Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan

 

I found this book on the bargain bookshelf at Barnes and Nobles and snatched it up.  In a two-day stint of the hottest week of the summer, I sat on my couch in the air conditioning and absorbed this book’s sad and plaintive tone.  It is a beautiful book, carefully evoking a family and town’s response to the day a teenage girl goes missing.  I was drawn in to the book because of its opening pages and the way the author evokes the small Ohio town and the details of the setting:  the interstate, the small-town roads, the gas station, the bars and the small-town stores that make up this young woman’s life and the life of her family.  We follow the soon to be missing heroine’s movements in the opening pages of the book, feeling her small-town yearning to get out, seeing her rebel and hang out with her friends, their relationships finely wrought through the dialogue, nicknames and physical descriptions O’Nan uses.  So strong is O’Nan’s depiction of this young woman, that we feel connected to her even though, after the day she goes missing, we are not able to hear her voice, see her actions and understand her desires in quite the same way for the rest of the novel.  The rest of the book reads like a slow-moving poem or even dirge.  But, this does not mean it is slow-moving.  It means that the effect of the book is that of layering reaction upon reaction of family members and friends, each getting their own chapters through 3rd person limited point of view.  At times the reader strains to know, “just tell me what happened to this girl!”  the desire for plot movement straining against the mournful interior meditations of each character.  But, instead of this being a criticism of the book, I think O’Nan has captured the very real phenomenon of a situation where there are no fast-moving answers to this girl’s plight.  And so, instead, the family is left with more questions than answers, and as a result, songs of their own regret, desire and growth as their lives move forward from the date of the loss of this young woman.  The ending of the book does provide some of the plot answers we have all been waiting for from page one.  But by then, O’Nan has so skillfully brought us into the fabric of this family and town’s life that the answers are, as with most things, beside the point.

I am fighting a sinus infection. It probably goes without saying, based upon the title of my post.  It has been over a week with this bugger, no pun intended, and the antibiotics have helped a bit, but they haven’t quelled the beast.  Enter, the neti pot.  My doctor recommended it to me as the single best thing for sinus infections–even better than antibiotics.  And then he went on to quote some study about how the neti pot had in fact reduced the number of sinus infections in England, when the government was looking for ways of getting people to rely less on antibiotics.

So.  A neti pot.  This device, this thing, seems right out of the 19th, 18th or even 16th centuries.  I picture Friar Laurence the apothecary from Romeo And Juliet having one of these things in his medicine closet.  “Here, Juliet, just stir in this mixture and give this neti pot a good run and you’ll be free of that heartsickness in a few days.”  The pot is downright homespun.  Downright passed on from someone’s great-great-grandmother or at least from the country doctor or even medicine man in the village.  How is it that this thing works such wonders in today’s modern era?

And yet, the neti pot has a good reputation.  Even before using it, friends and family extolled its virtues, sharing anecdotes of times when it “cured their ailment” or times when it was “the only thing that worked.”  Indeed, this little aladdin-lamp-like pot has a loyal following.  I decided to give it a try.

Just how does it work?

You boil water or use bottled water or filtered water and then stir in the provided mixture of sinus salts or whatever one might call them.  Stir.  Then, stand over a sink, head down, and use the spout end of the neti pot to pour the mixture into one nostril and then wait while it systematically comes out the other nostril.  Simple.

Intrigued, I decided to do a little research on the history of the neti pot.

It didn’t take long to find out that the neti pot comes from the Ayurvedic tradition.  Interesting.  So, a homeopathic remedy that is trumping the western practices of antibiotics…love it.  Sources claim that practitioners were interested in increasing the quality of the breath coming into the body, and so cleaning the nasal passages became a logical thing to do.  Says this site, using a neti pot not only helps the nose and mouth and eyes, it also clears the mind.

So, as I my initial impressions told me, this device IS in fact completely holistic and ancient.  And, for that reason, I love it.  I revere it.  It holds a place of honor in my collection of over the counter remedies.  The cute and efficient and oh-so-effective neti pot.  A little bit of ancient healing right on my medicine cabinet shelf.

My high school Latin teacher, Mrs. Jedziniak, made a big distinction between our avocations and our vocations. In trying to help us understand the difference between the roots of these two words, she discussed the idea of a “calling” for a vocation versus a “calling away” for an avocation.  While we might have a vocation, a job we did, our avocations were the activities and passions our hearts were drawn to.  These avocations were the things we would do regardless  of money or working life.  These were our passions.

I remember this because I see that most of us walk a line somewhere between our vocation and avocation.  Many of us start off following what we feel is our calling.  We train, make education choices, take jobs, internships, and meet connections all in hopes of landing our dream job.  For many of us, though, landing that first  job becomes more of an education in the world of work that an experience of blissfully having arrived at our true calling.  There is, after all, so much to be learned about the working world that has nothing to do with passion.  The working world contains rules, bosses and time sheets and deadlines and etiquette and politics and ladders to be climbed and backsides to be kissed.

So, it is only after being in the working world for awhile–whatever field someone goes into–that a person can really understand the definition or concept of the term “dream job”.  Now that all of the elements that go into a job have been introduced, a person can move on to start to think about what his or her dream job might look like.

I am interested in the leaps of faith people take in moving up the ladder in their careers or in the beginning stages of creating their careers.  These leaps of faith are times when a person simply imagines oneself into a job, and through a bold move or a decision takes on a task or job that he or she may not be qualified for–may not have the money for–may not even have the time for–and simply makes it happen because of the bold vision of the desired job waiting for them at the end of the road.

For me, this has happened multiple times.  I remember when I was first working toward becoming a teacher, 15 years ago, I took a job one summer at a summer school for ESL students out in western MA.  I really had very little ESL experience.  My training was in English Literature.  But because I knew this would get me real-time teaching experience in the classroom, I took it.  Another summer around that time I also accepted the position of Assistant Direction of a college summer program for ESL students.  Again, I had little to no ESL training, except for that previous summer experience now under my belt.  And, so, I became the Assistant Director of something.  I had never Assistant Directed anything!  These leaps of faith, however, did give me the classroom time I was looking for.  The very basic experience of standing up in front of a classroom and teaching.  From these moves, I began to feel like and become a teacher.

My move into creating a freelance writing career came about in an even more mind-over-matter way.  I began to call myself a writer in certain situations whenever someone asked about my job.  When filling out a name tag, I would put my name and then the title “writer” for my career.  I did this for two reasons.  I felt like it gave me a little bit of an alter ego.  And, I was also, whether I knew it or not, carving out a place for myself in my identity in which being a writer was a real thing.  The more I played that role, the more I became that role.  And now, a few years later, I can indeed say that I am a freelance writer, in addition to my full-time job of educator.

Clarence Jones came to speak at our school yesterday.  He is an amazing speaker, someone who employs all different styles of speaking within one 45 minute time period, engaging us with reenacting the story of how he came to meet and work with Martin Luther King Junior and regaling us with tales of how he has gone on to teach at Stanford and write several books.  At 80 years of age, he is energetic, articulate and young in speech and message.  The kids and teachers alike hung on his every word.  We were all coming face to face with a living figure from history.

I was struck by one of his biggest messages:  the only way to work with others and accomplish anything is through love.  He could have said any number of other things that would help one succeed in life, but he chose to say that love is the greatest thing.  And, the reason I was struck by that is because lately, time and time again, I keep receiving this message from great artists and thinkers.  They don’t name education or discipline or responsibility or motivation as the quality that most makes a life successful.  They name love.  Junot Diaz, speaking of the process of writing his most recent novel The Brief Wondrous Life of OScar Wao spoke at Montclair State University a few months ago.  There, he conveyed to us that he had to grow into the person who could write the book that he was striving to write.  He had to learn and develop the compassion necessary to write the book.  He said that when he started the book he was not yet the person who could write that book.  It took him 10 years to do it.  And, indeed, in teaching that book for three years now, to my high school juniors and seniors, and I am struck by the deep message of compassion and love and breaking of silences that it teaches.

Jones stated that it’s not even the love for others that is so important.  He said that we love others when we love ourselves.

So, it’s a snow day from school.  And, I am enjoying all the pleasures of having a day off.  I woke up at around 9:30.  Went down and made dunkin donuts coffee in my coffee maker.  Had some cereal.   I watched The View–interrupted for a half an hour by Mayor Bloomberg’s press conference about the state of his plowing and handling of the snow emergency.  Heard him speak hilarious Spanish to his constituents. Read a little bit.  Reading about Fairy Tales in preparation for teaching my upcoming Fairy Tale unit in my Women’s Voices of the 20th Century class that starts in two weeks.

Now, I am making brownies.  Not something I do often. Simple pleasure.

When I was little, I wanted to be a minister.  It wasn’t a big focus of mine–I wasn’t like, “I will be a minister when I grow up”.  It was more just one of several jobs that seemed cool to me and that I could picture myself doing.  I loved listening to the minster’s sermons at church.    Not the religious aspects of them, per se, although those messages were certainly moving and beautiful.  No, I liked the way a minster could bring in all of these different stories–from the Bible, from his own life, from movies and books and stories and even just stories about things that had happened that week–and weave them together to bring out a new meaning.   I loved the conglomeration of stories–high and low–all leading to a meaning or a lesson or a message about God or life.  The only thing that always kind of stopped me when I thought about being a minister, was the God part.  I wasn’t sure if I really had enough of a God calling to be a true minister.  Suffice it to say that I would have been just as happy hearing those sermons and the collected anecdotes if they had merely served to illuminate something about life or human nature.  It was the form that I loved and the fact that they spoke about God was important–but only secondarily so, for me.

In high school I was part of a group called Young Life.  It’s a Christian social group–I am not sure which church runs it.  My friend Bill Berry held the meetings out of his parents’ basement.  His house was really big, located on Wood Pond in West Hartford.  So, one night a week, I think it was Tuesdays, 20 or 30 kids from school would gather in Bill Berry’s basement for Young Life meetings.  I think most of the kids, including me, did it because it was social.  There was always some kind of activity for half of the evening, like a game or a project.  These were silly games like you might do at camp.  I can’t even remember them now.  Which is telling, I think.  Because my favorite part of the evening was always the end of the meeting when the leaders of the group would quiet everyone down and gather everyone in to listen to one of the leaders tell a sort of meditative story or sermon of sorts.  It usually involved a very personal anecdote from the leader’s life–sometimes the stories and details were really heart wrenching. Looking back now it seems like they must have been encouraged to include self-revelation.  They told about family problems or social problems they had been through or sometimes even problems with drugs or alcohol.  Things could get pretty serious pretty fast down there in that basement with the brown rug and white paneling. Where kids had been squealing in delight over games a few seconds before, the room would suddenly be quiet and intense.  I loved this.  I was in my element.  Listening to someone tell about her life and then hearing her link the story to a story in the Bible was just the meditative meaningful kind of shit that I needed on those Tuesday nights.  I know most of the other kids in the room probably considered these little talks the thing they had to sit through in order to be able to play the games and hang out with the other kids there.  But, this kind of deep revelation moved me. Again, I really don’t think I so much got the message about God though.  I just liked the meditative quality of it.  I like the storytelling and feelings and meaning.

So it makes sense to me, then, that writing non-fiction and blogging even appeal to me.  These forms allow me to do just what my congregational ministers have been doing up there in church every Sunday morning throughout my life:  Tell stories, elaborate upon some, make connections between books and people and religious texts and even history and pop culture and then draw them together into a whole that illuminates.  Congregational ministers are experts at this.  I think there is a bit of “down-to-earth” folksiness to the congregation style of sermons that really works for me.

Regardless, I write about this topic here and now because this memory of wanting to be a minister came bubbling up out of my memory a few minutes ago.  This memory kind of frees me.  It gives me license and a bit of context with which to indulge in this blog thing.  And it gives me a bit of a purpose.  Sometimes I feel like blogging and all that goes with it can be narcissistic and selfish or else I feel that I have to choose some trendy topic to write about.  But, if I instead just go with my gut–my own longstanding impulse to tell stories and connect them and sometimes (not always) hopefully illuminate something larger about life and humanity, well then, here’s my chance.  I get to be a minister.  Here in my own little corner of the web.

I am teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein this month to my sophomores.  My well-annotated copy of the book is like the bible to me–all the good quotations and themes and references to Romantic literature are marked throughout.  I would be lost without it.  And yet, to teach the book really well, I have to continually engage in the act of rereading.  As I sat down to read the other night, I felt for the first time in a few years, just how very foreign the act of sitting down to read a dense 19th century novel feels compared to the activities of my everyday life.  Maybe it’s just me. But I don’t think so.  Most things I do in my life today don’t require the complete concentration, quiet attention and uninterrupted focus that reading 30 pages of Frankenstein requires.  And, it felt good!  I was happy for the enforced silence and the enforced focus.  I really can’t multi-task when I am reading Frankenstein the way I can when I am, say, trying to check my email and text a friend and watch tv at the same time.  The 19th century novel, in fact, seems like the perfect antidote to multitasking.  If one tries to multitask while reading one of these tomes, one simply doesn’t really read.

English teachers the world over sing the praises of works of literature such as those by Dickens, Austen, the Brontes and Shelley because of the complexity of thought, the multifaceted sentences, the insight the books provide into time periods and cultures before ours and because of the strong vocabulary used throughout.  A newly valuable aspect of  these books is their role in demanding that the reader immerse him or herself in an act of complete focus that is becoming more and more rare today.  I used to tell kids that it was hard to read these books because it was hard to imagine what it was like to live in a world without television.  Only 10 years later, I have to amend this introduction by telling students that it’s hard for us to imagine what it was like not to have television as well as cell phones, email, facebook, texting, video games, im-ing and the internet.  And, this list grows everyday.

While the concentration I dropped into felt welcome, I could also feel my 21st century brain becoming antsy.  My thoughts danced around.   My fingers itched to grab my smart phone to check the email that I had checked only five minutes before.  Every bone in my body seemed to fight against the sense of slowness this act of reading was creating.  “You mean I have to sit and read for an hour?  Two hours?  Can’t I get this done more quickly? Isn’t there a short cut?  Can’t I hyperlink this?”

If I was feeling it, then my students certainly feel it.  Born as recently as 1995, the year I graduated from college, these high school sophomores probably have very few activities in their memory that require such slow, un-technological focus.

And yet, I see this activity as even more important.

It seems to me that as an English teacher I might do well to have my students reflect upon this act of reading.  Students are stretching out, slowing down and fighting their urge for instant gratification. It might be good to have them share their impressions about what it’s like to do this.

There is much to be learned here, and more thinking to be done upon this topic.