Solitude, Part I

All my life all I ever wanted was a family: husband, children, brothers and sisters all around me. I got that. I adore them. I would cease to exist if something happened to them. Dust.

However.

I adore being alone almost as much. Alone, alone alone with my thoughts, independent pursuits, my own agenda, a book. Every birthday and Mothers' Day I ask only for the luxury of the whole day to myself.

Every now and again a fluke happens in my life such as the one I am currently enjoying: My family is gone for the weekend. Zorro and T-Rex backpacking. The Cha-Cha spending some time with Scary Mary.

I poked a cold beer into each pocket of my jacket and walked to the movies and saw:

Becoming Jane

No secret that I love Austen. I know a fair amount about her, and I re-read her books in an endless loop all the year round. Snippets of chapters here and there. Sometimes I wish I could superimpose my constant rumination of her characters over my real life, making my own version of a book-club analysis of my family and friends. Drawing parallels...Scary Mary as a hybrid Lady Catherine DeBourgh and Colonel Brandon. My daughter as Marianne Dashwood. My sister as Elinor Dashwood crossed with Charlotte Collins. Myself as an unflattering but realistic mishmash of Mary Musgrove, Henry Crawford, Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Palmer.

I had no strong feeling about a fictionalized movie being made of her life. I had no expectations. No innate scorn to overcome. Honest.

I am so glad I was alone in the theater because I was gorked out and embarrassed by everything in this movie. I still am. It was Cringe-Fest '07. I think it was the ham-handed writing. The un-finesse-y way pieces of her books were wedged into the plot. The awkward overt verbal ripostes. The lovely girl who played Jane was a real beauty, and I have liked her in some other movies I have seen with my little daughter, but in this she was unsubtle, twitchy, and overdone. I am all squinched up thinking about some of the forced tete-a-tete in this movie.

The sets and costumes were beautiful and detailed. The actor who played the Tom LeFroy character was good....so much better than the Jane character. I remember him being the very best thing about The Last King of Scotland, too.

I looked at my watch a few times. Bummer.

On the upside, I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house. Can't wait for my family to get back and mess it up.

I sort of miss my bookclub sometimes. I have belonged to two. The first was a bookclub that I was invited to join by a friend. The other members all knew each other from their (Episcopal) church. Everything was cool. We read some good ones and some not-so. Kate Chopin's The Awakening failed to keep me awakened. There was one member who was bossy and dominated every discussion, convinced of her superiority because she was a lit professor at the local junior college. The night we gathered to discuss the book I chose (Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver), she showed up and declared that she did not finish the book.

"I just couldn't get through it," she declared. "It was almost as bad as a Harlequin romance."

OK, well, to each her own, but I was a little wounded, especially because everyone else seemed to like it. But, OK, right? When it was her turn to recommend a book she chose The Brothers Karamazov. Please. Spare me. This thing is 1000 pages and one of the most complex books ever written (I exaggerate...you get the idea). But the nail in the coffin was when someone chose Angela's Ashes (which I could take or leave). In the discussion this same member commented about one of the many arduous challenges recounted in the Irish family's life -- "Well what do you expect? I mean these people were Catholics, and we all know that does not exactly mean they are Christian."

So yeah, I stopped coming to the book club meetings after that. Three Strike rule.