Irony

I've just finished reading a book called Disobedience. It's a somber book, but still amusing and humorous. Or at least that's how I found it to be. It's wordy and slow, though. I thought that about all Hamilton's books. They take effort to read, but not in a bad way. Late last night when I read the last words, I smiled.

I smiled because it ended just the way I thought it should. She used the words and phrases I would have used if I had been the author. Henry spoke at the end as I would have in my own private conversations. He was seeing the world through his own filter in way that's similar to mine.

It's sort of what I loved about Eat, Pray, Love, that I read last year. It was a book that captured me on many levels. It was fun and that was perfect for the time that I was reading it. Gilbert also reported the world in a way that was familiar to me.

I am always just a tiny bit removed from the thing itself, thinking it all through. Living it over and over in a what if, make-believe sort of style. It's as if that hasn't been lost from my own far away childhood.

I'm here in the reality of everyday life and responsibility, and yet I'm just a single step outside it all. Everything is lived and watched. It is all thought over, thought through and wondered about. It sometimes clouds my actions and decisions because it can be hard to filter what is the experience that the masses have--me being part of that group--and what I've thought happened.

It's the same as Henry. He is there, present for the scene when Elvie is carried off by the men. He just sees it differently. Karen and Beth hear the violence of the men. He hears how quietly they run in the forest. He hears them breathing.

He doesn't feel the violation of his sister until much later. And then, it is only through his own thought process that he gets there.

So the irony part is this.

Over the last week or so, obedience has been hard to come by around here. The transition from slacker holiday to "normal" life has been hard. As the parent and teacher, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of disobedience. It's far different from the book, but it did lend a few light moments to the daily grind.

You have to laugh ever so lightly when you lecture the kids, put them to bed and then curl up with a book called Disobedience.