Book Club...

I have been in a book club with most of the women in my book club for over a decade.  There was a period of time when I moved out of state and then when I moved back, I was too busy working and single parenting that I did not attend.  But it has been over a decade I have known three of the women in my book club.  I have watched them walk through death, marriage, divorce, loss, heartbreak, longing, empty nesting, their children adulting well and not so well.  I have watched them win at life and also lose big.  

The newer members are equal participants to the party, I just have known them less time.  But I have watched them walk through all of the same things.

There is an intimacy to our gatherings.  A love that I feel for these women.  I love the books we choose (except mine this last time - I hated it).  I love the food we make each time we meet.  I like being snuggled in on the couch of my friends’ homes.  I like being in their presence and space.  I love the time we spend together, talking, relating, healing and discussing books.

There is nothing I do not like about book club.  And I am grateful to be included, a member.  It feels like a place where we encourage each other and get an opportunity to be intimately familiar with the lives of each of us.

I like the different selection of books we read.  Each of us having our own interests that we share with each other.  Sometimes it works out well, other times, it is kind of a flop.

Book club feels like a vestige of times passed.  A time where women gathered in each other’s homes and discussed important things like marriage, children, where we fit in our own lives and where we don’t.  Book club is intimately tied to our lives and how we live them.  Each of us bringing an effort towards resiliency, happiness, determination, grit and love...

It is about the books for my group.  But it is also about so much more. I love these women.  I am closer to some than others but I love them all, deeply.  Book club is an exercise for me of participating meaningfully in the lives of others with the added bonus of discussions about deep topics and literature with women I respect, admire and adore.

I am so very excited to get to be amongst these women today even though the book was shit.  I am going to do my best to be honest about the book, find something redeeming about it, but also explain why I didn’t like it.  What I felt was wrong with the message and the execution.  I expected more from the author and felt like this book was just written to fill a quota.  Something that practically wrote itself...and by that I mean CHATGPT could have written it in five minutes.

I don’t always love the books read, but I do love the women, the event and the reading.  Reading is never wasted time for me.  I read at least one book a week, sometimes more because I have always one fiction and at least one or two nonfictions going at a time.  Reading is a solace for me.  It is respite from a world that spins largely out of my control on the daily.  It is a place to escape when the world continues to become a place I understand less and less.  

In uncertain times, I am grateful to have a place to return to that is filled with love, support, guidance and an intimate connection.  I am grateful for the deep and meaningful relationships I have with the women in my book club...and I am grateful for the event, the books and the history.

Again, still...