Eating up (Figuratively) "The Journal Keeper, A Memoir" by Phyllis Theroux

My unscheduled freedom has provided me opportunity to do more reading. I have, as usual, a pile of books to get to, and several partially read to complete, but I have actually gotten through one relatively quickly, and I enjoyed it beyond measure. The Journal Keeper. 

Perhaps part of its appeal is that I am a journal keeper of many years, although I do not write nearly as well (she is an inspiration, therefore, for me to be more cohesive and thoughtful and less complaining). I feel a kindred spirit and with the shake-up of my own life of late, her experience and digestion of difficulty and change at upper mid-life, just riveted me. It is rare that I want to read a book over at all, let alone immediately. This is one that I do, and might, if only I do not get distracted by the need to dive into one of the others beckoning me.

The context for this published part of Ms. Theroux's journal, spanning the period from 2000 to 2005. When we meet her, her aged mother, who suffers from macular degeneration has moved in with her, in Ashland, Virginia. It is the same house in which she had previously lived a domestic life with a now ex-husband and three now grown children. When she leave us, it is three years after her mother dies and just after her marriage to a persistent, loving man named Ragan. 

I am reminded as she meanders incisively that each life has a story, and each story, though it unfolds almost without our notice, is really quite the fascinating drama with bits of sometimes comic, gentle relief. She writes with such innate loving of her mother, their easy relationship, and the one she initially resists with a man whose differences frighten her but whose decency and kindness compel her.  Change slips into her life, and while, initially she is reluctant, she embraces it and gives us all courage to proceed, and with a good amount of joy. 

I was bending pages and underlining segments throughout. As in all good tales, journals, fiction, or non-fiction, there is the reminder that we ought to stay in the present, not the past or the future. The first is done. The other we cannot control. One line I leave you with, and suggest you read this book, "Life is more intense when one is all here to live it."

I had begun to see that before I read this book; now I must not forget as I wander from one moment to the next.

And continue my own journal keeping.