood’s Very Nice Mice with the thought of gifting my granddaughters some cute little friends–with no end of teasing and puzzlement from my daughter and husband. (“So you retire … and start sewing little mice for … what, exactly?!”) But my ideas keep growing. What if I weave each mouse a little bedroll or gunny sack? And this boat is a no-brainer, since don’t the Tiny Mice (as I call them) need some sort of transport for their journey? (Because of course mice such as these are on a journey.) And what if each Tiny Mouse came with a story about who they are and from where they came?

Oh, my. I have surely missed this whole stitching game …