Tiffany Painter

I just finished a book and would love to tell you what I thought about it, but I am still deciding. I started out reading This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer thinking it would be just that, a love story. I knew it would have a sad ending because the wife is dying. It was described as a celebration of great love at the end of the fifty years Abe and Jane spent together going to Central Park first as young lovers, then as exhausted parents, and now to remember a life together. The story is told from multiple points of view, including the park itself. I think I went into it thinking it would be a sweet story about a long marriage and the difficulties of saying goodbye. I was wrong, This book showed how messy life and marriage is and how it’s not even the same for everybody involved, including the children. Jane was an artist and carried her own baggage into motherhood after losing her mother at a young age. Abe is conflicted between fulfilling his parents’ desires for him and his own longing to be an author. Max, their son, struggles with his own identity after being raised by a mother who couldn’t find her way as a new mother weighed down with depression and a father who didn’t really know how to help her. By the time I finished the book I felt the exhaustion of the characters. This was anything but a simple love story. Life is messy, so so messy. There is no such thing as happily ever after. People say and do the wrong thing all the time, and it usually has nothing to do with you. Everyday is just a new chance to try to figure it all out and do the right thing. But everyday is a new day with new opportunities to make mistakes. It really is amazing that people latch on to each other and try to get through life together. When you add children to the mix, that just adds more parts to the mess. But really, for most people, isn’t it nice to have these people to anchor to? Even though they will say or do the wrong thing on their own journey, when it comes right down to it, these are the people that will also help dig you out when life gets hard and lift you up when they can. Blunders and all, I’m happy to have my people helping me through my love story, and I think I liked the book after all.

4/9

sunny company
two friends walking together
dog and his shadow

4/12

oh, to be a tree
exfoliate what is old
and start fresh again

4/13

with every new bloom
I feel my soul burst free
shedding winter’s weight

4/18

there’s always that one
willing to be different
secretly revered

4/19

spring has sprung a leak
leftover winter seeped in
sun fixing problem