Life after Life
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Yesterday Kaleb asked me if his dad and I dated, before we got married, like Haley and her boyfriend Adam date. So I told him the story of how we met, which goes like this:
I was working at WordPerfect, and I was friends with a girl named Cindy. Her dad worked there, and her brother, and I knew them, but I was friends with Cindy. Her brother was coming home from his mission soon, and she decided that she should set him up with another of our co-workers, whose name was Jennifer Jack. Jennifer would be perfect for Cindy's brother, Cindy decided, because she liked country music (her brother did not, in fact, like country music; Cindy, however, did).
So one day in January Cindy's brother came to WordPerfect to meet Jennifer. She was my podmate. (Ahhh...those days of working for technology companies, when terms like "podmate" were just usual things you said!) I was on the phone when he came to see her, but a few minutes later, I got an email from my friend Cindy saying "My brother wants to take you out instead of Jennifer."
I still remember what I had on that day, a peach sweater, both baggy and fuzzy, and white stretch pants. (Forgive me, this was 1991 after all.) And how it felt to read that email: like anticipation of something bigger, even though I didn't even see him, and so it was that my first date with Cindy's brother (Cindy who became my sister-in-law, and yes: I did know my father-in-law and my brother-in-law before I knew my husband) was really sort of a blind date on my part.
Here's the weird part though: I very nearly called in sick that day.
I had a headache and a little cold and I just didn't feel like working. But for some reason (which I cannot remember now), I came in, thus starting in motion a series of experiences that lead to my wedding day and four fantastic kids, one of which asked me just yesterday how I met his dad.
Life sometimes pivots when you least expect it. And I confess, sometimes when I'm having one of those horrible why-did-I-ever-marry-him sort of days (which I desperately hope I am not alone in having), I think what if I had called in sick that day? My life would've pivoted some other way, and at some other time in the future. Maybe Jennifer Jack would've married Kendell, and Cindy could have a country-music-loving sister in law (which is not to say that I think she regrets having me as her sister-in-law; we're still friends). That other life, with a different husband and children, with different experiences, sometimes seems so close to me. Like I could almost see it except for the thin veil (made of reality I suppose) I can't seem to push away. I don't really wish for this other life (or the myriad of them, all made unique by me making different choices) because then I wouldn't have the home, children, and friends I have now. I wonder how it might be different but I don't wish for it. Of course, if I had made different choices, I would feel the same: these children, these friends, this husband; this life.
This idea of a life being made differently, depending on choices made differently, forms Kate Atkinson's novel Life after Life. It opens with a baby girl being born in February of 1910 in England, except the cord is wrapped too tightly around her neck and she never takes a breath. In the next chapter, the same baby is being born, in the same household to the same mother, except this time the doctor makes it in time to unwrap the cord and save her. Ursula—the baby—grows, sometimes into a child, each time getting older, but sooner or later meeting death, based on choice (usually, at her young ages, not hers). And being immediately reborn in the same body.
She carries, if not exactly a true memory of her previous existence, a sort of darkness about the events that previously caused her death—which is why, most of the time, she manages on the retry to make a different choice. The darkness is intuition, and warning; it creates a pivot that her life changes course upon. Sometimes it takes several lifetimes to get right, as with the influenza outbreak of WWI. As she gets older, the instances of possible death spread wider, but the impact of her choices begin to influence more of her life's outcome.
Even though I couldn't wait to read this book (when I finally got to the top of the hold list, it just so happened that I was in the circulation room when it got checked in, and my friend there gave it to me with a swoop and I did a thoroughly undignified and non-librarian-ish happy dance), I wasn't sure if this would get tedious. Or if it would turn into a McEwan-like exercise about writing. Instead, it was fascinating, watching how Ursula managed to either save or destroy herself, and how the ripples of her various decisions spread out through her lives. (Also fascinating: how she came in contact with some people no matter what life she lived, only in different contexts then she had in previous lives.) Multiple lives into her existence, she starts to get a glimmer that she will have another chance, so she makes a drastic choice in order to change the world. (You'll have to read the entire book to see if it works.)
The blurb on the cover of the copy I read is from Gillian Flynn (whose opinion I can hardly rely on anyway) and says that Life after Life is one of the best novels of the century. And, despite my dislike of Gone Girl, I have to sort of really agree. At least: one of the best books I've read this century. It made me look both backward and forward, down and up the lines that my decisions have made. The experiences I've made to create my current life. This is an idea that philosophers have thought about
before (the book's epigraph is three different quotes that introduces the theme perfectly), but carried out here in novel form? Well. I devoured it. It's not a book I think everyone will love, but me? It made me think that that veil separating us from the life (lives) we might've had isn't made of fabric at all,
but of paper.
before (the book's epigraph is three different quotes that introduces the theme perfectly), but carried out here in novel form? Well. I devoured it. It's not a book I think everyone will love, but me? It made me think that that veil separating us from the life (lives) we might've had isn't made of fabric at all,
but of paper.
Have been horribly scarred by reading Kate Atkison's Emotionally Weird which I loathed, but after reading your review, might just give Life after Life a go (will have to see how long our hold list is...).
And yes, you are not alone in having the why-did-I-ever-marry-him days; but working through them has got us to our 29th anniversary (yesterday). Feel fairly positive about making it to our 30th!
Posted by: Margot | Monday, August 19, 2013 at 04:07 AM
Yes, again, you're not alone in those why-did-I-ever-marry-him sentiments. I often dream of a different life if I would have married someone from my church of origin. Everything would be different. My children would have been brought up differently. They would have had a more similar life to the one I grew up in. But, like your previous commenter, working through the regretful days has led to a significant achievement of 23 years together, so I try to push the what-ifs aside (notice I said try). And I think it is probably a blessing that God didn't choose to give me someone comfortable and easy, where I wouldn't have been challenged so intensely.
Posted by: Wendy | Monday, August 19, 2013 at 06:15 AM
this was interesting to read. i read that book a while ago and i had mixed feelings about it. I didn't hate it (like i did gone girl) but i also wasn't awed by it for some reason. Maybe because none of the characters truly stayed with me long after and that's one of my measures of a good book. But i did keep thinking about it which is also a sign i spose :)
I just read The Lake and The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. Both of which I really enjoyed. Currently listening to The Orphan Master's Son which is proving challenging and reading Mr. Fox which is kinda cute.
And there you go. As for your story with Kendall, part of me believes that he would have had another opportunity to meet you and you two would have ended up together anyway. but i know i'm a bit crazy like that :)
Posted by: karen | Monday, August 19, 2013 at 09:46 AM
I felt frustrated reading Life After Life because I completely understood that Atkinson's goal in writing it was for us readers to have the exact kind of experience and emotional wonder that you had: to think about the "what if"s and trajectory tugs our personalities take us regardless of those small, call-in-sick-to-work kinds of decisions that can pivot whole life experiences. However, I only felt let down by Atkinson's refusal to risk leaving the comfort of Fox Corner and writing any of the secondary characters differently. I wrote in my review that I felt like she couldn't decide if she believed in the Butterfly Effect or Fate.
Anyways, I loved how you wrote your story. You pulled me right into your story, peach fuzzy sweater and white stretch pants and all. :)
Posted by: Lucy | Tuesday, August 20, 2013 at 08:29 AM