Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Okay, I didn’t post on the 7th because our internet was down all day, and I couldn’t really work around that! As for the 9th, well–the day was just packed. There was laundry and apple picking and more laundry and feeding people and more laundry and finding room for the apples, not to mention stake conference over Zoom. Today doesn’t exactly feel carefree, either–this morning I scrubbed the tub and puttered in my kitchen to fairly good effect, not to mention working on my too-tipsy mailbox, running over to the elementary school with a forgotten Chromebook, and putting the bedspread back on my bed. My oldest and I hit the orthodontist this afternoon, and in addition to more feeding of the people (because they always want to EAT, dang it!), we’ve been reading library books that need to go back tomorrow and doing all of the other various things one does of an evening with one’s children when one’s poor husband is working miserably long hours for the third week in a row.

Anyway.

On the other hand, I’m here today, and I get to review Marjorie Agosin’s (imagine an accent over that last i) The Maps of Memory: Return to Butterfly Hill. Like its predecessor, it combines oddly whimsical illustrations with difficult details about both life in a dictatorship and life in the aftermath; Celeste learns more about her parents’ experiences while she was in Maine and, in a surprising postal twist, gets the opportunity to look for some of the disappeared. We see friendship, hardship, PTSD, and hope, and while there’s a slight awkwardness in the writing style that I tend to attribute to being translated from another language, Maps of Memory is a book you want to keep reading. In the meantime, freshly picked grapes are calling me, so have a good night all!