The Household Guide to Dying.

I picked up this book at a community garage sale a few months ago. It was 25 cents. The title caught me, and well, at 25 cents, you can't really go wrong. So it sat, and sat, and then sat some more. Basically if it wasn't at textbook or something school related, I rarely read it. The Bible I still seemed to manage, although much less than I would like to admit.

So when I finished my course on June 18th (I ended up getting an A- which I'm quite pleased about), I figured I had a few weeks before my next course to enjoy a few books. I decided it was about time to read the book that had been staring at me from the shelf. It looked quite neglected.

Based in Australia, which I find it fairly amusing that the author's last name is Adelaide. Did she plan that? Anyway, its about a woman who writes "Household Guides" and then finds out she is dying from cancer, so decides it would be only fitting for her to write "The Household Guide to Dying." The book is all about her journey of processing her impending death. Those things she wants to tie up and ultimately the things she is quite prepared to leave undone.
I thought it was beautifully written, and quite insightful on many levels. Ahh, yes, nothing like a good book. I thought I would share some of my favorite bits and pieces from the book. She writes beautifully and with so much depth.

In one chapter she discusses the Hills Hoist rotary line. I love the detail and truth in this passage:

"For the rules of washing line culture have relaxed over the generations. By my childhood they were shifting, but in my mother's day they were still strict, codified and thoroughly gendered. The washing always went out early in the day. Only a disreputable woman would hang out her washing later than nine o'clock. Around lunchtime would indicate grave moral lapses like sleeping in or spending the morning glued to the television...
The code also covered pegs. Only a dysfunctional household left pegs on the line. A sloppy housewife did this, a woman with no scruples, who never bothered to sort whites from coloureds and who even unhygenically washed tea towels in with the underwear. Jean once told me that in her childhood you could actually sum up a woman's entire character from her habit of leaving pegs on the line. She was probably as sloppy and lazy inside the house as she was on the outside, leaving food tins in the fridge rather than transferring it to plastic containers, and only changing the bedsheets once a fortnight. This would be the type whose children went to bed unwashed, and who bought frozen pies for dinner on Friday nights. She probably also wore nylon underpants instead of cotton, and ate chocolate in bed. All this could be ascertained by one glance at the washing line. Pegs, fading, festooned with spiderwebs, sitting forlornly like abandoned fledglings...well, that sort of woman would not be invited to weekly tennis or to Tupperware parties. You would not be allowed to play with the children of such a household."

I also adore her description of the smell of a baby. After I read it, I wanted to go
gather Gabe up into my arms (who had long been sleeping) and just remind myself, as what she wrote of was so true:

"As babies, their heads had seemed engulfed by an invisible nimbus of something altogether holy. In particular, there was a spot on the back of the neck, where the smell of fresh human life was exquisite. It smelled wholesome, warm, faintly sweet. Slightly earthy, yet pure and heavenly at the same time. It was a new smell but a familiar one. A smell you may never have breathed in before your baby was placed into your arms, but one you recognised at once, as if it was imprinted in your DNA, and had been there all your life just waiting to be found. Each baby had a different smell, yet each was equally fragrant and soothing. You picked your baby up and drew deeply through your nostrils, again and again over months and years, before finally exhaling in utter satisfaction. No other perfume, no drug, nothing ever had the smell of a baby. Fresh-cut grass, a coffee bean, a glass of aged port, a lemon leaf crushed in the hand, a drop of Chanel No 5, a new book."

So there you have it. Probably the 1 of 2 books I actually get around reading this summer. Regardless, I loved it and would recommend it. Now onto book #2. I start a Political Science course on July 5, so I technically only have 6 days to read this sucker. Better get to it!

PS. Don't worry. Soon I will stop begging for you to vote for our family in the Shandro Photograhy contest. Last night we were winning by nearly 20 votes, then the Hopkins family came up from behind and are now beating us by 40 votes! I have no idea who has 40 friends and relations who vote for such things during the late night hours. Apparently the Hopkins do. Anyway, if you haven't voted already, please do! And you can even ask your friends to vote too!

http://blog.shandrophoto.com/2010/06/20/free-family-photography-contest-finalists/