by Elizabeth Berg, 2005
What a quick read! Bette Nolan loses her husband, John, to cancer. Leaves Boston, drives to Midwest, picks a town, a house, starts a new life. Opens a store, ‘What A Woman Wants,’ renews friendship with 3 old college roommates. Doesn’t open store until the very end. Great book! Loved all of her lists of “things” – things to put in her store.
Page 58: “John and I had often talked about how focused our culture was on distraction, about how ill suited we were to staying with things, following them through in a respectful and thorough way. There was a great discomfort with quiet, with stillness, at the same time that there was acknowledgement of how valuable these things could be. I once read an essay about a woman who spent an entire day simply looking at what she had, really seeing all the things she’d put in her house. I was as guilty as anyone else of buying books I never read, of rushing through days without ever looking up, of taking for granted things for which I should give thanks every day. Who appreciated their good health until they lost it? Who said grace? Who read to their children before bed without one eye on the clock, despairing of all they had to do before they themselves could sleep? Who engaged cashiers in grocery stores in conversations? Everyone seemed in a blind hurry, and there was no relief in sight…”
She kept scrapbooks of pictures she tore out of magazines and newspapers – sit sometimes in the afternoon with a cup of tea and make up stories to fit the pictures. She used to keep them in drawers but John had a rare fit of exasperation – do something with them!
John left her a bunch of slips of paper with words written on them, in a cigar box that he gave to the neighbor to wrap up and give to Bette after he died: “Eclipse,” “green bowl” (not sure), “Old CDs,” “Mists,” “Split Rail.”
Lists of things she would have in her store: Dutch cocoa, long glass jars of vanilla beans, chocolate-colored pajamas-brown flannel with red piping…heavy pasta pitchers from Tuscany, roosters from Paris for the kitchen, antique keys on satin ribbon, verbena soap, antique buttons.