A few years after I graduated from high school, I bumped into a woman I'd sort-of been friends with as a teenager. (I could remember her first name was Mary but I had to dig out my yearbook to figure out her last.) We shared a bit of what our lives looked like now (Haley was a baby then) and she said, "Wow, I am stunned. You were such a rebel in high school, I thought you'd be living in New York City with the lead singer of a punk rock band so you'd have a reason to keep wearing black clothes all the time."

That comment has stuck with me for many reasons, partly because I am ashamed of the fact that yes: I grew up in a small town in Utah and then I moved a grand total of about ten miles away and established my life. Plus, I sort of like the alter-ego she created for me, someone cool and involved and happy living in a big city.

But I really don't think I would be happy living in a big city.

I thought about that conversation quite a bit while I was reading Kathleen Rooney's novel Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. The main character, Lillian, is loosely based on a historical figure, Margaret Fishback, who was the highest-paid female advertising copywriter in the world during the 1920s and 30s. The story is told in chapters that alternate between Lillian's history in New York—her years of working up to the lead copywriter at Macy's, the boyfriends and the friends and the apartments and the parties. Also her struggle with the social limitations put on women at the time (she was the highest paid woman​, but definitely not the highest paid copywriter, for example). This part of the story explores the real-life implications of feminism, and what "feminist" even really means. How do women find happiness? Is it only through motherhood and marriage? Are mothers ever really happy or do we always have that "what-if" tug? How does one's work influence one's being?

The second part of the story is Lillian on New Year's Eve, 1984/85, and because of an accidental overdose of Oreos during a phone conversation with her son, she decides to take a walk. Walking the city has long been one of her favorite experiences—it was in her lunchtime walks that she composed her poetry—and so it seems like a fantastic idea to walk a 13-mile circle on a cold night in December. She makes several stops along the way: a favorite restaurant, a bar, a friend's party, a different restaurant.

I love a book that includes a map! It helps me imagine the story better.

She makes quick friends with the people she meets and she discovers new things in the city, even though she knows it so well already. (Which is the point of loving a city, yes? That it is always changing?)​This part of the story explores what it means to be a flaneuse (a woman who loves to walk a city) and what it means to be a person who is fully committed to being urban, to living in a city.

I felt a deep connection with Lillian. She values words, and walking, and independence. I love her quick wit. And I hope that when I am her age, I am still able to walk 13 miles (if not run). Some of her life experiences mirrored my own, especially her struggle with depression. ("I was at my wit's end," she explains, "being in a place where the weather did not reflect my mood. I was raining; the sun mocked my sadness." Which is something I could've explained of myself this year.) (I am grateful we have Prozac now instead of electroshock therapy.) She is a fascinating, strong, funny character.

One of the only things I couldn't relate to, though, is her love for the city. Which might've doomed my affection for the book...except, it didn't. Maybe because in some alternate universe, that urbanite version of myself exists, an edgy, world-wise, successful Amy who, I imagine, would love walking the city, even at night, even in the cold. And partly because I finally visited New York City (last fall) and I could picture some of the places she lived in. (I especially loved going to Macy's in New York and riding the old wooden escalators.)

But that version of myself is not the one I've created, and the Amy I am now...well, I have no desire to live in a big city, even one as magical and lovely and storied as New York. (I would like to visit more often, however.) "The city," Lillian thinks as she walks through it, "is dazzling but uncompassionate." This is something she likes about the city, but it is the exact reason I don't want to live there. The immense amount of people, the way the buildings go on for miles and miles and miles...even the subway: it is overwhelming to me; it's too much. It's uncompassionate. It makes me feel too small, despite the dazzle.

On the day I finished this book, I mowed my lawn, and as I was mowing I came upon a pile of dog poop. This is one of my pet peeves: I don't have a dog mostly because I don't want to have to pick up dog poop. I was annoyed, especially as I know exactly which neighborhood dog left me this special treat, and I had half a mind to barge over and say something. But then I thought about fall, when all of our sycamore leaves start coming down, and how many of my neighbors probably get annoyed at having to rake up leaves that didn't come from their own trees. (Although: I do​ try very hard to get them raked up as quickly as I can.) And that led me to think about the nature of living in suburbia versus a city. You still have to deal with other people's dog's poop in the city, but you don't get to mow your own lawn, and therein lies one of my deepest reason for not wanting to live in a city: it's because I want my own space, flowers to plant and prune and deadhead and fertilize, trees to take care of. Grass to mow.

And maybe that makes me into something laughable from an urbanite's perspective. Maybe it’s unimpressive. But really: who am I trying to impress? Mary from high school? I still wear black clothes, I still listen to punk music, I still love reading. I will always love reading. And I especially loved Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk because it helped me remember that my (boring, predictable, suburban, Utah-County) life is lovely, too.

Last week started out chilly: clouds and rain in the valley on Monday and Tuesday and then, when the clouds pulled away in the late afternoon, the mountains covered with new snow. During those sweet, cool days, I found myself thinking “I know that summer hasn’t even really started yet, but I’m ready for fall.”

I have a complicated relationship with summer. On one hand, I love so many things about it: the expansive freedom with the kids out of school, flowers, hiking, summer running & summer running clothes, the long evenings when the light fades so slowly, and a light breeze from the mountains kicks up and cools everything off so it’s all just perfectly warm. Mowing the lawn, lying under the trees watching the pattern of green leaves against blue sky, walking with bare feet across shady grass. Fresh corn at the farmer’s market, a watermelon in the fridge at all times, peaches—peaches!

But on the other hand, being hot makes me grumpy, and I live in Utah, where it’s hot. Plus, I’m uncomfortable all summer. I just really hate wearing shorts, because I don’t feel like they look good on me. I wear a lot of knee-length skirts to work, but honestly: I just want to wear my comfy skinny jeans, but if I do, I’m hot and prickly. And I can reverse dip as much as I want, but I continue feeling self-conscious about my triceps (I’m genetically predisposed to bat wings) so I feel sort of naked not wearing a cardigan to cover them up—but who wants to wear a sweater in 100+ degree heat? Not this girl who hates to be hot. And then there’s swimming. I’m not sure anyone except girls with thigh gaps likes hanging out in a swim suit, because inner-thigh chafing is a real, and really annoying, thing.

Obviously, my complicated relationship with summer is built squarely on top of my body issues, which I try to keep in perspective because it could always be worse, but summer makes it really, really hard to keep in perspective because my body is so much more exposed.

But that thought, so unbidden—I’m ready for fall before summer even really starts. It felt so much like my winter perspective, when I was really struggling with my depression and I didn’t want spring to come because the contrast between how I was feeling and what the world was expressing was just too much. I’m doing better, but I don’t want to slip back, and that yearning—for coolness, for darkness, for endings—felt like a backward motion.

So I resolved to delve straight into savoring summer. Savoring this summer, when Kaleb is newly-12 and trying to navigate his changing relationships with friends. When Nathan is 17, his last summer before everything changes and he, too, is ready to move on. When Kendell is starting to feel a little bit healthier, when despite some knee issues I’m ready to commit to running in a way that’s felt elusive for a while. When we’re all just a little bit committed to sun tanning (after prepping our Utah-white bodies for Hawaii).

To savor summer, I’ve been sitting outside on the patio more, eating a meal. And trying to find pleasure in the sunshine (instead of annoyance). And putting on a pair of shorts every now and then. Just trying to live in every day, in each now, instead of looking forward; trying to feel the goodness that is here (even amid the hard parts).

Wandering, quite often, around my garden, stopping to literally smell the roses, but also noticing where I needed more plants, and which plants need extra help (my rose bushes are infested with aphids, shiver). 

Friday was a summer day I could savor, especially sweet, and I want to remember the good bits of it.

In the morning, after Nathan and I went to physical therapy (we are both having knee issues!) we went out on the patio to eat a little breakfast, and he noticed a little quail family. The parents were shepherding the babies along the edge of our fence, and then they got to the corner. The mom flew to the top of the fence and squawked—“come up, come up!”—but the babies were too little. Nathan and I walked quietly over to the fence, so we could see better what was happening. The dad was lifting the babies, one at a time in his claws, into the gap at the top of the fence, and then carefully setting them down on the other side (in the yard without the two big dogs). The mom squawked at us so we didn’t get closer, but just watched until all the baby quail were deposted into the deep grass under the neighbor’s grapevines.

It was a privilege to witness.

Then I went to the greenhouse. A couple of weeks ago I dug out a flower bed that was making me a little bit crazy—full of morning glory vines and two different flowers that were taking over everything, crowding out my favorite blue-black iris. I dug everything out and tossed it all, except for the iris (which came from my dad, so I want to revive it if I can). So I needed something to put there.

Visiting the greenhouse is one of the pleasures of summer. I love just wandering for a while, picking the tags out of plants and reading about them, then putting them back. Taking my time to pick out just the right things. It used to be harder—when I had kids who came with me. Now, no one wants to go but me, which is bittersweet. I’d like to spend the time with them, but the solitude is nice, too. I wandered and I kept adding stuff to my wagon: petunias, and a pale-pink hollyhock, some shade ground cover, a couple of new columbines, two gorgeous lupines.

As I was checking out, there was an older gentleman behind me. He looked at all of the plants I was buying and said “I hope you’re not planning on planting all of that today!”

“What better thing could I do with a summer afternoon than plant flowers?” I responded.

He cautioned me to plant them quickly and get some water on them, and then he said “your husband is a lucky man. I love a woman who plants flowers.”

(I consciously decided to be charmed by this instead of skeeved; it really could go either way, right?)

Then I went and all afternoon I planted flowers. Sixty petunias, and the hollyhock, and the lupines. Even some zinnias, which never transplant well but maybe this time will survive. As I worked, I spent some time thinking about each of my kids, and my sisters, and my mom. I gathered up the stones I unearthed as I dug and, instead of tossing them, decided to pile them up in an empty spot of one of my flower beds. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them, or even why I felt compelled to keep them, but they just make me happy.

I got a little sunburned on my shoulders and the tip of my nose.

When I was finished, I took off my gardening shoes and dragged the house around the yard, watering the flowers while the freshness of the grass soaked up through the soles of my bare feet. Once the new plants were properly watered, I sprawled out in the grass under my sycamore tree. I watched and listened to a pair of crows fly and caw through my treetops, watched the clouds move through the sky dappled with the leaves above me.

I took some deep breaths and I realized: summer is OK.

(I can't wait until the petunias start filling in and spreading out; this flower bed is going to be luscious with them!)

I love the story of Beowulf, the Geatish warrior who saves the Danes from the monster Grendel, and then from Grendel's mother, and who, at the end of his life, saves his own people from a dragon and then gets pushed out to sea on a funeral pyre loaded with treasure. The mead halls! The heroic adventures! The kennings! Plus I've had a long fascination with Scandinavian history. One of my thoughts when I was in the British Museum last summer, in fact, was "I am in the same building as the Nowell Codex!" (The original Beowulf manuscript which was, alas, not on display.)

So Grendel's Guide to Love and War: A Tale of Rivalry, Romance, and Existential Angst, by A. E. Kaplan, was a must-read for me. It is a contemporary retelling of Beowulf, with all of the necessary pieces: several monsters (although they are in human boy form), a dead mother, heroic adventures to vanquish the monsters. Alas, no kenning.

But it's also just a fun young adult story, and if you've never read Beowulf it wouldn't matter. It tells the story of Tom Grendel, whose mother passed away years ago, and his father who has PTSD after serving in the wars in the Middle East, and his sister Zip. Tom and his father live in a retirement community, and when his neighbor dies, her house is purchased by her niece. Tom has a long, crushy history with the niece's daughter, Willow, as well as a painfully bully-ish one with the niece's son, Wolf (one of the monster boys). Their mother, recently divorced, is a news reporter and gone for long stretches, so she sets her kids up in their new house and then goes off to report on a story.

And Wolf starts in with the nightly parties.

Loud nightly parties, which set of his dad's PTSD, and so his dad travels for work to get away from the noise. Leaving Tom (and eventually Zip, who comes home from college) to deal with the loud parties, the bullying behavior, the crush, and the old neighbors who are getting increasingly fed up with the loud parties. Shenanigans ensue!

See? A fun story.

Except Tom is also still mourning for his mother, and unsure how to help his father, and wondering if his family will ever feel normal.

So memory, loss, revenge, romance, and a few really loud speakers get thrown into the mix.

This is one of my favorite YA novels I've read this year. Especially the ending—the ending took me totally by surprise. (Not in a twisty, oh-my-gosh-I-can't-believe-that-happened way, but in a sweet way that made the story feel complete.) I loved it so much that I read it in e-book format on my phone​, and if that isn't affection for a book, I don't know what is!

I usually love Sara Zarr's books. Story of a Girl and The Lucy Variations are books I hand over to young adult readers all the time, and How to Save a Life is my favorite book she's written. She is great at getting inside a teenage girl's mind and bringing it to life on the page; her characters feel authentic and their situations applicable to contemporary life.

So I was pretty sad to be so disappointed by her newest, Gem & Dixie.

It tells the story of two sisters living in Seattle with their alcoholic mother, who's barely keeping it together. Gem, who's 17, has always taken care of Dixie, but when Dixie turns 14 and starts high school, the differences between the two make their relationship difficult. Dixie is outgoing and popular, whereas Gem is quiet and keeps to herself. They limp along with never enough lunch money or clean clothes or food at home, until their long-absent father shows up—with a backpack of money he tries to keep secret. Gem nabs it and the sisters head to downtown Seattle to figure out their next step.

It's not really that the book was bad. It wasn't awful; it was decent, in fact. But I expected far more than "decent" from Sara Zarr. The plot never felt like it came together, and then it was resolved too quickly and behind the scenes. Plus there were a couple of plot holes I just couldn't work around (like where all that money came from in the first place). I wanted so much to love it, especially as it was about sisters and because I had a trip to Seattle coming up (it's always kind of cool to me, to read about a place, even in a novel, and then go there). But it just felt...average.

In fact, I totally forgot I even read it until I spotted it again on the library shelves.

Hopefully I'll love her next novel!

When I was working on my English degree, one of my very-favorite classes was the mythology course I took one summer. We studied the Greco-Roman tradition and the Norse pantheon; my final project was an anthology of about fifty poems about mythological beings (I still have it, and if I am ever a Famous Writer perhaps I will develop it and have it published, as in the past twenty years there have been innumerably more poems written about mythological beings).  These weren't new subjects to me, as it's a topic I've enjoyed for as long as I can remember; what changed me utterly was reading the Greek classics: The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. We had a translation that was incredible: approachable but not simplified, and poetic but still understandable. (I have misplaced my copy, much to my sadness, and I cannot remember the translator's name.)

Is it odd that I, a bibliophile, made it to 23 before reading these stories? I'm not sure. But they came into my life at exactly the right time, and I fell utterly, completely, and totally in love. Not so much with Achilles, Patroclus, Hector, Paris et al, but with the women. (If you know me, you're not surprised.) Helen, of course; Andromache, Chryseis, Hecuba, Penelope, Dido, Circe, Calypso, Lavinia. Cassandra and I are sole sisters. Some of them are barely mentioned in passing, some of the play larger roles, but they all fascinate me, for their sacrifices and their losses, their interactions with mortals and with gods, their subtle influences.

Since then I've reread Homer and Virgil's stories twice, in different translations and enjoyed them almost as much as that first time. (It really was an excellent translation!) Also Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides. But I've also developed an abiding affection for contemporary retellings of the Greek myths, tragedies, and legends. (I'm including a list at the end of this blog post.) So when I read that Colm Toibin's new novel, House of Names, tells the story of Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, and Electra—it was a foregone conclusion I'd read it.

Iphigenia is one of those haunting characters whose story stays with you. Possibly because of her name, but mostly because of her story: her father, Agamemnon, tricked her to coming Aulis, where he was stuck with his fleet, waiting for a wind that would not come because he had angered Artemis. Iphigenia believes she is coming to marry Achilles, but really she is to be the human sacrifice who will appease Artemis's anger and send the fleet to Troy. Her mother, Clytemenstra, is helpless to stop this from happening to her daughter, but she vows revenge as Agamemnon goes off to the long war.

If you've read the stories (this is technically a retelling of The Oresteia), you know what happens. If you haven't, I won't spoil it for you. But I will say this: I loved this book. The characters are far more developed than in Homer's story; they become real instead of narrative place holders. Other characters not in the original poem are added, developing the plot and the other characters' relationships. And the language! I loved this passage especially, when Electra is trying to communicate with Iphigenia's ghost: "Perhaps the days before her death, and the way death was give to her, are nothing in the place where she is. Perhaps the gods keep the memory of death locked up in their store, jealously guarded. Instead, the gods release feelings that were once pure or sweet. Feelings that mattered once. They allow love to matter since love can do no harm to the dead."

The novel stays true to the original story—I was especially glad to have one last glimpse of Cassandra—but its focus is different. The development of the characters brings other themes to the forefront: revenge, loyalty, love within a family (and how that love can break); responsibility for choices; the possibility and difficulty of forgiveness. It is not an easy, simple read; it is full of violence, betrayal, loneliness, loss, despair. But it is deeply empathetic and gripping, helping us step into the sandals of a civilization and a family in transition.

It is definitely going on my list of favorite Greek retellings:

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood—Penelope waited a long time for Odysseus to get home; when he did, he killed all of her suitors and her twelve maidens just for good measure. Atwood’s signature wit and themes are at work here—women trying to find a voice in a situation that has made them voiceless, establishing their own cruelty dynamics, and revealing the way myth infuses relationships.

XO Orpheus by Kate Bernheimer—a collection of short stories reimagining the world’s myths, including plenty of Greek gods and goddesses.

Alcelstis by Katherine Beutner—reminagines Euripides’ tragedy about a princess who loved her husband so much she agrees to die for him. A huge part of the story takes place in the Underworld; as Persephone is my favorite goddess I am just fine with this.

The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley—Cassandra’s story, only here she is Kassandra; she is cursed to always tell the truth but never be believed.

Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin—mentioned briefly in the Aeneid, Lavinia is another woman a war is fought over, this one much shorter and involved in the foundation of Italy.

Till We Have Faces  by C. S. Lewis—it is hard for me to convey my affection for this retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. It’s one of the books I’ve reread most in my life and, like scripture, I always find some new piece of knowledge.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller—were Achilles and Patroclus friends or lovers?

Black Ships by Jo Graham—what happens after the fall of Troy?

Helen of Troy by Margaret George—Helen’s autobiography.

The Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney—the poet’s translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, which happens to be my favorite.