Don’t Let Me Go – Catherine Ryan Hyde

If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And so, then nobody will help me.

This was the hook that kept me listening to this award-winning author’s tale about the child of an addict who unites her lonely neighbors into a support team to keep her out of the child-welfare system until her mother gets her act together. Thus, an agoraphobic dancer from a privileged background, a black manicurist with trust issues, a Hispanic bachelor, and an aged widow help her blossom in her mother’s mental and emotional absence. Even as she is threatened by the system and a personal tragedy that strikes close to her in a blessed reprieve from another lurking danger, she undergoes a makeover that includes a new look and a new outlook.  

Despite being billed as chick-lit, this story will appeal to anyone who has experienced the paralysis of loneliness or addiction and whose faith in humanity needs replenishment. A tale of possibility in an impossible world, it demonstrates the human capacity for change and our universal need for each other.

The mechanics of the narration feel a bit clunky, as if the author doesn’t always trust the reader to get it, but the story is more than solid.  2011, 429 pages or 11 ¼ hours on Audible [not recommended].

Richard Corey Lives

Perhaps you recall Richard Corey from Freshman English class—the title character of Edward Arlington Robinson’s narrative poem about a fine gentleman who glittered when he walked.  He was envied by those who went without meat and cursed the bread…until one calm summer night he put a bullet through his head. He’s been on my mind lately as I prepare to become a docent at the Hammond Harwood House, a showplace of Annapolis’ Golden Age, where Richard Corey would have felt right at home. You can see a picture of it here.

In a town with no shortage of historic mansions, this one, in my opinion, is the most elegant. A five-part Anglo-Palladian mansion, it was commissioned in 1774 by Matthias Hammond, a wealthy planter from Maryland’s Eastern Shore who, as a newly-elected member of the Maryland General Assembly, wanted a showplace where he could entertain important people. It was planned by William Buckland, based on classical designs, and it features some of the nation’s best woodcarving and plasterwork, as evidence by a main entrance that has been called the most beautiful door in America.

Set on the outskirts of a main thoroughfare that leads directly to the seat of power in Colonial Maryland, Hammond’s house was intended to broadcast his affluence, from the pediment atop the projecting central pavilion to the octagonal wings on the connecting hyphens. The bricks are laid in a Flemish Bond pattern, the most expensive style for its alternating long and butt-end pattern of bricks that provide maximum strength at maximum expense. That famous door features a carved architrave and faux mahogany finish. Its arched opening is decorated with an egg and dart motif, and the spandrels are draped with garlands of roses in high relief. The Ionic columns are topped by a frieze decorated with laurel leaves. And capping it all is a bull’s-eye window with an elaborate cartouche frame. This door says that the occupant is someone you should envy. I certainly did every time I passed, even knowing that no had lived there for a century. The warm glow I felt just admiring the place made me assume that the residents led a charmed life, but I was wrong. I thought Facebook had taught me by now that appearances are often misleading, but people live to dream—if only . . .

When Matthias Hammond lost his bid for reelection, he turned his back on Annapolis and left his showplace vacant for 32 years, save for the left wing, which was rented out as office. I was flabbergasted to learn this, not just because of the waste but because my illusion of this grand structure as one sprawling house was shattered. That the office was designed to be entirely separate from house proper, with a brick wall separating the two, seemed inconceivable.

The office tenant, Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase, eventually purchased the home for his daughter, Frances Loockerman, and her family. Frances and Richard Loockerman were a strikingly handsome couple and an apparent love match with everything going for them. Her great-grandmother was English nobility on her father’s side, and her mother, a local tavern keeper’s daughter, was renowned for her beauty. For his part, Richard was described by one of his peers as one of the handsomest, most sensible and well-informed men of his age. Yet he was also an alcoholic and chronic gambler, for which reason Judge Chase stipulated that the house be held in trust under Frances’ name alone.    

They lived here together for twenty-three years before he died in pecuniary straits, purportedly in the slave quarters of his Eastern Shore plantation following a three-week drunken bender. Two of her daughters were adults by then, but Richard’s death was yet another tragedy added to the deaths of four children already lost to illnesses and accidents.  Frances remained in the house for another thirty-three years, raising the remaining four children and welcoming back the eldest’s family. Along the way, her most promising son died in his thirties, a bachelor. Another son mysteriously disappeared after becoming the first student expelled from St. John’s College for punching a professor. And a third son was institutionalized for mental illness following a decade marked by violence and paranoia, often aimed at his own mother. Only one of her six surviving children had a long and productive married life: Hester Anne Harwood, whose youngest daughter ultimately inherited the home and died intestate in 1924.

Frances was made of stronger stuff than Richard Corey, but her life was not the carefree existence it likely seemed to the townsfolk who glanced in her windows as they walked home after a hard day’s work. Her house though, ah yes, her house was deceptively perfect in every way—to the point of having false doors whose sole purpose was to preserve the illusion of perfect symmetry and harmony.  

It's an old lesson but true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. How many perfect marriages have I seen end in divorce? How many of my golden classmates went on to disappointments? How many geniuses have I seen suffer breakdowns from the stress of perfectionism? How many times must I learn to be grateful for my spectacularly ordinary life?

I’m looking forward to visiting the Hammond Harwood House on a regular basis, getting to know its antiques and the stories of the people behind its solemn portraits. But despite the eye-popping grandeur, I won’t be fantasizing about living there anymore. I have a house of my own that I like just fine, thank you. It’s neither new nor historic, neither large nor small. It could use a facelift I suppose, but it’s comfy and it’s mine.

The Trump Family Brand

The time has come, Lewis Carroll said, to speak of many things. I’m thinking not of cabbages and kings but of a certain president and king-maker, as Donald Trump continues to sway midterm elections. What with the economy, the war in Ukraine, the baby formula shortage, and gas prices, it’s as if America has forgotten that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol has quietly interviewed over 800 witnesses already and will go public in June with the testimonies of select supporters in Congress.

It's all been so hush-hush that I had to Google the topic to find that family members Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Kimberly Guilfoyle completed their testimonies two weeks ago. And while Guilfoyle’s remains a mystery, Newsweek reports that Ivanka and Jared basically “corroborated other testimony saying the then-president had been advised to call off the mob at the Capitol before the building was breached.” Now there’s a surprise. Based on an analysis of Ivanka’s handwriting that I conducted back in February, I didn’t think she quite had it in her.

Much has been written about the former President whose signature, the very sign of his nature as he wants the world to see him, is as heavy, sharp, and anonymous as a cement wall capped with razor wire—and image reaffirmed by his tenure in the White House. Like the man, it projects a big image. 

Graphologists had a field day analyzing this persona, along with that of the First Lady’s rubber-stamp signature which appears as a testimony to her loyalty. 

But what of Ivanka, viewed by many as the most influential woman in the room and a likely peacemaker in those fateful hours leading up to her father’s intervention? The favored First Daughter’s script offers several clues to the motivations of the reality TV star who remains conspicuously off-stage.

First, the exactitude with which her signature matches the body of her writing is noteworthy. It means the model and fashionista is the same person on and off-camera, a refreshingly forthright attribute for one so relentlessly in the spotlight.

Second, her generally rounded hand is the very opposite of her father’s divisive wedges. This style is common among adolescents, with neither the tall upper extensions of great intellect nor the plunging tails of strong physical and subconscious drives. Rather, it stays comfortably in the middle zone of her social whirl. Ivanka just wants everyone to get along.

Third, her reclined slant indicates both an analytical perspective of the world befitting a former businesswoman, and a need for privacy. For despite her ability to turn on the extroversion, she keeps private matters private. Whatever she chooses to say, it will be carefully considered, filtered, and presented in an unemotional fashion. Should she ultimately testify, it will not be a mawkish show.

Such forthright goodwill and diplomacy might seem to offer hope for her cooperation, whether to protect her personal image or to soften her party’s image as enablers. But there is one important letter formation, the claw shaped non-loops of her low-hanging letters, which I thought would trump all that. Like a visual of a hand gripping a shoulder for support, this formation indicates one who relies on others for recognition.

As Sheila Lowe, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis puts it, the person who chooses the claw-shape has been made to feel guilty all his life…and sets himself up for punishment. She goes on to add that her defensive attitude makes it hard for others to deal with her, as she is constantly concerned with protecting her ego.

The ultimate question then was whether Ivanka’s image among the Trumps would outweigh her image with the general public. Did she want to be rewarded by society for cooperating or rewarded by her father for protecting him?  How much loyalty does she feel toward the Trump brand? Clearly, not as much as her step-mother, but I doubted that she had the gumption to stand up to a cement wall topped with razor wire. I was wrong.

As for Guilfoyle, an analysis of her signature offers little hope that she said anything that might be construed as an indictment of her future father-in-law. Her artistic scribble so obscures her last name that it fairly screams call me Kimberly—a visual renunciation of her own surname that makes her especially susceptible to the power yielded by Trump family brand. I’ll be interested to learn what she said when the record is made public.

The Lesson of Mother Duck, revisited

Why does it seems that it's mostly my lady friends, and only the mothers at that, posting tributes to their saintly moms on Facebook? None of us are saints. We do the best we can, but a day dedicated to idealizing us feels forced, and no one should have to feel forced to pay homage once a year when Hallmark says it's time. When I wrote this essay fourteen years ago, I was going through a rough stretch of separation pains from my offspring--rough on both sides. But even though we've all moved on, I still think Mother's Day is misguided. Do I expect at least a phone call? Yes. Do I want a card? Yes, but I won't be surprised when one of my two kids sends it late. That's her M.O. Another thing she does--call clear out of the blue at any time of year to thank me for being her mom and raising her as I did. THAT, for me, is Mother's Day.

Several years ago, I witnessed a remarkable Mother’s Day event: a mother duck hatching her ducklings right outside a busy restaurant. They were sheltered under a bench in a sunny corner, and one wet and wobbly chick struggled to gain control of his bulbous head while his siblings still struggled for their freedom. Their mother seemed available but unconcerned, like a good boss. There was no visual display of affection, yet it was evident from their proximity and eye contact that they were bonding. Mother duck checked on the progress of her remaining eggs in much the same way a baker checks her muffins for doneness just at that aromatic moment when they bear closest observation.

She seemed so poised and comfortable that I assumed she must have done this many times before. But perhaps animal mothers are just more in tune with what Mother Nature is telling them about the miracle and responsibility of motherhood. Unconcerned with layettes, feeding methods, toilet training, or the education and socialization of her chicks, she faced only one great challenge that I could see: crossing the busy road to the nearest water.

Human mothers have a much harder job, no matter how simple Dr. Spock made it sound with his advice to, Love ’em. Feed ’em. Leave ’em alone. Motherhood is an equal opportunity employer and the defining moment of a lifetime, without defining us. Therein lies the problem with Mother’s Day. It too often feels like a reason to bask in reflected glory or wallow in failure. We can thank Dr. Sigmund Freud for that, whose take on motherhood was so well summarized by the comedian Robin Williams: If it’s not one thing it’s your mother.

Thus Mother’s Day can feel like another skirmish in the mommy wars. Women are bombarded with romantic images of corsages and mimosas, sunny strolls through the park, flowering plants, flowery cards and homemade gifts from adorable children … on demand. Life just isn’t that simple.

So how does a mother with post-partum depression cope with the guilt? How does the neglected or abused child deliver on the breakfast-in-bed cliché? How does the mother of a disturbed teen deal with one day of indulgence following a year of rejection? If they are lucky (or not so lucky), there is a too-public brunch. Then again perhaps there is nothing at all: no visit, no card, maybe not even a phone call at the end of the day.

I have been party to all of the above, and I’ve come to realize that Mother’s Day is a contradiction. Mothers sacrifice. That’s their job. Kids take advantage. That’s their nature. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, kids are expected to stop relying on Dad or some other relative to arrange the perfect day and figure out for themselves what Mom would really like. The inherent role reversal is tough on both parties, yet the hype demands that convention be obeyed. When they hit the mark it’s great.

But why do we have this ideal vision of one special day, and where does perfection fit in?

Motherhood is relentless hard work, and no matter the outcome no one should be made to feel like a success or a failure because of her kids, especially on Mother’s Day, because there are times when we will all feel like one or the other. Children are individuals with free will. They will or will not be all that they can be … both good and bad. They are neither our creations nor our reflections any further than can be explained by the mirror.

Mother’s Day should not be a Hallmark occasion but any day of the year when a woman’s children do her proud or she rises above her humanity to cope with the inevitable stresses of the job. When it is really given the status it deserves, this holiday will no longer fall on a Sunday, because most mothers today are working mothers and they deserve a real day off when the kids are in school. They would appreciate the opportunity to retreat with their peers to a place where they could whine and laugh, revel in their sisterhood and share the simple camaraderie of coworkers in any tough job.

So this year I recommend women everywhere take a tip from mother duck. Sit back, relax and just watch them grow. Only don’t let them wander into the road. If the day is a dud, remember this, too, shall pass. Whether they show it or not, they are bonding.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris

It’s only your own space if you make it yours.

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day this Thursday, I bring you the true-life romance of Lale and Gita Sokolov, a Slovakian couple who met at Auschwitz-Birkenau and defied the odds to not only survive the war but enjoy nearly fifty years of marriage. Prisoner 32407, a.k.a. Lale, fell in love with Prisoner 4562 when he inked her arm. It was a reprehensible job with the unexpected benefits of better food, lodging, and comparative freedom, granted because of his facility with languages. He tried to perform his job as humanely as possible for the thousands of women and children who went under his needle, but his greatest gift to his fellow prisoners was the extra food and medicines he was able to purchase with jewels and money smuggled out of the intake processing center where Gita’s friends worked.

This best-seller, published in 2018, is so carefully researched that the conversations are word-for-word based on Lale’s recollections. But truth really does seem stranger than fiction when it comes to his almost cavalier relationship with the guard responsible for him. They have a semi-teasing banter and Lale is eventually entrusted to travel alone between the men’s and women’s camps to conduct business and see his beloved—with bribes for her overseer. It felt almost too Hogan’s Heroes at times, which left me wondering if Lale had come to embroider his truth with time or if the regimented inhumanity of concentration camp life did indeed have its chinks and he was just fortunate enough to have fallen into one. Regardless, I enjoyed this quick read enough to pick up the sequel, Cilka’s Journey, which tells the saga of Gita’s beautiful girlfriend who was subsequently imprisoned in a Russian Gulag for her forced fraternization with the Nazis.

For a detailed summary of Lale and Gita’s story, watch this seven-minute summary. 

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir

I was living a fairy tale in reverse. I had been brought up as a princess and now I had turned into Cinderella.

Malika Oufkir (b. 1954) grew up in a gilded cage: the royal palace of the Moroccan King, Hassan II. The pampered playmate of the young princess, she lived with the royal family and the King’s many concubines, an honor arranged by her father, General Mohamed Oufkir, his right-hand man. But it was an honor that chafed. Malika longed for a normal life at home with her five siblings, beautiful mother, and doting father—a man whose fearsome reputation she could not fathom. When her wish was finally granted in high school, what looked to be the start of a normal life came to an abrupt end with his death, presumably an execution for his role in the 1972 coup attempt. For sixteen years, the family and two servants were locked away in a series of squalid prisons. Madame Oufkir was thirty-four years old; her youngest child was just three.

Deprived of food, sunshine, visitors, hygiene products, and healthcare, they were on the brink of death when four of them made a miraculous escape involving an impossible tunnel and good fortune—only to find that most of their friends had forgotten or deserted them out of fear. The ensuing media attention, however, softened their plight to four more years of house arrest before they were ultimately freed. That they all survived was incredible. That they might all survive intact, however, was impossible.

This is a story about resilience, the strength of the human spirit, and the power of familial love. To Malika’s thumbnail sketch of that story in English, watch this ten-minute author interview [beginning at the 1 minute mark], recorded in 2006 on the occasion of her second book, Freedom: The Story of My Second Life.

John Woman – Walter Mosley

All of us make mistakes along the way. . . There’s no value in persecuting someone for trying to overcome their history in making a better future.

Not being a fan of crime fiction in general, I was perhaps the last American reader to be unfamiliar with Walter Mosley, the NYT bestselling author of over fifty novels. I now think I have some catching up to do, for I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller from the opening scene where I learned that CC mostly lived with his father, who called him Cornelius. The times he spent with his mother were magical because they ate out every night and she told him things that made his body tingle.

Cornelius is a good kid who commits a rash act just as his father dies and his mother disappears with a mobster. Drawing on her street-smarts and his erudition, CC remakes himself into Professor John Woman and builds a career on the thesis that history is subjective in the retelling and therefore unknowable—a revolutionary notion that brings both acclimation and castigation. But as the rhetorician finds the mystery of his own history too weighty for words, the great riddle lies in predicting how he will shape his own future. Here is a detective story, a cult story, a love story of sorts, and a philosophical diatribe akin to “Crime and Punishment” with so many escape clauses it took the author twenty years to shape the plot. You can listen to him talk about the process in this brief interview.

The Warsaw Orphan – Kelly Rimmer

. . . even once all of this is over, this evil could emerge from the souls of men again and again and again.

As Ukrainians fight for their lives, a Holocaust novel may sound like too heavy a recommendation, yet this is perhaps the best time to revisit the past. For fans of historical fiction as well as parents of young teens grappling with how to lend perspective to the news without graphic brutality, this fictionalized account of two half-Jewish teens living on opposite sides of the ghetto wall offers hope in the true tale of a child smuggling operation that saved thousands. Interweaving the bleak realities of war with the naïve bravery of two extraordinary young people, best-selling Australian author Kelly Rimmer gently recounts this action-packed love story that was the subject of a documentary film in 2011: Irina Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers. You can watch the trailer here, in which 95-year-old Irina recounts of what she witnessed and did as a young woman risking her life in the Warsaw ghetto every day. I feel confident recommending this for children aged thirteen and up because the violence, including a rape, is handled discreetly with the focus on a better future. [Harper Collins, 2021, 416 pages or 13 ¼ hours on Audible.]

Putin's Handwriting and The Red Scare

The 3 Russian Red Flags of Vladimir Putin's script: #1 His extreme-right slant means he's quick to action and anger with no logical buffer to his emotions. #2 His dominant lower zone (the length of his low-hanging letters) means he's motivated above all by subconscious drives of which he himself may not even be aware. #3 That lower zone is full of sharp, dagger-like shapes. Where weapons appear in the writer, look for violence in their deeds. This image is from notes he flashed at his 2018 meeting with Trump. You don't need to speak Russian or be a fly on the wall of their secret meeting to see that he was up to no good even then.

Crying in H Mart – by Michelle Zahner

I kept waiting for her to fix what I could not see, but she offered no critique. She just smiled, half in and out of consciousness, maybe too medicated now to tell the difference. Or maybe, deep down, she knew what was best, that small criticisms weren’t worth it anymore.

Indie pop singer Michelle Zauner is riding a wave of critical acclaim for her best-selling memoir, and not just because she’s won a Grammy. This tender story of rebellion and reconciliation between a Korean-American girl and her dying, perfectionist mother plucks all the right chords of pathos—just enough that we feel her loss but not so much that she overshares. Coming of age just as her mother is dying, losing her strongest connection to her mother-tongue and cuisine, these are losses that magnify mourning as she strives to keep the memories alive with recipes, travel, and a pen pal old enough to be her mother.

I had never heard of Zauner before a friend recommended this memoir, but I found the 7 ½ hour audiobook narrated by the author to be honest, rich in imagery, and artfully written. For a taste of her work and motivation, watch this brief interview that aired on CBS Sunday Morning just three weeks ago.