A book review...
and an epiphany
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is one of the best novels I have read in a long, long time. It gave me so many facets of my own life to reflect on. The story is about Alice, a 39 year old mother of three who falls off of her spin bike at the gym and hits her head - only to wake up and have the previous 10 years worth of memories completely gone. She thinks she is 29 and pregnant with her first child. She is happily married. She is close to her sister and enjoys a quiet, unassuming life. Within a couple of days of the accident she begins to get the full picture of who she has become in those ten years that she now can't remember. Nobody likes her except her snobby friends. She is divorcing her husband (who can't stand her) and is in the midst of a nasty custody battle for their three children (that she can't even remember having). She became a coffee and exercise addict, and had ascended the social scene to become one very involved mother - committees, class mom, etc... She became the type of person her 29 year old self couldn't stand. I felt so sad for Alice. During one scene in the story, just a few days after the accident, her husband arrives at a family event where their daughter will be performing. He lovingly greets the different family members who are there, and then greets her last.
"How are you, Alice?" His eyes were on the children. He didn't look at her. Alice was last to be greeted. She was the least-favorite person. He used his polite voice for her.
"I'm well, thank you." Do not under any circumstances cry. She found herself longing, bizarrely, for Dominick. For someone who liked her best. How horrible it was to be despised. To feel yourself be despicable."
He knows she has lost her memory, he knows that she still thinks that they are happily married, yet he can't bring himself to get past all of the hurt and anger that came about in the past ten years of their life together. The books weaves and winds around her trying to make sense of who she had become, and to work at undoing the damage and trying to repair broken relationships.
(Spoiler Alert!) You don't find out how it all gets resolved until the last few pages of the book. I didn't see it coming yet I loved, loved the ending. And a most wonderful passage literally moved me to tears...
"Sometimes it was exhilaratingly easy to be happy again. Other times they found that they did have to "try", and the trying seemed stupid and pointless and Alice would wake up in the middle of the night thinking of all the times Nick had hurt her and wondering why she hadn't stayed with Dominick. But then there were the other times, unexpected quiet moments, where they'd catch each other's eyes, and all the years of hurt and joy, bad times and good times, seemed to fuse into a feeling that she knew was so much stronger, more complex and real, than any of those fledgling feelings for Dominick, or even the love she'd first felt for Nick in those early years.
She had always thought that exquisitely happy time at the beginning of her relationship with Nick was the ultimate, the feeling they'd always be trying to replicate, to get back, but now she realized that was wrong. That was like comparing sparkling mineral water to French champagne. Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best - well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word."
Wow. A whole wave of different emotions came crashing through me when I read that.
Let me go back in time for a few moments to clarify some feelings here. My marriage to Dean is my second marriage. My first marriage went horribly wrong. I met my ex in 1993. In the following eleven years we moved in together, purchased a starter home, went back to school, got our degrees, got our first 'real' jobs, got engaged, sold our house and moved to a bigger house, and got married. April 4, 2004 was our wedding day. Sixteen days later, on April 20th, my ex told me he didn't love me anymore and that he was leaving. (I found out later that he had been having an affair for the year prior to our wedding - they got pregnant before the divorce was even final)
(One of the many, many reasons I hate the month of April)
My life changed overnight. My husband (soon to be ex) was gone. So was about 95% of my social network. To say I was devastated is a severe understatement. I cannot even begin to convey the depth and breadth of the sense of loss and humiliation I experienced. I still struggle with it to this day. It is not the loss of love that I still mourn (yuck)... it is the loss of innocence, trust, friendships... and memories. Those were hard, hard years, but rewarding all the same. I cannot say that I would ever want to go back and relive them, but those years - from age 20 to 30 - are pretty important years in any one's life. They define who you are as you become an adult. And the primary people who were a part of those memories in my life simply vanished overnight. I have no one to reminisce with. I feel as though I lost an entire decade of my life to the sands of time - and those memories - the good and the bad - are without meaning now. It's still hard to disengage from those feelings of loss as I struggle to redefine myself in current time.
The most difficult aspect of my new life was that of starting over. I had no idea where to begin, and it just all felt so painfully awkward and abnormal. I was 33 and feeling old and out of touch. And the clock was ticking. The whole concept of being single felt foreign to me. I didn't belong to anyone and no one belonged to me. Any new relationship meant that the whole intricate process of weaving personalities and lives together would begin... and that just sounded, well.... exhausting. And, in my jaded eyes, futile.
Dean is an absolute blessing and a miracle that literally dropped into my lap. I can't explain it any other way. I had closed my eyes, closed my heart and gave up. I had asked the Universe, on a daily basis (if not hourly) to deliver me from the lonely hell I was in. I wanted to love again but I was too afraid. I didn't want to get hurt again - I don't think my soul could bear it. But, as fate would have it, Dean came into my life, and on March 16, 2005, Dean and I went out on our first date. The process of memory making would now begin again.
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| Copper Mountain, 4-10-05 |
So here is one of our earliest memories. I love this picture, apart from the tree sticking out of the top of my head. We had been dating for approximately 3 weeks. We spent a ski weekend up in Dillon. We played pool and drank beer (I confess, Dean did not care for beer before he met me...I am such a bad influence), we skied and skied and skied. We even got to ski an extra day because a bad snowstorm moved in and we couldn't make it home safely. We went out to a nice Italian restaurant in Breckenridge. We played Scrabble and I lost. We played Backgammon and I lost - multiple times. Come to think of it, we have not played it again since then. Dean helped me pick out those ski goggles I am wearing at a store in Dillon. Jordan now uses them. We talked religion. We talked politics. We made fun of Texans. I graded papers and emailed lesson plans because our extra ski day was on a Monday. We listened to a lot of Depeche Mode. We ate breakfast at the same diner each morning, and I saw first hand how much Dean LOVES pancake syrup. We survived that first round of idiosyncrasies that make-or-break a relationship. And the memory-building continued...
Loading umpteen thousand trailer load to move Dean into my (our) house.
Wine, chocolate strawberries and two overly tired 5 year-olds having a play date.
An official proposal on the front porch just a couple of days before our wedding.
A flat tire on our scooter in Cozumel that led us to a beachfront bar and cold beer.
A spider in my hair at the pool and my subsequent freak-out.
Finishing HP6 on the plane (before Dean) and having to keep Dumbledore's demise a secret
Our first pregnancy test and first ultrasound.
Screaming out driving directions in six-lanes of traffic in LA during rush hour.
Hearing the news that my dog, Yuki, had died at home with my mom by her side, while we were driving though the Nevada desert.
A towel-folding competition. My way is faster. :)
The embrace after hearing that our 13 week old fetus (Colin) was intact and okay after we thought I had had a miscarriage.
We now have seven years of history. As the web of memories interweaves and expands, my fears ease. I love this life. I love my husband. I am forever grateful that I got a second chance to do it over again - it's been hard at times, but oh, so rewarding. I am thankful for the unexpected reminder from this book about how a love and a history like ours is to be treasured and nourished. I tend to lose myself in misery during this month, and this was just the emotional boost I needed to get out of my head and take stock in my present life and acknowledge that the only road I need to keep my eye on is the one in front of me - not behind me. (Dean's words)
(insert current happy couple picture here)
(yet there is none because we're lame)
(we only seem to take pictures of our kids, work projects and various food items)
(our last couple picture was at Christmas time)
(And it's fuzzy - Rylan took it)
(We need to amend this)
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