The Gilmore Book Club

How relationships can survive sickness and silence

It’s been years since that time that my mother and I spent so much time driving to doctors’ appointments, but now that I’m older and can look back, I’m able to see that all that time, though silent and miserable it may have been, all that time brought us closer together.

It made our relationship easier as I continued through high school, when most teenagers rebel and hate everything their parents say or do. It made our relationship more special as I moved away to go to college and began to figure out who I was on my own. It made our relationship grow as I became an adult, knowing her not only as my mom but beginning to know her as a person- a woman, a daughter, a wife, and a sister. When we’re young, we don’t see our parents as individuals, they’re just mom and dad, but as we grow older, our vision shifts to see the entirety of their identity.

For most of novel, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Sidda spends her days at the lake, flipping through the scrapbook that chronicles the lives of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Vivi, along with her friends, Necie, Caro, and Teensy had christened themselves the Ya-Yas, a sacred sisterhood of friendship and devotion. The Ya-Yas know each other better than their husbands do and are always there to lend a hand. Sidda grew up with these four women as her role models and in her time of crisis, she hopes to glean from the pages of the scrapbook the divine secrets the Ya-Yas have about life, about finding oneself, and about love.

There’s no scrapbook for me to peruse, but I have something better. I have first-hand accounts from my mother. Sometimes she’ll tell me an entire story, and sometimes it’s just a little snippet of information. But the more I learn, the more I begin to see the entire picture and piece together the puzzle of how she became who she is and how I became who I am.  

There are times when I’ve wondered why I think the way I do or why I act a certain way. How did I become me? Some of those questions can be answered by looking at my parents' lives, how I was raised, and my past experiences. But there are questions still unanswered. Questions that stop me in my tracks and make me want just to stop everything, much like Sidda did. I like to be in control, to be knowledgeable about what’s happening, but life doesn’t always lend itself to that. Try as I might, some things are out of my control. Some questions may never be answered.

It’s difficult for me not to have the answers, to not know the how and why of things. When I was young, I didn’t like to play a game until I had seen it played several times, until I knew all the rules and had worked up a winning strategy. I like to have all the information. That’s all well and good for board games, but it’s not so practical in life. I still harbor an inclination for that same approach as an adult, and though it might be helpful at times, I’ve also seen that it can hold me back.

When Sidda was young, her fear of the unknown manifested itself in the form of an elephant named Lawanda the Magnificent. A local shopping plaza was throwing an opening day celebration, and customers could pay to ride on Lawanda’s back for a short trip around the parking lot. All Sidda wanted was to ride an elephant. She dreamed of it for days and gleefully waited for the day to arrive. But when she stood before Lawanda, dwarfed by the size of the enormous animal, Sidda was terrified, so terrified she refused the ride and went home without knowing what it was like to ride an elephant.

To me, there is a greater fear than that of the unknown. It could be described as fear of regret, the fear of always wondering what it would have been like, or even FOMO (the fear of missing out), but what it really boils down to is this. It’s the sinking feeling that strangles your entire body as if all your organs had been suddenly filled with sand, that feeling you get after looking a good opportunity in the eye and choosing to turn back because you’re scared. I’m scared of that feeling. Sidda had that feeling the entire way home from the celebration that day, and it would have stayed with her if her mother hadn’t agreed to take Sidda back so she could ride Lawanda. And so, Sidda learned what it was like to ride an elephant. She learned what it was like to conquer her fear.

Starting this blog was daunting for me. I have a full-time job and a freelance writing career, not to mention errands, laundry, cleaning, etc. How was I even going to find the time to create a blog, let alone reread the 90 or so books I had already read that I would now have to reread just so I could pick out quotes and brush up on plot details for the blog? And then there were the big questions: What if I worked and worked and was disappointed with my writing or the way the site looked? What if no one read anything? Or read everything and hated it? What if I failed, and not just by other’s standards, but what if I failed myself, my own expectations, and standards? What if I failed my dreams, the ones that I had harbored for so long and worked so hard for?

My mom knew that I was battling with all these questions and got me to move forward because of one reason. “If you don’t do this,” she said, “you will always wonder what could have happened. You will always wonder, ‘what if?’”

I wasn’t willing to live with ‘what if?’ always repeating itself in the back of my mind. . I had been reading and writing and setting up the site for a while but still hesitated to publish it. There were still things to fix, better ways to write, and more books to feature. But all my hard work was invisible to the outside world. I couldn’t guarantee success, but I could guarantee it would never be a success if no one saw it. So I pressed ‘Publish,’ and my words streamed out into the universe. I climbed up on the beast, and I rode just like Sidda.

I don’t want to spend my life looking at metaphorical elephants and running in fear or, more accurately, watching everyone else ride the elephant before I make a decision to move forward. I want to take those once-in-a-lifetime chances that are given to me and create my chances when they’re not. I want to jump in, acknowledging my hesitation or nervousness but doing it anyway. I admit I’m not great at it yet, but I’m working on it. Some situations require safety, accuracy, and reality checks; I’m not saying to ignore any of that. But at some point, you’ve got to decide whether to go for it or not. And for all the wonderful things this life has to offer, I hope I say, “ You jump, I jump, Jack.”

Maybe with the help from my mom and from Lawanda the Magnificent, there will be times when I’ll finally be able to let go of all my questions and my need to understand. Maybe I can give up holding back and just live.

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