Nichole Bernier's Blog, page 4
September 29, 2015
People in our situation
The banker is talking to my husband on the phone about drawing up the deed for our new house, the ways she might go about listing us as joint owners. Her: “There are several options for people in your situation.”
Him: “Our situation?” Say, Irish people who like forest green walls marrying French Canadians who prefer taupe? Husbands who eat pigs-in-blankets sharing a refrigerator with wives who juice kale?
Her: “Well, people who aren’t married.”
Him: “We’ve been married for 17 years.”
Her (confused): “Oh. But you have different last names.”
September 21, 2015
My favorite recent read
A book I read last spring ruined me for books for a little while. Because after I finished, I had such a book hangover that I didn’t feel ready to go back to the trough right away. When I did, the first 50 pages of anything would feel so pale by comparison that I’d wander off mentally, then physically. It didn’t help that we were in the midst of moving, so my attention span was pretty compromised.
The book is A LITTLE LIFE, by Hanya Yanagihara, and news came out last week that it had made the longlist of nominees for the National Book Award. Irrationally, I felt a pride of relational ownership, like a niece had made the US hopscotch team, because that’s what falling in love with a (then) little-known book feels like to me. You become its advocate, you feel like everyone should see how spectacular it is — what, you’ve never seen my niece hopscotch? how can you not have seen that fancy footwork, those vertiginous transitions between movements…
I don’t recommend the book wily-nily to everyone because it’s a tough read — not tough on the sentence level, but tough in the sense that the subject matter isn’t for the faint of heart, circling back constantly to the mind-boggling suffering in a character’s past, and how he struggles to overcome it secretly his entire life. I won’t say more, though the reviews always do, because I think it diminishes the scope of the book, intimidates potential readers, and ruins the joy of discovery. But to me, it was a brilliant book about lifelong male friendship, a topic not often written about with depth unrelated to sports or military, and what it truly means to look out for one another.
Someone brought this collection of quotes from the book to my attention the other day, and I think it gives as good a sense of the book as any review, and without any real spoilers, which is nearly impossible to do. It’s a feature in a literary blog called “In 10 Quotations,” which gives a hopscotchy sense of a novel through 10 chronological excerpts.
I can’t promise you’ll love it arrestingly the way I did, but so far everyone I’ve recommended it to seems to have. But I can promise you’ll never forget the characters Jude and Willem.
“Always, he wonders why and how he has let four months—months increasingly distant from him—so affect him, so alter his life. But then, he might as well ask—as he often does—why he has let the first fifteen years of his life so dictate the past twenty-eight. He has been lucky beyond measure; he has an adulthood that people dream about: Why, then, does he insist on revisiting and replaying events that happened so long ago? Why can he not simply take pleasure in his present? Why must he honor his past? Why does it become more vivid, not less, the further he moves from it?”
August 24, 2015
Cottage courage
Last week, we moved across town to a house on the edge of a wood. This week, we found this abandoned gem in the forest not 300 yards from our back door.
Inside is a rotting old couch, a 1950s wooden high chair, modern plastic Disney toys, and a 12-candle platter like an altar in the middle. Several pages of scribbles from a little girl named Helen, who wrote the word MUSIC several times in large childish lettering, then in a tiny controlled corner of the back of the page, “And now I know.” Underneath is a deep, cold root cellar.
I don’t know whether to claim squatter’s rights and start writing there, or keep a respectfully wide margin spooked by the backstory I’m certain it has.
July 27, 2015
Campers in the rain
Haiku for a thundersome first day of camp
Day camp in the rain
Hiking on a stormy day,
Coffee down the trail.
July 6, 2015
Being six
Took the six-year-old to the doctor yesterday. All the older siblings were at home so he took center stage, chattering and wisecracking through the whole visit.
Afterward I suggested that maybe he could have toned it down.
Him: “But he might need to know everything about me.”
Me: “He doesn’t need to know that you can make fart sounds blowing against your arm.”
June 2, 2015
Front seat privileges
When you weigh more than four of the seven humans, you get front seat privileges.
May 8, 2015
Night shift
Driving past highway construction last night, had a heated conversation with the younger boys about jobs that sometimes require working when other people are sleeping.
Nope, shouldn’t be necessary, says the 5yo.
“What about doctors and nurses in hospitals?” I ask him. “Should sick people be told, ‘Sorry, no one can keep you alive during the nighttime?’ ”
Him, shaking his head: “That’s a tough call. Don’t ask me that question. I’m just a kid.”
April 16, 2015
The sports pacifist’s lament
The 5yo on Kindergarten soccer.
“Everyone says to be aggressive,” he complains. “But it would be a lot easier if the other guy just walked away from the ball.”
The sports pacifict’s lament
The 5yo on Kindergarten soccer.
“Everyone says to be aggressive,” he complains. “But it would be a lot easier if the other guy just walked away from the ball.”
March 8, 2015
The kittens have arrived!
The kittens have arrived!
They were discovered on Saturday morning, March 7th, at 7am — 4 of them, three boys and a girl (we think).
Winner of the kitten pool — through my complicated algorithm of factors — is Samantha Shapiro!
Email me your book pic, and if you want a recommendation, you know I have them galore.
