Tonight, I came home from taking Nathan to the Halloween dance to find my husband sprawled out at the end of the hall, face-first on the floor.

My husband who, today, was supposed to have open-heart surgery and who only didn’t because he got bumped by someone else’s ruptured aorta.

My husband who, when we drove home from the hospital at 7:30 this morning, said “wouldn’t it be ironic if I died today?”

Sprawled on the floor, not moving.

“Terrified” isn’t a strong enough word for what I felt.

I dropped my purse and sprinted down the hall, which has never felt longer. In my head I had this little tiny quiet space where my voice was whispering is this really happening? This can’t be happening. Out loud, I was shrieking his name.

When I got halfway down the hall, he sat up.

Sat up totally normal, if a little bit baffled by my actions.

Cause he was just, you know, lying on the floor trying to figure out where that squeak was coming from.

So then I started sobbing and hyperventilating. I sat on Kaleb’s bed and wept. Jake came rushing upstairs, and Kendell explained what had happened, and they both laughed, but I couldn’t laugh. I cried hard and ugly, my breath coming in gasps, for ten minutes before I could calm down.

I didn’t realize until those sobs came how much worry and fear I have been carrying in relation to this surgery. He’s done it before—had open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve. It should’ve lasted for 12-15 years, but instead, last June (not even six years later) he started having subtle signs—a little out of breath when he shouldn’t be, a sluggish metabolism, having to stop just to huff sometimes during exercise—that his yearly echo/EKG confirmed were the fault that his valve was starting to fail again.

We’ve done this before.

So in a sense, it shouldn’t be this hard. I know what to expect. Sometime tomorrow, for example, one of the surgery nurses will call me to let me know that my husband is now on the bypass machine, and I will freak out a little because of the very unimaginable quality of it. He’ll wake up confused and annoyed at all the tubes and wires that are attached to him, but still underneath, his inviolate sense of humor. He’ll have to weather the healing of his chest and endure the way it pops and creaks if he moves wrong.

He’ll recuperate and heal, and I’ll help him as much as I can. I know this because we’ve done it before.

It shouldn’t be that scary—that ugly-cry, deep-buried terror I found gushing out of me tonight.

But somehow, the fact that we’ve done it before makes it even worse. Not because we both know what to expect, but because I don’t know how to trust it again. How to trust that the surgery will be successful and that he will be ok. Because we’ve done it before and he came out fine. Fine after having his heart operated on. Can I trust that another “fine” outcome will happen again?

It feels less likely.

My friends and family keep asking me how I feel about his surgery. I think wondering—do I have any premonition? This time, I don’t. Last time I was afraid of the unknown, but I was literally never, ever afraid he wouldn’t make it. I knew he would be fine. I don’t feel like it will turn out badly, either. But I don’t have that rock-solid assurance.

But what can we do? He can’t keep on like he has been, his symptoms worsening as the summer and fall have passed. He has to face the surgeon’s knife again. And I have to trust, somehow. That it will turn out well. That if it doesn’t (I erased that phrase five times before I left it here, because writing it out might make it real) I will be OK.

I have been living with the constant worry, since June: what if Kendell dies? Mostly I think that he won’t. At least—not this time. But one day, he will.

What made me stop crying and gasping and shaking tonight was when he came into Kaleb’s room, sat down next to me on the bed, and just hugged me. Right now, he’s here. He’s here with his big shoulders and strong arms, with his foibles and angers, with his laughter and appetites. I can still touch him and laugh with him and argue with him. Get mad at him and tell him I love him and ask him what that squeak might be. I have right now, and hopefully I will have many more years of right nows, but one day I won’t, and I want to remember that more clearly. So as not to waste the right nows.

(On our last hike, just last Sunday, before his surgery. Slower than normal but he still refused to quit and made it to our destination, Maybird Gulch. Even with his bad heart valve.)

A few weeks ago, Nathan asked me for help in picking a research paper topic. It was for his history class, and the general idea was to find an event in history that isn't very well-known and then discover (and write about) the details.

I think my favorite historical novels are the ones that do this very same thing: teach me something about history that I didn't already know. Even within the very-well-known (and most-written-about) historical events, like the Holocaust, there are smaller events (which is why I loved The Madonnas of Leningrad—about the siege in Moscow during WWII and what the Russians did to protect the art in their museums—and The Invisible Bridge​—which is a long novel about what happened in Hungary during the same war). Did you know that during World War I, soldiers who were infected with STDs could turn in the woman they thought they caught it from, and they were then "quarantined"—which looked a lot like prison—while receiving experimental treatments? (I learned that from Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal.) That African American slaves fought in the Revolutionary War? (Chains and Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson.) That in the antebellum south, there was a resort in Ohio where white slave owners could vacation with their slave mistresses? (Wench​ by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.)

When Nathan asked me for help, I'd just finished reading Chris Bohjalian's novel The Sandcastle Girls. I picked it for my genre read at work; we were reading romances, and, well. You know how I feel about romance novels. I went with this one because it seemed interesting, and like it would be one of those novels that would teach me something I didn't already know.

Which is a vast understatement.

I'm not sure how I lived my entire life without learning about the Armenian Genocide, which happened 100 years ago during Word War I. (Perhaps because the Turkish government still denies that it was a genocide and, since America wants Turkey as an ally, we don't discuss it much.) In case you didn't know about it either, a brief summary: the country of Armenia, which was mostly Christian (it was the first country to make Christianity its official religion) was part of the Ottoman Empire, which was mostly Muslim. The Ottomans allowed the religious minority some freedoms, including education. As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, those in power became suspicious that the Armenians would take the side of Christian countries in the war, such as Russia, and as World War I grew larger, the Ottomans began massacring Armenias. It is estimated that of the 2 million Armenians, 1.5 million were killed.

The Sandcastle Girls tells the story of Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in New York. Although her grandparents were Armenians, she knows very little of their history, until a chance encounter with a photograph grabs her curiousity, and researching it leads her to some of their story. It also tells the story of Elizabeth Endicott, who travels to Allepo, Syria after graduating from Mount Holyoke College. She goes there to offer service to the women and children who are being marched through the desert.

This is a grim story. It does fulfill my original requirement—a romance. But it is heartbreaking and disturbing and utterly unforgettable, how this genocide took place. Elizabeth's story in Allepo, with Armen, the man she becomes friends with, is full of the suffering of the Armenians. (Even now, in places in the desert there, you can dig a shovel into the sand and uncover human bones.) It is also a story about women's rights and independence, about friendship and loyalty, and about motherhood. There were twists I didn't expect. As a love story, it worked.

But I equally enjoyed Laura's story, especially as she dug into her family history. I know not everyone shares this fascination, but I love the process of finding out details about my ancestors. I always wonder if there are similarities and connections that I will never be able to know, since I don't know many of their personal stories, and this is a line that runs through The Sandcastle Girls, too. Plus, Laura's lack of knowledge about the genocide, even as the direct descendant of a survivor, made me feel a little bit better about my own.

I told Nathan about this historical event, and he ended up writing his research paper about it. This created the opportunity for many discussions: the brutality of humanity, the drive to eliminate entire races, the futility of not being able to change or stop such things. (Which haven't stopped, of course; 100 years later, Syrians are still being driven from Allepo, and we can look to Darfur and Burma for other examples.) I didn't have any important answers to his questions, except I had to share this conviction of mine: I think it is important for us to witness. Even if it is only by reading a novel or writing a research paper. If someone knows what happened, if we are moved to sorrow or anger about it, none of the lives are saved. Nothing changes in history. But we change. Someone knows​. And even if that knowledge cannot fix what happened, it still matters that we know it. That we are witnesses, even if—no, especially if—the details disturb us. 

I was looking through my list of book notes the other day, and I realized something: I'm not sure I've read one book this year that I have completely, entirely loved, without reservation. Etta and Otto and Russell and James is likely my 2015 favorite. I did really like The Library at Mount Char. Kissing in America is probably my favorite YA novel this year. Well, and I did love The Buried Giant​ quite a bit. 

But I haven't loved, adored, and been totally consumed by anything I've read this year.

I started reading Naomi Novik's fantasy novel Uprooted with the hopes that this would be it, my favorite novel of the year.

​It tells the story of the country of Polnya, where lives are constantly influenced by the corrupt presence of the Wood. In the valley where the malevolent wood grows, the Lord is called the Dragon. He lives in a tower and his responsibility—as a wizard—is to keep the Wood at bay, as much as possible. To that cause, for as long as he's been the Lord, once every decade the Dragon (whose name is Sarkan) takes a girl from one of the villages. The girl lives with him and does...something that helps him with his magic. No one is quite sure what the girl actually does, as each time, when her ten years are finished, each one has left the village for the grander life at court.

Agnieszka has grown up knowing she will be in the group of girls the Dragon will chose from, but she's never actually worried he would pick her. She's clumsy and drawn to dirt, and not especially beautiful or highly skilled at anything, unlike her friend Kasia, whom everyone assumes will be chosen, as she's beautiful and smart an brave.

Of course, what kind of story would this be if the Dragon didn't pick Agnieszka?

What follows is a fantasy that feels both familiar and unusual. In my head, all of the fantasy settings are somehow on the same (admittedly, rather large) planet, so if you could travel far enough (or maybe in the right magical way), you could leave one and arrive at another. I think this is how my mind allows for the overlap between fantasies (which are very often because of myth or fairy tales) and also why I get annoyed at fantasies that feel too close to something else (I'll go to the real Middle Earth if I want to be in Middle Earth, not a second-rate interpretation of it). The fantasy landscape here was familiar in the general fantasy sense (especially the hero's journey, court intrigue, and the presence of magic. It is the Wood, with all its gloomy, far-reaching menace, that makes it (delightfully) strange.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

It fulfilled many of my fantasy must-haves: a strong main character who is not unbelievably strong. (I like my main characters to struggle a bit to find their strengths, and to be realistically bad at some things. "Unaccountably good at every.damn.thing" characters make me crazy.) A compelling setting. (The devious, corrupting Wood is creepy, but in a good way.) A magic system (or other unworldly aspect) that makes sense within the context of the book but isn't the only tool the characters have. Characters who change because of their experiences. References (glancing or otherwise) to other myths, legends, or fairy tales. (This one has links to Baba Yaga and, more subtly, the Green Man.) Something captivating and unexpected and new. (The origins of the Wood and the magic they make with a book were that for me.)

It is almost, almost my favorite book this year. I will recommend it to lots of patrons and there are several scenes that I know will pop into my mind years down the road. I fell right into the narrative and didn't want to put it down until the end. (Except, I confess: the battle scene. I almost always skim through battle scenes.)

But what stopped me from entirely loving it was the romance. Maybe because I expected too much—I think I thought it would feel like someone telling what Psyche experienced in Cupid's house in Till We Have Faces but it wasn't ethereal at all. Sarkan is sort of presented as the wizard, fantasy-novel version of Mr. Darcy. You know: not really​ a stiff, mean, selfish grumpy bastard, just misunderstood. Except, I never could get around to understanding him. He never managed to soften my heart and I couldn't see why Agnieszka falls for him. (On the other hand, she doesn't fall under him, in the sense that she remains herself and doesn't change to make him happy.)

So close.

Sooooo close.​

Still, though. I really did love this book. The friendship Agnieszka (I wonder if Naomi Novik had to pause every time she wrote that character's name, to remember exactly how to spell it? Or if she made an autocorrect and then just typed something like AGNI and let the computer write it for her?) has with Kasia is a highlight of the book, as well as the way she becomes more independent and able to stand up for herself—to make her own story instead of letting her society write it for her—and how she finds her unique magical abilities.

I think anyone who likes fantasy will love this book, my one picky hesitation aside.

In a futile attempt to make myself feel better, this was my breakfast this morning:

Why the carb overload, the heaping plate of comfort food?

Because I woke up thinking about a conversation I had with a woman I had just met this weekend. My sister-in-law asked me to be a sub at her Bunko game. I haven’t played Bunko for a long time—haven’t spent time with so many women at once for a long time, and it was lovely to talk like women do. To share a few frustrations and feel like other people are also going through what you’re going through. At one point I started talking to one of the women—I think her name was Jenny—about parenting. She had three kids fairly close to my kids’ ages, and she said “don’t you just love this phase of motherhood? I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed being a mom so much as I do now that they are teenagers and starting to go out on their own.”

I said, “Wow.”

I rolled the dice. I counted the two fours and rolled again.

“Wow. That makes me feel…”

Then I rolled the dice again and dropped the conversation altogether. Instead I thought about how inadequate language is, because it is hard for me to say how that makes me feel.

How I am enjoying being a parent the least I ever have.

And how guilty I feel about that.

And how I wish I could find the joy, how I try to, but how it gets swamped in worry, anger, frustration, sadness, melancholy.

Loneliness.

Really. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more lonely than when I’m in the room with a teenager who is feeling so absolutely angry at me that all he (or she) can do is shut down. Turn silent and turn away and box himself off from me.

I miss them so much.

I miss the idea of what I thought this would be like. I thought it would be easier than it has been. I thought the relationships I’d built with them as they grew up would be strong enough to shore us up against the buffeting winds of teenagehood. I imagined a lot of laughing and talking through it. Sure, I knew we’d have conflict. But I thought that I had already paid my dues. That all my angst and anger and screwing up and mistakes and regret from my teenage years would be enough. Would help make me into a good mom who would know how to parent teens well. Who would know what to say to prevent mistakes or to balm wounded hearts or to guide choices.

Turns out, no.

Turns out, I’m messing things up in ways that are entirely different than how my own parents messed things up, and it doesn’t seem to matter what I try to do, it’s always wrong.

And I miss feeling like my kids were happy. The struggle isn't only how I feel about this experience; it is mainly in knowing they are struggling, and in feeling helpless to do much about the struggle. There are so many things in their lives that I cannot fix. And the thing I can change—myself—I still cannot. I can't shift my knowledge of right and wrong in the ways they want me to, even though sometimes it would be so much easier to set it down. To stop fighting. To say yeah, sure. You don't have to go to school or to church, you can do whatever you want. Here's a joint, here's a beer, enjoy yourselves! Can I find you a stripper while I'm at it? They want laxness from me at a time when laxness feels like the worst thing I could give them.

How can I lead them to happiness?

So I ache. And I worry. And I pray. I meditate and I hike and I write. I try to talk to them in different ways. I try to be gentle. I try to offer advice that might help. I try to be as positive and patient and calm as I can.

I try not to make it about me (even though this blog post really is all about me), because most of all I remember what adolescence felt like. The bewildering intensity, the contrast between wanting freedom and feeling adulthood rushing at you too damn fast. I wanted to somehow make this easier for them. But I haven’t.

Maybe that is just the nature of being a teenager. Maybe it is just always going to be difficult no matter what.

Maybe it’s always hard on parents, too. Except, Jenny from Bunko isn’t the only mother who’s told me how much she loves parenting teenagers and new adults. I want to be that parent. But I’m not.

And it’s not even that I have horrible kids. I don’t. Sure—they are grumpy and difficult and make decisions I cannot agree with. They push boundaries and slam doors and swear far too much. But they are good kids. They work hard at their grades and their jobs. They make me laugh.  They are each brilliant in their unique ways. Sometimes they surprise me with their compassion, or they send me a funny meme that brightens my day, or they toss off a pun or correct someone’s punctuation or casually mention an obscure literary reference. They are becoming people and so sometimes they make messes, but they are becoming good people.

After the rebellious, moody, impossible messup of a teenager I was, I deserve far worse teenagers.

I know this.

I love them. So much.

But. This is hard. This is so hard. I know that parenting is always hard. I also haven’t forgotten what the hardness was like when everyone was little and it felt like you’d be changing diapers and playing with Fisher Price toys for.ev.er. It was monotonous and exhausting and someone was always touching you. I’m not casting a glowy, selective focus on the past; I know that was difficult, too. But what made that hardness bearable is that I always felt loved. Three hundred times a day, one or another of the kids would do something that would make me melt, would make me say “awwwww,” would remind me of why I was doing this. Because I love them—and they loved me back.

I miss feeling, with absolute certainty, that my kids love me.

I know—this blog post is pretty raw. I’m not sure I should post it. I know I sound selfish, like I am turning their teenage issues around and only focusing on how they affect me instead of what I can do to help them. When I am a parent, not a blogger, I try really hard not to do that. But here, in this post, I wanted to try to set it out in words—what I am feeling. Because (and I just realized this): we are both conflicted, just in different ways. Their conflicts are the ones of adolescence. Mine are the ones of middle-aged motherhood: I love them and I want them to choose, but I want them to never make a mistake, which is silly because then they would never learn anything, but I want to spare them the pain of learning the hard way (even though my own knowledge I’ve gained the hard way is my most precious). But middle age isn’t just parenting, it’s also worrying about your own parents and feeling like your body is starting to fail (hello, dislocated-for-three-weeks toe joint) and wondering if it’s already too late to achieve the ambitions you’ve held all your life and stressing about the 401k, the IRA, and the Roth. About upcoming performance reviews and surgeries and mortality.

With all that internal conflict going on, no wonder there is so much external combustion. Perhaps I need to be more forgiving of everyone. Even myself?

So today, while eating hash browns with cheese and English muffins with plum jam and hot chocolate with a rather large glug of cream in it, I say kudos. Kudos to you moms who are loving raising teenagers. I’m glad some of you exist in the world. That sounds sarcastic, but really: good for you. I wish I knew your secrets. I wish I didn’t feel like I was constantly walking a high wire and looking across the distance to see my kids on their own wires, higher than mine. I wish I weren’t always terrified that one of us will fall. I wish I knew how you do it.

Until I figure it out, I will keep muddling through. Maybe I won’t ever figure it out. At least there are hash browns with cheese, and English muffins, which really don’t fix anything, of course. They didn’t even really make me feel better. Writing this did, though. A little bit. And maybe someone else will read it and also feel a little bit better. A little bit less alone.

I have had The Mermaid's Child​ byJo Baker checked out for six weeks and three days now. That's a long time for a book to be checked out---one renewal and now it's three days overdue. I don't want to return it until I write about it. But I'm conflicted over what to write. Is there even a point in writing a negative review, especially when I can't explain why it disappointed me without spoiling it? And does it matter if I spoil it if I was so utterly frustrated by it that I don't care if anyone else reads it—except I'd like someone else to read it because there were parts I loved and want to discuss and parts I hated and want to discuss.

So I just keep starting this review over and over. And spending way too much time on a book that frustrated and disappointed me—while still making me fall in love with a character and her setting and experiences.

So, if you did read The Mermaid's Child​, please tell me if it also frustrated and/or disappointed you, or if you loved it. And if you haven't read it yet, but want to, warning: spoilers!

I loved and adored Jo Baker's novel Longbourn. So when I read about her newest book, The Mermaid's Child, I was beyond excited to read it. It tells the story of Malin, who lives in a tiny village with her father, who loves her but is so busy working as the ferryman that he doesn't have time to pay much attention to her, and with her grandmother, who really doesn't like her because, well, her mother was a hussy. Nonsense, her father tells her—your mother was a mermaid.

Malin is sent to a small school, and she is fascinated by the map on the wall, but her teacher, who shares her grandmother's opinion, will not let her look at it. She is the strange girl at school, with no friends to speak of. One day, the circus comes to their small village, and Malin gets a glimpse of the display cages, but a specific one grabs her attention, the mermaid's cage. She tries to get in to see if it is her mother, but she can't. This ignites a fire in her to find her mother, and eventually she gets the chance to leave her tiny village and see the wide world. Accident, good and bad fortune, and even some choices take her to very different places: larger villages, a seedy port town, the desert, the arctic region, the sea. She becomes a sailor (hiding the fact that she is a girl, of course); she learns to read aboard a ship I will never forget; she very nearly dies of dehydration in the desert.

She learns how to perform in the circus.

There does seem to be a missing chapter, however. In one part of the book, the ship she is sailing is overrun by pirates. In the next chapter, she has been transported by ship to land and is being sold in a slave market. What? How can all her time on the pirate ship just not be there?

Still, I loved so many things about this book. Malin is an interesting character; she is spunky and outgoing and yet sometimes easily broken. She is brave and unafraid to speak her mind, yet it takes her awhile to figure out who she really is. She gets a bit of closure near the end of the book that was particularly satisfying. Her adventures were fascinating and unusual, even though the book reminded me intermittently of The Life of Pi, Sea Change, Ahab's Wife, and The Alchemist. I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite place she (temporarily) landed.

In fact, that is why this book disappointed me so much: I loved it so thoroughly until the very, very end. Here is the spoiler I promised: the book ends with Malin returning to the village where she grew up, very pregnant. She goes into the small classroom where she used to attend elementary school of sorts and finally can look, without her teacher hitting her, at the map on the wall that used to fascinate her (but only out of the corner of her eye). This is the big reveal, that the island with her small village is actually in between two much larger coasts and not, as she thought, a large landmass with a small lake in the middle.

Then she goes back to the house she grew up in, has her baby, and looks at it. The book ends just like that: "I lifted you to my chest, and touched your bloody cheek, and you opened your eyes. You looked at me."

Seriously.

That is the end.

I was pretty sure my copy of the book must've been missing pages.

Really: I don't need a happy ending. In fact, I prefer an unhappy ending to artificial, everything-works-out-in-the-end ending. I'm even OK with nebulous endings.

But this was like the all-consuming black hole of a nebulous ending.

I was expecting something earth-shattering. The jacket cover even promises that Malin's journey "leads to a discovery that she could never have expected." WHAT IS THE DISCOVERY? that she could have a baby? That she misread the map? All that lead up and then she just...goes home. Sure, with a baby. But still. I was expecting something beautiful and strange. Or elegant. Or something.

​I think it's time I return this book. Someone else can grapple with it. At least I didn't damage it when I threw it on the floor in disgust. 

Addendum: It was only tonight, after I finished this book and threw it on the floor and then picked it up and carried it around with me for weeks, trying to figure out what to write about it, that I looked at the copyright page. The edition I have is copyrighted 2015—but the original copyright date is 2004. Which means this is likely one of her first books, not her newest. Which to me suggests that Baker's publisher or agent was building on the success of Longbourn. Which lead me to realize: the endings to both books are nearly identical. In each, the main character returns home after years of traveling, with a baby. Yet Longbourn was entirely satisfying because the story was told before Sarah got home. In The Mermaid's Child​, there is too much story left, and none of what did happen gives any sort of foreshadowing to let us know what Malin will do next.