Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Buckle Up

In 1993, my partner and I climbed into my Ford Escort to go on a “backroads” trip across the country, inspired in part by William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways: A Journey into America. That book followed the author along literal roads less travelled and featured his conversations with people outside of the usual American gaze. "What does it mean to be an American?" was a guiding question for his trip, and ours.

 

Along the way, my car’s air conditioning crapped out, so we were able to experience America in all its summertime sensory glory: sticky and buggy. And also, this was before cell phones and GPS, so getting lost was very possible. In fact, getting lost was kind of the point.  

 

Most kids today will never know what it’s like to be lost. Their connection to their location is constant, and if for some reason their GPS isn’t working, they can always call their mom. In fact, their mom is probably tracking them right now, following their every move from afar with a Stalk My Grownup Baby app. Hint to young adults: Are you not in your dorm room tonight? Your mom knows this!

 

But back in the day, maps were paper and hard to read. Sometimes you’d go right instead of left or miss the turn. And you’d find yourself at the most amazing place, a place that felt like it was waiting for you to find it. Of course, that was also the moment that the car would start making weird noises, and your paper map would suggest that you were 10 miles from the nearest anything. You wished you had a way to call your mom, but you didn’t see a pay phone. And besides, you didn’t have a quarter to make the call. Your mom was probably out celebrating her empty nest anyway, not sitting around at home waiting to solve your problem.

 

One of the best parts about our trip in 1993 was stopping at just about every roadside historical marker. If you want to go beyond textbook broad-sweep history, spend a little time in the middle of nowhere! You’ll see towns that rose and vanished because of the railroad, groups that pushed others out, and you’ll see how those others fought back. The names of towns and rivers speak all about migration and aspiration.

 

However, lest we get caught up in the glory of purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain, it’s important to remember that those historical markers are political storytelling. For the Midlife Crisis Bingo square, Buckle Up, I want to talk about How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.

 

Category Description: Sometimes the way forward involves crossing difficult terrain. Read a book that challenges you, or makes you look something difficult in the eye, or asks you to do hard work.

The author asks the reader to consider the public history around slavery. He visits several sites that feature that story: some plantations, a prison, a New York City history tour, a cemetery, a local Juneteenth celebration, and a site of capture and departure of enslaved people before they were placed on ships to America. Each site offers a slightly different purpose – for instance, “to commemorate,” or “to give voice,” or even, “to make people uncomfortable.” The book leaves the reader with a set of questions about public history. First, in the face of limited historical evidence, how certain do the creators of the sites have to be to make what they say "true?" Second, what are the consequences of foregrounding some narratives (or objects or locations) over others? And third, how central should slavery be in American history and storytelling? Since the publication of Smith’s book, that final question has anchored all sorts of messy conversations on our political stage, leading to the likely possibility that some communities might not even put this book on their library shelves.

 

I don’t think that Smith would consider his work to be a “road trip” book, but I immediately thought about myself as a consumer of American history on my long-ago journey. I’m also struck by the fact it feels like our country’s air conditioner has broken. Things are sticky and buggy, and Smith wants us to lean into the heat.

 

Writing this post sent me on a deep dive into my old photo albums (remember when you took pictures and had to wait to see them until you took your film into the drugstore to be developed?).  I stumbled upon this unlabeled picture from our trip through the South in 2000.

 

I’m sure we just drove by it, snapped a photo, and said, “Weird!” After all, there was no smart phone in my pocket to quickly name and explain and situate every curious thing on demand. But all these years later, I do have a smart phone, and Smith’s book has made me wonder what this site was and why I am filled with unease.

 

Turns out that Wigwam Village No. 2 was built in 1937 in Kentucky to serve people on “automobile vacations.” Eleanor Roosevelt gave it some publicity in a newspaper column, and now it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The tents are not actually wigwams, but no one said that this venue was on the National Register of ACCURATE Historic Places, did they?* The website claims that the motel is “an enduring testament to a time past,” with all the comforts of home (WiFi, cable TV, coffee pots, a swimming pool, and “plenty of hot water”).

 

I seem to recall that things didn’t go so well for the Cherokee people in Kentucky. One of the online reviews (one star out of five!) says, “The place was dirty and damaged, the bed linens had tears and stains.” At first, I misread that as tears of grief, like the kind one might cry on a violent, forced exodus. But no, this historical site must be telling a different story altogether. It occurs to me, uncomfortably, that what we are giving “enduring testament” to with this National Historic Register designation is twentieth century white people’s travel culture, where the land is yours to explore, and your comfort is the most important thing. It’s a memorial to the American road trip, just like the one I was on.

 

Well, crap.

 

History is messy and hard and full of dragons. We have a lot of work to do. 

 

This is a random dragon we found in Cullman, Alabama. It's at the Ave Maria Grotto, which is a four acre miniature city built by a really bored monk in the 1950s. It features 125 replicas of holy places, and also this dragon. The lesson? Keep at it with your weird hobby.

*The National Archives and Records Association has placed a "Potentially Harmful Content" warning on its webpage about Wigwam Village No.2. Does that help? Hurt? Add texture? Do nothing?

Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Group Dynamics

The whole class of sixth graders at my middle school back in 19XX were bused to a camp for a week-long outdoor educational experience. I look back with dismay that we were organized into Native American tribes*, in which we picked new Native names for ourselves, made jewelry out of natural objects, tromped through the woods, and played the occasional game of Capture the Flag. As you might imagine, one girl horrifyingly got her period for the first time, and others experienced some light hazing (tied up in dental floss while sleeping, sometimes also covered in shaving cream).

 

But my most profound memory from that time is the “solo experience.” Each camper was plopped in the woods somewhere and had to sit there, alone. There was some sort of writing task, as well, but what struck me most was the sound of absolute solitude. The high-pitched squeals of my classmates were gone. So too was their quiet judgement and the creak of shifting adolescent power structures. There was no distracting TV, no music videos, no record players. It was just quiet. And quiet was uncomfortable.

 

Fast forward several decades, and there was no more quiet. Parenthood brought the endless questions of toddlers, cloying children's songs, the forced practice of brass instruments for the school band, the holler and slam of teen angst. And then, Covid! We were all together, all day, endlessly. Remember those first months, where we were all getting used to the sound of too many people on Zoom, separately but simultaneously?

 

I love reading books about the noisy interactions of families, both biological and found. To fill the Group Dynamics bingo square, I chose Deacon King Kong by James McBride. Here’s the square description: You never get the front seat. There are so many secrets. Why didn’t she/he/they love you the way you deserve to be loved? You can’t stand to be apart, and you can’t stand to be together. Read a book about group life that makes you feel less alone, or one that reminds you about why you actually enjoy quarantine.

 

This novel involves a sprawling New York City housing project full of wacky characters of different backgrounds, most of whom live tightly packed together. The development of these characters is masterful, and while there is an active plot, this is really a book about meeting all these interesting people and coming to understand their role in the city's history. The author also wants us to see the humanity in each of them, despite their sometimes-questionable choices. Ultimately, this novel is one about people's deep commitment to a place and to others.

 

I suppose that midlife crisis-ing has involved figuring out my own deep commitments, and it turns out that figuring stuff out involves managing my new “solo time.” The kids are gone, and with them went all their structures and institutions and negotiations. No more carpool schedules. No more Saturday sporting events in the rain. No more curriculum nights. No more arguments about whose turn it is return the milk carton the refrigerator (This was a real thing; after one loud debate about milk carton politics, I equally loudly declared that there would be no more milk drinking in our household Ever! Again!).  In the kids’ absence, it’s quiet. I know that some of you are probably drooling with jealousy, but I am here to tell you that it’s weird.

 

I’ve been on a bit of a reading jag about solitude lately. I read Jenny O’Dell’s How to Do Nothing. It was very intellectual dive into the politics of our technologically connected life. She suggests that we are clicking our way into corporate algorithms and their financial pockets at the expense of our ability to creatively solve common problems. I read Katherine May’s Wintering, which is about the “fallow” spaces that exist between periods of creativity. And I also read The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl, which is about the relationship between uninterrupted time and creative work. Together, these books provide a great reminder that solitude is a generative thing, and that I should absolutely, without question, put down my phone.

 

Also, for the record, milk drinking resumed in our home shortly after my decree. And still, no one put the carton away. It turns out that I’m a lousy dictator.

 

Burgermeister Meisterburger. Also a lousy dictator.

*I checked out my school’s website, and the outdoor program continues to this day. However, kids are now organized into “guilds” instead of tribes. Progress? They must be doing that same medieval history unit in social studies, the one where we had to make shields representing ourselves and our interests. I got a C on that project because I couldn’t adequately draw my deep interest in soap operas. At the time, my goal was to be a leading lady. I figured that people might see past the braces and the acne and the shy slouch and notice the glittery starlet within.

Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Out of Time

Welcome back to our 2021 Leaning Stack of Books Midlife Crisis Bingo recap. Today we'll focus on the Out of Time square. Hopefully you have a minute to take a break from all those time management conversations you're having with your young adult. I know it's a constant race against the clock to get it all done.

 

Here's a reminder of the description: It seems like just yesterday that you were a teenager waiting impatiently for the thrill of adulthood. Now the sink is backed up, there’s a stack of bills to pay, and the child you’ve been nurturing all these years with your love and energy just called you “Karen” when you asked him to put his dirty socks in the hamper. Today is kind of a bummer. Take this opportunity to read something about a time long ago. Or read about the future. Or both.

 

For this square, I read Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. I loooove this author. This book was recommended to me when it came out in 2020, but I. Just. Could. Not. Pick. It. Up. I was not – and am still not, really – ready for a book about a viral illness that wipes out lots of vulnerable people. But this was a stunning novel (a rare 5 stars for me on Goodreads) -- gorgeous all the way through. It's a fictional account of the marriage between William Shakespeare (who goes unnamed) and his wife, who is called Agnes in this telling. Hamnet is one of their children, and the reader gets to understand the dynamics of this family as the plague sweeps through their town. I sobbed and sobbed at parts of this story. If you have any pandemic-related grief or anger or dismay at all, be warned.

 

Reading Hamnet makes me wonder about novels that have too much of a connection to big, painful things happening in real time. In March 2020, Emily St. John Mandel, whose novel, Station Eleven, is set after a pandemic wipes out most of civilization, tweeted: “Maybe don’t read my book right now.” I recently finished Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends, which is set in the early months of the pandemic. Critics love it, but for me it was just too soon. I don’t need to revisit those early months where everyone was rubbing hand sanitizer on their pizza boxes and hoarding toilet paper. Not yet.

 

One of the things that I love about O’Farrell is that she has an extensive backlist. I keep discovering more. She has a signature voice in all her work, but you can really see the development of her writing over the years. I particularly loved The Hand That First Held Mine (2010) and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2014). I just learned today that she has a new one coming out in September, called The Marriage Portrait. It appears that she got some work done while I was doom scrolling the internet during quarantine.

 

While this Bingo topic prompted us to read about the past or the future, there’s another way to think about being “out of time.” Feeling like you’re running out of time to do the things you want to do is a key theme of midlife crises. And there’s a whole self-help industry around finding strategies to seize the day. Of course, those books and their pearls of wisdom are competing with bills and meals and mortgages and Facebook for our middle aged attention. And also, seizing the day competes with sleep. In my twenties, I was a “let’s stay up and watch the sunrise” kind of person. Today that’s still true, except for the staying up part.

 

When is it important to make the most of every moment? The urgency behind that idea makes my blood pressure rise. It often seems that we sit between two poles – doing all the things all the time at a breakneck pace and feeling badly about it or doing very little and feeling badly about it. See how I judged myself above for my lack of accomplishment during the pandemic? And experts and marketers are hell bent on giving us whiplash – Life is short! Hurry up! or Slow down! Smell the roses!

 

I just confirmed my inability to hurry up and seize the day AND my inability to meditate meaningfully about the world around me by slowly spelunking through the internet. My search term was “middle aged advertising.” It turns out that some companies are targeting middle aged people by using the phrase “the new young.” Give me a break. That’s kind of like when my life partner and I were trying to get our toddlers to accept the fact that they couldn’t always be the first one to do things. We coined the terms “first first” and “next first.” That way, everyone got to be first all the time. We felt pretty pleased with our parental ingenuity. The strategy worked for about 5 minutes, and then the kids put down their pacifiers and told us that they wouldn’t allow us to perpetuate trophy culture in our household.

 

Get up and make your dreams come true, my new young friends. Or lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Both paths are perfectly acceptable. We’re all winners here. 

 

 

Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Spring Chicken

I hope you all had a good Groundhog Day. I sure did. I appreciate the fact that so many of you were inspired to send me groundhog related photos and videos, though that means that you were screwing around on the internet rather than reading. Put down your phone (after reading this post, of course), and pick up your book!

 

It’s time for us to begin our 2021 Midlife Crisis Bingo wrap-up. As promised, I will share my recently completed Bingo card. I wrestled a bit with how to do this wrap-up, and I’ve decided to do many short posts rather than just a few expansive ones. I wouldn’t want us to have to strain our eyes or to stop looking at TikTok for too long. Today’s post is the first one on my card: Spring Chicken.

 

The category description: Kids these days are fresh and creative, and they help you solve your problems connecting to the internet. The world is in good hands. Read a book by an author younger than you are. (For many of us, this should be an easy task!)

 

Doesn’t it bug you just a little bit when you see young people getting their writing done and getting published and acquiring literary fame and fortune? I am bugged. And I get just a little judgy. I mean, what do these youngsters really have to say?

 

It turns out that they have quite a lot to say. For this square, I read Beautiful Country, a memoir by Qian Julie Wang. Wang details her years as an undocumented Chinese child in New York City in the 1990s. It is a visceral account of deep poverty, hunger, illness without insurance, experiences in American public schools, threats, aspiration, defeat, and resilience. If you’re one of those people who is drawn to stories about the power of books and reading, you’ll find that theme here. Wang’s reading life plays a big part in her development.

 

I generally don’t love memoirs by very young people because of my aforementioned judginess, but I thought this one was terrific.  I was an adult in the 1990s and remember the decade well, so it was interesting to think about this child’s experiences in parallel time.

 

Feeling like you have missed your moment is a hallmark of a good midlife crisis. So in a way, being jealous of younger writers makes me a success in midlife crisis-ing. Win! For fun, I just searched for people who published their first book after 50, and here are some notable ones: Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep), Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes), and Anna Sewell (Black Beauty). And here’s a fun 2018 article from LitHub on “late bloomers.”

Speaking of being older than very accomplished people, I have been watching the Olympics this week while eating Pringles on the couch. I find myself looking at the parents of the athletes and recognizing my generation there. Hello, peers! Those lessons you dragged your children to in 2010 have really paid off. My kids were very busy assembling trash into works of art at that time. Too bad there's not a gold medal for freestyle mess making. 

 

Also, a note to the 30-year-old athletes that the announcers keep burying (“It’s the end of the road for him!”), you do have many more years of good times left. Don’t worry.

January Roundup! Plus, Midlife Crisis Bingo Is Done Even If The Midlife Crisis Continues

 

(Happy Groundhog Day tomorrow. For $14.99, you could acquire this special sign. Yay, rodents!)

January was a rough month for me. The endlessness of COVID and its reach into my life – with remote work and school, the ongoing should I/shouldn’t I about travel and recreation, and general worry – have been exhausting. Mostly, though, I have been flattened by the larger conversation about how we (won’t) take care of each other and our communities.

 

Also, it turns out that we Americans are pretty gung-ho about banning books right now, which is spirit-crushing. I’m not sure how we developed a new comfort with broadly restricting information and having limits on our access to ideas, but all of our alarm bells should be ringing. This isn’t just an isolated occurrence happening in “other places.” Just the other day, I was reading an article on the Book Riot site, and I was needled by the name of a middle school principal with a book removal agenda. I searched through my email, and sure enough, she was my student once upon a time. I take it she wasn’t excited by our class discussion about education as the practice of freedom? Fortunately, Viet Thanh Nguyen (the author of The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016) provided some balm with his recent New York Times editorial about the role that reading “inappropriate” things has played in his life. 

 

Clearly, I was distracted last month, and that made me an antsy reader. Do you also have a problem with checking your phone while reading? I need to get that under control. I started and stopped several novels, but in the end, I grumpily finished six books:

 

Of these, I probably enjoyed A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature the most. It’s a collection of essays about the interactions between humans and nature, and ultimately about unlikely beauty. And it's funny! It turns out that I really need funny these days.

 

But most importantly, I finished my 2021 Leaning Stack of Books Midlife Crisis Bingo Card. Woo! I took the full month extension to make my way through those final two squares, so hooray to me for meeting my own deadline:

 

 

This month I will be discussing my Bingo-ing and what I’ve learned through this midlife crisis. I hope you join me! You can see the category descriptions here and generate your own card here. Please share how far you got into the process or why your midlife crisis prevented you from reading or even why you hate Bingo. Remember – it’s ok if you just did one square or one row. It’s also ok if you read nothing. But if you did finish your card, let me know. One lucky reader is going to get a free book!

 

I will leave you with the opportunity to watch Chunk the Groundhog’s compilation video. Chunk and his furry family eat vegetables at a picnic table. Sound up for maximum enjoyment! Or actually, better yet, put down your phone and read your book. 

 

New Year, Same Old Stuff; Also, Bingo Extension!

 

Happy New Year! I guess? Is it a new year? I am back on the couch, school is remote for now, and the internet makes me angry. So much seems stuck, and I am losing confidence in the idea that we are going to turn this ship around.

 

HOWEVER! I did regain my reading mojo last year, and I’m looking forward to discussing that with you here. In particular, I’ve been on a dive into books about solitude and the creative life. My nest is empty (except for right now. Winter break + Omicron = lots of people in the crowded house), and that has been weird and sad and also satisfying in ways I hadn’t expected.

 

I’ve been keeping track of my reading on Goodreads, so feel free to follow me there, too. I know I used to do long reviews on this blog, but those took forever to write and became less and less fun over time. I’m considering writing different kinds of essays here instead.

 

So what’s next? Santa Claus showed up in a big way this year (masked, fully vaxxed, boosted!) and I’m eager to jump into this new leaning stack. 

 

But first we have some unfinished business, don’t we? Last year, I introduced Midlife Crisis Bingo, and I recently sat down to see how I did. It turns out that I need an extension. You, too? Great. Let’s take an extra month to get this done (You can see category descriptions here and see the FAQs here and print out your own card here).

 

My intention: Starting February 1, I will walk through my own Bingo card with you. I’m completing the whole card, but remember that you’re a winner no matter what. You only read one book? That’s fantastic! A row? Hearty congrats! Two rows? Let’s celebrate! The beauty of Midlife Crisis Bingo is that you are always good enough. But if you do finish the card, post a photo below in the comments or on The Leaning Stack of Books Facebook page. One lucky winner is going to get a prize (A book! Woop!).

 

Until then, it looks like have two squares to go:

 

Vintage:

 

Who’s calling you old? You are just getting started, baby. Take a moment to notice that having a midlife crisis is actually the luxury of a person with many years ahead! To put your age in perspective, read a book that was published before you were born.

 

 

Old Love:

 

Oh man, you know you can’t go back. Or can you?

 

 

I’m excited to reconnect with you all, bookish friends. Onward to 2022!