The family is gone. The visits are over. We may have accomplished something with our mother over the last few days and we may not have. Only she can answer that. I know what my motivation was in visiting assisted living facilities and I'm comfortable with it. The weekend wasn't too stressful except for my sister trying to force us into these group therapy type discussions. Ironic, since she was the one who also said she hoped we would not spend the whole weekend talking about our parents. Enough of that.
I've really been enjoying my reading time this summer. We went to the bookstore yesterday and picked up a few interesting books including "Summer at Tiffany" by Marjorie Hart and "A Savage War of Peace" by Alistair Horne. The first is a woman's reminiscences about the summer of 1945 when she and her friend went to NYC from Iowa and worked at Tiffany. She does a wonderful job describing what New York was like that summer, the patriotism, the fashion, and how exciting it was to be at a place like Tiffany where she ran into people like Judy Garland and dreamed of seeing the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who were known to shop at the boutique next door. I'll be done with this today. This is simply a pleasure to read. It's a book that begs to be shared among friends so we all remember simpler times.
The other book is about the Algerian War for independence. We got it because it was mentioned in an article in "Christian Science Monitor." The Algerian War, as I've mentioned in an earlier posting, is studied for its similarities to the Iraq War. We decided to see for ourselves. Obviously not a book about anything simple at all, but a reminder that in order to understand the present, you must know about the past. And perhaps it's books like "Savage War" that make books like "Summer at Tiffany" more meaningful.
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