#MicroblogMondays: The looming spectre

Yesterday was stepMIL's 80th birthday party. We've avoided most large family gatherings thus far since covid began, but this one was pretty hard to say no to (especially since we've only seen stepMIL & her family two, maybe three times since the pandemic began) -- and so we went, with BIL & SIL. It was a beautiful day -- clear and sunny, but not too terribly hot or humid, thank goodness -- so we were (thankfully) able to spend the entire time outdoors. The only times I briefly ventured inside were to stow away my purse, use the bathroom, and to fill my plate with food in the kitchen. (And it's a big house, and there were few if any other people inside at the time.) 

There were between 30 & 40 people there -- members of stepMIL's family, including her nieces and nephews and their families, and dh's uncles & aunts (his late dad's brother, sisters & brothers-in-law, all now in their 70s & 80s)(but not any of his cousins). We hadn't seen any of them since pre-covid times, and (against my better judgment) there were lots of hugs and kisses on both cheeks (Italian-style) all round.  Dh, BIL & SIL greeted them ahead of me and did not fend off their hugs & kisses -- and they were all so clearly delighted to see us. It's hard to be the churlish outlier...! 

Older Nephew's wife wound up with a case of food poisoning (!) from takeout the night before and stayed home, but Older Nephew still came with Little Great-Nephew, who was, of course, the hit of the party (sorry, stepMIL!  lol).  ;) None of the aunts & uncles had seen LGN before -- their GREAT-GREAT-nephew!! (now 2 & 1/2 years old) -- and I will admit I felt a little sad as I watched them fuss over him. I work on family trees on paper and computer, and here were FOUR generations of the extended family, all together right in front of me. Something I never got to experience myself, and never will. It was special, but also a bit of an "ouch" moment. 

The looming spectre of covid -- now in its SEVENTH wave hereabouts, running rampant in the almost complete absence of masks or any other restrictions -- hung over the gathering. As I wrote a few posts ago, Younger Nephew & his wife, the most covid-cautious people we know, were not planning on attending -- and then (despite all their best efforts at covid avoidance) Younger Nephew actually came down with the virus last week!! (He's pretty sure he got it from his SIL & her two little girls, who also got sick shortly after they visited.) He is feeling a lot better, albeit still a bit plugged up, but was still in no shape to be going anywhere. (His wife wisely decamped to stay with her parents nearby until he is fully recovered.)

StepMIL's youngest sister would have been there, but first her husband and then she succumbed to the virus. She's feeling better, but still testing positive, and so her only appearance was via Facetime on her oldest son's cellphone. 

Little Great-Nephew was fascinated by 
the gargantuan fountain in stepMIL's front yard. :)  

Her other son and his wife were also there with their absolutely adorable 17-month-old baby. We were warned the baby had a cold, however, and so regretfully admired from a distance. 

One of dh's aunts told us her son (dh's cousin) recently spent a few days in Paris on business -- his wife came with him and once his work obligations were done, they spent a few days there as tourists. They arrived home to the current crowded chaos that is Toronto Pearson Airport and spent more than four & a half hours going through customs and waiting for their luggage. Despite the fact that masks are still required on flights and in airports here, they tested positive a few days later. (They decamped to their cottage "up north" to wait the virus out.) 

We came home, tired, full of food, and sunburned. 

Hopefully that's ALL we came home with...

(The first of my two summer surgeries -- the keratectomy/eye procedure -- is two weeks from today.) 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"Anna and Her Daughters" by D.E. Stevenson

This summer, my D.E. Stevenson fan group will be reading and discussing "Anna and Her Daughters," published in 1958. Our discussion begins on Monday, July 11th. 

While you might assume from the title that Anna is the main character in the book, the novel is actually narrated by the youngest of her three daughters, Jane. I liked Jane's voice here very much, albeit she seemed very mature and articulate for a 17-year-old, lol.  

The opening pages dive into the action with very little preamble: 40-year-old Anna Harcourt and her three daughters -- beautiful, spoiled and selfish would-be debutante Helen; middle sister Rosalie, who has always lived in Helen's shadow; and brainy youngest sister Jane, who is planning to head to Oxford -- have always lived a very comfortable, free-spending life in a big house on Wintringham Square in London (the setting for several other DES novels). But their husband/father recently and very suddenly died, leaving them with no income and very little savings. Brother-in-law/Uncle Leonard urges them to downsize to a small flat and find jobs -- but Anna resolves instead to sell the house and return to Ryddelton, her hometown in Scotland (and the location of several other DES books -- and there are several nods made to those other stories and characters), where they can buy a small house and live more cheaply.  

And then tall, dark, handsome Ronnie Ferguson enters their lives. 

As I said, I enjoyed Jane's narrative voice, and the story of the three very different sisters (as well as their mother). To me (I have a younger sister), the sibling relationships and rivalries rang very true. About halfway through, there was a plot twist, and it felt like everything was going to wrap up nicely -- but (like life), the story just kept going -- and then there was another twist (a few of them, actually!) -- and then suddenly everything wrapped up (perhaps a little too suddenly and neatly) and it was the end. If there's one consistent fault with DES's books, it's that too many of them end rather abruptly. (And I'll admit that a few of the machinations that it took to get to the end of this one didn't sit quite right with me... I can't say much more without revealing some massive spoilers!  lol)  Still, she does always leave me wanting more...!  

3 stars on Goodreads.  I will count this book as a re-read when we are finished our group discussion in late August. 

This was Book #31 read to date in 2022 (and Book #2 finished in July), bringing me to 69% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 8 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."  

Friday night odds & ends

• BIL called last night to tell us that... Younger Nephew has covid!!!  This was bombshell news for our family. Dh & I are pretty careful -- a lot more careful than the majority of people we know -- but Younger Nephew & his wife leave us in the dust in terms of covid precautions, lol.  Believe me, if HE can get it, ANYONE can. :(   (They think he picked it up at his SIL's house on Saturday -- she has two small children, and they are all sick right now too.) 
• Relevant note: Earlier this week, the province's Chief Medical Officer of Health admitted that Ontario is now in a seventh (7th!!) wave of covid (fuelled by the extremely contagious Omicron BA.5).  :(  
• The last time we saw Younger Nephew and his wife was a week ago, on Canada Day (last Friday, July 1st) at BIL's house -- and they actually asked us all to rapid test first as a precaution (oh, the irony). 
• We immediately tested again last night after BIL called (before we learned Younger Nephew almost certainly picked it up on Saturday, after we'd seen him). Negative again. 
• I'm running out of free rapid tests, and I don't think the provincial government is handing them out anymore (although you might be able to find a box or two at one of the outlets where they were available, if you searched around enough). (And of course, free PCR testing at a medical facility has gone the way of the dodo bird unless you meet a very strict set of criteria.)  Since we're at the start of yet another wave, which seems to be the most contagious one yet, I ordered a couple more boxes to have on hand from this supplier (recommended to me last year by Turia).  We can afford to buy them, but what about people who can't?  
• Meanwhile, with covid all around us (again)(still?!), we are heading to stepMIL's 80th birthday party on Sunday afternoon (!). Not sure how many people will be there -- but the weather is supposed to be nice and so I'm hoping we'll be able to stay mostly outdoors. 
• Of course this is NOT a good time for me to get sick with covid (or anything else, for that matter...!), with two long-scheduled surgeries/medical procedures coming up, the first in a little more than two weeks' time...! 
• SIL said, "I think we're all going to get it, sooner or later." Yeah, but even if I can't avoid it altogether, I'd prefer to prolong the inevitable for as long as I can, lol.  I've already gone 2.5 years without getting infected, while some people are on their second or third round -- and the damage done to your body can be cumulative -- so I'm hoping that even if I get sick, at this point, I'm slightly ahead of the game. Plus, as time goes on, the vaccinations and treatments keep improving, and that helps too.  
• Great article from The Guardian: "Keeping mum: TV’s problem with women who don’t want kids." Subhead: "Nearly 25 years after Sex and the City, TV still has a hard time accepting child-free women. Post-Roe v Wade, that needs to change." 
• "So, where are these nuanced stories of child-free women on our screens? It shouldn’t come as a shock that you can be a loving, successful and mostly happy person and still not want to have kids... The lack of TV that positively depicts women who decide not to have children is particularly disappointing... " 
• "...the conversation has barely moved on from one of the biggest breakthroughs for child-free women on screen: Sex and the City’s televisual debut, nearly 25 years ago... The fact that a series aired over two decades ago – which, retrospectively, got a lot of things wrong, and was very “of its time” in so many ways – is still the best portrayal of women who don’t want to have children is exasperating. And right now, we need to see the contemporary, positive stories of child-free women more than ever." 
• (And where onscreen are those of us who wanted to have children but never got them?? -- and positive portrayals, at that??) 
• And... hot on the heels of "Should we tax the childless?" (see my post here), another British newspaper, The Telegraph, offered up an opinion piece this week with this click-bait headline: "Child-free travellers should be banned from going on holiday this summer."  (!!!)  (Can you imagine the outcry if the headline targeted any other minority/diversity group??)  
• I've seen some suggestions, on Twitter and elsewhere, suggesting this was meant as satire, or tongue-in-cheek. Even so -- it's just not that funny.  
• One more response to the Times piece, from Glamour (UK): "First we're told we're selfish for wanting children; now we're being told we should tax the child-free:  As women, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t." (Yep.) 

Just call me Boomer ;)

(Alternate title: "Senior adventures with technology,"  lol) 

So here's the "microblog" post I should have written for Monday, except it actually happened Monday afternoon, after I already posted.  ;)  

Dh & I went out to a few stores on Monday afternoon, including Best Buy. When I got my new cellphone last year, I didn't realize it didn't have an earphone jack! -- apparently none of them do anymore (!)  and they didn't point that out to me at the cellphone store. (eyeroll)  I took a look online at the wireless earbuds and holy cow, talk about expensive...!  (particularly the branded ones that match my phone)(on top of the already expensive phone itself -- our first several phones were freebies if you signed up for a two-year plan -- but apparently they're not doing those anymore either...!).  

My sister's techie boyfriend told me I could just get an adapter & keep using my old earphones (which still work fine with my laptop) -- I have several pairs, each of which cost me less than $15 when I bought them years ago, and they are perfectly fine for my purposes. I wanted to be able to use them before my eye surgery in a few weeks, because my sister (who had a similar procedure done last year) warned me I won't be able to spend a lot of time reading or on my phone for the first few days -- I figure I can listen to some podcasts -- and I wanted to be able to use my phone to do it, instead of dragging out my laptop. 

So I marched into the store, nabbed a young guy who worked there, showed him my phone and my earphones and how they did NOT fit together! and asked about the adapter -- he listened with a bemused expression (I could practically hear him thinking "Okay, Boomer...!"),  and went straight to the rack & pulled a little box off -- $15. It plugs in where the phone charger does -- so I can't charge my phone and listen at the same time -- but that's okay. 

Dh couldn't stop laughing as we walked away.  "He's probably thinking, 'Argh, old ladies...!'"  dh teased. "I AM an old lady!" I retorted.  (Certainly to that kid, anyway, I'm sure...!) 

Whatever. I got what I wanted.  :)  I suppose I'll have to get the wireless ones eventually, but I'm perfectly happy with the old ones for now. 

It occurred to me that if Katie (who would be turning 24) had been here, she could have come with me and picked the right thing off the rack without having to ask for help. Or maybe if she'd been around, I'd have already been using wireless earbuds years ago?  Who knows??

Oh well.  

"An insult, not a solution"

The fallout continues from British demographer Paul Morland's opinion piece in the Sunday Times: "Should we tax the childless?"  (His answer was (naturally!) an enthusiastic yes.)  I flagged this article in my #MicroblogMondays/Odds & ends post yesterday. 

Thankfully, the response to his proposals has been overwhelmingly negative -- and not just from childless & childfree people. Here's a sample of things I've been reading and listening to over the past 24 hours: 

• Jody Day of Gateway Women appeared on LBC Radio in London on Monday, July 4th, to chat about the proposed childless tax with Sangita Myska (who is also childless not by choice).  Jody appears shortly after the one-hour mark of the program (11 p.m. program time).  
• If you have time, you may want to continue listening after her segment ends, because Sangita continued to take listener calls on the issue for the remaining two hours of the program! (Just think -- a solid TWO HOURS of talking about childlessness!)(Most listeners were, thankfully, in agreement that it's a very bad idea.)  
• The program will remain available online for six days (the rest of this week). 
• Jody was also on the BBC (Radio Bristol) with James Hanson on July 5th, discussing the declining numbers of babies and the complex reasons why women aren't having (more) children. (Jody's segment begins at about 1:37 into the program.) The program will remain available online for about a month. 
• Kat Brown (whose Instagram post alerted me to the controversial Times article), responded in Stylist magazine: "Paul Morland’s viral Sunday Times piece shows it’s easier to blame women than to make meaningful change." 
• The London Economic ran an article about the backlash to the Times piece. 
• The UK organization Ageing Without Children responded with this post on its blog. 
• On Medium:  Clair Woodward mused about "Taxing the childless, and other ways to kick us when we’re down." 
• Also on Medium: Berenice Smith, one-third of the team that brings us the wonderful podcast The Full Stop every month, penned a response to Morland's piece in the Times. 
• "Tax the childless! Encourage ‘our own’ to breed! What an asinine, inhumane way to tackle a population crisis" (Zoe Williams in The Guardian) 
• "Welcome To Gilead" (Rachel Moss, Huffington Post UK) 
• "Taxing the childless would be an insult, not a solution" (Rachel Cunliffe, The New Statesman) 
• "Proposing To ‘Tax The Childless’ Isn’t Just Ludicrous, It’s Offensive" (Polly Dunbar, Grazia) 

I'll keep my eye out for more. 

And if you think you don't need to pay attention to this issue because you don't live in the U.K., think again. Consider that in July 2021, would-be Republican candidate for congress J.D. Vance proposed that parents should have more voting power than childless people -- which some took further, proposing that childless people should be banned from voting all together (!). (I wrote about this here and here.) No doubt there are politicians in North America and elsewhere who will think Morland's ideas are worth implementing here too.   

#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

(This is NOT exactly a "microblog" -- but it's what I've got this Monday...!)  

• It was Canada Day on Friday (July 1st). A relatively quiet day for dh & me and, I suspect, many of our fellow citizens, despite being the first time in three years that official celebrations were being hosted on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and elsewhere across the country. (Actually, "near" Parliament Hill instead of on it, since the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings is under extensive renovation right now and the whole area is a construction zone.) 
• Canadian have never been as ardent about waving the flag as Americans and professing their patriotism -- which does not mean we love our country any less -- we're just quieter about it. ;)  Or have been, anyway. Canada Day celebrations are a much bigger deal than they used to be when I was a kid, but I still don't think it's in quite the same league as the Fourth of July in the U.S. 
• A couple of things have put a damper on Canada Day celebrations in recent years:  first, covid (which shut down the usual official/organized celebrations for the past two years);  second, revelations about the treatment of Indigenous children in residential schools just before Canada Day last year;  and finally, the occupation of Ottawa, our national capital, for several weeks this past winter by a bunch of flag-waving yahoos calling themselves "patriots" and demanding "freedom" and the overthrow of the federal government. 
• This Toronto Star article captured the very mixed feelings many people had about Canada Day this year. (Margaret Renkl, in the New York Times, expressed similar sentiments about the American flag and Fourth of July this year.) 
• (Thankfully, despite the fact that some of the convoy participants returned to Ottawa for Canada Day, it was a mostly peaceful day.)  
• It's by no means a perfect country -- and the past few years have brought that reality home in spades. But for all its flaws, it's still a damn good one, and I would not want to live anywhere else.  :)   
• As a Canadian, I was feeling somewhat helpless in the wake of the recent Dobbs vs Jackson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Roe vs Wade. Then I saw a news item (I think via Anne Helen Petersen on Twitter?) about the clinic in Fargo, North Dakota -- the only one in the state -- and the closest one to my mother's hometown in northwestern Minnesota (a two-hour drive away). It's still open for now but will likely be forced to close soon. The next-closest clinic is another four hours away in Minneapolis-St. Paul. 
• Fortunately, Minnesota (where abortion is still legal) is right across the Red River from Fargo, in Moorhead -- and the clinic plans to move operations there. A GoFundMe will help cover the costs of moving and renovations to the new space. I happily made a donation. It's a small thing, but it made me feel a little bit better. 
• Americans looking to Canada for abortions might find it difficult: this Washington Post article explains the limitations of the current Canadian system and the drawbacks for Americans who might want to come here. 
• Moira Donegan's column in The Guardian, on the fall of Roe vs Wade, said it all.  Sample passage: 

The real story is the women...

The real story is about thousands of these women, not just now but for decades to come – the women, whose lives will be made smaller and less dignified by unplanned and unchosen pregnancies, the women whose health will be endangered by the long and grueling physical process of pregnancy; the women, and others, who will have to forgo dreams, end educations, curtail careers, stretch their finances beyond the breaking point, and subvert their own wills to someone else’s.

...the books that will go unwritten, the trips untaken, the hopes not pursued, and jokes not told, and the friends not met, because the people who could have lived the full, expansive, diverse lives that abortions would allow will instead be forced to live other lives, lives that are lesser precisely because they are not chosen.

The real story is the millions of women, and others, who now know that they are less free than men are – less free in the functioning of their own bodies, less free in the paths of their own lives, less free in the formation of their own families.

The real story is not this order; the real story is these people’s unfreedom – the pain it will inflict and the joy it will steal. The real story is women, and the real story is the impossible question: how can we ever grieve enough for them?

• Katy at Chasing Creation is hosting an Instagram Live session on Thursday, July 7th at 7 p.m. Central/8 p.m. Eastern with Dr. Jay Zigmont, Certified Financial Planner and founder of Childfree Wealth. They'll be talking about financial planning when you don't have children. Details in this Instagram post. 
• Dr. Zigmont just released a book on this subject! Details area available on his website -- it's available through bookstores, including Amazon. (A Kindle e-copy is just 99 cents (US)!) 
• Dr. Zigmont will also be one of the featured speakers at Katy's upcoming Childless Collective Summit, and attendees will receive a free digital copy of his book!  :)  
• The summit will be held online and free of charge, July 14th-17th -- four jam-packed days with 40 amazing speakers from our community! Details & registration here. 
• The Clan of Brothers Facebook group for childless-not-by-choice men is changing its name to The Childless Men's Community. (I've changed the name on my list of resources in the right-hand column here.)  
• The organizers realized that "clan" in the U.K. (where many of the members are located) has a rather different connotation for men (and especially men of colour) in the U.S. (!).
• My longtime penpal in New Zealand alerted me to a new book (memoir) that's coming out there shortly that's relevant to us CNBCers:  "You Probably Think This Song is About You" by Kate Camp. It's not (yet?) available in North America, although it can be ordered through Book Depository. ($32+ Canadian for the paperback, so I think I'll wait and see...!).  
• A great excerpt of specific interest was published in a local publication:  "No miracle baby here." 
• From Carolyn Hax in the Washington Post: a very common situation in this community: a new mom notices her best friend has gone silent since her own miscarriage. Carolyn offers her thoughts, as do other readers in the comments. 
• Anne Helen Petersen interviewed Doree Shafrir last week on her Culture Study newsletter on Substack, about "the past and future of online parenting content," in a post titled "Where can you talk about ~mom stuff~ that isn't Facebook?" . 
• "I’m not a parent," says Petersen (she is childfree by choice), "but I read it [Shafrir's own newsletter] because the way we think and talk about parenthood matters to all of us. And as you’ll see below, I also think Doree understands exactly what so many of us miss and crave from contemporary media aimed at women in general and moms in particular — and doing it in a space that is not Facebook." There's a lot of talk about "the power of the mom community" and how it's changed over the years, and how to create and build community, "in real life" as well as online. The conversation continues in the comments (which, as might be expected, is also full of mom-talk). 
• I enjoy Petersen's work, and I get why she finds parenthood an interesting topic (I do too) -- and I am all for online spaces that are not Facebook too. 
• Nevertheless!  Here's my comment (below one from someone who identified as a non-parent). It's had five "likes" so far:  

I am not a parent either (not by choice)... I have to admit, I am a little envious of the automatic "in" that parents get into community networks, simply by virtue of being parents and the common experiences they share in that regard. (Case in point: a commenter above notes "IRL community matters so much - and parenting is a huge part of community.") Those of us who aren't parenting have to work harder to build new connections and to maintain our connections with friends & relatives who are parenting (and who don't always have the time or energy for us on top of everything else on their plate). It can be very difficult and frankly very lonely sometimes. 

AHP, I would LOVE for you to chat with Jody Day of Gateway Women about the childless (not by choice) experience and bridging the gap between parents and non-parents. :) 

• Coincidentally! -- the next morning, I found this somewhat-related post by Yael Wolfe on Medium: "If You’re Not a Mother, You’re Not Welcome at Our Retreat: How pronatalism is redefining female support systems and self-care."  She says it all so much better than I can! -- please go read the whole thing! (beware the comments, though...!) -- but to pique your interest, here are a few excerpts. She starts by noting the proliferation of moms-only retreats: 

What bothered me about this, however, is the way these retreats are positioning themselves, their target demographic, and by extension, me and other women without children.

These mothers-only spaces are not a new thing, folks. Women without children have been excluded from the sisterhood in countless ways over the centuries. We know we don’t belong. We’ve been told. We’ve been shown. We got it.

So if the goal is respecting the journey that women who have children are on, then what about respecting the journeys of the childfree and childless? 

And:  

Isn’t it a little worrisome that so many women assume that childless and childfree women cannot possibly understand the hardships of motherhood in any way?  ...The level of emotional immaturity, apathy, and total lack of cognition that we would have to have to not understand any aspect of motherhood is staggering. And to make that assumption about women who don’t have kids is even more staggering. That’s a potent cocktail of pronatalism and misogyny right there that many women don’t realize they’ve been sipping.

It seems so odd to me that so many women who have children work so hard to separate themselves from women who don’t. Whether it’s ending friendships with women who don’t have children or gatekeeping retreats that are only for mothers, why on earth wouldn’t mothers want our support? Why on earth wouldn’t they want to lean on us and welcome us into their world?

And why on earth can’t they see that we have our own hardships that maybe they ought to show up for, just as we try to show up for them? 

• British journalist Kat Brown at No One Talks About This Stuff on Instagram (also the name of her forthcoming book) flagged an opinion article from the Sunday Times (UK) that (as one commenter put it) seemed like it was drawn straight from The Onion (satirical site). 
• Unfortunately, it wasn't.  The proposal being put forward by demographer Paul Morland: "Should we tax the childless?"  His answer was (naturally!) an enthusiastic yes, with the aim of increasing the UK's birth rate ("grow our own" -- and thus avoid having to rely on those pesky immigrants for future labour requirements...). Among his recommendations: 
• "Create a “pro-natal” culture" [like there isn't one already??]. 
• "...including a national day to celebrate parenthood." [Said Kat: "wait until he finds out we already have two!" -- isn't that what Mother's Day and Father's Day are all about?]
• "...and a telegram from the Queen whenever a family has a third child." [Telegram?? What century is this guy living in? And -- if you're going to encourage the births of third children -- wouldn't it be better to offer financial incentives, better maternity leave & daycare, etc.??] 
• "Public figures can lead the way with words and actions (the prime minister, with his seven known offspring, has a track record in this regard)." [Love the phrase "KNOWN offspring"!!][Said Kat: "don’t even get me started on suggested Boris Johnson has some kind of parenting role model."]  
• Also: "Sacrifice a portion of the green belt around London and other cities to free up additional space for more, cheaper family homes."  [To quote Joni Mitchell: "They paved paradise, put up a parking lot..."] 
  
• Tax credits for parents and a “negative child benefit” tax for non-parents. "This may seem unfair on those who can’t or won’t have children, but it recognises that we all rely on there being a next generation and that everyone should contribute to the cost of creating that generation." [Like we don't already contribute by paying taxes for schools and other services to benefit other people's children, services that we and/or our children will never get to use ourselves?]  
• "Educate people that getting pregnant becomes more difficult with age."  [I'm all for greater fertility awareness at a younger age -- but "educate people" has a slightly sinister ring to it...] 
• As Kat said on Instagram, "it’s easier than putting pressure on the government to actually do something useful for its citizens, whatever their makeup...  don’t worry about responsibility as long as you’re spraying children into the world. Even if you aren’t being responsible about the future those children face." 
• The UK organization Ageing Without Children has posted a response. There's also a lot of reaction on Twitter. 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

"Anne of Green Gables" by L.M. Montgomery

The first time I read "Anne of Green Gables" -- the classic first novel by Canadian author L.M. Montgomery, published in 1908 -- I was about 8 or 9 years old. It was around 1969-70, and my family had recently moved to a small, remote, rural community in northwestern Manitoba. To our dismay, the town lacked a local library -- the closest one was 40 miles away -- but we soon learned we could order, receive and return books from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, through the mail!  (I wrote about this service in a post here.)  

I don't know if I'd heard of "Anne of Green Gables" somewhere before, or if I was intrigued by the description in the library catalogue, but I do remember that's where I got the book from. I read and returned it -- and then devoured the sequels, one after another -- as well as Montgomery's other novels -- and bought some copies of my own -- and re-read them all, over and over again during the years I was growing up and entering young adulthood (to the point that some of my personal copies started falling apart!). 

I was infatuated. I started naming objects and places around the town like Anne did. I already loved to read books and use big words like Anne (and felt like a misfit among my peers, as a result). Anne was even Canadian, like me!  Clearly, I had found a "kindred spirit."  

I can't tell you when the LAST time I read "Anne of Green Gables" was, but it's safe to say it was quite a while ago -- certainly more than 20 years ago, very likely more than 30 and possibly even 40 or more. In the interim, I've seen multiple movie and TV versions of the book (albeit not the recent "Anne with an E" series);  I've read books about Montgomery herself and read scholarly publications about her work. (I was an English major at university, but unfortunately, the study of "CanLit" and (especially) Montgomery specifically was only in its infancy then.)  I still haven't been to PEI -- yet!! -- but in the early 1970s, we went to Winnipeg on my sister's birthday to see a touring production of "Anne of Green Gables" the musical that's been performed in Charlottetown every summer since 1965 (with time out in 2019 and 2020 because of the covid pandemic -- but it's back this year!) -- and my high school drama club put on a non-musical "Anne of Green Gables" play when I was in Grade 10. I hoped for the part of Diana or Anne herself -- but alas, I wound up playing... Anne's nemesis, Josie Pye!

So -- needless to say -- the story has become well engrained in my memory -- and when I opened my newly purchased copy of the book (I splurged, and bought the entire Anne box set produced by Tundra Books!) and started reading, even after all these years, I could practically recite the words on some of the pages without even looking at them -- they were so very familiar.  It was like coming home to an old friend.  (And how appropriate that I finished reading it on the Canada Day long weekend...!)  :) 

I picked up "Anne" again recently because, after covering 7 other (non-Anne) Montgomery novels since the pandemic began in March 2020, my L.M. Montgomery Readathon group on Facebook announced that "Anne of Green Gables" -- the book that started it all -- would be our next read together.

By now, the basic plot is pretty well known: middle-aged brother & sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert (both unmarried and childless) decide to adopt a boy, unseen, from an orphanage in Nova Scotia, to help Matthew with the work on their Prince Edward Island farm near the small town of Avonlea. But when Matthew goes to pick up the child at the train station, the boy turns out to be a precocious 11-year-old girl with bright red hair, freckles, a wild imagination and a prolific vocabulary, who is overjoyed at the prospect of finally having a real home. Reluctant to send the child back to the orphanage and an uncertain fate, the Cuthberts decide to keep her anyway, changing their lives (and Anne's -- and ours!) in ways they never could have imagined.  And thus, a literary phenomenon was born.  :)  

I may be pretty familiar with the story but there were a few things I'd forgotten about or was reminded of:  for example, right from the start of the book, the reader is confronted by certain stereotypes about orphans and adoption (particularly as cited by neighbourhood busybody Mrs. Rachel Lynde in the opening chapter), some of which linger to this day. Of course, unlike Anne, most adoptees today are not orphans whose parents are dead. They are usually surrendered for adoption (through agencies or private arrangements) because their biological parents are unable to care for them, or they are placed in foster care by the state, until they are reunited with their families, or parental rights are relinquished or terminated and they become available for adoption. 

For all that I love "Anne of Green Gables," I wouldn't call it my favourite LMM novel (or maybe even my favourite "Anne" book). That would be a toss-up between "Rilla of Ingleside" (which is about Anne's youngest daughter, growing up during the years of the First World War), "The Blue Castle," and "Jane of Lantern Hill" -- all books we've covered in the Readathon, and all reviewed on this blog. Nevertheless, and despite some of the dated aspects mentioned above, it's still a classic (and deservedly so), and it's easy to see why it's still so beloved, in Canada and around the world, more than 100 years after it was first published.  

4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 on Goodreads. :) 

Our chapter-by-chapter group discussion of "Anne of Green Gables" begins on Monday, July 4th.  If you're a fan, come join us! I will count this book again as a re-read once we're finished (in mid-November). 

At the recent biennial conference of the L.M. Montgomery Institute of the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, the L.M. Montgomery Readathon received the 2022 Dr. Francis W.P. Bolger Award, which is presented for "outstanding contributions to our appreciation of Montgomery and place in Prince Edward Island, through scholarship, education, preservation, creative works, or by other means."  Announcing the award, Philip Smith said, in part, "The last two years and more have been times, for some, of separation, loss, fear, and loneliness. The L.M. Montgomery Readathon has invited people into the Montgomery community, invited connections with her Prince Edward Island, from the early days of the pandemic. It has provided a route for Montgomery to serve during the pandemic as a refuge, an inspiration, a means to community."  :)  

This was Book #30 read to date in 2022 (and Book #1 finished in July), bringing me to 67% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 8 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."