The Smallest of Things

 

Spring is a busy time of year for gardening and cleaning the summer house, Villa Ramona, and the property, Silva Dulcis. We have a robot lawnmower, Buddy, that is a godsend when doing spring work until the chip in the robot no longer works. Now he is taking another extended holiday after his winter rest. We have become birders and are enjoying identifying birds as they make their nests in the many birdhouses Andreas built during the cold winter. (Now he is moving enormous stones for the rock wall!). A fun time of year where the little changes have a big payoff.

'The Waves' by Virginia Woolf was the book chosen to read in April by my Reading i Sverige book club. Several years ago, I read 'To the Lighthouse' by Woolf, so I thought I knew what to expect. I was aware that her style of writing was a stream of consciousness, a difficult genre for me. Yet, 'The Waves' is one of the most challenging books I have read. The beginning reminded me of the first section of 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner. As a reader, I was thrown into a story, and nothing made sense. The only reason I kept reading was….to keep reading. Once I finished the book, I reflected on it and said: What a brilliant book! The book's title gives away the theme of the book: 'As in me too the wave rises. It swells. It arches its back.' The waves never stop; from birth to death, the continuous power of the waves never lets up. Reflecting on the book, I found Woolf brilliant in what she accomplished. Lordy be, I struggled reading it!

This same book club intends to keep our summer reading on the lighter side because of the holidays and travels. The May book is in the contemporary category, and we are reading 'The Wives' by Tarryn Fisher. 'The Wives', a thriller, took no time to read. Even though the book was a page-turner, it left me with emptiness, for the experience was in the reading only, not the reflection. To be fair to the book, Fisher does address the negative role women often have in the American culture. Woolf does the same in her novel, except in England. The titles of these two books are almost the same except for one vowel.  And yet, what an amazing contrast between them. 

One vowel changed my reading experience completely; 'The Waves' to 'The Wives.' The smallest of things. Yet, is it not the smallest of things that make life what it is? This reflection made me think about the tiny seeds I have been planting in the hopes of a beautiful reward this summer. It made me think of the small words we say to each other to live in a civil society. It made me think of those special small things we do for those we love. It is the smallest of things that we intentionally do, making our life experience rich and beautiful. This spring, enjoy the smallest of things.

Currently reading:

• Psalm (5th Century BCE by King David and Solomon
• The First Four Books of Poems (1995) by Louise Glück
• The History (425 BC) by Herodotus
• Kajsa Kavat (1950) by Astrid Lindgren
• Every Thing is Sacred (2021) by Richard Rohr and Patrick Boland
• The Universal Christ (2019) by Richard Rohr
• The Abominable Man (1971) by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Completed:

• The Wives (2019) by Tarryn Fisher
• East of Eden  (1951) by John Steinbeck
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (2020) by Erik Larson