Recently, I had quite a reading experience. I read a book that made me laugh out loud. This same book also touched me with its tenderness and familial love evident on every page. And, this book put into words emotions I had felt but never quite articulated.
The book is Sandwich by Catherine Newman. I picked it up at one of the Little Free Libraries near my home. And I enjoyed the book so much, I’ll be buying my own copy, and returning this copy to the Little Free Library so another reader can experience the gift that is to be found in this novel.
Here are a few of my favorite passages:
“ ‘Oh, honey,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me! I’m totally good. I’m so, so happy to be here with you.’
“This is how it is to love somebody. You tell them the truth. You lie a little.
“And sometimes you don’t say anything at all.”
“Menopause feels like a slow leak: thoughts leaking out of your head; flesh leaking out of your skin; fluid leaking out of your joints. You need a lube job, is how you feel. Bodywork. Whatever you need, it sounds like a mechanic might be required, since something is seriously amiss with your head gasket.
“You finally understand the word crepey as it applies to skin — although you could actually apply this word to your ass as well, less in the crepe-paper sense than the flat-pancake one. Activities that might injure you include ping-pong, napping, and opening a tub of Greek yogurt. Your hairline is receding in such a way that, in certain cropped photographs, you look like somebody’s cute, balding uncle. You eat pepperoni pizza and, a half hour later, put a hand to your chest, grimacing like a person in an Alka-Seltzer commercial.”
“ ‘ I think,’ I say, and then stop. I’m so sad and angry that I feel like my sweating skull is going to break open like a grief piñata, my terrible feelings raining down on everyone.”
“ ‘I know,’ my father says. ‘It is a privilege to grow old. We are lucky to be here.’
“ ‘We really are,’ my mother says. I cry a little then, because of the conversation and the wine and this absolute devastation and blessedness, rolled up into a lump in my own throat that I have been trying to swallow for my whole life.”
“Life is a seesaw, and I am standing dead center, still and balanced: living kids on one side, living parents on the other. Nicky here with me at the fulcrum. Don’t move a muscle, I think. But I will, of course. You have to.”
“He was studying me with his big brown eyes. Eyes, nose, mouth. The children’s features shattered me a little bit — as if someone had siphoned love out of me and tattooed it onto someone else’s face.”
“The adrenaline is wearing off a little now. I rest my forehead on the metal bars of the gurney. She is going to be okay (knock wood). But also? She is going to die. Not now (knock wood). But eventually. I mean, obvs, as the kids would text. But I am struck by this fact. I am stricken. Willa always says she can’t spare anybody, and I’m thinking, Me either, baby girl. What, exactly, are we doing here? Why do we love everyone so recklessly and then break our own hearts? And they don’t even break. They just swell, impossibly, with more love.”
“And this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel. To say, Same. To say, I understand how hard it is to be a parent, a kid. To say, Your shell stank and you’re sad. I’ve been there.”
“Back in the cottage, all the windows are wide open, and a breeze is blowing through, bringing with it the pink smell of phlox and roses. I’m sad and relieved about my parents leaving. I’m furious with and crazy about Nick. I’m remorseful. Grateful. I’m excited for Maya and Jamie, and worried about them. I am amazed by Willa. I am drowning in love. My great-grandparents were murdered by Nazis. The world is achingly beautiful. I am fifty-four years old, and I know better, finally, than to think you have to pick. That you even could. It’s just everything, all the time. EVERYTHING. Put it on my tombstone! EVERYTHING!”
“So much of privileged adulthood seems to take place here, in the space between the soaring highs and the killing disasters. It’s just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subtlety, its decency and dailiness.”
“I’ve heard grief described as love with nowhere to go. To be honest, though, I sometimes feel like love is that already.”
Friends, have you read Sandwich or any of Catherine Newman’s books? (She writes fiction and nonfiction. In fact, her latest novel, Wreck, is somewhat of a continuation of Sandwich. It features the same family, two years after the events of Sandwich.)
Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.
WendyKennar.com 