Elizabeth Berg somehow manages to publish a novel once each year. I don’t know how she does it, but I know this: her stories are amazing. It’s not that they are complicated or clever. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. She is able to create a wonderfully deep and interesting novel about....nothing. I’m serious. Her stories are about the most ordinary of people, folks just like you and me. The characters aren’t sexy or strong or rich. They are...normal. Their problems, conflicts and joys are run-of-the-mill, just like you’d find in your life or mine. Some get divorced and some stay happily married. Some struggle with cancer and others with growing older. I suppose this is exactly what I love about Elizabeth Berg’s novels - they are approachable, easily digestible, and yet...they make me feel things very deeply. That is her greatest gift: the ability, through writing, to elicit emotion in the reader.
Last night, I was reading in bed as my husband pretended to watch the Bruin’s game. (I say pretend because his eyes were closed.) In any event, there I was curled up against the pillows with my iPod reading along as one of my characters was sharing with her dinner date something that had happened to her that day. This character had watched a woman sitting on the commuter bus crying. All the passengers could see the tears running down the woman’s face and the woman was just sitting quietly with her hands in her lap allowing her tears to flow. Then, a 50-something male passenger came and sat next to the woman and placed his arm around her shoulder and just stared straight ahead. The character was so moved by this small act of kindness. It gave her hope in humanity and made her feel that we’re all connected. And it made me cry.
Yesterday was a hard day for me, so the tears were easy in coming. I just felt sad. Maybe it was Monday-itis after a warm, sunny weekend...but after reading that passage and sharing it with my husband, I began to wonder if that heavy sadness I’d been feeling throughout the day was more than that. It’s true that I tend to have these bouts of heavy heartedness now and again, without cause or explanation....sort of a recurring tug on my heart strings. Last night, Elizabeth Berg’s writing helped me to realize that what I may be feeling is a longing for connection, for that sense of belonging in the world.
I don’t talk about it much, but I had a pretty sad childhood in a lot of ways. I wasn’t a “wanted” child, and my needs, both physical and emotional, went unmet much of the time. Perhaps this transient feeling of sadness and disconnection, this sometimes intense longing for an elusive something is related to those early experiences, sort of like a very long arm reaching out from my childhood and tugging on me, leaving me rattled and off kilter. I shared these thoughts with my husband and he seemed to understand. It felt good to be held and kissed on the top of my head as I let my own hot tears flow.
I am ever-grateful for writers like Elizabeth Berg. She writes about ordinary, everyday life through characters we can relate to. Some of us need a good novel to help us access our own feelings and thoughts, to process things we’ve been through, looking at things through a different lens. Good literature, music, movies, art - these are the mediums that help me appreciate humanity, mine and other’s. A simple story, a poem, a song. Sometimes, these are my salvation. I’m hopeful, too, that my own “art” might touch others. A photograph, a journal entry....the simple sharing of words and images. You just never know who needs your touch, even though it’s scary to reach out, to open up. We need each other. That much I know is true.
