Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What is it like to be a Mother, a woman, a working woman, a feminist, a baby boomer...or someone who's aging, who is at the end of their life with little options? What is faith, motherhood, marriage, work, being a woman, friendship, love, life, or God forbid, death? What in our life are absolutely not necessary or important?

I used to read Anna Quindlen's column religiously, not because we have a similar life as other readers claimed (her kids are older, her career is more successful, she's happily married...), it's because no one can analyze a complex situation or phenomenon, then is also able to explain it simply yet eloquently with a dash of humor. She can see everyday situation that we encounter in a deeper sense, in which she contributed to the loss of her Mom at a tender age of 19. She explained why mortality is always on her mind:

"But the gift that some of us have been given, in exchange for terrible loss, is the gift of that knowledge."

Being able to see and feel things deeply enables her to write in a language unlike all others. Her word choices are simple although carefully chosen and perfectly arranged. Yet they strike the perfect chord in my heart. Her advices are insightful, brilliant and sad in a way. The life that all of us women have to go through...We thought we had it so perfectly planned, not to avoid mistakes, not to delay anything or miss opportunities...We wanted the perfect job, the perfect husband, kids at the right age, yet the outcome is usually unpredictable. We go through exactly the same cycle, the generation before us, and the generation after us, although many circumstances have changed, most for the better.

"I would tell my twenty-two-year-old self that what lasts are things so ordinary she may not even see them: family dinners, fair fights, phone calls, friends. But of course the young woman I once was cannot hear me, not just because of time and space but because of the language, and the lessons, she has yet to learn. It's a miracle: somehow over time she learned them all just the same, by trial and error."

The whole book is full of insightful and poignant writings like the above, I highlighted all of them so I could go back and re-read them, think about them, ponder about her words, and how similar they are to my own, and many other women in the same stage of their life.

"There comes that moment when we finally know what matters and, perhaps more important, what doesn't, when we see that all the life lessons came not form what we had but from who we loved, and from the failures perhaps more than the successes..."

She also talked about our affinity to possessions, our refusal to retire or acknowledge mortality. She explained what a longer life expectancy and better healthcare has changed our expectation of life...for both better or worse. She explained the wonder of having girlfriends, although they might be different ones in different stages of our life. She indicated that women's movement has bought us great changes, thanks to all the women before us, but we are not yet there...Everything that we encounter or to be encountered in our life as a woman is in this gem of a book. I highly recommend it to all "finely aged" women out there. However, I do think that younger women will find this book useful, if they don't see it as preachy due to their age. Finally, Quindlen said since we don't have an absolute definition of "old", she was going to give it one:

"...OLD is wherever you haven't gotten to yet."

"When I think of that future, I know that my choices will narrow, have been narrowing as surely as a perspective drawing leading the eye to the focal point. I won't be going to medical school and becoming a surgeon. I'm not going to live in Italy or learn Chinese. I may have to become more thrifty and less spontaneous, may be lonelier and needier than I'd like..."

But, as she wrote, drawing is okay, sitting in a big chair with a long book is okay, spending long hours pulling together ingredients for a stew and staying inside all day while its aroma seeps into every corner of the house is okay, eating alone while reading a book is also okay. Life is....to be continued.


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