Book Group: These Is My Words

I have wanted to read less "fluff" books and more books with substance. So I put aside my silly novel and opened up the book group book. I got 10 pages into it and wondered why I was reading it. A great deal of the problem was getting no sleep for the previous two nights. But there is so much hardship, death and horrifying experiences that take place in the beginning that I struggled to know why this book would be better than the silly novel I had put aside. Knowing that Kate had read and highly recommended the book I sent her an email (at 3 in the morning) asking her to tell me what it was that drew her to the book and why I should finish it. Because of the great reply I received back from her I picked up the book again and was quickly sucked in. I couldn't put it down for the next two days and finished it quickly. I really enjoyed the main character Sarah and am half in love with Jack Elliot. Several things struck me and I thought I would share them.

It seems it is a day of unusual chores, and I felt restless and in need of more changes. (I got such a chuckle out of her moving furniture. I just moved my living room around and rearranged the three bedrooms.

On Childbirth
"If it was possible for me to have chosen to die rather than go through that childbirth, I am sure many times during it I would have gladly died. How anyone would go on to have another baby, I am sure I do not know...Mama said I must relax more, and Savannah said, try to work with it. But there is no working with something that feels as if your legs are being torn off by the roots, and your insides are being cut with axe blades. They kept saying, just let it go, you are fighting against it too much. And I hurt so bad that I told them both to stop talking. There was nothing I could do but fight against my dying. For two days I laid in that bed,. soaking with sweat, tired and hungry and scared to death, until finally I gave out and couldn't scream any more. It was only when I had no more fight in me that the baby was born. So I understand what they were trying to say, but I don't know how any woman could give up and make herself surrender everything to what feels like being torn in half by teams of horses. It quit begging them to kill me when I though I was really dying, so I laid there and waited for it to happen...When I was finished there was not a single part of me that did not feel worn and exhausted and sore. My eyelids are sore. My fingers are weak."

On Motherhood
"I wonder if every new mother feels as if there is nothing left of herself. Every minute of my day and every last thing I do is tied to this little someone else. I am scared to death I will do something wrong, and she will die or grow up meager or sickly. And I got to thinking about all kinds of things like, how will I know how to teach her not to be selfish? And, how will I teach her to be honest? And how will I know if she has a sickness when she is too little to say what hurts? (What a perfect description of being a new mother.)
"It is a certain kind of terror to know I carry a baby and have the other two to protect. Even with the soldiers around, I feel so alone. Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule. Our children weigh hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank, and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it. I was plum out of diapers, and some things won't wait, Indians or no, so I did up some wash..." (How we mothers worry and worry and then we have to go on with the reality of the day like diapers.)

On being "good" "For me it seems like the only thing that comes natural is aggravation and hard work...I know Mama and her were crying for love, and for all their dear feelings for our families. They don't know I was crying because they are wrong, because I am not good like them, nor sweet tempered and loving. I was crying because I felt like they didn't see the real me inside, and if they had they wouldn't shed a single tear at all over me...Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at the place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the hardest. All the people I lover are down the side always, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing along in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like they have a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone."

"It is an awful thing to look on such sad circumstance and not be able to shed a tear. It is not because I do not feel for these folks, but maybe I feel too much. Part of me is glad, in a low down, mean way, that it is not Albert's or Mama's graves we are digging. Glad that it is some soldiers I don't know and neighbors and friends but not family. Lord, I must be the cussedest woman there is to think that. Finally, I felt so guilty for thinking those things that I creid. Then I began to feel the heartaches of our friends and neighbors and I cried for them, too, as we said prayers over each and every grave. Then I heard Savannah praying on her front porch, and she was saying Thank you, Father, that our home and family was spared, and I suspect she may feel the same way I did, and maybe it wasn't so awful then."

On books & Education
"These books are not trash, I said, as I know they are the opposite. They are the only thing I wanted in my life more than I could name. They are pearls in my hair and scarlet velvet gowns..." (Sarah found a page of a book describing wonderful things like pearls and scarlet velvet gown. I love her description of books as something as wonderful as those things.)

Taking a school test is a new way to be afraid, and takes the knees right out from under you. If I'm riding a horse and get thrown, it's just a matter of getting back on. And if I'm fighting for my life, there's only living and dying to choose from. But taking that test, that's like showing other people the inside of your thoughts, and just waiting for them to say, wrong, wrong, wrong, and you can have a thought that seems right but since you never went to school, maybe it isn't.

Forks And Trees "It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken. It isn't like I'd want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself. It's just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach."

"He said wisdom is not a path, it is a tree. At the time I was too busy to give it much thought, so I nodded politely but didn't pay much attention. Now I see that he was surely right. I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn't fill. But my life is not like that, it is a tree and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone. I declare, it is like some other part of me made up some rules about happiness and I just went along with them without thinking. My heart is lightened so much that I am amazed at how sad I felt for so long."